What is "7 Tasks"?

“7 Tasks Source” uses the “Half-Life 2” engine to tell the story of Charlie Crown. Crown is a scientist working for the Hypothesis Research Facility, a company engaged by the government to run top secret research projects. He becomes involved in a mission to recover certain sensitive materials; materials which may have originated from an alien dimension which could be used to create havoc. This mission leads him to encounter a number of aliens and zombies and other creatures who all seem bent on making Mr Crown history.

My inspiration for “7 Tasks” was… Wait…. I’m probably getting ahead of myself. My name’s Fred. Fred Turner. I am 13 years old and I’m the developer of “7 Tasks”. I live in Littlemore; a part of Oxford, England that lies on the trans-dimensional fault lines between Heaven and Hell. I’ve long been drawn to the infinite possibilities that lie in the world of gaming and it seemed only natural that I enter that world by working on a modification of “Half-Life 2”; a game which, itself, seems to stand at the bridge between the world we know and something much darker.

It all started with one map… I was at my grandmother’s and found myself writing a story that seemed to come from the deepest recesses of my mind. As with many ideas I put it to one side and forgot about it. Several months later I found the story in my room and found myself thinking: “Why not? This could work as the plot for a modification of Half-Life. I’ll give it a shot!” So I started up “Hammer” the “Half-Life 1” mapping program and started creating a map based on the story. I created the opening scene in which Charlie meets with Larry, the HRC company representative. When the first map was complete I saw how this could be a great game mod, my only obstacle was that I had no idea how to create a game mod.
It took a bit of internet based research but eventually I found a way. I got loads of mapping and texturing resources (like Wally and Gimp) and ended up creating an entire level.

After playing around with simple mapping I decided that I wanted zombies; the traditional kind with rotting flesh and blood covered jaws. As the zombies in Half-Life 2 have huge parasites attached to their skulls I needed to make some serious changes for my own story. I found a useful forum called ‘TWHL’ which is a “Half-Life 1” and “Half-Life 2” modification resource. I posted a question on how to get rid of these head crab things and somebody gave me a link to a site called Valve Developer Community. Here there was information on using C++ with which I could code my own zombies.

After editing the zombie I thought that “7 Tasks” needed more changes than a simple zombie adjustment. I looked online for all kinds of coding tutorials. After getting the ones I thought were important I only ended up using about four but those four were enough to give me a good start in making my own code.

I got a modelling tutorial from TWHL and studied this. My first model was not success but I kept working on it until I had something I was satisfied with. I may have got my models working but I soon found out that this was an extremely time consuming hobby.

After creating about a million test maps to play around with I got used to mapping for “Half-Life 2” quite easily and am now comfortable working with all the coding and mapping resources I picked up.

The other day I created my own zombie animations by mixing the codes for zombie animations and the codes for human animations. The result was a zombie who can move like one of the infected from the film “28 Days Later”. I thought I might as well try my hand at animation as well and created a zombie standing animation from the ground up.

What I hope to have accomplished next is an all new walking animation and a zombie who has lost his arms. I’m also creating to an AK-47 to be used in the mod as well as new blood effects.

Well that’s about it then. Thanks for reading.