Bravado is a new singleplayer map for Black Mesa, now available in the Workshop!
While attempting to escape Black Mesa, Freeman’s tram is halted by a military lockdown at an administrative facility chiselled into the side of a canyon wall. Freeman must restore power to the tram and, along the way, discover what happened to the scientists.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=449141574
Go and check it out and like, fav, comment if you enjoy it.
Nice map.
Small map, but I enjoyed it. Only suggestion I have is in the spoiler:
[spoiler]When going up against the helicopter at the end, I ran out of rockets because I was a dumbass. I went all over the place looking for more rockets (I found some in the room opposite the main area, but ran out of those, too) but I couldn’t find any more. I ended up having to hang out in the canyon area, crouched behind a corrugated metal plate, and lob grenades at the helicopter to defeat it.
I suggest placing a rocket ammo crate somewhere in the level.[/spoiler]
Danielsangeo:
[spoiler]There is a rocket crate. However, I am confused by your description. When you talk about rockets “opposite the main area,” it sounds like you’re talking about where the rocket crate is. The rocket crate is located behind the big red Secure Access door at the beginning of the level.
There are only two areas with rockets. The Security Office when you enter the interior and the big red door. The big red door has a rocket crate and a couple crates containing the RPG itself, for players that decided to forego or forgot about the Security Office one and ran all the way over here without getting it.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]Okay, evidently I’m either blind, a dumbass, or not informed. X/
I didn’t see this the first time through:
https://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/540775541815793754/339ACB45166C9F7B0036A6A6E7F4A75F62591710/
I was looking for this kind of crate:
https://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/half-life/images/6/6b/Ammocrate_rpg.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20090804094921&path-prefix=en
Apologies. Great work on this map, then![/spoiler]
Excellent piece of level design here. I only have two issues with it:
Great job!
Re: danielsangeo
Nah. It’s tough to get used to a new visual language when you’re so used to the Half-Life 2 language. Because I played the series in reverse order, I never understood until later that Half-Life 1 crates contained goodies! You can imagine why I thought the game was so difficult. >_>
Re: Health kits
There are 3 batteries scattered around, along with 2 health kits. There are 2 health chargers and 1 HEV charger, which are basically locked off from the player until the return trip. There are also a few alternate ways to complete battles with minimal damage to yourself. I can explore adding more, but it would be help to know what was the tipping point that brought you to low health in the first place?
It was the houndeye pack. I thought “oh, houndeyes!” and proceeded to shoot them, but after taking a few blasts, I saw my health was at 15, so I panicked and ran the other way trying to scavenge for health kits (which I couldn’t find). I eventually killed them and the bullsquid without taking any additional damage, fortunately, but it took a while because I had to be as careful as I could not to get one-shotted.
I probably took a bunch of additional damage before the houndeyes, and didn’t realize that I was running low until the numbers turned red.
[spoiler]There is a medkit and a battery over in the bathroom near the room where the Houndeyes are. The Houndeyes are meant to be a trap - you can see them through the window before you encounter the two Zombies near the bathroom. Because the Houndeyes are sleeping, it is possible to not trigger them at all if you don’t use the Pistol to kill the two Zombies. If you quietly Crowbar them to death instead, you can then kill the Houndeyes with the Grenades you get from the dead guard. 
There is also a medkit to the right of the freezer chamber, just after the Bullsquid.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]Ah yeah, I remember those med kits. I remember picking those up, but my health didn’t last long because low armor plus Hard mode.
… also, I feel really stupid now for forgetting that grenades are a viable weapon. Whoops. 
[/spoiler]
Hey!
I just played through this and wanted to say I really enjoyed it, nice work!
Yeah, unfortunately, I never figured out if Black Mesa had its own equivalent of item_dynamic_resupply. That’s a special “item” in Half-Life 2 that transforms into whatever the player needs most at the time they break the crate containing it. All the item_crates I found in BM were hardwired to drop specific things (although there was a field that linked to a script somewhere?).
It’s sort of a two-pronged problem. For one, without this entity, it’s easy to flood Easy and Normal difficulty with too much health. With it, you can always give away some throwaway item on lower difficulties. And secondly, none of the item_crates look good in an office environment (they are conspicuously absent in Office Complex). It’s actually a testament to how Half-Life 2’s item crate blended into any setting while still standing out. The giant 48x48 crates in Black Mesa don’t work in an office setting.
Thanks!
Played this last night and had a lot of fun.
I liked the layout, keeping everything hugged in tight to the one area. Smart design.
Reminded me of the early 00s when there were tonnes of SP mods around for HL1.
I always find myself trying to avoid having ragdolls in my maps look like they spawned in the T-pose. I gotta ask, bravado has a lot of bodies sitting against walls like this. Is there any special method you used, or did you just get lucky with the physics engine?
The prop_ragdolls are oriented so they are tilted back against the wall, so when they drop, they go butt first. I believe there are better ways to do this, like the Hammer update entity, but it’s somewhat reliable for that kind of effect.
If you want it to look interesting, you could also use env_physexplosion to toss the ragdoll around. That’s how Valve did it in HL2, in the room where Alyx beats up all the Metrocops while Gordon is stunned.
I think Stormy mentioned some way to have the ragdoll snap to the first frame of an animation before going all dangly-like, but I don’t recall exactly.
Yes, physexplosions can be great for messing up a room. 
I’ve also heard about the ability to snap a ragdoll to an animation frame, but I’ve never been able to make it work in my previous maps. The VDC talks about a field called “sequence” which is absent from the FGD and supposedly uses the first frame of the provided animation. There’s just one problem - it expects an integer, not a string.
That led me to look at prop_ragdoll’s code, where the actual name of the variable is m_nOverlaySequence, not sequence. It is an integer. Based on what I had seen there, I was led to believe that while this functionality exists, it’s not exposed to mappers. I believe that while the variable can be set by mappers, they are not used by the game unless code tells them to do it, and it doesn’t appear to be set up that way by default. One example of its usage is with npc_barnacle, where it manually sets the ragdoll into the ACT_GESTURE_BARNACLE_STRANGLE animation using this system.
People can correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s just how I interpret it. Whether it’s sequence or m_nOverlaySequence, random integers or ACT_ names, I never got it to work in my tests.
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.
