Half-Life (Sven Co-op) Setup Guide

Please read first: this is a multiplayer game

Sven Co-op is a multiplayer game, and its version of the Half-Life campaign is built to be played co-operatively. Some of what it asks of you, such as needing more than one player at a campaign portal console, is there on purpose to keep it that way.

This randomizer is made for co-op lobbies. We do not endorse using it, or any convenience it adds, to work around Sven Co-op's multiplayer design or to treat the campaign as a free single-player Half-Life. Play it with other people. If you want Half-Life on its own, buy Half-Life.

Requirements

Sven Co-op (free on Steam). The Half-Life campaign maps ship with it: there is nothing extra to download.
Archipelago 0.6.7 or newer.
The half_life_sven.apworld file.

Install

Put half_life_sven.apworld in your Archipelago custom_worlds folder.
Open the Archipelago Launcher and start Half-Life (Sven Co-op) Client.
The first time it runs, a folder picker asks for your Sven Co-op folder (the one containing svencoop). It remembers the answer in your host.yaml, so it only asks once:
```
half_life_sven_settings:
  game_folder: F:/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common/Sven Co-op
```
You can edit that by hand instead of using the picker if you prefer.
Type /install in the client. That copies the AngelScript plugin into your game and registers it in svencoop/default_plugins.txt.

/uninstall removes it again, and leaves nothing behind: the scripts, the bridge directory and the backup of your default_plugins.txt all go.

If you would rather do it by hand, the plugin tree is inside the apworld at half_life_sven/plugin/plugins/, which mirrors svencoop/scripts/. Copy it across and add this block to svencoop/default_plugins.txt yourself:

"plugin"
{
    "name" "Archipelago"
    "script" "archipelago/ap_main"
}

Play

Generate and host a multiworld containing your Half-Life (Sven Co-op) slot.
Start Sven Co-op and create a listen server (New Game) on the map -sp_campaign_portal. This is the Sven Co-op campaign portal, and it is your hub. Plugins only run on servers, so joining someone else's server means their machine needs the plugin and the client.
Connect the client to the room.

You should see [AP] Connected to the multiworld. in the game chat.

Universal Tracker

If you have the Universal Tracker apworld installed, this client grows a Tracker tab showing which locations are in logic right now. Nothing to configure: the client uses Universal Tracker's window when it finds it and its own when it does not.

Two of this world's decisions are rolled at generation rather than derived from your YAML: which mission the seed opens with, and what the run starts you holding: so the world hands the real seed's answers back to the tracker rather than letting it roll its own. Without that its view would drift from the server's by a whole starting mission.

Client commands

Command	Effect
`/install`	install the plugin into the selected game folder
`/uninstall`	remove the plugin, its scripts and its bridge files
`/gamedir`	reopen the folder picker to change installs
`/gamedir <path>`	set the folder directly, without the picker
`/where`	show the game folder, bridge path and plugin status
`/commands`	list the chat commands you type inside the game
`/missions`	show mission unlock status
`/deathlink`	toggle DeathLink
`/amnesty <n>`	show or change the DeathLink amnesty for this session
`/newrun`	starting this slot over: forget which missions were finished on this machine, so the server's completions show as "(Remote Complete)" until played again
`/force_melee_throw`	toggle Melee Throw on in a seed that has no Melee Throw item
`/toggle_custom_bots`	let Bot Swarm's bots wear custom player models, or only the game's own so nobody has to download one; kept across sessions

Campaigns

Sven Co-op ships four single-player conversions and the campaign portal fronts all of them. Each is a YAML toggle:

Option	Campaign	Missions	Finale
`include_half_life`	Half-Life	18	Nihilanth
`include_opposing_force`	Opposing Force	13	Worlds Collide
`include_blue_shift`	Blue Shift	7	Power Struggle
`include_they_hunger`	They Hunger	3	Episode 3

Only Half-Life is on by default, so a YAML written before this existed generates exactly the seed it always did. Switch every campaign off and Half-Life comes back on regardless, because a seed has to contain something.

What each campaign needs installed

Everything runs on the host's machine: the plugin and these maps have to be on the server, not on the people joining it. A campaign whose maps are missing will fail the moment someone warps into it, so check before you generate.

Campaign	Missions	Maps it needs	Check for
Half-Life	18	`hl_c00` … `hl_c18`	`svencoop/maps/hl_c00.bsp`
Opposing Force	12	`of0a0` … `of6a4b`	`svencoop/maps/of0a0.bsp`
Blue Shift	7	`ba_tram1` … `ba_outro`	`svencoop/maps/ba_tram1.bsp`
They Hunger	3	`th_ep1_00` … `th_ep3_07`	`svencoop/maps/th_ep1_00.bsp`

Some missions have no hub console and are reached by !warp alone. No campaign has a panel for its intro, and Opposing Force has two more gaps besides:

Mission	Campaign	Reach it with	Intro?
Black Mesa Inbound	Half-Life	`!warp 0`	yes
Boot Camp	Opposing Force	`!warp 18`	no, the training course
Incoming	Opposing Force	`!warp 19`	yes
Crush Depth	Opposing Force	`!warp 25`	no
Living Quarters Outbound	Blue Shift	`!warp 31`	yes

Opposing Force's panels run 01-05 and 07-11 with no sixth: that gap is Crush Depth. exclude_intro_missions drops the three intros and leaves Boot Camp and Crush Depth in, console-less, reached by !warp.

The campaign portal can also have whole areas switched off by the server, which looks identical to a missing campaign from in-game. If a campaign's consoles are sealed, check these in your server.cfg:

as_command spcp_hlsp 1
as_command spcp_opfor 1
as_command spcp_bshift 1
as_command spcp_theyhunger 1

Enabling more than one changes the run in three ways:

Every campaign hands you one of its own missions at the start. Four campaigns means four missions open from the first spawn, not one.
Every campaign's finale is a goal. The seed is won when all of them are done, and the client says how many are left as each falls.
Weapons go into one shared pool. Opposing Force's displacer, sniper rifle, SAW and spore launcher turn up in Black Mesa, and Half-Life's crossbow and Tau cannon turn up in theirs. Blue Shift brings no weapons of its own, so it gains the most from having company.

They Hunger's weapons are the exception. Its tommy gun, tesla gun, spanner and the rest are not weapons Sven Co-op ships: they are custom entities its own maps register, so they only exist while you are playing They Hunger. They still shuffle inside the seed, but the game will only hand one over once you are in a They Hunger map. Receive a tesla gun while you are in Black Mesa and it is waiting for you the moment you warp to an episode. Nothing is lost, and nothing in Half-Life's or Opposing Force's logic ever expects one.

They Hunger also reskins the weapons it borrows, so a few checks are named for what you see rather than what the engine calls it. The crowbar is an umbrella, the pipe wrench is a shovel, and hand grenades are sticks of TNT. They are the same items as everywhere else: send someone the Pipe Wrench and they swing a shovel in Episode 1 and a wrench in Black Mesa.

Missions Required is per campaign and the settings are independent. missions_required is Half-Life's and opens Nihilanth; opposing_force_missions_required, blue_shift_missions_required and they_hunger_missions_required do the same for theirs. Finishing Opposing Force missions does nothing for Nihilanth.

They Hunger is the thin one. Under strict logic its Episode 1 is enterable with a melee weapon and Episodes 2 and 3 expect a gun, its own or one that travels; its check placement has had no pass yet, and with three chargers in the whole campaign almost all of its checks come from reaching maps.

Playing the randomizer

You start with the crowbar, the medkit, and one random mission unlock, drawn from every campaign in the seed.

random_starting_weapon swaps the crowbar for a random melee weapon from the campaigns you enabled: Opposing Force's pipe wrench or combat knife, They Hunger's spanner, or the crowbar anyway. With only Half-Life or Blue Shift on there is nothing else to pick and the setting changes nothing.

Whatever it lands on replaces the crowbar rather than joining it. Crowbars in the levels are then refused the way any ungranted weapon is, until somebody sends you the Crowbar: it is an ordinary item like the wrench, and a wrench start puts it in the pool. Whichever melee weapon the roll chose leaves the pool instead: nobody is going to send you a wrench you are already holding. The medkit is yours either way.

Walk up to a chapter's console in the portal room and press either button. The plugin rewires the consoles: one press travels to that mission if you have its unlock, or tells you it is locked.

There is no console for Black Mesa Inbound: the portal map does not have one. !warp 0 is the only way to reach mission 0. If you would rather not have a mission that can only be reached by typing a command, set include_black_mesa_inbound: false in your YAML and it is left out of the seed entirely, along with its checks and its unlock item.

Chat commands (press Y in game, not the console):

Command	Effect
`!help`	list these commands
`!ap`	list every mission and its status, printed to your console (`~`)
`!tracker`	every location in the seed, by map, found or not, to your console
`!tracker <text>`	just the maps or missions matching that, e.g. `!tracker hl_c03` or `!tracker office`
`!find`	point you at the nearest check on this map you have not found
`!find <text>`	point you at a check by name, e.g. `!find hev charger 3`
`!trace [text]`	draw a line from your feet to the nearest check, or one you name; `!trace` again to stop. A later part's Reached or a mission's Complete traces to the level exit
`!warp <number or name>`	travel to an unlocked mission
`!warp <name>`	the same by name, e.g. `!warp office`
`!warp <name> <part>`	back to one part of it, e.g. `!warp surface tension 3`
`!warp <map>`	the same by map name, e.g. `!warp hl_c11_a3`
`!warp <game> <number>`	a mission counted within one game, e.g. `!warp of 3` (with a part: `!warp of 3 2`)
`!menu`	numbered menus: warp, a tracker that opens on the mission you are in, find, and trace
`!custombots [0\\|1]`	host only: whether Bot Swarm's bots may wear custom player models
`!aphud`	toggle an on-screen counter of checks found on this map, mission and seed
`!hub`	return to the campaign portal

Every one of these also works in the console (~), which saves opening chat and losing mouse look just to ask where a charger is.

Mind the leading dot. Sven Co-op namespaces a plugin's console commands, and with no namespace set the separator dot is still there: so it is .ap, not ap. The server prints the exact list at load:

[AP] console commands ready (8): .ap, .ap_tracker, .ap_find, .ap_warp, .ap_hub, .ap_help, .ap_menu, .ap_hud

Chat	Console
`!ap`	`.ap`
`!tracker [text]`	`.ap_tracker [text]`
`!find [text]`	`.ap_find [text]`
`!trace [text]`	`.ap_trace [text]`
`!custombots [0\\|1]`	`.ap_custom_bots [0\\|1]`
`!warp <number or name>`	`.ap_warp <number or name>`
`!hub`	`.ap_hub`
`!help`	`.ap_help`
`!menu`	`.ap_menu`
`!aphud`	`.ap_hud`

The ! versions are chat commands: they only work typed into chat (Y), not into the console. The . versions are the reverse.

Console output from ap and ap_tracker lands in the console you are already looking at, which is the main reason to prefer them.

Going back for a check you missed. !find names the part a check is in and prints the exact command to get there, and !warp will drop you straight into that part rather than at the start of the mission. Only parts you have already reached: the mission has to be unlocked and you have to have stood in that part before, so this is for going back, never for skipping ahead.

!warp numbers run across all campaigns: 0-17 Half-Life, 18-27 Opposing Force, 28-33 Blue Shift, 34-36 They Hunger. Half-Life's are unchanged, and !ap prints the numbers grouped by campaign. Each mission is also numbered within its own game, which is what !warp hl 5, !warp of 3, !warp bs 2 and !warp th 1 take: from 0 for a game with an intro mission (so the number matches its hub console), from 1 for They Hunger.

!tracker only lists checks the seed actually contains, so chargesanity: false means no charger lines rather than two hundred that can never be ticked.

The client also prints this list when it connects.

Finishing a mission sends you back to the hub automatically and sends its completion check. Trying to enter a locked mission is refused.

Weapons are items. A weapon lying in the world still sends its check the first time you walk over it: anywhere in the campaign, and whether or not you are allowed to keep it. You cannot hold it until the multiworld gives you that weapon. The campaign's own per-map loadouts are stripped for the same reason.

Chargers are checks. Every health charger and HEV charge panel sends a check the first time someone presses use on it, even an empty one. Every Xen healing pool sends one the first time someone steps into it. That is 120 of Half-Life's 189 locations, and 162 of the 378 across all four campaigns; chargesanity: false in your YAML removes them all for a much shorter run. The other campaigns have far fewer: 22 in Opposing Force, 18 in Blue Shift, 2 in the whole of They Hunger.

The HEV suit is armour, not the suit. With shuffle_hev_suit: true you keep the suit and its HUD from the start: you would not be able to switch weapons without it: but your armour is held at zero until the HEV Suit item arrives. Batteries, wall chargers and Armor Battery filler all do nothing until then, and the game says so in chat when the item lands.

The long jump module is switched on, not handed over. With shuffle_longjump: true you cannot long jump until the item arrives, however many modules the campaign puts in front of you. With it off the module is left to Half-Life entirely: nothing early, and you get it where the campaign gives it, in Forget About Freeman and everything after.

That is the one place the two pieces of optional equipment differ. An unshuffled HEV suit is granted from the start, because the item is the only thing that ever turns armour on and nothing in the campaign would.

A finale is not unlocked by an item. Each campaign's last mission opens once you have completed that campaign's own missions_required count, set in your YAML and defaulting to all of them. Every finale in the seed has to be cleared to win it.

Blue Shift seals two missions, not one. A Leap Of Faith is the escape cutscene at the end of Power Struggle rather than a mission of its own, so the two are one ending and neither has an unlock item: the count opens Power Struggle, and clearing Power Struggle opens A Leap Of Faith behind it. That leaves five Blue Shift missions the count can ask for.

DeathLink

Any death gibs the entire Sven Co-op lobby, and if DeathLink is on it is also sent to the multiworld. A DeathLink arriving from another world gibs everyone in the lobby too. Toggle it live with /deathlink in the client.

Amnesty. death_link_amnesty in your YAML (default 4) is how many deaths the lobby is forgiven before one is reported to the multiworld. It only affects deaths going out: inside Sven Co-op the lobby still gibs every time, and the death message says how much is left ("Amnesty remaining: 3"). When the allowance runs out the next death goes to the multiworld and the allowance starts again. The countdown is shared by everyone in the lobby, survives map changes, and can be changed for the session with /amnesty <n>. Set it to 0 to send every death.

Troubleshooting

Nothing happens / no [AP] messages. The plugin is not loading. Check the server console for [AP] loaded 18 chapters, 174 locations at map start. If it is missing, default_plugins.txt is wrong or the scripts were not copied.

[AP] FATAL: could not open .../checkdata.txt. scripts/plugins/store/archipelago/checkdata.txt did not get copied. Rerun the installer.

Client connects but the game never reacts. /gamedir is pointing at the wrong install. The client prints the bridge path it is using; check that ap_in.txt is appearing there.

You keep the weapons you pick up. The plugin is not running, or that classname is not in checkdata.txt. Only the classnames listed as K records are gated.