Art of Ascension is a free RPG modification for Half-Life 2. Art of Ascension combines the spirit of online role playing games with the faster battling pace of classical first-person shooters. Players increase their character's level and enhance their abilities by battling to gain experience. With higher levels comes training points to upgrade their weapons and attributes.

Your player file is saved to our server during play and when you leave. When you come back to ANY of our servers you will pick up right where you left off.

Alpha v0.27 is now out for download. This is a client and server release. The most significant changes are:

• Fix tooltips for changes from v0.26
• Fix linefeeds on README.txt
• Add aoa_request_server_hosting command for automatically initiating a new server
• Rare crasher fix for unowned weapon
• Update for new GDS

The AoA GDS hosting is in the process of changing (to my own new site). Although hopefully this will be pain-free, please note any issues on the forums.

Website consolidation and forum relocation redux:

Gamespy is ceasing it's operations regarding the planet*.gamespy.com user sites. What does this mean for AoA?

The forums (previously hosted at gamespy) are moving again. Looking at around at free available solutions, it seemed like the best option was a facebook board. In the coming days before the cut-off deadline when Gamespy shuts down, I will attempt to archive some of the old material (such as game feature recommendations), however it will not be automatically transfered to the new forum, so feel free to re-post old topics as desired.

The website, which currently exists on aoa.gamemod.net and gamespy.com will now be only available at aoa.gamemod.net.

Alpha v0.26 is now out. This is a client and server release. The most significant changes are:

• Change Magnum spawn ammo to 10.
• Change RPG spawn ammo to 10.
• Change Crowbar base damage to 70 and per-level damage to 3.9.
• Change Machine Gun base damage to 8.
• Change Magnum base damage to 50 and per-level damage to 2.2.
• Change Pulse Rifle base damage to 25.
• Change Stun Baton base damage to 70 and per-level damage to 2.3.
• Make Grenade secondary fire occur on button click rather than button release, which fixes some Grenade issues.
• Fix rare server crasher related to fragged players impacting physics objects.
• Fix possible crasher of the client if you were to reconnect to a server while viewing the upgrade menus.
• Make Lucidity Player ID work when looking through windows/glass.
• Fix rare crasher in the Valve SDK apparently having to do with objects catching fire or being destroyed.
• Fix exploitable issues that could arise from entering spectator mode.
• Rare crasher fix involving RPGs under certain conditions.

Forum relocation:

Regrettably, after 6 months to a year of site Nachos administration mostly disappearing (which meant that no new users were able to register on the forums) it appears AoA needs to relocate to a new forum site. Thank you Saint for all you assistance in the past, wherever you are.

Thanks for the patience of all the users out there that were frustratingly unable to register in the past, but the new forum is up and running, and should be a reasonable substitute going forward.

Alpha v0.21 is now out. This is a server-only release, it contains only two significant changes, in order to quickly get out a fix for a regression introduced by merging the last SDK update from Valve:

• Fix v0.20 issue that caused lag during player firing
• Reduce Pistol refire delay from .2 to .15 and reduce per-level damage from .9 to .7

Alpha v0.20 is now out. This is a server and client release, and the client is not backwards compatible, so upgrades are required. The most significant changes are:

• Ensure poison does not occur during map intermission
• Do a hit beep sound for the attacker whenever the server registers damage to another player
• Change Agility Flying cost from 5 to 8 at level 30, and 3 to 4 to level 70
• Add a more useful crosshair

Alpha v0.19 is now out. This is a server-only release. The most significant changes are:

• Add player respawn sound
• Allow Invisibility to continue during non-attack alt-fire (Crossbow)
• Grant frag-assist experience points even if you die/respawn before the victim dies
• Give frag credit to attacker who recently did the most damage on what would otherwise be a suicide
• Change lag compensation to the method used prior to the v0.17 Valve SDK update
• Decrease Machine Gun Grenade per-level damage from 3.0 to 2.3
• Increase Stun Baton per-level damage from 2.25 to 2.5
• Grant RPG secondary fire the ability to detonate all in-flight missiles
• When a character dies, a health pack of their Level plus 5 HP is left behind, that always grants a small bonus HP pickup
• Guile level 60 grants Poison
• Power level 40 grants Poison resist

Alpha v0.18 is now out. This is a server and client release. The most significant changes are:

• Fix cosmetic issue where SLAM lasers could appear at odd angles after the SLAM was destroyed
• Fix issue where SLAM explosion occasionally would not be visible/audible
• Only display Crowd reaction for the fragger, not everyone who contributed damage to the frag
• Synchronize client-side display of Crowbar/Stun Baton range with actual server-side value
• Add use of underwater explosion sound when appropriate
• Fix to allow items created while underwater to be grabable
• Ensure flashlight stays on even when Mana is low
• Allow training above 100 on Max HP, Max AP and Spawn AP
• Lower Crowbar per-level from 4.5 to 4.2
• Raise Magnum per-level from 2.2 to 2.4
• Raise Pistol per-level from .8 to .9
• Fix display of Power Stun visual on victim's HUD
• Give bullets a tiny amount of volume

Alpha v0.17 is now out. This is a server and client release, and the client is not backwards compatible, so upgrades are required. The most significant changes are:

• Update to the latest Valve SDK
• Mirrors damage can no longer inflict Armor Knock or Power Stun
• Fix bot physics interaction hitbox
• Remove the Grenade's Gravity Gun pickup explode timer reset
• Change Stamina 80 Speed boost to 60%
• Increase Pistol per-level damage to .8
• Change SLAMs to always detect fast-moving players
• SLAM level 30 grants instant fuse
• Give Crowbar and Stunstick refire exhaustion
• Fix SLAMs that would detonate instantly if laser pointed at a fence
• Raise Magnum per-level damage to 2.2

Alpha v0.16 is now out. This is a server and client release. The most significant changes are:

• Anyone doing damage to another player gets experience proportional to the percentage of damage they did to help frag the victim
• Aggression level 30 grants Bash attack
• Aggression level 40 grants Multi-Weapon Spawn
• Aggression level 60 and level 80 grant Increased Clip Size
• Add custom death icons for Bash, Mirrors, Thorns, Health Trap
• Give Pistol a refire rate of .2 seconds
• Power Stun disables Mana Regen for 10 seconds
• Remove HP Hardness
• Stamina level 80 grants increased Speed
• Negate HP Toughness does 1/2 negation within 10 levels of opponents Stamina
• Display experience and leveling messages by default in the HUD chat area
• Fix bug from HL2 where resizing the game window would mess up the placement of HUD elements
• Keep Player ID health color green when health is above max
• Make SLAMs explode if the object they are attached to is moved
• Fix issue where Thorns could do more damage than it should in some cases with multiple users of Thorns
• Disable Health Leech for damage done by Thorns or Mirrors
• Increase Shotgun secondary fire to 18 bullets
• Add Pogo and Bash to the in-game config menu
• Cap Health Leech at Max Health
• Make Health Leech unaffected by Item Health Pickup
• Fix Player ID font spacing to be a little more consistent at different screen resolutions
• Grant 1 extra Max MP per Player Level
• Display Invis on Mana HUD when active
• Fix own Aura of Thorns to deactivate own Aura of Invisibility
• Move HUD Chat/Info messages to top left

Utilizing features from v0.15, a new Frag Stats page has been created. This new page graphs stats for Frags By Weapon and Experience Points By Weapon. In addition to satisfying curiosity, over time this will help Art of Ascension adjust to maintain balance.

v0.15 is going to be released a bit earlier than expected to address the important Physical Mayhem bug, and to adjust to hosting issues. This is a server-only release - enjoy! The changes are:

• Fix a cause of the Physical Mayhem bug
• Fix minor issue that could show garbage values for the attributes of a bot right as it joined
• Fix a possible crasher that was broken in the HL2 core by the latest Steam update
• Collect stats info on frags from all servers to track weapon effectiveness

Alpha v0.12 is now out. This is a server and client release. You will be able to continue to play with the v0.11 client on a v0.12 server, however the Shotgun secondary fire will look misleading until you upgrade to v0.12. (The screenshot below indicates the Shotgun secondary fire change, before and after.) The changes are:

• Add Crowd Favorite bonus system, granting more experience for being and killing the Crowd Favorite
• Charisma level 60 grants Aura of Mirrors
• Lucidity level 60 grants Ammo Regeneration
• Lucidity 70 grants Armor Knock
• Lower Crowbar speed increase to .003
• Raise Pistol damage increase to .7
• Lower Pulse Rifle primary fire damage increase to 1.2
• Raise Shotgun damage increase to .2
• Raise Shotgun secondary fire to 14 bullets, and widen the spread by about 2.5x
• Lower Stun Baton damage increase to 2.25
• Raise RPG ammo pickup to 5
• Raise RPG base max ammo pickup to 20
• Raise Alchemy Create Armor to 50 AP
• Allow ammo pickups, even at full ammo (allowing Mana pickup as well)
• Fix Mana display, which previously displayed 99 as the normal max when it should read 100
• Disable Mana loss from Aura of Speed when dead
• Add AoA icon to Steam menu
• Reduce in half the distance a spawnable item must be moved before it may respawn
• Reduce number of sprites and sparks from Pulse Rifle
• Change default name to '?' to hopefully avoid some confusion
• Implement cheat-restricting facility for global character bans
• Patch which seems to fix Physical Mayhem on Win32
• Linux server porting

Alpha v0.11 is now out. This is a server and client release. You will be able to continue to play with a v0.9 client on a v0.11 server, however the Pulse Rifle and scoreboard may both look odd/misleading until you upgrade to v0.11. The changes are:

• Change Pulse Rifle primary fire to a projectile weapon
• Change SLAM base damage to 100
• Change per-level Stun Baton refire rate increase to .001
• Fix experience points calculation to use frag ratio of victim
• Separate out suicides on the scoreboard
• Patch from Valve to supposedly make vphysics crashes less likely

Alpha v0.10 is now out. This is a server-only release. Players do not need to change anything on their v0.9 client installs to get these changes:

• Power level 30 resists Crush Damage
• Power level 40 resists Blast Damage
• Increase base AP strength to 150%
• Change SMG per level damage to .15
• Change Pistol per level damage to .5
• Change Shotgun per level damage to .15
• When a player disconnects, ensure all owned weapons/projectiles in play are remove/destroyed
• Ensure fall damage is always uncapped (instead of stuck at 10 damage)
• Ensure map's weapons always are removed and respawn when picked up
• Power level 60 grants Resist Fall Damage
• Ensure player screen does not fade to black when dieing from a fall
• Grant 7 Attribute points and 5 Weapon points at level 0
• Enforce delay on consecutive weapon switches
• Add +1 to maximum AP/HP, and +1 to spawn AP/HP per player level
• Change Max HP Attribute to +2 maximum HP per level
• Auto-kick players that have been idle (dead or spectating) for more than 5 minutes (with a full server)
• Change Aura of Speed base cost to 3 Mana per second, with an exhaustion cost

Alpha v0.9.3 is now out with just one minor bugfix. Players do not need to change anything on their client installs to get this fix:

• Fix a fairly rare issue where repeatedly reconnecting to an HL2 server could cause a player file to not be able to load on that HL2 server. (Until that HL2 server was restarted.)

Alpha v0.9.2 is now out. This is a minor server release containing chiefly bugfixes. Players do not need to change anything on their client installs to get these fixes:

• Set SLAM damage per weapons page
• Remove a player's Health Traps and SLAMs from the server when the player disconnects
• Avoid making Player 'low health' sound on respawn
• Reduce Invisibility base cost to 2 Mana
• Fix a rare server crasher involving weapons damage
• Always display specators numbers as '0' on the scoreboard
• Fix a server lockup in the HL2 core, common to servers with more than 7 or so players

Alpha v0.9 is now out. Players with v0.8 Clients do not have to upgrade immediately, however some features are only available once upgrading to v0.9 Client. New features and fixes:

v0.9 server:
• All ammo pickups grant 5 Mana Points
• Alchemy level 10+ now increases Max Mana Points
• Alchemy level 35 grants Create Health
• Alchemy level 45 grants Create Health Trap
• Alchemy level 60 grants Create Armor
• Alchemy level 90 grants Aura of Invisibility
• Charisma 10 grants Pogo Jumping (you need the v0.9 client to use this command)
• Stamina level 40 grants HP Toughness
• The Mana cost of flying increases the longer you remain flying in the air
• Lower Mana cost of flying to 3/second at 70 Agility, and 5/second at 90 Agility
• Increase wall armor charger capacity to 100
• Increase normal armor pickups to 25
• Add 'denied' sounds whenever attempting an action you lack the ability to do
• Take frag ratio of victim into consideration for determining experience points
• Increase all armor strength by 25%
• Change weapon Grenade base to 100 and per-level to 6
• Change weapon RPG per-level to 3.5
• Change weapon Shotgun per-level to .2
• Change weapon SLAM base to 50 and per-level to 4.5
• Do not let +speed misleadingly make the speed sound when you lack the ability
• Fix HUD display of HP over 500
• Fix issue where a player with no spawn weapon set would cause the scoreboard and stats to display incorrectly

v0.9 client:
• Flash the Mana hud element when Mana changes
• Miscellaneous hud tweaks (always display hud elements, even when at empty or full)
• Make non-overriding default config

Alpha v0.8 is now out. This version transmits a lot of new information down to the client, so it is not backwards compatible. All clients will need to upgrade to v0.8 to play on v0.8 servers.

Changes:

• Add +aoa_user_stats command, which displays vital stats about the user.
• Display user's level on the scoreboard
• Display user's experience points gained so far on the current map on the scoreboard
• Display Mana numeric value on top of Mana bar
• Valve SDK bug fix that makes ladders work properly (not laggy/sticky)
• Valve SDK change to optimize bandwidth for player
• Valve SDK bug fix for ducking players looking bigger than their hitbox actually is
• Many other Valve SDK changes
• Let the RPG refire independantly of any missles still flying

Server alpha v0.7 is now out with the following changes:

• Remove pre-v0.6 client name change message
• Add player disconnection message
• Implement Intelligence AP Toughness
• Change AP to absorb 0% of drown and poison damage, 85% of bullet damage, and 60% of all other damage
• Make RPG be dumbfire
• Implement Guile Mana Regeneration
• Make RPG radius increase by .25 per level (rather than 2 per level)
• Make say_team visible to all players in non-teamplay mode
• Implement Lucidity AP Pickup
• Implement Charisma Victory Mana
• Implement Aggression Spawn Mana
• Implement Intelligence AP Regen
• Implement Power Max Ammo
• Tweak base max ammo amounts
• Tweak base spawn ammo amounts
• Fix fly cost at 5/sec

The Weapons Guide has been updated to reflect the changes from v0.6.

Server alpha v0.6 and client alpha v0.6 are both out now. The client v0.6 upgrade is recommended, but not required to play on v0.6 servers.

Server changes:

• Vitality Item Health Pickup implemented
• Vitality HP Regeneration implemented
• Vitality Bonus HP Pickup implemented
• Vitality Desperate Regeneration implemented
• Implement Stamina Aura of Speed (+speed command)
• Disallow sprint speed while holding objects
• Make 'Loading...' display smoother
• Make RPG respawn with 10 ammo to start, and properly display remaining RPG ammo
• Add aoa_status command to display all character levels in console
• Respawn upon release of the fire button to avoid wasting ammo on spawn
• Add reminders and tips printed center-screen on deaths
• Implement Stamina Resist Drowning
• Add messages stating that you must begin playing first before using the command (aoa_fly, aoa_attribute, etc)
• Steam SDK Update: Implemented a fix in the lag compensation code that was occasionally preventing players from respawning correctly
• Fix a crasher issue
• Remove Mana having any effect on drowning time
• Do not turn off flashlight just because Mana ran out
• Make players invincible for the first second after they spawn
• Fix Crossbow damage, which was previously stuck at always 100
• Make Fly use Mana
• Change Stun Baton per-level range to .75
• Change Crossbow damage to 125 and 5 per level
• Change Crowbar per-level damage to 4.5
• Change Grenade damage to 125 and 5 per level
• Change SLAM damage to 100 and 4 per level

Client changes:

• HUD tweaks
• Disable auto-weapon-switch
• Synch Fly play control with v0.6 (will play smoother when out of Mana)
• Add README.txt to explain install

Server alpha v0.5 is out, with the following feature additions:

• Implement Spawn AP
• Implement variable Experience Points for frags
• Add message 'Intelligence Level 10 is needed for Flashlight.'
• Require Agility Level 30 for Flying
• Add spawn weapon (command: aoa_spawn_weapon)
• Disabled weapon autoswitch
• Implement Max AP
• Only respawn when attack is pressed
• Implement Aggression Respawn Ammo
• Implement Lucidity Item Ammo Pickup

Note, this is all server-side with no client upgrade required, so you can keep playing with existing client installs.

Art of Ascension moves to Planet Half-Life!

We've come home to where we truly belong. Thanks to Planet Half-Life for hosting us. Update those bookmarks! Or, if you're extremely lazy you can just rely on the auto-redirects that have been added for each of the pages on the old site, redirecting here to the latest content on Planet Half-Life.

Yes, even the dynamic-content pages (like Player Ranks) have auto-redirects to the new location, here on Planet Half-Life.

• Muzzle flash on bullets firing now affect the environment
• Brief 'Help' text explaining how to start playing
• Completion text on aoa_weapon/aoa_attribute commands, which shows the available Weapon and Attribute names as you type
• Cosmetic improvments to the menu and opening screen
• Culled unnecessary files from the .zip, now down to just 3.5 megs to download

All of the weapon upgrades are now in place, and most weapons have had their damage profiles modified to maximize balance. The Weapons Guide has been updated to reflect these changes.

The Tactics and Max HP Attributes are now completed. Also Intelligence Level 10 is now required for use of the flashlight (which previously was free to everyone.)

Most weapons now have their upgrade in place. The Weapons Guide has been updated to list all of the upgrades.

Also, there should be another client alpha released fairly soon. The majority of changes done following the second alpha client release have been server-side only, but some client changes have been in the works as well. For example, some of the menus have been tweaked to display help, and to pop up the 'Begin' menu on startup.

However one even nicer feature is the addition of muzzle flash effects on the world.

If you have played HL2 much, you probably noticed that firing a gun doesn't illuminate the walls around you, which looks a bit flat. Thanks to Jay at Valve for pointing out the simple fix which dramatically improves the appearance, per the screenshot shown here.

Art of Ascension has had a second server running for about a week now to assist in Alpha testing. We have more requests lined up, which will get set up once the server is ready for the next Alpha stage. As always, if you wish to host an AoA server when it becomes available, see the Art of Ascension server FAQ.

The character data is pretty much done, so now the user detail pages show all of the Attributes and Weapons levels. Also the Champions page has been implemented, listing the strongest/weakest characters in various categories.

AoA got some unexpected press recently from Halflife2.net, which, while appreciated, was a surprise. Only the Client has been made available for alpha test so far, so that means there's only one AoA server running right now. The press from Halflife2.net resulted in an unexpectedly large number of complaints yesterday when the server was taken down for development. The server should be ready for alpha testing by the end of the week, at which time more servers will be available. If you wish to host an AoA server when it becomes available, see the Art of Ascension server FAQ.

As you can see from the Stats Page most of the GDS functionality is done. Coming in the next few days will be experience points and leveling. That should be handled mostly server-side, so, the following client install should be good during that development.

There are a lot of changes following the big SDK update, so feedback on all of those would be good. For instance, all of the weapons have changed, so thought needs to go into tweaking them to ensure balance.

Download Client Alpha 2.

Well yesterday's SDK update from Valve was huge. All the weapon code has now switched over to use HL2 deathmatch weapons. The upshot is that all the HL2 deathmatch weapons should now be working in Art of Ascension.

The ranks pages on the left have some links to real data now. The pages are still in early alpha testing, and more features are coming soon.

The Rocket Launcher has been ported to Art of Ascension. I wasn't a big fan of the laser-guiding so that's out. The Rocket Launcher is now dumb-fire in line with more classic shooters. Also the first of the ability commands has been implemented: aoa_fly, which engages flying mode. Right now you engage it with the command (presumably bound to a key for conveniance) and can then you use the jump key to fly instead of the normal jumping. Here's a screenshot of both the Rocket Launcher and flying in action.