New Fan Mission

[66662b3bd3b36ZylonBane]

It also doesn't help that it seemed like Half-Life had maybe a dozen ambient sounds for the entire game.

http://www.netshark.us/valve/sounds/ambience/
http://www.adminmod.org/manual/Admin_Mod_Reference/Half_Life_Sounds.htm#ambience
I count quite a few more...

Operative word "SEEMED". Certain ambient sounds were used much more than others.

[66662b3bd3e0dAurora]

Certain ambient sounds were used much more than others.

You are right in that certain areas in the Half-Life single-player campaign overused the same ambient sound effects to the point where they got tiring. The garbage processing facility was one of those areas. In some custom content too, the usage of the stock sounds makes everything sound very familiar in a bad way.

But comparing both games. SS2 seems to have smoother shading than Half-Life. Also, even at maximum light it's still a tad darker than Half-Life.

I have not expressly compared the lighting quality of the two games, but the lighting in the original campaign, done using standard compilers of that era, indeed left a lot to desire.

Using modern compilers and tweaking the settings allow one to create much more precise lighting with smoother gradients, as you will see from the following screenshots of stuff I made in more recent years:

http://i.imgur.com/66wZ7Oi.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/tWkeZW2.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/YyyLHbk.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/0wWaQrg.jpg

[66662b3bd3f9dGodlike]

Half Life 1 Modifications...I played them hard when I was young. Especially those singleplayer. ETC, Chemical Existance, They Hunger, Peace Like US, Poke646 and so on.
Aurora, great work on Hammer editor! Post some more screens from ShockEd. We are all courios how is going.

[66662b3bd410eicemann]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hihEhsdwiIk

Yup