Frequently asked
questions
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Could you add an mp3 player to
Spirit?
I might, someday. But new things scare me.
- 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.
- Could you add a trigger_random
entity so that I can do random events?
The multi_manager already has several randomisation
options.
- 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.
- Could you create a new
weapon/monster for me?
No.
- Oh please, I need them for my
mod...
No.
- 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.