HLA is still the best platform for modded VR experiences 5 years later. You should definitely do it, wmafranz. Can't wait to hear the soundtrack you choose as well.

Thank you fellas, it's really awesome to see people still commenting on this old addon! I've been thinking abt making another little HLA campaign once I'm back home with my desktop, this time set in a city environment that transitions into some kind of concrete brutalist environment later. And of course making even better use of the enhanced combine units that show up here!

Damn straight, Zymurgy. This classic I will never forget. The tension is off the charts!

Excellent game. As Skummeh commented: "think it will be an action masterpiece". I'll update that to (in 2025) " I think it is an action masterpiece"

Thank you hotmajl7, your cheerfully kind and wonderful comment has inspired me, and now I may even update this map sometime to fix the issues! Yes!

music super, game super !!!!

Thanks for the write up Menachem, just wanted to let you know I've learned a few solutions to some of the issues you've mentioned since last time I worked on this mod, and I wont be fixing any of them as idc about this mod no more

If you're going to distribute so much ammo, do it in 4 packs or just spawn the player with it. The string music in the basement is poorly orchestrated and will just deafen you with high pitches while there's nothing next to you. The zombies with instantly exploding grenades will almost always do at least a little damage no matter how fast you are. Freeman's gloves clip into the gravity gloves and you can't see your ammo or resin without looking at extremely specific close up angles.

Combine shields are really annoying and without any grenades they are impossible to beat. Music gets really annoying after having it blast for 10 minutes straight while you just dump clips into arms and legs. At the back half of the train you have 3 soldiers covering every angle with full shields so you can't hit them at all without getting right next to them. No grenades to use, you can't peek, and they don't ever advance. irl good defensive position, but really stupid game design.

Too much ammo.
Music is good.
Action is solid.

The game-balance is off a bit. But it's still fun, so barely up, but still rated up.

Only a few more older ones to record as I have only 3 or 4 left to do.
This one is very well done and is quite hard to complete

My playthrough ---> https://youtu.be/56SpK4QZC9c

THANK YOU!! Great map - had a lot of fun playing it.

Played this again after a while. Good fun to play. The Zombie part is really cool.
I also like the Campaign+ modified Combine. The end is a bit bulky with the amount of enemies.
https://youtu.be/21KakgaMlUc

Great game and map, NEED MORE NOW!

I decided to give this a try on Merciless and was happy to see that it functioned quite well. Unfortunately, it's just too difficult in the last section with the orange armored enemies and some of the distance fighting. The previous sections were really enhanced by Merciless so it's a shame that it wasn't balanced throughout. My playthru here: https://youtu.be/UIkZV6ZwB9o

Great map/game. Could have been more enjoyable if it were a tad easier but hey some people like challenging. even on easy I had to really pace myself. You can stack shit to climb which is good. Yeah prettyyyy, prettyyyy, prettyyyy good.

this is one of the scariest fucking things I have played through in a while

Yup! The music is from the Payday 2 Soundtrack. Here's a tracklist, if I remember it all correctly:

-First battle with the soldiers: Shadows and Trickery

-In the dark concrete tunnels with all the zombies: Clowns are Scary

-Final battle with the soldiers: Razormind

-Ending music once you go in the elevator: The Take 2016 (Stealth)

Let me know if I forgot any tracks.

is there any way to get the music? what is it called? simon viklund did a fantastic job on it

Finally a real challenge! It REALLY got tense right at the third encounter and just went upwards from there.
Note: it's best if you enable "+hlvr_continuous_normal_speed 100 +hlvr_continuous_combat_speed 175" in the launch options if you want to have a chance to keep up with the enemies.

Here's a No Commentary of the beginning of the mod, on hard mode, with zero deaths.
https://youtu.be/0eDs8xHZJV0

If anyone has any issues with the sponginess of the enemies, there's always lower difficulties but this is certainly not a mod for anyone starting up with the modding community.

Really loved the pacing and level design of this map. The final battle felt a little too much and i kept dying especially once you turn around the train.

Some of the gates also turned back to solid clipping if I loaded a save after they unlocked but before I went through.

Reload a save, not my gun. I couldn't do that without my other hand.

It was promising, but there's just too much ammo and not enough health / grenades. The resin was also ridiculously easy to find.
The custom music is impressive, but the final encounter felt way too drawn out. I really don't understand this campaign+ mod anyways. Giving an enemy quadruple health points and ten shields on every part of their body doesn't make them more engaging, it makes fighting them tedious and kills the flow. The last room of shielded enemies just turned into waiting for someone to drop a grenade, then running in circles around the last guy just to get a shot. Also, my left hand disappeared in the zombie tunnel and I had to reload.

Here is The Underground. by @wmafranz#9859. I played a version before the recent update.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdJVwnHzc98&list=PLXlqud_jS2IcYYzqvsNKaDyatTQSt52xU

While the new update was good overall, some things you might want to address highlighted in my playthrus. Still an awesome time, of course. Love this map!!!

https://youtu.be/69cMliwIJFs

Alright guys, update is finally out. Sorry it's so late. I was gonna upload it yesterday, but I was banned from the workshop for a day. Anyways, let me know if you run into any new issues or discover any old ones, and let me know how the new ammo situation feels, I think I might not have reduced the ammo amount enough.

Hey fellas, just a heads up, I probably won't be able to get the update out today, because I realized I have a deadline coming up for something much sooner than I had originally thought. Expect it sometime on Monday, or Tuesday, or maybe even Wednesday.

Nice, I'll add that to the todo list for the weekend update. Thanks for letting me know.

hey, the guy that made the combine plus mod (delit) updated his mod to fix perfomance issues so i highly recommend adding this, he even allowed soldiers to run and gun now

Thanks for the kind words, folks! It's good to hear that people aren't really having many performance issues, as that was one of the main things I was worried about. I will hopefully have an update out sometime this weekend that will include the gameplay changes people have been recommending, maybe some further optimization (though I might end up doing this later), and some other misc. fixes.

This map was an Absolute blast to play^^ Played through on Hard difficulty and the Final battle took me about 15 minutes with 4 Deaths in total... This was by far the most Optimized Workshop map i´ve played up until now i had Zero Frame drops except when the final battle started.. but that is fault of my PC which has some outdated parts :D

Nice! I can't believe it finally came out. I remember seeing playtests of this back in Spring of 2020

This was a blast. Loved the mix of challenging fighting you had throughout.

thanks!!!

Loved it! Great additions off your first draft which was already super fun. You went for a badass fighting map and surely delivered as the 40 minutes of fun will fly by. There was definitely a lot of ammo but I see why you added it, as these new combines/zombies are something that most players are not familiar with so better to have too much than too little! Great job!

That Was Awesome man, i think i had 3 heart attacks and a stroke whilst playing that

Really fun atmospheric Zombie battle and large scale combine battles. I died alot on the final encounter (I suck) but it was fun ajusting my tactics and trying again.

The music is awesome too

If you want to make the map even harder than Hard difficulty, mess with the host_timescale CVAR. Here's my run at 1.75x game speed (4 deaths but a ton of fun!). FYI this doesn't affect the music speed, thankfully. https://youtu.be/sALqsC2Myew

Thanks for the feedback everyone! It might be a little while before I update the map again, but once I do, I will definitely address these critiques!

amazing

Skummeh, thank you for the kind words. I agree with your statement that this level is close to being something pretty gosh darn special.

First and foremost, awesome music. I don't usually care about that so much but I really noticed not only how good it was, but how well it was set to the action. I kind of agree with the ammo critique, however I wouldn't get too crazy with taking it away. Very tense and well done. Great job!

Excellent effort

Great detailed review as always, collin. I totally agree with points 4 and 9 for criticism. But that aside, this map was so much damn fun! I think it will be an action masterpiece with a few refinements.

Oh yes, the music was also inspiring. Part 1 had an old style, slightly horror like feel to it (e.g., the Night Stalker TV Series from the 1970s), and Part 2 had a more modern beat, and reflecting the action very well. Especially for Part 2, the music seemed to start/end with each battle, I wouldn't have minded some lulls in the music during the fighting (maybe you did, but I more clearly remember the music ramping up before a fight, and stopping following the fight.

(11) The subway tunnels in Part 2 were nicely constructed, and generous in space to be able to move around a lot; this was a nice contrast to Part 1 where you had more confined tunnels. (12) In Part 2, the final part took place in what seemed to be a u-shaped tunnel designed. After getting through the first part of the U, I could not travel back down it (one of those invisible walls). This was a shame because I wanted to try firing inside the subway train on the one side of the "U" to the other side of the "U". All in all, it was a heck of a level that I really feel, with some changes (especially the ammo), could be even better. Thank you for providing a good time!

(8) Some of the creepiest lighting was when you had to jump down into some red-colored tunnel; very moody and slightly surreal. (9) In Part 1, there were a number of times where after walking past some dead bodies, it turns out they weren't dead. While this was very effective at first, it felt slightly overused by the end, such that I started to turn around as I walked past it, waiting for its resurrection (and was not often disappointed). (10) One time there was a HeadCrab Zombie I shot dead, and the zombie's head slowly slid down the side of a barrell. I can't explain why, but that was the scariest, most immersive part for me.

(4) Too Much Ammo! I do appreciate the generosity, but aside from not standing out in the open to get shot, there was so much ammo, that the difficulty of an encounter directly correlated to my distance from them (e.g., if they were close, then it could be tense; but if they were far away, it was easier to go 'full Rambo' because I just had to keep firing until I reached the next cover point. (5) The final portion of Part 2 (fighting down the long subway corridor just before the end), despite the overabundance of ammo, was a real 'fight for every inch'. I was very glad I got through it, but if they all decided to rush me at once, I think I would've just surrendered. It was tough, and could've easily been so much more tougher. (6) I would occasionally find graphical flaws (e.g., walking through some solid objects), or some design issues (e.g. walking into a invisible wall), but these were very limited in occurrence. (7) "Massif Peaks'. Funny.

Played on a Valve Index with a i7-8700/16GB RAM/GTX1070Ti and Normal Difficulty. General Observations are as follows: (1) The level played smoothly throughout with no noticeable jitter or reprojection. (2) Solid level design in both parts of the level. Part 1 was very Doom 1-like in structure, but a good use of shadows, lighting and slightly creepy enemies made for an enjoyable rump. Part 2 was also Doom-like but not as many twist-n-turn tunnels; instead it often gave a feel of the opening of 'Saving Private Ryan' in that certain segments you fought hard to stay your ground, and maybe more hard to advance. But when completed a portion of the level, it felt earned. (3) The Soldiers with Force Fields over specific parts of their bodies were a welcome change to the standard Soldier, as you had to shoot in non-standard places. The Suicide Bombers were used fairly effectively, and added some tension, but was ultimately defeated by........

Tense music and hardcore action; some seriously awesome combat! I decided to play on Hard my first time and didn't regret it, but you should likely already be experienced with Campaign+ if that is your intention. I would say nothing is as hard in this map as the first Northern Star battle in Campaign+ where you get flanked from multiple sides. You have better opportunities to use cover to protect yourself, but the tension is still extremely high and you will be tested. An absolute blast to play! Here is a video of my playthru: https://youtu.be/FlvYkrIBNzU