Interesting approach to a Half-Life 2 mod

[SineSwiper]

A friend of mine at work is planning on writing a multiplayer mod for the single-player story mode of Half-Life. Basically, the idea is this:

* The story is exactly the same as the single player, except for the multiplayer aspect.
* You have two people playing for the good guys (usually Freeman and the chick), and two people playing for Combine, each as a random soldier.
* If the good guys die, they have to go back to the beginning of that load scene. If the bad guys die, they get transferred to control another random soldier. (They don't respawn, but get to control an existing soldier.)

I think it's a really neat idea, and totally reinvents the idea of multiplayer.

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

The Crossing and Left 4 Dead both hit on these ideas. I'm not sure how well this would fly in Half-Life proper, though, rather than a game specifically designed for players to jump in and out of bad guys—how much fun would it be playing a combine soldier or slow-ass zombie?

[SineSwiper]

The Crossing and Left 4 Dead both hit on these ideas. I'm not sure how well this would fly in Half-Life proper, though, rather than a game specifically designed for players to jump in and out of bad guys—how much fun would it be playing a combine soldier or slow-ass zombie?

Well, zombies probably wouldn't be an option. Or they could, but you have the option to jump to any enemy. Here's what I'm thinking on this route:

One player plays as Gordon Freeman. He can do everything that Freeman could in the real game. If Freeman dies, he can have limited lives (per load scene) to respawn in the same (or nearby) place.

One or more players play as good guy spawn. They can play any of the gun-wielding NPCs. They can switch to any one they want with some sort of binding. The default is the one closest to Freeman. These players can do anything that the NPCs do, which is limited, but unlike Freeman, they have a whole army to work with.

One or more players play as Combine. Same deal as the good guy spawn. They can switch to any soldier (with the default being closest to Freeman). They tend to have more/better weapons, but they don't have Gordon Freeman on their team :)

Playing as zombies, actually, might be an option, so that when the bad guys are done with their soldier scene, they can still attack Freeman.