A Casual Run of (Altered) Xen
2*Custom music not actually included in the actual addon release, though it would be nice if I could.
Felt like having a casual runthrough of Xen one random afternoon, though it might've ended up ballooning into altering some things that I find irritating by way of the usual entity editing. The music tracks playing for most of the video is me getting tired of listening to HL1's OST for the ten buhmillionth time and going for something else in my playlist. Those who've seen my clippostings in the various Discord servers I hang around in'll probably get the idea already. It's technically an NFR, though considering I've rebalanced the maps, it feels wrong to add that bit in.
The readme in the "Xen Addon" download details what I've altered, though to put things short, the main idea was settling old pet peeves that miffed me regarding this chapter. See, I actually don't find vanilla Xen in by itself to be as irritating as some people think. No skill issues here (aside from maybe the elevator bug that gets me jammed even in this run). There's claims of Black Mesa (the game) fixing Xen, but I find that they went over the complete opposite end in terms of what I seek when it comes to a "desperate push behind enemy lines" situation that I've always perceived HL1's finale as. Kinda hard to feel that when you have regenerating egon ammo. Bah. That's a rant for a different day, I digress.
The ammo capsule (weaponbox entity) is the one I find most irritating. They're not like Doom backpacks that consistently give you X amount of ammo. The mapper gets to put whatever they want inside, and the player is none the wiser on what contains within. Adding to that, it doesn't consider the amount of ammo you have. If you got full .357 ammo, and then grab a capsule that has... say, 30 .357 rounds? Everything inside gets vaporized. You have to deliberately spend half of your entire supplies incase an ammobox randomly decide to contain 8 RPG rockets, 7 tripmines, or 8 AR grenades. Yes, all examples I've mentioned are real ones. Which one is which? You won't know until you pick them up. I like to manage resources, especially here in what is clearly the toughest last stretch of the game, so one could probably understand why this particular mechanic incenses me to no end.
Some folks suggested further alterations, and I've done some whenever it feels like it'd help. Replacing any excess explosives with ammo that players can use, bumping up the health restored per second in the funny pools or chambers, making the floating outdoor platforms faster so the player'll wait less, etc. I will admit that it's not a foolproof fix. It's not the silver bullet that'll mend every lamentations of Xen. It's pretty much just an addon mainly made for me personally. Everyone's got their own preferred version of Xen, and I doubt mine'll fix the woes of a good many. That said, it has helped me personally to enjoy all of my HL1 playthrough, and who knows, maybe it'll help some too. Makes me wonder what a potential "Xen the Way Valve Did" be like. Would be neat to see a community collab like that, no? Hah.
Installing this should be easy enough, navigate to your HL1 installation and pop open the valve folder. Remember to backup your old stuff first incase you wanna roll back someday. Paste both the "maps" and "models" folders in, and the next time you run Xen, it should be running the modified maps. "sv_cheats 1" followed by "skill 3", "map c3a2d", and "impulse 101" should also work if you wanna skip right over to where this video starts.
Mods Used:
LeonelC's HD HUD: https://gamebanana.com/mods/457678
MP5 & Shotgun Sprites Fix (altered to fit the above): https://gamebanana.com/mods/24745
LD Weapons Reanimation Pack (used old HL1 pistol to replace that awful BS/OP4 Gearbox one, dreadful thing butchers both the slide and the backplate, no clue why people kept using that one): https://gamebanana.com/mods/179921
Xen Addon: https://www.mediafire.com/file/leghhs...
Various OSTs from Omori, along with its mods, Reverie and Omoriboy. Oh, and the starting track's from Clock Tower 2, almost forgot to mention.
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