A Few Suggestions to the Developers

Black Mesa Archive The Cafeteria
#1

I don’t know if anyone will care, or like this, but here I am making a suggestion topic. Here it is:

I really love how much thought that was put into developing this game, I really do, but I have a suggestion that could spice up the gameplay a bit. To add a bit more variety.

I noticed several things from the original game was missing from Black Mesa, for example, Service personnel (called “Gus” in the game files) you could see them during the tram ride, but now they are absent.

Yeah, these guys, in case anyone can’t remember:

There are forklifts in Black Mesa, but no one who drives them. Though not played out in the original game, these guys are the backbone of Black Mesa, they are workers. They are supposed to take care of things a scientist shouldn’t be bothered to do. (like moving stuff around along with Loaders, repairing some stuff, welding stuff and all that. In Black Mesa scientist do all that stuff, which is ridiculous.) A small number of these guys can be added to the game (not all of them should be attached to their forklifts this time) they can be used to make the game more lively during the tram ride. And later in the game, you can find one or two live ones and a few zombie version. (where it is possible) They could also work as a multiplayer model. They also drive some Black Mesa vehicles such as forklifts and trucks, so in the surface areas where you wouldn’t see loaders, these guys would make lots of sense.


Black Mesa actually had trucks to move stuff in. And people who worked on them. (this certainly helps the immersion on “what do they eat” level, if you don’t know what that means, just google “Shandification”.) This should be in the game.

A second thing that can be added to the game is a few Residents during the dormitories level. There were civilians in Black Mesa (families of the black mesa personnel, like Eli Vance’s family, but not them specifically), but you don’t see a single one of them in the game. I think adding a one or two of them (along with zombie versions) could add some dramatic effect to the game.

Another thing that would be great to see is HECU soldier zombies (military zombies, I don’t remember seeing them in the free version), they could be a variant of the zombie, much like Zombine from HL2. Zombies with body armor. Think about that.

What else… female zombies? I might have gone too far with zombie thing… But I think it is a nice idea.

What do you guys think?

#2

  1. I’ve been trying to include unarmored “security guard” NPCs as office workers, maintenance/janitorial workers, and forklift drivers for my own/the community’s use for about a week now. Sadly, I am having hideous technical problems with my custom character_manifest file. ?(

  2. I really do like the idea of having some sort of armored car or heavy transport in places, especially since all of the civilian trucks currently available are those crappy HL2 models. Their presence in the long-abandoned(?) sections of Apprehension suggests the facility might have used those military flatbed trucks for this purpose, but I feel like having a military vehicle be too common pre-operation would stand out as odd.

  3. I’m not sure on people with civilian clothes because 1) I don’t think we will ever see the dormitories outside of individual mods, and 2) I get the impression that most of the scientists at BM did not live in the dorms full time, seeing as they talk about heading into some sort of town or city for a day or weekend off. However, I doubt base personnel wear their uniforms all the time, so who knows.

  4. Zombarines would be a nice touch, certainly. No reason not to have them.

  5. Given that the same zombies appear where female scientists were in Anomalous Materials / Unforeseen Consequences, I just sort of assumed the zombies were mangled enough not to stand out as one or the other in bad lighting with the crabs on. That said, it would be a nice bit of extra consistency to include them.

  6. On that same note, I think it might be a good idea to add female security guard NPCs- there were several mods that made different ones for the original Half-Life (some more reasonable than others, the ones I thought were best were the “Barniel” NPCs from HL Italia’s mods), and while I’m not a modeller myself I don’t think it would be too hard to reverse-engineer them from the existing Source “human” assets.
    Now, I don’t think any of this is necessarily anything the devs themselves need to spend time on. However, I think all of these things would make for good mods, and in fact am working on the one I can make pretty actively right now.

#3

I think it should be done by the developers, because this stuff should in the original game. A little variety is needed. They are not making a mere mod anymore, they need to include some stuff both for the singleplayer and multiplayer. It is only right.

By the way, of course we see Dormitories, “Level 3 Dormitories” to be exact. It is in the game. They lived there and for some, their families lived there as well. Sure, they might get away for the weekends, but I’m sure many stays there with their families during the work days. (Eli Vance and his family for example)

I always hoped we would see female security guards. Not many of them, just one or two of them. One especially expects to see one around Anomalous Materials section. Most likely on a desk job I imagine.

Yeah, It always seemed weird that only vehicle Black Mesa has is some SUV’s. It would be a nice addition to add some Black Mesa trucks. They are in the original series, so it is all canon and stuff. :smiley:

Overall, I am glad you agree.

#4

Well, yes but they are not obliged to add anything more to the base part of the game, just because people payed money for it. They already put more passion and love into their game than probably 90% of AAA game developers nowadays.
I do agree, that some of these changes would be pretty awesome and would help the game to feel more rich and detailed, but

  1. They most likely don’t have time for completely unneccesary details like these right now. They have to finish Xen, fix lots of bugs, refine and expand multiplayer, rewrite the workshop, parts of the menu that are broken, etc. These changes although cool, would carry little to no importance and are of no matter at all to the devs at the time

  2. The devs would have to carefully inspect the game in order to implement these changes. You can’t simply randomly insert a bunch of zombie grunts in a few different maps. That would simply feel forced into the game and would counterproductively break the immersion. You would have to carefully think about, where to replace normal zombies with zombie grunts for it to make sense. and that’s simply one of the many aspects you talked about.

I also hope that we will get further little details like the ones you suggested, but they most likely won’t happen until the dev team has most of the important things off their plate. Only then will they look at these minor suggestions and think about implementing them.

#5

Or the soldiers all wear helmets and such. Cause I think they know what they’re dealing with.

Scientists even recreated a part of Xen in a chamber with living creatures (headcrabs,…)

So before they knew which danger they brought (headcrabs,…) I guess they had accidents aswell, but more containted, so just in the labs, not over the complete facility.

They learnt about them and knew they jump on your head, soldiers know this aswell when they need to eliminate the treat…

So I think only soldiers not following the rules or loose concentration are overtaken by the headcrabs and become zombies

Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.