Happy 20th Anniversary Half-Life 2!

Valve is celebrating 20 years since Half-Life 2 was released, with a Half-Life 2 Anniversary Update, as well as a 2 hour Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Documentary on YouTube.

I usually don't make these kinds of posts, but the Half-Life series is very special to me. If I had to point towards a singular thing, that resulted in me going down the programming path. Which in turn resulted in me becoming a software engineer, it's most likely Half-Life 2.

I still remember playing the Half-Life 2 demo as a kid, and being absolutely scared playing through Ravenholm. I even recall, how I was only able to play during the day with the sound off.

However, as I got a few years older, I managed to play through Half-Life 2 completely. Now 20 years later, and I've played the whole series countless times. Not to mention, that throughout the last 20 years, I've been playing every other Valve game to varying degrees as well. From Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, to Counter-Strike: Source, to Team Fortress 2, to Left 4 Dead 2.

Now, how does all that tie into becoming a programmer? See, it all started with puzzle maps in Half-Life 2: Deathmatch and later surf maps in Counter-Strike: Source. They made me realize that anybody could make maps. So I started learning Hammer Editor, and making custom maps. I never really released any of my maps, but they were played among friends at LAN parties.

However, I wanted to create more than "just" maps. So it then transitioned into my first attempt at learning programming. Which of course was attempting and failing hard at learning C++, since that's what the internet told me the games I loved was made in. I gave up quickly, and instead ended up learning web development, which was a lot more approachable.

After quite some time of web development, I also started playing Garry's Mod. This then resulted in me trying to make my own addons. It still required quite a bit of learning, but Lua was luckily a lot more approachable. Especially considering, I'd also been learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript by now.

In 2010, I created and released my first Garry's Mod addon "Item Crate". Which was followed by releasing 4 other addons, during the subsequent half year.

I still remember how ecstatic I was, seeing my addons reach the front page of the "Garry's Mod Addons" website. It sadly no longer exists today, as it has been replaced by Steam Workshop. However, I still have the number of downloads laying around. After 3 years my addons had been downloaded 23,820 times. Which back then for Garry's Mod, was quite a bit of downloads.

I remember seeing my addons having been re-uploaded to Steam Workshop, many many years ago. I wonder if someone still uses them today, or even remembers them.

All in all, my facination and interest in computers and software development, most likely started from those puzzle maps in Half-Life 2: Deathmatch many many years ago.