Beta Aesthetics 3.0: Ultimate Edition

[BenedictKapustin_42]

The purpose of this mod is to recreate the style and atmosphere of the beta version of Half Life 2. "Beta Aesthetics" does not change the maps or the gameplay itself in a serious way. Only textures, models, sounds, soundtrack and shaders have been changed to match the 1999-2001 era.
Almost all the material was taken and reworked from the leaked 2003 beta version of HL2. Many materials were also taken from HL1, since in the earliest periods of development, VALVE had not yet created much content for HL2, therefore they used some elements (sounds, for example) from the first game, and the Beta HL2 itself was much closer in atmosphere and the style to HL1.

Overall, the game now looks much darker and more depressing, showing us the aftermath of the Combine invasion much more devastating and detrimental to the Earth, which now looks like one large wasteland inhabited by creatures from Xen and patrolled by combine soldiers. The city now looks American-style, closer to New York, maybe.The game's color palette now has a yellow-green shade, inspired by the concept arts. This colors creates that "toxic" atmosphere of a dying world.

The soundtrack for the mod was taken from the album "Mishaps in Reactor Chamber" by composer Chris Jensen, who made the soundtrack for Opposing Force and the HL2 trailer at E3 2002. I thought his music perfectly matched the new style of game. Simple, but dark and tense, it sounds like music from 90s games.

Download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G-Rg3RJx5Vrj0-1xAzOaNXF1J2OjXOn2/view?usp=sharing

ALL CREDITS TO A-SHIFT FOR THE POSTER

Gamebanana: https://gamebanana.com/wips/58559
Moddb: https://www.moddb.com/mods/beta-aesthetics-30-ultimate-edition

[BenedictKapustin_42]

New download link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nyfaVz6LF9N9xx8DpdvNe2WZHhjquW3B/view?usp=sharing

[BetaFreeMan]

Good Job!

[Sixteen60]

For some reason, the captioning didn't match Gman's voice at the beginning of the game.

[KycT]

How to install this mod on pirate hl2 build 2707?

[FILipKOS1337]

buy from steam

[KycT]

What does steam have to do with it when I was talking about the non-steam version?

[Cvoxalury]

KycT was talking about an older build of HL2 which you can't really get anywhere on Steam because it never offered rollback to previous versions for HL2.

I'm not 100% sure this will work for 2707 but it works in 2761:
just drag the "beta" folder from the archive (beta_aesthetics_3\hl2\custom\beta, this one), and drop it next to hl2.exe.
Go into the "beta" folder and create a gameinfo.txt there.
Copy this into it

Code: [Select]

"GameInfo"
{
game "Beta Aesthetics"
title "HALF-LIFE 2"


FileSystem
{
SteamAppId 220
ToolsAppId 211

SearchPaths
{
Game |gameinfo_path|.
Game hl2
}
}
}

Then create a shortcut for hl2.exe with these additional parameters

- game beta -w xxxx -h xxxx -console

where xxxx and yyyy is your desired resolution such as 1920 and 1080.

If you did it right you should see the old background picture right away.

There *may* be an issue with none of the models showing up if they're in the newer model format (Episodic) than original HL2 format. In which case the only thing you can do is use a newer build (like 2761). Or recompiling all the models, but is it really worth the effort.