Half-Life DM GOLD multiplayer maps
century megapack - best of all times

version 1.1
1998 - 2018

This is the most complete (because maps are still being produced) selection of Half-Life multiplayer maps of good quality every server must have.
Not only these maps were selected and tested, but also missing or damaged resources were recovered, mistakes and bad resources were fixed.


What's included?

- 820 maps for multiplayer game, about 3GB.
- all required resources (textures, models, sounds, skyboxes, details, etc.).
- documentation, whenever available.
- original fixes that you won't find anywhere else.
- 7 playlists, sorted by genres.


Who is this for?

- First of all - for players: no more need to spend hours digging a couple of nice maps out of mountains of garbage.
- For HLDM server owners: pack does not contain any trash like temporary files and you will find maps for every taste there.
- For collectors: this is history!
- For admirers of beauty: this is art!


Features:

- Original documentation was preserved and recovered (all text saved to mapname.txt).
- Recovered lost resources for many maps.
- Many maps were fixed (e.g. wrong transparency modes for ladders, fences, etc.).
- Maps were tested for play-ability.
- Fixed sounds: markers, frequencies, some loops were purposefully cut to avoid crashes on some HL versions and for smooth looping.
- In some rare cases "music" was cut off - huge WAV-files with horrible quality that were playing on the map (like the train announcer voice at the beginning of HL).


Installation:

- Unpack the entire archive into Half-Life directory, when asked to "overwrite folder valve?" choose "yes".
- Note: all files are new (no standard HL files will be overwritten), they can be safely deleted to restore HL to its original state.
- Nothing else


Tested on:

- Half-Life 1.1.2.1 (steam) + XDM 3.0.4.0
- Windows 7 x64 + DirectX 11


Important notes:

- mapcycle.txt cannot be larger than 8KB (8192 bytes)! Because of this it is better to keep it in unix format (LF) - Half-Life does recognize it and more maps can fit inside.
- Some maps contain animated lights (flickering lamps, fire, etc.), that on some video cards may drop FPS from 60 down to 10! That's how the game is made.
- Old Half-Life versions (WON) have tighter limits on models, sprites and sounds - some maps may fail to run there.
- Also, some Half-Life are likely to crash because of unsupported sound file format (> 22050HZ, > 8bit, > 1ch) or those containing bad markers/regions/etc. Surprisingly, even now there are some "specially gifted" mappers who stubbornly ignore this.


Afterwords:

- Pack author: ~X~
- My respect goes to map authors - without them we wouldn't have anything to play!
- Distribute this package as much as you want. You may put in on your blog, website, file server, on your favorite torrent tracker, in a cloud, in the darknets, burn it on a CD, on a tape, just don't ask money for it.


Interesting facts:

- Maps were chosen out of more than 4000 total, manually.
- Detail level was not the only decisive criteria: you can find relatively simple maps with good gameplay in this pack. There are many factors, but all of them are as objective as possible.
- Maps are collected from all around the world, sometimes - from places many would afraid to visit :) - file archives, pirated CDs, abandoned HLDM servers, torrents, DC++, maps sent via IM, sites, forums, friends, clubs...
- Maps were tested on original Half-Life and XDM ( https://moddb.com/mods/xdm | https://mods.moddb.com/5440/ ) mod, which greatly expands HL multiplayer capabilities.
- In the process of separation, piles of maps of doubtful quality were formed: from "ok" that "almost made it" to "epic fail" that can cause vision damage. :)
- All 1 author was harmed during making of this pack.
- Author of this pack is a mapper himself and produced lots of maps, none of which are featured here. All of them were made for XDM, where you will find them. \(~_o)