Half-Life 2 Deathmatch

Half-Life 2 Deathmatch is a multiplayer game where you can play with other players in a map, and the goal of the game is to get the most kills. Team play is also available for Deathmatch.

The great thing about online play is that it never gets old, and it is always a different experience everytime. There are hundreds, if not thousands, or servers to choose from to play on, with hundreds, if not thousands, or maps to play. Not to mention thousands of players to play with! So it is apparent that everytime you play, it will be different than the last time you played. 

Starting your own server

Configure the connection

To start your own server, there are some things you first need to do to get your server ready.

1. Make sure you have port 27015 open on your router. Go into your router's configuration, and enable port forwarding for port 27015 to go to your PC in your LAN.

2. Make sure you have all traffic for port 27015 allowed if you have a software based firewall on your PC. Set up a rule in your firewall to allow traffic from this port, or simply turn off your firewall while you are playing the game.

3. Enable the console in Half-Life. There are two ways of doing this. The first way is to find the shortcut for HL2, or HL2DM, right-click it, and select Properties. In the target box, after the xxx.exe file, type a space and -console. The second way, and probably the better way is to open up steam, right-click the game in the My Games list, go to Properties, and click Launch Options. Type the -console in there and Save. Now with the console enabled, you can press ~ during the game to bring the drop-down console into screen to type in some extra features.

Starting the game
With that all set up, now it's time to start your game. Simply run HL2DM.
When you get to the main screen, you will see another window in there as well, that is the console you enabled. You can always close the console if you wish, and reopen it with the ~ key.

There are some commands you need to type in the console to ensure that it will allow other people to play on your server.

net_start (enables internet play)
sv_lan 0 (disables lan play)
deathmatch 1 (enables deathmatch play)
maxplayers 5 (sets the maxplayers, any number up to 32)

You COULD type those in everytime, but there's an easier way. Open up Notepad, type those in, and save the file as something like "servermode.cfg" and save it in the \half-life 2 deathmatch\hl2mp\cfg folder. (The name of the file can be anything you like) Now when you run HL2DM and get to the console, simply type "exec servermode.cfg" in the console, and all four of those commands will run.
After the configuration is initialized, start the map. Which map to run? Type "maps *" to show a listing of the maps you have installed. To run a map type "map mapname". It will take a bit to load, but then you will be in the game, and your game will be on the master list and others can now join.

Customize your server
To customize your server, there are two files you need to modify. The first one is in the \half-life 2 deathmatch\hl2mp\cfg folder. Open Notepad and open the valve.rc file. In that file, you will see a command hostname "Half-Life 2 Deathmatch". Change the "Half-Life 2 Deathmatch" portion to the name of your server. This is the name that will appear on the master list of Internet games.
In the \half-life 2 deathmatch\hl2mp folder, make a new text file with Notepad called motd.txt. In this file, put some information about your server there, like rules and such. This will first appear when people connect to your server.

Some special commands
Here is a list of some special commands I've picked up so far. They are fun to enable on your server.

sv_cheats 1 (enables cheats)
buddha (god mode)
noclip (walk through walls)
impulse 101 (give all weapons)
impulse 83 (spawn airboat)
impulse 82 (spawn dune buggy)
physcannon_maxmass 500000 (allows gravity gun to pick up max weight)
physcannon_tracelength 500000 (allows gravity gun to pick up from max distance)
sv_gravity 1 (low gravity)
kill (suicide, good if you are stuck)
npc_create npc_name (creates characters from game)
ent_remove_all npc_name (removes all those characters from game as long as they are not dead)

Go here to see a list of spawnable characters

If you ever change a commands setting, and want to change it back to the default, like sv_gravity for example, type in the command "sv_gravity" and press enter. It will give a quick description of what the command does and it also shows its default value. For sv_gravity, it will show a default value of 600. So then type in the console, "sv_gravity 600" to revert back to default setting.
Not sure what the command you are looking for is named? Just press the first few letters of what it starts with, and the console will show a drop-down list of the commands that match that entry. You can then press the up and down buttons to scroll through that list.

Tired of typing "impulse 101" into the console over and over? With the console entry line blank, hit your up and down buttons to recall previously typed commands. If you just typed impulse 101 and pressed enter, press your up arrow and enter again to recall that command.

Don't like to jump out of game to enter frequently used commands? Bind the command to a single keystroke! Say you want to have a key to toggle noclip mode. In the console type the following bind "\" "noclip". The "\" can be any key you want. But make sure that the assigned key AND the command are both in double quotes, otherwise it will not work. Now in game you can hit the \ key to toggle noclip. Only problem with this is that the game will loose this information when it is quit. For a more permanent solution, put these bind commands in your config.cfg file located in the \half-life 2 deathmatch\hl2mp\cfg folder.  

Gravity Gun

The gravity gun is a great tool to use, especially in Deathmatch. You can use it to pick up items and throw them at your opponents, and also pick up items and use them as a shield.

A great trick you can do with the gravity gun is catch a ball from the alt-fire of the combine rifle. When the balls hit you, you disappear, but they can be caught, and fired back at the person who shot you with it. Another neat trick is to fire a ball towards a flat wall so it comes directly back to you, and catch it with the gravity gun.

You can also catch just about anything that someone throws at you too. If someone throws say a box at you, you can catch it and fire it right back. Only problem with this is that you have to be dead-on with the catch. If something is fired at you with a different angle, like down towards your feet, it is harder to catch than if it was fired directly towards you.

I have also see how people will use the gravity gun to move an object, stand on that object, and do a gravity gun shot at that object while they are standing on it. This will repel you away from the object kind of like a super jump.

Pistol

This exploit has been corrected since the Steam update on December 10th, 2004.

This is a glitch that not many people know about. I wonder if it is something that will be corrected with a future update. The pistol only fires with the left-button, the right-button doesn't do anything. BUT, if you hold down BOTH buttons, you can 'charge' up the pistol. Usually its a full second per bullet. There are 18 bullets in a round, so if you hold both mouse buttons for about 18 seconds, it is fully 'charged' up. Then release the right mouse button with the left mouse button still held down, and your pistol will shoot ALL of the bullets its 'charged' up to shoot. After 18 seconds, this will shoot your entire round in one shot. If aimed correctly, that one shot can kill someone with one hit.

Crossbow

The crossbow is a tricky weapon, especially when you are trying to hit someone from across the map. The crossbow arrows DO bounce off certain angles of things, like walls and floors. An easier way to take someone out with the crossbow when you are both on the floor and some distance away, is to shoot the arrow at an angle to the floor towards the opponent. This will cause the arrow to skip across the floor like a stone skipping across water. The opponent will have trouble seeing the arrow, unlike when it's shot directly at him, and you can have a better result this way.

Since there are no binoculars in Deathmatch, you can use the right mouse button with the crossbow to zoom in on things at a distance.

Grenades

Grenades are tricky at first, but here's how they work. The left mouse button will 'throw' the grenade, good for reaching areas farther away from you. The right mouse button will 'toss' the grenade, good for reaching areas closer to you.

RPG

The laser on the RPG in this version of Half-Life is better than the original. If you shoot a RPG at someone and miss, if done right you can swing the missile around and try to hit the opponent again.

With noclip enabled, you can shoot a RPG, and fly around the map with the RPG next to you. You do have to speed up or slow down for the RPG, but you can watch it fly directly in front of you. Pretty neat trick.

Crowbar

In 02/17/05 Steam update, the crowbar was added. It acts just like it does in the single-player game.

Stunstick

In 02/17/05 Steam update, the stunstick was added. It is the stick that the guards carry around in the single-player game. Acts like crowbar, but I think it does a lot more damage than crowbar.

Slam

In 02/17/05 Steam update, the slam was added. The slam is like the tripmine found in the original HL1. When you are close to a wall, you can attach it and a laser will shoot out showing its trip. When that is crossed by anything, it detonates. You can also toss these out on the floor. Do so when not facing a wall, you will toss them onto the floor, and a red light on them will blink. You can toss one or many at a time. Now they act as the sachel bags in HL1. You will see your other hand holding the remote detonator. A simple right click and it (or they if u have multiple ones down) will detonate.

Weapons missing in Deathmatch

Unlike the single player game, there is no bugbait in DM.  

What's new?

In Half-Life 1, it was easy to create a custom spray. Normally, only one-colored sprays are allowed. But with the trick of putting a certain shade of blue in a certain corner, you could make your own color sprays. This was awesome when that came out. The sprays could only be a certain size, and the max was 128x128, and they had to be converted to a .wad file for the game to use it.

In Half-Life 2, things are different. Colored sprays are the norm, the size can be up to 256x256, and no more .wad files.

Spray file details

When you start HL2MP, click Options, and on the first tab, where you enter your screen name and choose your model, there is the spray option as well. Spray images can be .jpg, .bmp, .tga, or HL2's image file .vtf. The only other restriction is that the spray has to be equally sized using these numbers...256, 128, 64, 32, 16, 8, 4. So you can have a picture that's 256x256, or 128x128, etc. So any picture you have on your PC, you can use as a spray, as long as it's in one of the allowed formats, and resized to the allowed sizes. Click the Import Spray button, locate your picture file, and then click OK. When in a game, use the 't' button to spray, or whatever button your spray is located on.

Making a custom spray with transparent background

If you have a picture with a white background, do these quick steps to remove the background:

1. Open Photoshop, click File, New..., create a new picture with the exact same width and height as the picture you are editing. Make sure the background field says Transparent.

2. Click Layer, New, Layer, and create a second layer. Open your original image, copy and paste it on this layer.

3. Click Layer, Layer Style, Blending Options. Adjust the slider bars in the bottom of this window to make the background disappear. Save picture as .gif, .tga, or .png to preserve transparent background.

OK, this is the hard part. If only it were easy. But who knows, someone might come out with a prog that makes this whole process easy. But until then use these steps.

(These instructions are copied from here, but written in my own words for clarity.)

You will need Photoshop to do this process. If you have a Photoshop version earlier than CS, you need to find and download the TGA Plugin. If you already have Photoshop CS, you may continue...

1. Open Photoshop and click File, New, and change the width and height to 256 or 128, whichever you like, but both numbers must be same, as described in section above. Make sure background contents is transparent, and click OK.

2. Make sure your layers window is open, if not open with F7. On the current layer, Layer 1, double-click it in the layers window and rename it to background. Click the button below to create a new layer, rename this one image.

3. With the image layer selected, copy and paste your picture on this layer. Hold down the Control button and click the image layer in the layers window. This will put an active lines around your pasted image. In the layers window, click the Channels tab to make it active.

4. Click the button below to create a new channel. Now you will see the whole box blacked out while still seeing your image outline with the active lines moving. Now make sure your background color for this is set to white (The 2 color boxes on the toolbar to your left, the background color one is the one on the right, the one behind the one on the left. Click it, move the color cursor to the upper left corner, and you should see the numbers under R, G, and B all at 255.)

5. Press alt-backspace. This will fill in the inside of your image white. Then press control-d, this will deselect your image.

6. Click the layers tab button to make it active again. With the image layer selected, change the background color of it to gray (right box again, gray is R, G, and B all at 128). Click the background layer to make it active and press alt-backspace. Now you will see your image surrounded by a gray background.

7. Click File, Save As, choose location, name it, and select Targa file (.tga) from the drop down list. (If you see a transparency checkbox, check it) Be sure to select 32-bit on the next window and click OK.

Now you can import that image while loading up HL2DM, and it will spray your image with a transparent background! That wasn't so bad, was it?!?

After you load an image file to use as a spray with HL2DM, after the game starts, HL2 automatically makes your spray picture file a .vtf file in this folder:

\half-life 2 deathmatch\hl2mp\materials\VGUI\logos

You will see a .vtf file with the same name as the picture file you used. This is nice so in the future, all the sprays you use are in the same location.

See my custom spray here 

First create some teams of players, in this example we will use combine soldiers and citizens.

Type in the following commands to make them fight:

ent_fire npc_combine_s setrelationship "npc_citizen D_HT 90"
ent_fire npc_citizen setrelationship "npc_combine_s D_HT 90"

This will make the combines 'hate' the citizens and vice versa. You can also make two groups of npc's work as a team, use D_LK 90.

D_HT  "hate" - makes enemies
D_LK  "like" - makes allies 

And type, or copy and paste, and put these in...

//insult generator
alias dis1 "say You suck; bind k dis2"
alias dis2 "say OUCH; bind k dis3"
alias dis3 "say Ha ha; bind k dis4"
alias dis4 "say Do I know you?; bind k dis5"
alias dis5 "say Sucka; bind k dis6"
alias dis6 "say Who's yo daddy?; bind k dis7"
alias dis7 "say Respect my authority!; bind k dis8"
alias dis8 "say YO MOMMA; bind k dis9"
alias dis9 "say Where you at?; bind k dis1"
bind k dis1

Now you can change the quotes to anything you want, and add more or less by editing the commands. At the end where it says bind k, you can change this to any key you want. Also with this code, you could change things up so that you had a certain quote dedicated to a certain key. So then you could have a set of keys that when pressed would automatically say certain things. Example, "Nice shot!", binded to u, "Great to see you again", binded to i, "Gotta go, be back soon", binded to o, etc.

Now during gameplay, with a simple smash of the key, it will spit out one of these lines, and with each smash of the key, it will spit out the next one. Only bug I know about this one, is that the first line it spits out isn't always the first one or top one, it can be random. But this works on every server I've tried it on.