Xen Museum
PLEASE READ THE DISCLAIMERS BEFORE PLAYING!
As featured in the "Xen Museum Update". An official mod made by Crowbar Collective which showcases some cool Xen concept arts, sketches, plans, and most importantly: a hub to launch into old development versions of all the Xen maps across the entire 5 year history of the development of Xen!
This Museum provides a unique and interesting deep-dive into the history of Xen and how each Xen map evolved over time. Outside of the main atrium, the Museum is split into 3 "biomes" representing each major Xen chapter: Xen, Gonarch’s Lair and Interloper. Each "biome" features multiple portals, with each portal representing a map from the chapter. By each portal is a computer, which lets you pick a version of the map to play. Each map has several versions, taking you from the beginning of its development to near the end, allowing you to actually witness first-hand how the map evolved over time. Simply pick the map version that looks interesting to you, and step into the portal, and you’ll be able to load into that map version and actually play it!
The dev maps provided are exactly as they were at that point in development. You’ll be playing them in the same manner that we did while we were making them! Will you explore the full history of one map in detail, or will you browse around several to get a feel for how things changed across the whole game? It’s up to you!
We hope you enjoy this fun and interactive tour of our intensely difficult 5 years of development. We thought this was a really cool and unique way to show off the way a game can develop and evolve over time. We’ve never quite seen anything like it, and we hope you guys have as much of a blast playing it as we did making it!
DISCLAIMERS
-When launching into an old dev map from the Museum, the loading times can be quite long, and the sound will hitch and repeat. It might seem as if the game has crashed, but be patient. It should load into the map eventually.
-The maps provided in this mod are given exactly as they were at that point in development. As such, they will be buggy and might crash in places. Some things might be missing from the map and you may often need to use the console to give yourself all weapons (impulse 101; give item_longjump), or noclip at certain points. Please do not report bugs with these maps. They will not ever be updated. Also there are some hilarious bugs in places!
-This mod forcibly sets mat_specular to 0 when you launch an old dev map from it. This means you should not go straight back into playing a normal Black Mesa / workshop map after playing an old dev map. Instead you should restart your game, as the game defaults mat_specular to 1 when you launch it. Alternatively, you can just type mat_specular 1 in the console to reenable specular mapping, after you’re done with playing the dev maps.
