Hello again everyone!
After 20 years of enjoying everything that the Half-Life community has had to offer, I am incredibly happy to finally release my own contribution to you all.
This Half-Life mod will let you experience the Black Mesa incident from a different perspective, with some insights into mysterious events which Gordon Freeman was not present for.
This is my first real modding effort, which I began around 5 years ago.
I initially had just hoped to make a short and simple campaign that I myself would enjoy, working on it sporadically over the years in my spare time.
I never expected it to be as large an undertaking as it turned out to be, and I also could have never anticipated that I would get married and become a father in the time I worked on this project! It has been a long journey, but very much worth it.
This mod has been created and tested for the Windows version of Half-Life on Steam, and it is not compatible with Half-Life Source or the old WON version of Half-Life.
Music is integral to this mod, and the soundtrack may not work if this is played any other way.
Lastly, due to the detail in some areas, I would recommend running this on a more modern computer than what Half-Life was designed for originally.
There are two ways to get the mod below, either a Windows installer which will find your Steam Half-Life directory automatically, or a zip file.
Please run this using the shortcut created for Half-Life: Echoes in your Steam game library, this avoids the "ED_Alloc: no free edicts" crash by increasing the entity limit. If you change games from within Half-Life this command will not be run.
Select your format below - setup instructions are included with each download.
I have put a lot of time, energy and care into this, and I hope that you enjoy playing this as much as I did making it!
Thank you to all who supported me while I created this.
Cheers,
James Cockburn
TROUBLESHOOTING
This mod is designed for the current Steam version of Half-Life on Windows.
I cannot guarantee it will fully function any other way.
Ensure that you run the game using the "Half-Life: Echoes" game library shortcut in Steam.
This increases the entity limit and avoids the crash "ED_ALLOC: NO FREE EDICTS"
Do not load Half-Life and change to Echoes from within the game.
This will skip the command to allocate extra memory.
You can set this manually if you wish, by adding
-num_edicts 2048
To the Steam launch options for Half-Life: Echoes.
To do this, right click on the game title, and select properties.
Then go to the "General" tab, then "Set launch options".
Or alternatively, add this to the Half-Life launch options:
-game echoes -num_edicts 2048
Remember to remove this if you wish to play Half-Life normally.
If this fails, try to load a saved game from a previous map and try to continue from there.
Report any issues that cannot be fixed by the above to the moddb page.
Moddb.com
Nice. Looks pretty neat, will certainly check this out within the upcoming week. Great job on all your hard work!
Congrats on a fantastic release!
Congratulations on releasing your first big mod! It looks amazing and I can't wait to play it.
Really enjoyed this mod. Thanks for your hard work!
Tremendous work for mostly the one person, and it has been done astonishing! Thank you, James!
I'm still somewhat at the very beginning.. Perhaps in map3 after the resonance cascade.. This mod is brilliant - impressive in every way and aspect go play it people!
I review will follow once I'm done with it.
Y'all know what I'm gonna do right now. :^)
Once again, Great job!
Really excited about playing this over the weekend.
Help! I can't put this down! Mod of the Year without a doubt.
Gonna stream it today, review it tomorrow.
Wooohoo, congrats - another Mod of the Year contender steps into the ring :)
This is high praise - thank you very much :) And thank you for running this site!
Well deserved - and i'm just overjoyed when I see HL mods as it's the game that inspired ModDB in the first place!
This is very good. I made an account just to comment. Good job, James!
Just fantastic, would recommend this to any and every half life fan
I really enjoyed it. The game story, cinematic fiction was excellent. Congratulations. I wish that the new projects will continue. Best regards.
The boss fight with that shielded Grunt or whatever was kinda BS, certainly not enough health laying around and not enough shotgun ammo. I managed to beat him on my 5th try but only had 6 health left. As soo as I got to the next area I was killed instantly.
Really put me off the mod. I'll try and pick it back up in a few days.
Did you play version 1.0 or 1.1? At the very least, the headcrabs are gone in 1.1.
A couple of tips for the boss, before you get in the lift - check the cupboard at the top of the stairs when you first enter the building, check the ceiling vent in the bathroom, and there is a door hidden behind the forklift in the boss room that might yield something good for you (plus a Health Charger!) :)
Excellent mod. Great attention to detail with the environments and pacing. Feels like an old Valve game.
What is compatibility like for the Mac version of Half-Life if installed with the zip files?
It is only available for Windows at the moment I'm afraid, but some modders are looking to see if is possible to be ported
Would be nice to play it on Linux as well!
Very nice job.
that .exe file just gave me some virus..try to activate touchscreen and now i cant even delete it..
I can say with 100% conviction that the exe is safe. It is an inno script that simply unpacks it's files to your half life folder.
Hi there! This has the potential to be one of the best HL mods around, unfortunately it keeps crashing on a regular basis. I have followed the troubleshooting guide, even going so far as to use use -num_edicts 4096. I will gladly return to the game once it has been patched to fix this, as it is regrettably unplayable at this point.
Try to add this line in liblist.gam in "echoes" folder (open the file with Notepad, edit & save changes):
edicts "2048"
Hi, I'm really interested in playing this mod, is it translated into Spanish? or subtitles? or is it complete in English?
I spent a good bit of time editing sound clips to fit this mod - I am afraid I only intended it to be in English, sorry
Great mod, almsot complete it on 1 go, a lot of details. Im gonna probably vote for you as mod of the year)
You didn't said if HL is needed
It's essential, necessary, obligatory, mandatory, indispensable...
The clue is in the heading of the page - it is listed as a mod for Half-Life :)
Hi everyone! I have a problem with this mod. In all cutscenes no video only sound. Someone know how to fix it?
Play on Windows. Other platforms are not supported.
I'm playing on Windows 10
Are you playing this on the Steam version of Half-Life?
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This is the best mod ever. If you thought about visiting Black Mesa again, from a different perspective, this covers it all. I was blasted off with the quality in this mod, some other stuff (visiting Black Mesa from actual Black Mesa, that is in the outside), pools, dialogues, civilian scientists, low-level personnel with dialogue, it's pretty much when they created Deus Ex and everyone was with their mouth wide open. Just download this thing to see what I mean.
I am really enjoying this game so far. But I have an issue: echoes09b where the zombie is throwing the barrel- then cutscene - and then i´m just standing there and I can´t do nothing (not even flashlight) except looking around. How can I fix this ?
Can anyone relate ? I really wanna play this .... OMFG :D
I've fixed that issue now, sorry about that!
Moddb.com
Install this and load a save from a previous map :)
i cant find it in my library help please
Download the zip version and check the readme, it has full instructions
nvm i got it to work i did the .exe thing the game was AMAZING it felt like this was made by valve 10/10
Oh man, this isn't a mod, this is the ****** masterpiece, everything is well designed, the story, amazing, FX, awesome, the dialogues, Jesus, they're powerful, and you took goldsrc to an unimaginable level, it's so enjoyable. This mod looks like a standalone game, or an official expansion, I had more fun playing this than Opposing Force, trust me. as a half life mega fan, I recommend you to put it on sale on steam, Half Life Before is on sale and it's trash, you know. There are some bugs, but nothing to worry about. It's ******* MOTY, c'mon give me a hug.
And it works perfectly on Android as well ;)
As a par-time modder of FIFA 98 Series, I respect yours when you said preparations have undergone five years. I could not imagine when I'll complete a mod with time and power consumed like yours for my favorite games. Cheers.
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