''Sven Co-op'' is a

co-op A cooperative (also known as co-operative, co-op, or coop) is "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically-control ...

variation of the 1998

first-person shooter First-person shooter (FPS) is a sub-genre of shooter video games centered on gun and other weapon-based combat in a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action through the eyes of the protagonist and controlling the pl ...

Half-Life Half-life (symbol ) is the time required for a quantity (of substance) to reduce to half of its initial value. The term is commonly used in nuclear physics to describe how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable ato ...

''. The game, initially released as a mod in January 1999, and created by Daniel "Sven Viking" Fearon, enables players to play together on online servers to complete levels, many which are based on the ''Half-Life'' universe but include other genres. In addition to the cooperative gameplay, ''Sven Co-op'' includes improvements from the original ''Half-Life'', including improved

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

for both enemy and allied

non-player characters A non-player character (NPC), or non-playable character, is any character in a game that is not controlled by a player. The term originated in traditional tabletop role-playing games where it applies to characters controlled by the gamemaster o ...

. Since its original release, the project has been overseen by David "Sniper" McDermott. In 2013,

Valve A valve is a device or natural object that regulates, directs or controls the flow of a fluid (gases, liquids, fluidized solids, or slurries) by opening, closing, or partially obstructing various passageways. Valves are technically fittings ...

, which owns the rights to the ''Half-Life'' series, gave the development team the rights to publish the modification as a standalone title on

Steam Steam is a substance containing water in the gas phase, and sometimes also an aerosol of liquid water droplets, or air. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization ...

, and further allowed them to distribute the maps and assets of ''Half-Life'' to support its release. The standalone release, representing version 5.0 of the mod, was released in January 2016.

Gameplay

''Sven Co-op'' is a

based on ''

'', using its

GoldSrc GoldSrc ( ) is a proprietary game engine developed by Valve. At its core, GoldSrc is a heavily modified version of id Software's ''Quake'' engine. It originally made its debut in 1998 with ''Half-Life'', and would power future games developed b ...

game engine. The modification enables a server so many players can cooperate (along with and allied non-player characters) to complete

levels Level or levels may refer to: Engineering *Level (instrument), a device used to measure true horizontal or relative heights *Spirit level, an instrument designed to indicate whether a surface is horizontal or vertical *Canal pound or level *Regr ...

against creatures and other enemies that are controlled by the computer. The modification was initially based around the levels from ''Half-Life'', but since have expanded to include the other ''Half-Life'' games and user-made levels. Multiple levels may be connected to make a longer campaign by the level designer. The game can also be played in single-player mode, taking advantage of improvements over the original ''Half-Life'' that were made by the modifications, particularly the artificial intelligence used by non-player characters.

Development

The game was originally created and released by Daniel Fearon. At the time, Fearon was one of the maintainers of the ''Half-Life'' fan website ''Atomic Half-Life'', created in anticipation of the game's release. Fearon was sent a copy of ''Half-Life'' by Valve prior to its official release, and while playing it, he toyed with the game's code, figuring out how to spawn enemy creatures in multiplayer maps. Fearon's work had initially been done before Valve released the

software development kit A software development kit (SDK) is a collection of software development tools in one installable package. They facilitate the creation of applications by having a compiler, debugger and sometimes a software framework. They are normally specific to ...

for ''Half-Life'', requiring him to craft the modification atop the existing ''Half-Life'' distribution and to work with multiplayer over slower internet connections, such as phone-line

modem A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by Modulation#Digital modulati ...

s. Fearon initially developed a single map that could be played cooperatively, and later a second version with two maps. The first public version of ''Sven Co-op'' was released on January 19, 1999, about 3 months after the release of ''Half-Life''. He used the name ''Sven Co-op'' to reflect his online handle, "Sven Viking". Contrary to the common belief that ''Sven Co-op'' was developed to play through ''Half-Life'' cooperatively, Fearon had wanted to create a means for players to engage in cooperative experiences together, often just spawning in large number of enemies for them to dispatch together on a single map. This drew a number of amateur level developers to craft mission-based maps for the mod, where players would be required to go to different areas on the map based on success or failure of a given objective. Such designers included Dave McDermott, who initially ran the ''Sven Co-op'' website before becoming a developer of it. Fearon had planned from the onset to include support for cooperatively playing through ''Half-Life''s single-player campaign within ''Sven Co-op'', but this was hampered initially by how the game's engine transitions from map to map, and made it difficult to keep players together in the multiplayer approach. Ultimately, the team was able to work this out, and later added support for ''Half-Life''s two expansions, '' Half-Life: Opposing Force'', and '' Half-Life: Blue Shift''. Around 2004, prior to the release of ''

Half-Life 2 ''Half-Life 2'' is a 2004 first-person shooter game developed by Valve. It was published by Valve through its distribution service Steam. Like the original ''Half-Life'' (1998), ''Half-Life 2'' combines shooting, puzzles, and storytelling, and ...

'', Fearon had been planning to release ''Sven Co-op'' on

, but didn't due to confusion between the ''Sven Co-op'' team and Valve. Further, Fearon and the team had started work on a ''Sven Co-op 2'' in anticipation of using the

Source engine Source is a 3D game engine developed by Valve. It debuted as the successor to GoldSrc in 2004 with the release of '' Counter-Strike: Source'' and '' Half-Life 2''. Updates to Source were released in incremental versions, with the engine being su ...

from ''Half-Life 2''. Though they had developed a large number of assets for the mod, they were hindered by the lack of the SDK, which had been pushed back along with the release of ''Half-Life 2''. Many of the team members had started to move on to other projects, and Fearon found they lost too many key members to continue development. Around this point Fearon opted to leave the project, giving the project lead over to Josh Polito. McDermott and Polito began negotiations with Valve to gain access to the GoldSrc engine around 2010 and to have Valve change some of the numerical limits originally imposed in the engine's use in ''Half-Life'' that would enable them to improve ''Sven Co-op''. The two got official approval from Valve to release ''Sven Co-op'' on Steam as a standalone title in 2012, though opted to wait nearly a year to announce this in July 2013 to give their team time to develop a

hotfix A hotfix or quick-fix engineering update (QFE update) is a single, cumulative package that includes information (often in the form of one or more files) that is used to address a problem in a software product (i.e., a software bug). Typically, hot ...

for the current version of the mod. This standalone title was released on January 22, 2016, and includes all the assets for ''Half-Life'' required to play that game without installing the original game; players are still required to have purchased and installed ''Opposing Force'' and ''Blue Shift'' to play those in the standalone release of ''Sven Co-op''. The standalone version includes updated versions of the ''Half-Life'' campaign maps, improved versions of popular maps developed for ''Sven Co-op'', and additional scripting tools that will allow level designers to further customize new maps beyond the default GoldSrc. McDermott stated that their team anticipates continuing to improve tools for level designers, such as being able to replace the game's default

heads-up display A head-up display, or heads-up display, also known as a HUD (), is any transparent display that presents data without requiring users to look away from their usual viewpoints. The origin of the name stems from a pilot being able to view informa ...

, though as the game is still developed in the team's free time, there is no information on when these will be available.

References

External links

* {{Half-Life series 1999 video games Cooperative video games First-person shooters Multiplayer online games Video games developed in Australia Windows games Windows-only games GoldSrc mods Video games set in New Mexico

Gameplay

Development

See also

References

External links