Building a Popular Half-Life Mod During the Rise of Counter-Strike
My personal account of building “Cold Ice”, an underground Half-Life mod
When we purchased a home computer in 1998, I was consumed by PC video games. Particularly first-person shooters Quake II, SiN, and Unreal Tournament. Out of all of them, my favorite was Half-Life. The gameplay felt solid. The ambiance of the environment was immersive. The weapons felt heavy and responsive. The cast was engaging — Marc Laidlaw’s plausible scenario where theoretical scientists open a portal to an alien universe.
In my opinion, Half-Life’s online multiplayer battle mode felt realistic and fast-paced. HLDM (Half-Life Deathmatch) was a place where online strangers compete to obtain “frags.”
At about the same time I engaged with others in these online matches, the company that developed the game, Valve, released an SDK (software development kit) in April 1999. The SDK enabled the community to modify the game to their…
