articles • Easter eggs Released: December 2003
Screenshots
Introduction
This article is about all the little easter eggs hidden in my projects. If you look carefully you may discover a lot of trivia in my work. I'm a huge fan of stuff like this and I hope you enjoy it, too. The screenshots on the right will help you to find the easter eggs yourself, if you have'nt seen them already.
This article may be updated in the future.
Times of Troubles
The office complex (fourth map)
The first easter egg can be found in the office complex (the fourth map). There you come across a board just after you leave the elevator shaft. This board features an award for myself since it took me much too long to complete Times of Troubles.
Another easter egg can be found just around the corner. To be more precise: in the conference room of the office complex. There, someone left on the beamer and you can still see the last statistics they talked about in this room. Now what could be more concerning than 1138 chickens in ventilation shafts? The number 1138 is a small reference to one of my favourtie movies THX 1138.
„Meeting Barney” (sixth map)
If you thought the statistics above are fake, you were wrong. There are some chickens hidden in the ventilation shafts. After you made your way through the train station you have to enter a ventilation shaft in order to proceed.
Then, there are two ways to go. The right direction is where you have to go, the left direction leads to the easter egg. Don't be put off by the bars blocking the way, you can smash them also it takes some time (better use a grenade).
Now it should be no problem to find these three chickens eating a dead headcrab. And yes you can kill these just like the ones in the Counter-Strike map cs_italy.
The thing with the chickens found in ventilation shafts somehow became an obsession and so more and more ideas for easter eggs came up. One of the ideas was that the chickens could be chopped in pieces through a ventilator. I thought a long time about how to implement this until I did it in a probably not so funny way.
Still in the sixth map you come across this desk with a red light at the wall behind it. You can use this light by pressing your use key. Then turn around and watch the ventilation shaft above. You will see some feathers and flesh spreading out of the shaft. Poor chickens!
The next one is a tribute to a guy that was never used in the original Half-Life. These guys in their yellow overalls never got a tribute so I decided to do one. The guy in green overall is a new skin for the model I made. I wanted to use it in Times of Troubles but never found a good spot so the only glimpse of him you can get is on this picture. The actual easter egg however is the text on the picture:
The Black Mesa Construction team fixes everything in no time. But don't get too close to them - they also eat everything in no time.
If you can read this, you've eaten too many carrots.
- the administration
A few corners after this one you get to meet Barney, the security guard. There you also can find a toilet with a heart-shaped hole in the door. Jump, to discover another chicken. Now if this ain't original! Now, if you aren't a fan of chickens, I promise that this was the last one.
The last easter egg is an accoustic one. You have to get access to the H.E.V. Supply Depot & Recharge Stations. There you can find recharge stations for both your health and your suit and also a radio used by the soldiers. While you can use every radio in Times of Troubles you definitely should try this one - it has it's very own sound. Oh, and did you ever empty the recharge stations?
E.T.F.
In E.T.F. there is only one little easter egg to be found - and it's not actually hidden at all. After you've made your way through the first map and the first half of the second one you come across a room with a vending machine and a flatscreen tv. One the left side you can see two posters of the first and the second Dark Wars. Next to those you can spot an poster promoting the third and final episode claiming to be our most epic movie.
