Happy 20th Leakmas!

[Витой]

So, today is October the 7th 2023, which means we celebrate a big anniversary! Exactly 20 years ag, October the 7th 2003 Half-Life 2 development build was leaked into Internet. Besides this build some other content was also released, including Source engine source code. This build named "Half-Life 2 beta" by the fans gathered many of them around it. And even now, after 20 years, many of us continue to study it, create our own mods, fixes and content based on things cut from the game. Literally tons of content were cut from the game - locations, characters, enemies, various features... And all this gave us base for study and discussion.

Just like a little later for S.T.A.L.K.E.R, all this led to the fact that many of us tried to restore “the original Half-Life 2”. There were just tons of mods started (and most of them not finished). Just for fun, on our forum you can find a thread with an incomplete list of about one hundred such mods!

On such a big day, we didn’t want to leave you without a gift and planned to prepare two rather big surprises at once, namely new versions of the Mega Patch and Mega Build. In them we are planning to return most of the content that was missing even in beta, especially textures and models. But unfortunately, no matter how hard we try to prepare everything for release for the 20th anniversary of the leak, we are not ready to release the Mega Patch 5 and Mega Build today. We decided not to rush an unfinished product for the exact anniversary date, but instead finish everything that was planned first and thoroughly test it.

Happy Beta Anniversary everyone!

[NTN9]

Why the Town mod thread was removed?

[Витой]

Why the Town mod thread was removed?

Alfeos asked to since I made a mistake and the version of his mod I had wasn't final. He's still working on it.

[Gurluas]

Happy Leakmas everyone, may the fox be with you!

[bruno]

Forgot to comment here yesterday, oh well. May as well do it today.

Merry Leakmas everyone!

Also a huge thank you to everyone who has been contributing to the restoration and fixing of the beta itself (Especially to Vitoy/Витой for keeping the community alive during it's early years and VXP who has been tirelessly working to make the janky beta engine more stable for free so that people could enjoy the beta without much hassle) and everyone who has simply been here for this journey.

Once again Merry Leakmas to all true citizens!
Now onto another 20 years of the "dark and gritty"!

[shyruz]

wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooootttttttttttttttttttt leeaaaaaaaaaaaakmaaaaaaaaaaaaasssssssssssssssssssssssss
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[MegaMan1904]

lets fucking gooooooo
lets keep community alive til 30th leakmasss!

[syf2010]

this is so exciting 
i cant wait for it to come out
happy leakmas everyone!

[CactusTown]

i neeeeeed ittt

[Kaban3000]

: D

[Commander Booce]

happy leakmas fellow beta enjoyers! (ik i am late to this)

[red_engine]

Huh? is that?
The last picture, im not really sure if this is a mod or not but i think this is the prototype of the Dog, the one used by combine

[Rostikbeta]

Huh? is that?
The last picture, im not really sure if this is a mod or not but i think this is the prototype of the Dog, the one used by combine

absolutely right

[TakerOfTVs]

dog looks like wall e

[vitorhunter12]

Are the flags on the terminal screenshot a restored feature?
Also i really like the TBot there!