Posted by: Spider
Date posted: Feb 08 2003
User Rating: N/A | Number of views: 3717
Number of comments: 1 |
Description: |
Humorously subtitled: "How to Accidentally Get Your Work Published"
Discovery
Like most Half-Life fans, I was looking forward to it's addon, Opposing Force. Like most fans that are part of the editing community, I was also looking forward to seeing Gearbox's handiwork. So while perusing OpFor's pak file, I came across the player model folder. I was glad to see Otis in there, and the Drill Sergeant. There were plenty of treats for online playing. Then I noticed GMan and the Zombie from Half-Life. I thought it was odd that they were in there. Maybe since they were released separately after Half-Life came out, this was some official way of releasing them. But I checked out the models to see if there was anything different about them. Maybe the Zombie was the new grunt zombie from OpFor, or something. I opened up zombie.bmp and was rather surprised. "Hey that's my zombie picture!", I yelled. After a few thoughts rushed through my mind about how it could've gotten in there, I started laughing and just had to tell some friends that my zombie picture was included with OpFor. "You did artwork for OpFor? No way!" they were saying. Well what could I say, except 'yes' and 'no'. Admittedly it wasn't much at all, and I'm sure it wasn't even planned to happen this way.
Realization
It all started back in November 1998 after Half-Life was released. Valve was working on the SDK and I was privileged to be one of the few people who was able to look at it before it's release, to make sure it was up to a standard that Valve wanted for the online editing community. They decided to release some of it early, in the form of a 'mini-SDK' and continue working on the source code portion of it. November 25th saw the first release of the mini-SDK. There were some fixes and updates that needed to be done to it though, and they wanted to include more source files, including the Zombie model. I had checked these over for them also, and noticed there wasn't a multiplayer picture for the Zombie. They said that it's just part of the SDK release, not an official release as a player model. So of course I asked if I could compile it and release it, and they approved. I created a multiplayer picture for it plus fixed some problems with team colors in the skin. I was allowed to release the Zombie the day the updated mini-SDK was released, on January 1st, 1999. Here's a quote from Wavelength's archived news page: | | | | There were 2 new Deathmatch models included, a Robot Grunt and the Zombie from the single player game which Spider compiled and zipped them up |
My Zombie Picture included with OpFor (Left) Valve's Zombie Picture (right)
I didn't mention in the readme that I had to fix it up or anything. I figured since most of it was from the SDK that there would be no reason for even putting my name in there. Cold Fusion got the model and reviewed it here, and you will notice that it uses my picture. And most model sites have this version that I put together, so it almost seems to have some authority that goes with it. Until...
On January 13th Half-Life's 1008 patch was released, which included the official release of the Zombie. Valve made a multiplayer picture for it, which is to the left. But none of the webpages updated their copy of the Zombie with Valve's. So even to this day, there are two versions circulating: Valve's in the patch and mine on the internet. I even use mine in my Skin Tutorial since I fixed some areas of the skin that were having problems because of team colors.
Conclusion
Anyone who upgrades Half-Life will get Valve's version of the Zombie. But anyone who downloads it from the internet will get mine. Whatever reason Gearbox had to include the Zombie with Opposing Force, they must've got the model from the internet instead of directly from Valve. As I mentioned, I never put anything in the readme to warn them that all of it wasn't officially from Valve. I never thought it would be published or that anyone other than Valve would need to publish it. All I can say to Gearbox is "Thank You!" for accidentally publishing the wrong one. And all I can say to anyone else looking to publish another model from Valve, is that I also did the multiplayer picture for the Santa model that Valve released for Christmas 1998. =) |
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User Comments
Showing comments 1-1
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So did which picture was made first? Did you make yours first then valve just mirrored it and changed the blood to be darker? |
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