Moon over White Cliff-Side
1: Luna Under Tension
By Thomas Michael "Codes and Ponies" Hood

Saturday, July 2nd, 2016...

Luna had just gotten her new computer set up. It was a Dell Extreme Performance System One 27 inch All-in-1 Desktop Personal Computer with all the trimmings.

"Now that I've got everything transferred to my new computer," said the goddess of the night, to nopony in particular, "I'm going to see if there are any games that might pique my interest."

As she was searching the Internet for interesting games, 1 item in particular caught her eye.

She read out loud: "White Cliff-Side remakes VALVe Software Corporation's first title, Half-Life 1, in 21st century, current-generation, Source Game Engine glory, bringing the game to modern standards in the process.

"It was born out of the belief that VALVe Software Corporation's official Source Port of Half-Life 1 didn't do the game the justice it could have.

"8 years in the making, the 1st public release was let out on September 14, 2012, including everything except the "Hazard Course" training level (which was removed officially because they felt it was a waste of development time, so they used HUD notes to alert players how to use weapons upon picking up the weapon in question for the first time. Some players on the official forum remade it out of nostalgia, however), the Xen levels (which the development team were putting so much effort into-so as to avoid "Xen Syndrome" as the first-person shooter portion of the video game industry calls it-that they had to push it back into the 2nd release) & the online multiple-player component (same reasons as the Xen levels, except without the "Xen Syndrome" aspect). These were added later on.

"Game-play was also made to be more challenging & realistic.

"This mod puts a whole new perspective on the world that started the Half-Life continuum & introduced the world to Gordon Freestallion, the gun-toting, crowbar-swinging, grenade-throwing, armor-wearing PhD in theoretical physics."

After finishing reading the item, Luna was ecstatic. "How did a Half-Life nut such as myself have not hear about this?" she said. "& it completely revamps everything. She downloaded the appropriate files to her computer. She decided to check out the community forums while she was at it, & found 5 plugins that piqued her interest:
-On a Rail Uncut
-On a Rail: Loop Modification
-Surface Tension Uncut
-Community Project: Hazard Course Remake
-White Cliff-Side: Uplink

After her copy of the main White Cliff-Side application finished installing, she added the above mods (it was a painstaking process, including a few code scripts to integrate White Cliff-Side: Uplink into the storyline in much the same way Half-Life: Uplink Add-on did with the official Half-Life: Uplink), putting all the mod files into the appropriate sub-folders, & what not. After finishing that, the Princess of Gamers & the Night cheated a few cheat scripts into the game to tweak the weapons.

After doing those cheats, Luna set all of the game's graphical settings all the way up, bound all controls that weren't bound by default to keys while keeping all the default key controls, set the game world volume & the music volume all the way up, turned on full closed captions, set her in-game microphone volume all the way up, & set the game-play/dynamic lights/shading systems all the way up.

After making sure all the game's settings were how she wanted them, she put on her "game-sync headset" that allowed her to physically enter the game world via mental projection & dynamically interact with non-player characters. Finally, Luna made sure she had Source Software Development Kit Base 2007 properly installed, as she needed a copy of that on her computer to play White Cliff-Side. When the royal gamer saw everything was a-okay, she started her play session.

As she was getting ready, a beige Earth pony with glasses, brown eyes, a messy brown mane, a straight brown tail, a fez, a black Doctor Whooves t-shirt, & a laptop keyboard cutie mark smirked when he caught sight of her.

So, Princess Luna's finally playing the greatest mod of all to its full potential, thought this Earth Pony, who went by the name of "Cluster Writing Brain". After an incident destroyed his house (none of the possessions of any of the residents or visitors were in the house at the time, thank Celestia), he brought every earthly possession he owned at the time with him on the go, until he arrived at Canterlot needing a place to crash. Fortunately, Celestia & Luna took him in.

Brainy went to go find Celestia, so he'd have somepony to talk to while Luna was lost in her game. Sure enough, he bumped into said Celestia while looking for her.

"Oh, hello, your majesty," said the stallion. "I was actually just looking for you,"

"Greetings, Cluster Writing Brain," said the Alicorn. "what would you like to talk about?"

"Well," started the stallion, "Your sister is playing a game mod, Captain Armor just had some sense knocked into him after trying to kill my fillyfriend just because she was a Changeling (My fillyfriend wasn't even a member of the changeling species involved in that incident), Princess Mi Amore Cadenza just had a rage quit reaction from losing a game of Marathon Infinity: Blood Tides of Lh’owon Multiple-player due to incompetent allies again, Twilight broke Pinkie's brain again..."

"Wait," said the goddess of the Sun. "What mod?"

"From what I can tell, White Cliff-Side: Source," said Writing.

"Ah. She'll enjoy it" noted Celestia.

"You play?" queried Writing

"Yes.", said Celestia

"Okay," Just than, the sound of a magic-induced explosion happened.

Captain Shining Armor trotted by, mumbling like a perpetually annoyed sailor.

"Captain Armor, what's wrong?", asked Writing.

"Oh, hello sir Writing Brain. Just problems with a new recruit. He's not used to low-level law enforcement jobs, so he's having trouble with the ropes of being a royal guard trainee as it were. He accidentally damaged a training facility. You have no idea how many bits that's going to cost to fix. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to find my wife." Shining trotted off again, getting back to mumbling like a perpetually annoyed sailor.

Author's Note

This is more an introduction than anything, showing Luna setting up her copy before playing the game, so be nice (but brutally honest) while criticizing. This is also my 1st time writing for this universe.
I'm not gonna continue this story until the Development Team releases the next version of the mod with the Xen levels & online multiple-player levels, because I don't want to leave you with a prolonged cliffhanger after the chapter where Luna does Lambda Core.
I'm mostly writing this story because I have yet to see a "Luna is a gamer mare" thing involving Black Mesa.
The gaming Headset that Luna uses is based on the "IPV" headset from ChaoticNote's Luna Plays anthology.
Will Luna be able to complete the advanced Hazardous Environment Suit training with no problems? Find out in Chapter 2: When They say Hazard Course, They Mean It.. Coming once I play the Hazard Course remake plugin for Black Mesa: Source