Alien npc thread

Black Mesa Archive The Cafeteria
#1

This thread is for talking about alien npc’s their behavior, there textures and animations and attacks.

Some things I have thought while playing black mesa

  1. Barnacles, headcrabs, snarks and zombies are pretty much great. No major issues with these I like them all and additions to there behaviour.

  2. Like the darker vortigaunt skin mod, I think they should darken the texture on the vorts and I also think they should go back to their HL1 sounding vorts, the slave collar can explain away the different vocalization would be cool if we could hear vorts without slave collars talk like HL2 vorts perhaps we could free them and become allies?

  3. Bullsquids could do with more texturing like the vortigaunt skin, that mottled effect, the animation for the tail whip should also be improved taking cues from HL2 Beta tail whip animations and make it similar. Also the mouth tentalecles could also do with more improvement like the HL2 Beta bullsquid and walking/ running more fluid

  4. Gargantua is good also ok we know the AI needs fixing up but I would love to see the foot stomp return along with earthquake cracks that travel with the shockwave

  5. Alien controllers I think could do with better movement or navigation. Not too fond of the projectiles although good copy of the original. Part of me thinks change the attack to something else like a psychic attack or draining the players energy through a energy tether. On hit a blurred overlay could suggest the psychic attack on the players brain like the smod slow motion overlay blur effect. More up close swooping attacks would be interesting. Like this video from Smod for the psychic attack overlay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTcjUt6Vulo

  1. Alien Grunts good but a bit stiff animation, could do with a bit of alteration but nothing drastic on the whole really good.

  2. Mantas are perfect

  3. Houndeyes also really good. I am using xalenas particle effect and I really like this visual addition. I would like to see squad tactics for these though and the alert animation for squad leader(stand on back leg) brought back.

Your thoughts now, and you don’t have to quote me and what I think I want to know other peoples thoughts on the alien npc’s.

#2

Imo Bullsquids should be more like their namesake. In HL1 Bullsquids loved charging at things, they only used their acid spit if something was a significant distance away or unreachable. BM’s Bullsquid uses the acid attack almost exclusively and doesn’t try to melee unless you want into melee range. It actually reminds me more of a acid sentry than HL1’s Bullsquid.

#3

I would actually like the mantas to maybe shoot some sort of green beam ray to the ground, that then creates the teleportation rift (if that’s how it’s called) from where the aliens spawn of, to give a sense that they’re also transport aircraft, like they were in hl1.

There’s also this debate to wether the the barnacle should die from 1 crowbar hit or 3\4. IMO i would make it 3\4 hits only on hard mode. So that the continuty from hl2 is not as different.

#4

A lit prop flare does not burn a barnacle if it eats it. that is something i noticed.

The physics of the headcrab is not quite correct in relation to 9mm ammo. 9mm bullets don’t seem to affect the headcrag enough in terms of physics reaction.

#5

Well the crowbar also swings slower than HL1’s does. You’d only get out 2-3 hits in the time it took to do 4-5 in HL1.

#6

I think barnacle vs crowbar is not an issue.

There has to be some kind of consequence for getting caught on it’s toungue and if you don’t have ammo then you will have to hit and hope. Or avoid it in the first place

#7

I think that the “punishment” for being hit by a barnacle is less about taking damage, and more about breaking the player’s flow. Besides, if the player decides to wait and ride allll the way up the tongue, then use the crowbar to kill the barnacle, they then have to fall back down, often taking damage in doing so.

I think that barnacles are annoying enough as they are in HL1/2, and having to take damage to kill them with a melee weapon puts them over the top.

#8

Then edit the skill.cfg and make the blunt damage scale .5 or something.

#9

AI: The Vort AI needs a significant overhaul. They charge like HL1’s after they fire their lightning the first time, and it makes them a sitting duck. They’ll stand there because the AI hangs when there’s no path for them to take to go into melee range.

It should be within a certain distance that they’ll aim to close the gap and melee or choose a random position within a bubble to move to while they “recover” for the next lightning spray.

Lore: Beyond that, no. Humans are a foreign concept to them at that point in time, if you meet a new race that until recently was hostile, would you trust them off the bat, even if you were forced to fight?

There’s nothing in the HL cannon about when they turned to humanity for help, but it’s not before the Nihilanth was brought down by Gordon. It’s best to not speculate.

Garg: Agreed with the Garg, but additionally give them an AI similar to the Agrunts, they’ll charge directly over the player (or NPCs) position and squish them after the flame’s been active for a length of time in addition to improving the path finding capability.

Agrunt: Their AI’s a leg up compared to the vort’s, but it could be improved in some ways, (squad tactics and wanting to stick back rather than charge in).

Other thoughts: If the coding team is up for it, I hope they can implement squad tactics for different entities. Similar to how OBM’s team did it: https://www.moddb.com/mods/operation-black-mesa/videos/ai-demonstration#imagebox

#10

Yeah, I did. But, we’re discussing NPC’s defaults, and I was debating an opinion with Ronster. That’s all.

#11

I always use guns on barnacles, crowbar is a bad choice against barnacles unless you have no ammo because you are letting yourself in for perhaps a bite + fall damage.

If you use guns on them both bites and fall damage can be easily avoided. Why do you want to kill them with the weapon that is least suited to deal with them?

@chickenprotector i was trying to show convey that the vortigaunts are only hostile because they have little control over what they are doing. the slave collars once removed would make them in their natural state and even their voice would be different. I think it would be nice to try and explain this in the game but i get where you are coming from. Perhaps a vort could somehow accidently be freed of it’s shackles the player becomes incapacitated and it helps the player out and heals them. This would get the point over perhaps. better still we visit the area where they are held and collared against there will.

Ok the tentacles i thought were very well done don’t see any need for any alterations here either.

Ichy… was not that good in half life better in black mesa yes, but they need more health to be more formiddable. I also wondered if there was a system for there detection. if we could lure them up to the surface by throwing objects to disturb the water. i.e. throw a prop physics in the water the ichy will check it out. A sort of fishing to deal with them from the surface.

Bite attack suffers poor proximity to the player the ichy needs to be right in the players face when it bites

Blood underwater on bite? With bubbles and an underwater panic voice?

When the ichy bites it should be a melee hit type of damage and nudge the player wobble the camera

#12

It would be a nice scene if you could visit the area and watch one of them get collared but like I said, from a cannon prospective, having a vort help you (in BM) is a non-option. Unless the guy behind the lore (everyone knows who he is) explicitly states it, there’s no point to speculate.

There’s even some lore against it as well; In episode 2 after you pull Alyx’s essence from the void, the Gman says & I quote:
“There was a time when they cared nothing for Ms. Vance… When their only experience of humanity was a crowbar coming at them down a steel corridor…”

Basically they cared nothing for humanity. I’m not saying the scene is farfetched, but highly unlikely. Maybe if the vort left after the deed was done, it would be plausible. They wouldn’t immediately know how to speak English either, so just something like the regret vort from Text’s add-ons could be good and not lore-breaking.

#13

Your right there Chicken protector and thanks for reigning me in on that. It’s not the Black Mesa teams fault the mess with the vorts and asking for them to do clean up duty on it. But it’s certainly something that could do with some fleshing out. I came to Half life via Half life 2 so I did not know what they were so in retrospect I was confused why I was fighting them when longer time players of the series were thinking other thoughts. But I’d love to see that gap bridged somehow. However or whatever the solution is.

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.