Sven Co-op

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Sven Co-op

Developer(s)	Sven Co-op Team
Designer(s)	Daniel 'Sven Viking' Fearon & David 'Sniper' McDermott.
Engine	GoldSrc
Version	3.0 (December 24, 2003)
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows
Release date	January 19, 1999
Genre(s)	First-person shooter
Mode(s)	Single player, multiplayer
Input methods	Keyboard, mouse

Sven Co-op - usually abbreviated as SC - is a multiplayer mod for the popular first-person shooter computer game Half-Life by Valve Software. It is still under active development and is currently at version 3.0, with the next version (4.0) expected to be released in the near future.

Sven Co-op is a cooperative game, where players must work together against AI controlled enemies (NPCs) and solve puzzles as a team.

The game was originally created and released by Daniel 'Sven Viking' Fearon as a small mod with two single player maps and the game configured to allow NPCs in the game (by changing a CVAR to allow them to exist in the multiplayer game mode). Sven Co-op was released on January 19th 1999 - before Valve's Team Fortress Classic - and is therefore seen by some as the oldest Half-Life mod in existence that is still in development. It has since grown to become a full blown mod, with a full team, and one of the most played games on Steam, excluding the official games by Valve.

The current version of Sven Co-op being worked on is 4.0, and will be released in 3 stages called "Bronze", "Silver" and "Gold".

1 Current Team
2 Gameplay
3 Monsters and Weapons
4 Mapping and Modelling Community
5 Blockers
6 Sven Co-op 4.0
7 Sven Co-op 2
8 Notability
9 See also
10 External links

[edit] Current Team

Daniel 'Sven Viking' Fearon
Founder, Project Manager

David 'Sniper' McDermott
Lead Programmer, Web Design, Mapping

David 'Commando' Starr
Mapping, Project Coordination

Oscar 'Nev' Björhn
Programmer

[edit] Gameplay

In-game screenshot of 4.0

Since Sven Co-op is heavily based on the original Half-Life, it is essential that the player is at least familiar with Half-Life and its controls, and it is recommended that they have completed Half-Life's Hazard Course tutorial level. The single player campaign of Half-Life is supported by Sven Co-op, but in a slightly altered form to create a better challenge for co-operative play.

Sven Co-op's levels are set as missions and are generally separate from each other. Many missions span several maps, and some are collected together in a series. The aim of most levels is to reach the end or to achieve an objective -- obtaining a high score is not the focus. Map scenarios can be set in Black Mesa, cartoon worlds, World War II, fantasy maps, modern urban warfare or any other kind of theme and time period the mapper chooses. This creates an extremely diverse gameplay environment, as virtually all other games have a fixed theme and time period.

Some of the major features of the mod include:

In-Game Monster/Player info system that displays information about NPCs and other players the player is looking at.
The ability for mappers to create allied monsters to assist players and follow commands issues by players such as following the player or attacking an enemy.
The ability for mappers to individually customise the models and sounds of NPCs and weapons.
A medkit 'weapon' that is used to heal other players and friendly NPCs.
Significant improvements to the original Half-Life NPC AI.

[edit] Monsters and Weapons

Sven Co-op includes several new monsters and weapons. Most of these come from Half-Life's Expansion Half-Life: Opposing Force, but have all been coded from scratch.

The new monsters included in the game are most of the Race X aliens including the Pit Drone, Shock Trooper, Shock Roach and the Voltigore. Also included are other NPCs such as zombified Barneys and Soldiers, the Gonome, the Black Ops Male Assassin, Osprey and Apache, Otis, the Clean Suit scientist (immune to poison damage) and friendly grunts which are the Medic (able to heal friendly NPCs and players), Engineer and regular grunt.

The game also includes new monsters, namely the Baby Gargantua (much smaller than an adult Gargantua and possesses the same attacks albeit less damaging, and is susceptible to conventional weapons fire), Martial arts Assassin (a mêlée-only variant of the Black Ops male assassin), Robo Grunt (a robot soldier that is more resilient to damage than their human counterparts) and the Heavy Weapons Grunt (a human grunt armed with a minigun). The Robo Grunt and Heavy Weapons Grunt were originally to be included in Half-Life but were cut from the game, although their source code is in the Half-Life SDK. More NPCs are planned to be released in version 4.0.

In addition to the Half-Life weapon arsenal are some from Opposing Force as well as new ones. The Opposing Force weapons included are the Barnacle grapple, Pipe wrench and M40a1 Sniper Rifle. NPCs such as Otis, the medic and engineer grunt can use the Desert Eagle pistol (Otis uses it exclusively) and some grunts can use the M249 SAW (which will become a usable weapon for players in version 4.0). The original weapons are a medkit, an Uzi that can be used in akimbo and the minigun used by the Heavy Weapons Grunt. Players who donate to the developers will get access to a golden Uzi that does slightly more damage, and their crowbar can become electrified to deal more damage, emitting a blue glow and giving the player an aura.

[edit] Mapping and Modelling Community

Sven Co-op has a very active Mapping and Modelling community, as evidenced by the recently released map pack, The Big One 490 map pack which is a huge collection of maps made by fans. Sven Co-op also has a busy modelling and model conversion scene, and a group of these once went out to form the Half-Life Improvement Team, dedicated to improving models for all Half-Life games.

The Sven Co-op team has worked together with several Half-Life single player mod developers to convert their maps to Sven Co-op. Most notable is the They Hunger Co-op project to create a co-op version of the popular They Hunger mod, which will be released some time after Silver. There is also another project to create a co-op version of Opposing Force.

The community has slowly dwindled over the years, but Sven Co-op still remains one of the mods with most custom content. This success might be because of several reasons: Due to Sven Co-op's similarity to singleplayer games, it is easier for mappers to create their own worlds and scenarios that go beyond the standard gameplay mechanics, unlike other multiplayer games that are typically very strict when it comes to the gameplay and story. Another advantage of Sven Co-op is the ability for mappers to change models and sounds to create wildly differing themes and also slightly altering the gameplay. A major downside of the 'single player' style, is that Sven Co-op maps generally take more time to create than maps for other multiplayer games, but despite this, SC mapping has still managed to thrive.

A common criticism of mapping for singleplayer games is that a mapper will never have a good overview of how popular his or hers maps are. When you are mapping for an online coop game you can simply do a regular check of the server list to get a good impression.

[edit] Blockers

Earlier versions of Sven Co-op had distinct disadvantages with players having the ability to stand in door ways or narrow pathways and block all other players from finishing the rest of the level. This was often done in spite or for griefing purposes, however a player would simply need to leave the computer with no ill intent and come back later to find that they had inadvertently been standing in a narrow pathway and prevented any other players from pressing onward. Sven Co-op Version 2.0 gave the ability for the crowbar to "pull" other players out of the way, and also added a votemenu that allows to start a vote for a kill or a kick of players that are detrimental to gameplay, virtually eliminating the scourge of blockers.

[edit] Sven Co-op 4.0

Version 4.0 is the version currently in development. It has been in development since the release of Sven Co-op 3.0 in December 2003. The current plan is to release it in three segments - Bronze, Silver and Gold. Bronze will have most of the new content implemented while Silver and Gold will follow-up with the remaining new content.

A changelog for 4.0 was released but many features have since been added to the mod. Here is a short list of some of the announced features for 4.0:

New game modes:

VIP - Players must escort a fellow player or NPC to a specified point. Mappers have the option of setting up spawn points for guards on various routes along a path the VIP must take.
Assault - Players must enter an area guarded by NPCs and destroy specified objects. Can be an unlimited amount of objects, specified by mapper. Upon destruction, the object(s) can trigger an event. A time limit to accomplish the mission can also be included.
Invasion - The opposite of Assault. Players must defend structures or NPCs within the given time period from invading monsters. Structures and NPCs can be repaired, and the mapper can define whether or not a given entity is allowed to be repaired by the players. Via the class system, players will have the ability to build things like sentry guns or other defensive structures.
Other: Using the Sven Co-op entities, mappers can set up combinations of these game modes.

Other features:

A new Player class System: Through a text file, mappers can provide up to 10 player classes on their map. Options like choosing the player model, health, armour, specific abilities, weapon load out, etc, will also be available.
New weapons, such as the M249 SAW.
New monsters, such as Tor and a G-Man bodyguard.
The ability for players to revive recently killed players using the medkit.

[edit] Sven Co-op 2

In-Game dramatic screenshot of the Combine Super Soldier

Sven Co-op 2 is the Source engine version of Sven Co-op. It is currently on hold until Sven Co-op 4.0 is finished. Little is known about this, save for a handful of screenshots of work in progress.