GENERAL INFORMATION

    Title:        Timeline
    Filename:     timeline.zip
    Author:       Ross Smith
    Email:        r-smith@ihug.co.nz
    Home page:    http://halflife.mani.ac.nz/
    Description:  Single player adventure for Half-Life

BACKGROUND

    "The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,
    That ever I was born to set it right!"
        -- Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5

    You are Gordon Freeman, formerly a scientist at Black Mesa
    Research Establishment, now reluctantly employed by a mysterious
    organisation as a troubleshooter. (They send you out looking for
    trouble, and when you find it, you shoot it.)

    You are contacted by the Man in Blue. He seems strangely worried;
    something has ruffled his normally impenetrable character.

    "Mr Freeman, we need your help urgently. It seems that somebody at
    Black Mesa has been experimenting with ... unconventional
    applications of the dimensional gateway technology. They have
    developed what appears to be a working time machine.

    "Unfortunately, the scientists who were working on it disappeared
    before we could ... persuade them to turn it over to us. It
    appears that we were not the only ones following their work from
    behind the scenes. A renegade organisation within the US Marine
    Corps got to them before we did, and used their technology to
    travel into the past.

    "We believe they have found allies in another time, and intend to
    use their advanced technology and foreknowledge of events to
    change the course of history. If they are not stopped, they may
    erase your ... er ... our world from existence.

    "We will send you to the location of the last known transmission
    from their agents. The ... ah ... clean-up of Black Mesa is still
    proceeding, but you should be clear of it there ... I hope.

    "The time apparatus must be somewhere nearby. You must find it,
    follow them into the past, and stop them -- by any means possible.
    I can offer you no help once you leave the present.

    "The existence of the world you know depends on you, Gordon
    Freeman. Good luck..."

INSTALLATION

    Unzip timeline.zip into your Half-Life directory. It should create
    a subdirectory called "timeline" and place all its files in there
    (if it doesn't, you have a corrupt archive or you didn't unzip it
    properly).

    Copy your valve\config.cfg file into this directory if you don't
    want to set up all your customised controls again.

    There are three ways to start the game:

    (1) Start Half-Life normally. From the main menu, go into "Custom
        Game". Select "Timeline" from the list, click on "Activate",
        then on "Done". You should now see the main menu against a new
        background. Use "New Game" to start a game in the normal way.

    (2) Open the console (this is reached by starting the game with
        the "-console" command-line option, then either selecting
        "Console" from the main menu, or starting a standard game and
        then hitting the backquote key). Enter "game timeline", then
        "skill 2" or "skill 3" if you don't want to play on the easy
        setting, then "map timebase1".

    (3) Make a copy of the Half-Life shortcut on your desktop. Rename
        the copy to "Timeline", then go into its properties settings
        (right-click on it and select "Properties" from the popup
        menu, or left-click on it and hit Alt+Enter), and go to the
        "Shortcut" tab. In "Target", add "-game timeline" to the
        command text (without the quotes, and with a space between the
        existing text and "-game"). This shortcut can then be used to
        start the Timeline custom game directly.

    To uninstall Timeline, just delete the "timeline" subdirectory
    from your Half-Life directory.

CREDITS

    Inspiration:  Cemetary, In Flames, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden,
                  Motorhead, every SF author who's ever written a
                  "What if the Nazis won?" story, and _Gladiator_.
    Playtesters:  Adam Boileau, Luke Pascoe, Grant Zanetti.

    (Extra thanks to Adam and Grant for providing the server space and
    domain name.)

PLAY INFORMATION

    Single player:  Yes
    Multiplayer:    No

MAP INFORMATION

    Number of maps:  30
    New textures:    There are several new textures in timeline.wad;
                     most of them were modified from textures in the
                     original game.
    New sounds:      None

CONSTRUCTION

    Base:                None (all new maps)
    Prefabs:             None (besides the standard Worldcraft prefabs)
    Editing tools:       Worldcraft 2.1
                         Paint Shop Pro 6.0
                         Wally 1.48b
                         Zoner's HL compile tools
    Compile machine:     PIII/450, 128MB RAM
    Total compile time:  6 hours 19 minutes 11 seconds

COPYRIGHT

    You may distribute this game in any way you like provided you
    don't change any of the files in any way. If you don't cooperate,
    then don't distribute it in any form.

    Authors may use these maps as a base to build new games. Feel free
    to grab anything you like out of it, provided you're making
    substantially new maps and not just minor modifications to mine,
    and you include appropriate acknowledgements in anything that uses
    my material.

    Half-Life is Copyright 1998-99 by Sierra Online and Valve LLC. All
    rights reserved.

    Timeline is Copyright 2000 by Ross Smith.
