I'm almost certain the 3D skybox technique was employed only for performance reasons. It's an inexpensive way to make the map look bigger. If Valve wanted they could have probably created maps that were as big as the 3D skybox makes them appear, but the decreased performance was no doubt...
The mod isn't bad. I don't much care for some of the new model textures (Alyx's day-glow outfit in particular is hidious; the Combine don't look too bad, though).
And is it me, or do these modded levels take an obscenely long time to load? It seems the load times are almost tripled over the...
A little tip for those of you with the desire to try and switch back to conventional weapons during this sequence: try shooting the antlions with the gravity gun.
For me, it's really more a case of not wanting to overwrite actual game files. Having it as its own mod simply reduces the possibility of rendering the entire game inoperable.
I look forward to it!
Uplink rocked! I was hoping Half-Life 2's demo would be a similiar stand-alone mini-game.
Now there's an idea for a mod--Uplink: Source. But rather than just remake the original Uplink, it would be cool to see it "reimagined" to dovetail with the Half-Life 2 storyline.
Any chance of turning this into a proper mod that installs to ".../SourceApps/SourceMods"? I'd love to check it out, but the installation looks pretty messy.