Half-Life: Paradox

## *The what:* So what is "Half-Life: Paradox"?

Previously known as the ***Sven Co-op: Masters of Dying*** project.

***Half-Life: Paradox*** is Sven Co-op's own unofficial multiplayer campaign, and probably longest story mode campaign any game has ever featured, spanning over 2000+ maps the entire community has created in 20+ years, ordered in such a way that feels seamless, like the maps were made for each other to be that way. The perfect mapcycle. All of which translates to roughly a minimum of 1000 (one thousand) hours of gameplay.

*Or another way to explain it is:*

It is a serverside (and/or also clientside) setup to play a unique Half-Life co-op multiplayer storyline, that takes shape through the project's community ported or fixed maps (read *Ripent Wars* below) and all the rest of the maps from the game that already exist (plus some community addons are recommended for a better experience). The story is played and told on the run during gameplay as players advance through the maps just like any Half-Life game, and at the same time told via the in-game Message Of The Day files (motd text files present at the start of each map as a text box -default key ingame is F2-) for those that like to read, need directions, objectives, or don't know what is going on.

This is a conglomerate and a homage to the great work this entire community has put into this game for free and for fun.

## *The how:* Which are the other projects involved?

This project needs another project to work: *Ripent Wars*. And also can be enhanced by several other projects on the works by the community that are very recommended.

The projects are:

1. **Ripent Wars:** This is the internal name the team gave to SCMapDB's map fixing effort project. HL:P depends on this to be complete before it can be released. It aims to port famous mods from Half-Life and fix existing maps for Sven Co-op using varied tools or possibly even some actual mapping at some point. There are lots of maps out there and there are lots of good Half-Life mods to port for co-op play too. Taking some liberties will be happening to accomodate co-op play and make things more interesting overall. The team is small and thus is going slow. The maps are being released as they are finished on scmapdb.com for everyone to enjoy. And HL:P's mapcycle is in constant modification as more maps are fixed or ported.
2. **Remake Addon:** Aims to bring back the original Half-Life feel and also bring it up to today's Sven Co-op standards, as well as fix problems with the old default content. This is basically a pack of models, sounds and sprites (effects) that is being enhanced as time goes by and as more people remake their own versions of old Valve style designs in a more professional, bug-free and high-definition way. But be certain that this has a 99% fidelity with original designs, we follow the designs to the smallest details. Many 3D models for NPCs and players have already been remade in this way and are now part of the default content of Sven Co-op and thus, as time goes by, the idea is for this pack to be as small as possible (containing probably only the smaller models, sprites and sounds in the future, as more and more of the other designs are shipped with the base game).
3. **Fix Addon:** This is another pack of models, sounds and sprites, but this time it enhances all the custom content from Sven Co-op maps, fixing bugs and bringing up the detail if possible. It does take some liberties with designs in some cases, but it does so to keep the game not so repetitive. Many maps use the same files copied from other maps over and over again but organized into different folders, and this is an opportunity we can exploit to give variety to things, as well as fixing the problems, without going too far away from the original intended designs used by the mappers. This addon project is similar to Ripent Wars, since its aim is to fix, but instead of fixing the maps, this fixes the problematic custom models, sounds and sprites of the community made maps.
4. **Weapons Fix Addon:** Originally part of the Fix Addon, now the models, sounds and sprites (effects) of the weapons from that addon have been separated from it for a good reason. This addon fixes bugs, adds proper Sven Co-op colorable hands and adds overall variety to all the custom weapons the maps have. It was separated to be able to give the option to choose from a pool of weapon replacements so to not replace weapons from maps that intend to have different hand models than the Sven Co-op default hands on them (for the purists that want to keep the original feel of the custom maps while sacrificing consistency or continuity). It is a good choice to couple this addon with the next addon: The INS2 Pack.
5. **Insurgency Weapons Project:** This is an addon by the developers of the game. Both a weapon pack and a plugin. It replaces some of the custom weapons in maps with fully scripted, professionally developed weapons based on the game Insurgency 2 (translation: all the most popular guns will be here working like their real life counterparts). As time goes by more weapons will be included and more maps will have their weapons replaced automatically if the plugin is installed. This adds tremendous variety and quality to the game and is extremelly recommended. It was made with the same idea as the Weapons Fix Addon, and should be used together, so when this one doesn't replace the weapons in some map, the other one does at least a simple replacement job. Both of these packs hopefully won't be needed one day, as the intention is to remake the entire weapons system in the game with backwards compatibility so there is hand and weapon model choices easily like in Half-Life 2 (though that is a long shot... one can still dream).
6. **Texture Enhancement Addon:** This aims to remake from scratch all the default textures from Half-Life and its expansions for use in Sven Co-op in high resolution (without affecting performance or sacrificing quality). It is a very complicated task for several reasons, and progress is waiting for developers to upgrade the game engine to support different texture compressions. Meanwhile, the current version uses the *detail textures system* that comes with the base game which results in very cumbersome replacement updates (a huge text file has to be created for each map that exists) and huge file sizes for the textures.

## *The why:* Why would HL:P need a wiki?

This wiki contains only the lore from HL:P. The other projects don't need a wiki since they are just content for the game, and can be found on the official discord server.

The story, spanning from 2000+ maps is unofficial, fanbased, but totally acceptable within the Half-Life universe as any other mod close to the original Half-Life storyline is, and much more. It requires a wiki because it has too much content and will be confusing. We are talking about a story that patches all Valve's plotholes in their games with actual gameplay and expands on the universe with each small detail about it, with a lot of branching, while breaking the 4th wall with an atom bomb. Want to know what happens to Gina and Collete? Who GMan is and who he works for? What happened to all the cut content? You have it all. And the cut content is ALL back in full force! (and really, ALL of it and more! -also expect several references to other Valve games as well as even other games-)

This wiki will have all the info on the story, places and characters you will meet and play as in-game.

This project was made with the intention to give closure to Half-Life and Marc Laidlaw's legacy, as well as all the fans, by merging all the best theories, stories and expanding on what Marc himself also said across the years, with a mix of cooperative gameplay twist to also honor the most famous Half-Life mod (after CS and TF): Sven Co-op!.

And... it has also been updated to be on-point with the events of HL:Alyx, so do not worry, THIS is why it is also called *Paradox*.

Take it as a mod within a mod, hence why this was once called SCMOD (Sven Co-op masters of dying).

Also be sure to join the SCMapDB Official Discord for anything map related!

## Categories

* Story
	+ Summary
	+ Full
	+ Quantum Powers
* Characters
	+ Main characters
	+ Important characters
	+ Secondary characters

* Factions
* Maps
	+ By order
	+ By locations
	+ By chapters