Half-Life 2: VR Mod How to Load Custom Maps

Almost immediately after this mod came out, I began to wonder how well custom maps would work in this.

The answer is… fairly well, assuming they don’t change too much. Custom weapons or complicated scripts won’t work, but if it’s just a map made to run in normal Half-Life 2 (or, for another example, GMod) chances are it will work fine as long as you give HL2VR all the materials it needs, assuming the map isn’t only using vanilla assets.

To this end, I’m going to demonstrate using the well-made RE2 Sourcemod maps, which were ported to GMod. This is NOT a perfect example, as the maps supposedly use content from Episode 1 and Episode 2 which I don’t believe are included with HL2VR yet, though I could be wrong. If it’s true, you’d have to add HL2E1/HL2E2 content to your HL2VR custom folder to avoid errors and pink textures. As of writing this I’ve only played up to the first ladder shortcut in the RPD and haven’t yet come across any errors, at least.

Where and how you get the custom maps to try out is up to you. There’s a lot of custom content made for Half-Life 2 over the years.

For my example, we have this RE2 Source port:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2716806565&insideModal=0

Downloading this content for use in HL2VR is possible in a couple different ways. Personally I recommend the Windows program “Crowbar”, which serves as an incredibly useful Swiss Army Knife style of program for most games running on the Source engine, and it can download as well as extract addons from the GMod workshop among other games’ workshops.

https://steamcommunity.com/groups/CrowbarTool

There are other ways, such as websites that can download from workshop – if you want to go down that road, you can figure it out yourself.

Once downloaded and extracted, you should have some files:

We’re going to install these in the custom folder of HL2VR. Therefore, navigate here:

steamapps\common\Half-Life 2 VR\hlvr\custom

Make a new folder in here, named something relevant to what you’re adding. For me, I’ll call it “re2”. Then, paste the folders you extracted from before into this, so the result is something like so:

Now the content (maps, textures, models, etc) will be detected and loaded by HL2VR.

Start HL2VR.

From the main menu, assuming your game window (the 2D one) is in focus, you should be able to open the developer console with (~) and type commands in with your physical keyboard. It might be possible to do in VR as well, but I haven’t figured that out.

You’ll want to load one of the maps you installed. If you don’t know the names, go to the custom folder, into your created subfolder, then maps, and see what the names of the BSP files are.

In my case, four maps are added:

re2_1_gmod
re2_2_gmod
re2_3_gmod
re2_4_gmod

So loading the first map is as easy as typing “map re2_1_gmod” and hitting enter.

Assuming all went well, the map should load and gameplay should begin.

• As previously mentioned, the maps list EP1 and EP2 as dependencies, so if their material/model contents aren’t added to HL2VR’s custom content folder it might result in errors. It depends on what HL2VR loads and what the addon comes with.
• Map 1 drops you right into the thick of it, so be ready to go fast or get bitten.
• Map 1 seemingly doesn’t give you a suit. Either that or I’m bad and couldn’t find one. But going without a suit is hard, as you won’t have sprint, a health HUD, or a flashlight. So consider opening the console once you’re in a safe spot and putting in “give item_suit”. Alternatively, you can start right away on the second map if you want, which spawns you at the RPD with a suit, crowbar, and pistol.
• Saves seem to be… broken. Whenever I tried to load a save, it disabled the AI (and said so on the screen). Normally you can do this with “ai_disable” in the console, and repeat it to toggle the AI back on. But when the mapload does it, I haven’t found a way to un-disable them, as that command no longer did anything. So you may not be able to use saves at all. If you die or have to come back later, you might have to simply load the map you were last on, and maybe use console commands to give yourself whatever equipment you had before. This could be a problem exclusive to this addon, I’m not sure.