The303

this is the oldest deviantart submission with the “barney calhoun” tag.

When your fanart is so good that the devs just had to put it in the next game, framed within’ Doomguy’s own home.

Early HL1 G-Man: Why is G-Man so angry? I know that Black Mesa is a massive environmental hazard, with its constant leaks and goop river, but he’s seriously pissed off. Like the entire faculty killed his family and kicked his dog or something. The model’s alright, though. 7.5/10

HL1 G-Man: A timeless classic. He’s a bit square, though, and his neck makes him look like a giraffe man. But still, a classic. 9/10

HL1 HD G-Man: Like most of the HD pack, G-Man’s model isn’t as good as it could be. This is mainly due to Valve giving G-Man a neck thicker than his arms and a weird face that takes up 80% of his head.  Also he looks like a complete dork with that tie, but considering Black Mesa’s track record with ridiculous ties, I’m not too surprised about this. 6/10

OpFor/BS HD G-Man: Also known as Smug Anime Girl G-Man. Overall, this model is the same as the HD version, but with an all-new head and tweaked body that really polish up the model. I quite like it, actually. Shame about that tie, though. 7.5/10

HL1 PS2 G-Man: Out of the three HD G-Men, this one’s the best of the bunch. To put it simply, it looks like a proper HD version of the original G-Man, without any silly ties or thick necks. His eyes freak me the hell out, but otherwise, I’d say it’s on par with the original! 8.5/10

HL2 Beta G-Man: And the other versions of G-Man were thrown out. It’s missing a bit of polish admittedly, but it’s still a very good interpretation of everyone’s favorite weird alien businessman. 9.5/10

HL2 G-Man: Well, would you look at that? I don’t think I need to say anything else about this model, now do I? It’s perfect. 10/10

Half-Life: Alyx is right around the corner, so I figured I’d check out the original Half-Life in VR. but while setting up, I found something: a build of HL1 with voice recognition, machine learning powered AI for the NPC’s. What ensued was the most infuriating run of Half-Life 1 imaginable.

Today I learned that at some point the Half-Life level editor was briefly planned to be a commercial release, rather than a free download. The world would have probably been quite different if this happened, and not necessarily for the better…

(Yes, I know Worldcraft was originally a shareware editor for Quake etc., but this looks like it would have been a big-box retail product! I remember seeing one or two big-box Quake editors on shelves back in the 90s, I can’t imagine they sold especially well…)