Antlion-Soccer
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Overview
Antlion Soccer is a sports Deathmatch mod for Half Life 2. The idea is very simple: two teams, one arena, two goals, gravity guns all round and a big pile of Antlions in the middle. Score points for blasting Antlions into the opposing team's goal.
Features
- Explore the island to unlock the story and piece together the mystery
- Randomised narrative means a different version of the story is told every time
- Features a specially commissioned soundtrack by composer Jessica Curry
- Ready for LAN or Port Forwarding play
- Up to 8 players, 4 per team
- Released with 7 arenas
- Includes VMF files for building new arenas
Media
Team
Thechineseroom is the name of a development-led research project based at the University of Portsmouth, UK and funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council. The idea behind the project is simple: there are questions games researchers are interested in, that fall outside the kinds of media produced by industry. This gives us a choice, either we can discuss these questions theoretically, or we can take advantage of the rich culture of modding and availability of game engines and try and build media ourselves to tackle them. This second option- development-led research - is what thechineseroom is all about.
Over 2007-8, we have developed three mods, two in Source and one in idTech4, each pushing in a different direction. Dear Esther explores the use of FPS technologies to create an interactive storytelling experience, removing traditional gameplay. Conscientious Objector is a re-imagining of the opening of Doom 3, only this time with the ability the kill removed (i.e. you get the shotgun, but it's only got rubber bullets in it); and Antlion Soccer pushes the inherent sport of Deathmatch in a different direction (it's pretty much what it says on the tin - soccer with gravity guns and antlions).
thechineseroom (Dear Esther team):
- Produced, written and designed by Dan Pinchbeck
- Environment built by Josh Short and Adam Griffiths
- Programming by Jonathon Brown
- Music by Jessica Curry
- Voice Acting by Nigel Carrington
Localized versions
History
Antlion Soccer started development in September 2007, stopped development in Jan 2008, started again in July 2008 and was released on the 29th September 2008.
It was original put together as part of thechineseroom, a research project based at the University of Portsmouth, UK, building experimental FPS mods. The idea was to use the basic deathmatch model but shift gameplay from fragging other players to more conventional, teamwork orientated sports play. A basic arena model was built which was then used as a basis for putting together map variants to diversify gameplay. These maps include the additions of Antlion Guards, Manhacks, Cars and Gun Turrets, plus daytime and nightime versions of the arena.
This link goes through to 1.0, hosted at ModDB. There are some minor adjustments, mainly to displacements and a trigger location or two, to be carried out before 1.1 is released (probably Sept 08)
Known errors
Antlion Soccer is stable running as an LAN game. It has been tested using Port Forwarding and is normally stable, but the following errors have been found in testing. These do not appear to be code errors in the mod, but we are working on them and if anyone has any advice on how to resolve them, please do contact us.
- LAN servers are restricted to local clients (Class C)
- This problem seems to occur, when the server is created or restarted whilst the a client is already running the application and attempts to join the server. To bypass this error, simply close the mod down, reload and retry connecting to the server.
- Disconnected: No Steam Log On—A connection to the VAC servers could not be made. For troubleshooting network issues, please click below.
- This problem seems to occurs on all clients after random periods of time. Currently we do not know a solution to this problem, for now please just type retry in the console to reconnect to the server.
