Made by a team of talented people from two countries at war.
After 13 years in development, Half-Life: Field Intensity has been released. The mod for Valve’s Half-Life was created by a team of veteran modders known as Hazard Team, who previously made Half-Life: Induction. Field Intensity is way bigger, though. It follows athe playbook of Opposing Force, with 34 maps taking you through a campaign based around one of the marines sent in to Black Mesa to take out the alien threat, as well as any scientists still alive. Needless to say, all the reviews of it are glowing.
Field Intensity started development in 2009, right after Hazard Team finished Induction. Originally called Soldier’s Adventures, they wanted to create a “classic” Half-Life mod. as programmer Roman Chistokhodov puts it, they wanted to create a mod that “tells the story of the Black Mesa incident from the point of view of yet another character.”
Field Intensity is divided in two parts, which Hazard Team refers to as “Days”. Day 1, which features maps by mod co-creator KRSK, is based around the marines’ first encounters with the Xen aliens. Day 2, on the other hand is more about getting out alive. The two days are woven together by an unseen radioman character who clues you in to the wider events happening at Black Mesa. Chistokhodov states that this idea was “inspired by games like Bioshock and SOMA“.
Field Intensity is a huge project that initially started off using the Opposing Force game libraries. But in 2017, Chistokhodov started work on his own version of the Half-Life SDK. As he said:
Eventually it let us abandon using Opposing Force game libraries and switch to our custom implementation. Having such freedom opened a lot of new possibilities, so I’ve added new enemies and weapons beyond Opposing Force ones.
Roman Chistokhodov
That said, there is a larger reason why the mod took so long; real life tends to get in the way. A combination of school work and shifting interests often kept the mod on the shelf.
There was even a time when I wanted to abandon it altogether, thinking that Half-Life modding is outdated and nobody would be interested,” he says. “However I saw that Half-Life community is still alive and a lot of mods are still being developed and some are even getting released on Steam.
Roman Chistokhodov
One other notable thing about Field Intensity, at least given the current geopolitical situation, is the team itself. Hazard Team is made up of Russian and Ukranian members. And the current invasion of the latter by the former has had an impact on the team. KRSK, who was responsible for much of the first Day’s maps, is Ukranian. They still keep in touch, though; it’s actually heartening. And Chistokhodov is happy with the response the mod has gotten.
We’re happy that we made it to the release. So far reviews are great, people like it, so it was not for nothing. We gather all the feedback and watch playthough videos to understand what we can fix and improve about the mod.
Roman Chistokhodov
You can download Half-Life: Field Intensity over on Mod DB.
Source: PC Gamer
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