Frequently asked questions

  1. So what is this Spirit thing anyway?
    Spirit of Half-Life is a mod for Half-Life. You know - like Counterstrike, or Opposing Force. It's a rather unusual one, though. Most mods provide one or two new entities and features for mappers to use - for example, Opposing Force has climbable ropes, and new monsters; Counterstrike has buying zones and hostages. But Spirit is all new features. It offers literally hundreds of new things - ranging from obvious new stuff like rain and snow effects, down to obscure things like info_alias and locus_variable entities.
  2. How do I start using Spirit, then?
    Making levels with Spirit is pretty much like making levels for any other mod. You install the mod on your computer, tell Worldcraft (or your favourite editor) to use the appropriate data files, and then you can simply start using the new features. See the Setup Guide for more information.
  3. Can I use the Spirit features in my levels for Counterstrike, Opposing Force, etc?
    Short answer: no. Half-Life can only load one mod at a time, so you'll have to choose one. Activate Counterstrike, or activate Spirit. You can't do both.
    Having said that, if you're writing a new mod yourself, the Spirit source code is available for download, and you're free to (ab)use it however you want. So you could get access to Spirit features by simply copying them out of the Spirit codebase.
  4. When I've made a Spirit level, how do I distribute it?
    There are many ways to do this, but the simplest is probably to download the Spirit Mod Skeleton, copy your .bsp file(s) into its map directory, then open up the liblist.gam file provided in Notepad and make changes as appropriate. Ta daa! You've created a new mod, which will appear in Half-Life's custom mod browser. Oh, and you'll probably want to rename the "skeleton" folder to something more appropriate, too. To distribute it, just zip up that entire folder.
  5. I've been making a Half-Life level, and I think it needs to use some features from Spirit. Can I transfer it?
    It's hard to say. All Half-Life levels should run perfectly in Spirit, without needing any changes. That's the idea, anyway. Unfortunately, at the moment there are a few bugs which mean it's not quite perfect... so all I can say is, try it out. If there are problems, let me know.
  6. Help! How do I use all these things?
    If you need information, the first place to look is the Features page, which should hopefully answer all your initial questions. When you (inevitably) have a question that it doesn't answer, I recommend you ask on the forums at the Spirit website.
  7. Could you add an mp3 player to Spirit?
    I might, someday. But new things scare me.
  8. Could you add drivable vehicles to Spirit, like the ones in Counterstrike?
    In theory, perhaps I could. In practise, the ones in Counterstrike were horribly bug-ridden, so I'm not very keen on the idea. (I have enough bugs already, thanks!) Maybe some time in the future.
  9. Could you add a trigger_random entity so that I can do random events?
    The multi_manager already has several randomisation options.
  10. Could you make it possible to have mirrors in my level?
    Monsters have a "Reflection" renderfx mode, which makes the monster get drawn twice as though it's standing on a shiny floor. If that doesn't do what you need, then no.
  11. Could you create a new weapon/monster for me?
    No.
  12. Oh please, I need them for my mod...
    No.
  13. So what team did all this stuff, anyway?
    There's no team - just me, Laurie Cheers. I'm a 22 year-old university student in the UK. I got frustrated with the stupid limitations of the Half-Life entity set, so I decided to change them... and now, a couple of years later, it's grown beyond my wildest dreams.
    Laurie stopped coding for Spirit after the 1.2 release. This release reflects additions made by a number of people, and was compiled by Confused.