Black Mesa vs the Arena. Pick a side: the Half-Life universe or Quake. Five a side on Half-Life's Crossfire, bots filling every empty slot, and every fighter looks like themselves: no team colours.
- Black Mesa: Gordon Freeman, Barney, a Scientist, a HECU Marine and the G-Man, plus Opposing Force's Adrian Shephard, Otis, the Drill Sergeant and a Black Ops Assassin.
- The Arena: Quake III's Sarge, Ranger, Visor, Klesk and Doom, plus Team Arena's Janet, James, Fritzkrieg and Pi.
Each side starts with its own weapons (crowbar and pistol, or Quake III's Gauntlet and Machinegun) and hears its own announcer: Half-Life's VOX and HEV voice, or Quake III's. The map is shared: Half-Life's full arsenal, Quake III's Rocket Launcher, Railgun, Lightning Gun, Plasma Gun and BFG10K, plus Quad Damage and Haste on Quake III's timers.
Everyone gets a set number of lives (5 by default). Run out and you spectate; the last side standing wins. A match also ends after 5 minutes: more players still in wins.
New in 0.3.1 (fixes)
- The whole of Crossfire is in play: bots find their way into the bunker and the south yard, and both sides have extra spawn points there
- Bots no longer circle in the upstairs rooms or press into the wall by the lifts
- Bots no longer chase pickups they can't reach
New in 0.3.0
- The Half-Life universe against Quake, instead of red and blue
- Opposing Force and Team Arena fighters
- Quake III's Gauntlet and Machinegun as the Arena's starting weapons
- Each side has its own announcer
- Bots close in on the last survivors
What you need
- Half-Life (Steam): the map, characters and weapons come from your copy.
- Quake III Arena (Steam): the Arena's fighters, weapons and announcer are read from your own install. Without it the Arena is played by Half-Life stand-ins, and the game tells you so.
- Optional: Quake III: Team Arena and Half-Life: Opposing Force add four more fighters each when installed.
Nothing from any of these games is included in the download.
Good to know
- Single player only: you against bots, no online or LAN play in this version.
- It never goes online and only reads your game folders, so VAC isn't involved.
- Menus use the number keys. Type
chooseteam in the console to pick again.
How it works
Half-Dead Arena runs on the open-source Xash3D FWGS engine (bundled), which plays Half-Life from your own copy. Its new game code is built on the Half-Life SDK (hlsdk-portable), and draws Quake III's MD3 models, skins, shaders and sounds from your Quake III and Team Arena installs inside Half-Life.
Credits
- Built with Claude (Anthropic) as the AI coding assistant.
- Half-Life and Opposing Force (c) Valve / Gearbox. Quake III Arena and Team Arena (c) id Software. All loaded from the player's own copies.
- Engine: Xash3D FWGS by the FWGS team (GPL-3.0). Game code: hlsdk-portable / Half-Life 1 SDK (free, non-commercial).
- Libraries: SDL2 (zlib) and stb_image (MIT / public domain).
