Half-Life Alyx NoVR mod

The team has put together a year wrap up of development and since the mod began its development this year, it will chronicle development since the very beginning to now!

We were honoured to have found out today that we were part of Lambda Generation's Favourite Mods List of 2023, check out their video below and if you haven't joined their amazing community do so today!

We are also so thankful to have won single-player mod of the year and ranked 4th in the players choice mod of the year here on ModDB but will talk about that more below. This mod began in March 2023 making it only 9 months old! We have come a long way as a team and the mod itself, and we cannot thank you all enough for your support.

We reached a major milestone with downloads now reaching OVER 100 000 DOWNLOADS between ModDB and GitHub. This is a massive milestone and we are so happy that we can now say that we have helped over a hundred thousand Half-Life fans experience this entry in the series.

The Mod of the Year awards on ModDB for 2023 was a huge success for Half-Life Alyx NoVR and was a massive morale boost for the team. The mod won two major awards:

The mod was also highlighted by the ModDB team under the Q1 Review of 2023, that article along with the other award articles are listed here:

We cannot thank our fans and the hard working people behind ModDB for their support, votes, feedback and kind words. Without such an amazing community backing us we would not be where we are today! Thank you all again so much! Peace and love!

This is the month that the mod began its development with the first video uploads becoming available and a public open source GitHub repository for the mod. Half-Life Alyx also marked its 3 year anniversary of release this very same month. After 3 years with no mod released yet for Half-Life fans without VR, NoVR became the first, but unfinished, to release an alpha version of the mod with the aim at first to allow players to play it fully from start to finish.

On March 12, 2023 the first video would be uploaded to YouTube with the mod fully open source to all, that video can be found below, remember this is an old video showing the first days of the mod.

The mod would finally make its debut on ModDB after a few weeks of only being on GItHub, as the team wanted to get it in a better spot before pushing it to a much larger platform. We will be listing all the articles we have published here on ModDB at the end of each month and linking to them so you can delve deeper into early development if you never had a chance to read them.

In April 2023 the mod would complete its first goal of allowing players to complete the game from start to finish, no need to noclip, all interactions and scripted events intact, the entire Jeff fight playable and more. While many interactions and such were omitted and floating guns were used at this time, all of that would change in the coming months.

As we became the first NoVR mod to achieve this goal, we became the number one most popular mod on ModDB (it is not easy knocking STALKER Anomaly off that perch) and have regularly been the number one Half-Life mod. As our mod requires a copy of Half-Life Alyx (a full price game) it does have a higher price of entry compared to Source 1 mods. So we appreciate everyone is purchasing a copy from Valve but trusting us to give them a flatscreen experience players expect.

Of course as the mod became extremely popular with many outlets covering our progress and helping spread awareness that the game was now accessible without VR. PC Gamer, Ars Technica, Polygon and many more showcased our mod to the world! Some of these articles are listed below, please note these articles are discussing a much older version of the mod.

April was an extremely busy month as the team continued to push forward and ensure the story could be completed from start to finish with as many interactions preserved.

During this month we saw the team expand and many new additions added to the game, including toner puzzles! The team also started working on a Launcher for the game to make installation and regular updates easier for players. Half-Peeps, a popular Source Filmmaker YouTuber, worked with us to use some of their Half-Life Alyx environmental videos as backdrops for the Launcher and possibly in game in the future if a proper Source 2 SDK would be released.

Subtitles were also improved in this build and enhanced, and since the game comes with many languages by default, has become a great way to play the game no matter what language you speak.

As the summer months began, more polish and bug fixes would be pushed to the mod on a regular basis. However, the next challenge for the team was now in sight, viewmodel and animation development for Alyx's arms, hands and weapons. Slowly our animation team was formed with no easy task in front of them. As noted already, there is no Source 2 SDK, so while creating models and animations in external programs like Blender is easy, porting them into the game so they aren't a broken mess that don't work is a monumental task. There are still some things that we are having trouble fixing, such as animation loops overlapping, which are major milestones we intend to reach in 2024.

It was during these summer months that Alyx's arms and hands began to take shape, along with her gravity gloves and the weapons she would use in her fight against the Combine. We showcased what we were working on during these months and promised a major animation update before the end of 2023.

This was now the main focus for the team, the floating guns had to be replaced before the end of the year!

On August 29th, 2023 we had announced that the first major animation update would release in October 2023 but had not yet finalized a date. In late September we provided our release date of October 27th, 2023. This first update helped establish the foundation of how we can properly implement new animations and viewmodels into Source 2. It was a major milestone for the team and we aim to add more animations and improve ones based on your feedback.

The team continued to work on animations, fix bugs, playtest and ensure the update would include as many new updates as possible for players! Not only animations and models but a new HUD with animated hearts like in the VR version, an updated flashlight that casts shadows, Alyx's multi-tool was added to the game and many other new additions.

All this hard work on establishing the animation foundation would be released on October 27th, 2023. This would be the largest single update the team would push in 2023, a massive undertaking with no SDK.

That major update released this month not only included the new viewmodels and animations but also had so much more:

• Alyx’s animated arms and hands
• Firing, idle, reload and holster animations for all weapons and grenades
• Upgrades for all weapons that can be visually seen with each enhancement
• Combine Fabricator changes for easier use by the player
• Reflex sight upgrades highlighting enemy weak points
• Dedicated inspect button
• Additional toner puzzles added throughout the game
• Enhanced flashlight
• Updated HUD with 3 animated hearts (not available on Steam Deck)
• Fixes to the Jeff and Strider encounters for a smoother gameplay experience
• Other bug fixes and updates throughout the entire game
• Multi-tool (can be equipped and is animated but currently not functional)

With a new HUD, pockets, toner puzzles, viewmodels, weapon upgrades and so much more the game was now even closer than ever to achieving as much parity as possible with the VR version. One thing was for sure, there was no mod like ours, while there are many projects out there by mod teams that bring flatscreen experiences to VR (just look at the excellent work done by the teams who brought Half-Life 2 and its episodes to VR) there are not many teams doing it the other way around like we are.

The team is immensely proud of what they achieved so far and as we started to head into the end of 2023, the mod was now sitting at a solid 0.5 version.

November found the team reviewing all feedback, bug reports and more from the animation update. Pushing many updates and fixes that would help fix some of the things players wanted to see adjusted either from animations or gameplay. The team worked hard to push numerous updates to ensure player feedback was implemented in a timely manner.

Another major update that would be pushed this month is a brand new main menu, along with the usual bug fixes and stability improvements throughout the game. We also helped celebrate Half-Life's 25th anniversary this month with a special 25th anniversary update to go along with a sale of the game itself too.

December 2023 was a very busy month, we talked earlier in the article about awards which happened this month as well so let's focus on the other exciting updates in December! The month continued with new updates to the game weekly and a new playtester role for the Discord server, bringing us a new small team of playtesters that can review updates before we push them out. Most updates for the mod will be fairly substantial moving forward, with more moving pieces, so we will be doing more playtesting on a private branch of the GitHub repository, before placing it on the Main branch for all to access. This will ensure better quality control as we start moving towards a 1.0 version hopefully by the end of 2024.

This month also brought accolades to the team from a variety of outlets, along with ModDB that we covered earlier in the article, along with great coverage on YouTube such as:

2023 started in March for the mod and from beginning to end the year was filled with a lot that the team is proud of. As mentioned before we are working with no Source 2 SDK, converting a VR game to flatscreen and many other challenges that Source 1 mods simply do not have to work against, along with the relatively new nature of Source 2 as well. Despite all that we continue to break new ground in Source 2 modding and it is your enthusiasm, feedback and passion that keeps us going. We are proud to say we are the most successful Source 2 mod on the planet!

The updates won't be stopped as we released more gameplay features in the last days of 2023 and already have more ready for 2024. The end of 2023 had a lot of updates added, such as helmets now being wearable, with masks coming next as one of the first updates for 2024.

We also added all the weapon upgrades for you to use, they just don't have animations attached to them at this time, which is how things worked before when we had floating guns. So the last two weapon upgrades are experimental and available now. We also solved many softlock issues with the pockets which we added once again at the end of the year.

Another update coming in recently over the holidays that you might have missed is a full update to the Steam Deck controller layout via Steam Controller Configuration tools. If you got a Steam Deck as a gift then you could play Half-Life Alyx NoVR anywhere you like!

The Steam Deck and Controller layout for the mod is now the 2.0 version with these latest additions:

• Sprint and crouch are now toggled actions (this can be modified like any part of this layout)
• Buttons for using items in your pockets added
• Adjusted touchpad and analog stick aiming sensitivity
• Grab and use objects clicking the right touchpad and slide to aim - great for using the gravity gloves
• Tertiary weapon mode with dedicated button added
• Toggle gyro aiming in layout options with custom sensitivity settings
• And many more changes!

As always, modify this layout however you like, it is a great foundation for a controller setup as well like an Xbox or Playstation controller.

Moving ahead into the new year, our main goals for 2024 include:

• Making the final 6 achievements attainable with NoVR
• Animations and final adjustments to the final weapon upgrades
• Addition of more toner puzzles throughout the entire game
• Preliminary prototype of the locker puzzles
• Additional animations such as Alyx's hand on the health station, injecting a syringe and more
• Map edits to ensure smooth locomotion on all maps without getting caught on items
• Improved weapon sway and movement along with snappier ADS speed
• And much more!

As noted we intend to aim for a 1.0 release by the end of 2024, so most major parts of the project should wrap up by the end of the year. This is all tentative and of course it could take longer, but based on the first 9 months of development we should be on track.

Of course after the 1.0 release the team will continue to support and update the mod, and it being open source from the beginning means anyone can branch off and continue the project in whatever way you please!

Internally the team has been thinking about two major things, a new name for our game development studio and what our next project will be. At this time we know it will be an immersive sim using the Godot engine and will be a fully fledged independent game. Don't expect any other news about that next project until 2025 or beyond.

For a final treat here is a comparison of day one of the mod to how it looks today: