The Incredible Half-Life 2 Machine is the result of an idea I've been pottering about with for about 8 years now (based on the modified-dates of some of my files).

It's the idea of recreating the machines found in each level of The Incredible Machine with Half-Life 2.

Following are comparison shots of the mouse cage and the conveyer belt. The HL2 ones are taken from within Hammer, so they may not look as good as they do when playing. This is not all that I've put together so far, but it's always better to pace oneself when posting media. Also see the modDB profile for some slightly different information and piccies, as it's easier to post them there than here.

TIM	HL2

Please Note: This is not a fully-playable Half-Life 2 version of The Incredible Machine. This is not along the lines of Garry's Mod. This is a re-creation of the construction of the machines found in the game, with the illusion that the machine is doing what it appears to be doing. At this point in the project, neither interaction with the machine pieces nor build-your-own-mode is available.

The Incredible Machine was originally designed and coded by Kevin Ryan and produced by Jeff Tunnell, developed by now-defunct Jeff Tunnell Productions and published by Dynamix, a Sierra company.
Jeff Tunnell has now co-founded GarageGames and created Chain Reaction, a spiffy 3D game wherein you put together pieces of a Rube Goldberg contraption to get a little purple creature to a teleport pad.

"Hey, you need help?"
Sure! I haven't figured out Softimage|XSI yet, so I need some modeling help. What I need at the moment is a shiny dark blue bowling ball and a bumpy orange basketball that are both 32 units in diameter. I'll also need a piece of shiny metal pipe with a 90^o bend. From the side, it has a height and width of 32 units from the entrance of one end to the edge of the lip on the other end. As nothing needs to travel through the pipe, the ends should be closed. See these originals for reference...

"Hey, moron, Half-Life 2 hasn't been out for 8 years!"
Uhh... yeah, and your point is what, exactly? Did I say I've been working on this idea in Half-Life 2 for 8 years? I started fiddling around with this idea in Quake 2 in July of 1998, alternating between Worldcraft (now Hammer) and QERadiant (now GtkRadiant). I dropped it after about a year because Quake 2's engine just couldn't do what was needed. Then, in November of 2004, Half-Life 2 was released and on December 20, 2004 I started converting over everything I had done so far into the fancy new map and material formats. After first figuring out how to do that then actually doing that for a few weeks I got tired of working on it. That, and I realised I just didn't know how to do too much with the fancy new stuff. Then in December of 2005 I picked it up again after fiddling about with other maps and learning about the new Hammer in the process.

"Wow! That was a fascinating life story! (can you smell the dripping sarcasm yet?)"
Oh, shut up, theoretical website reader.

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