BMPD: Pre-Disaster Office Complex

General Development Source 1
#1

I honestly thought I was the only person who cared about this, but there seems to be quite a lot of interest in maps set before the Resonance Cascade, featuring Black Mesa in an explorable and working state. Therefore, I have decided to remake Office Complex as it was the morning before the Resonance Cascade, complete with expanded areas behind what used to be locked doors.

Progress[/size]

All three maps have been restored, and are currently being updated to work on the new Xengine Update build. The original Map A and a revised Map B are now updated; work will continue on updating Map C and expanding Map A. Check the tail of the thread for the most recent updates.

Help Wanted[/size]
[/size]Currently, I have no way of adding custom scripted scenes or NPCs into the game short of editing the BM VPKs themselves- the custom VPK system seems pretty limited right now, and I would like for this to change at some point, as that would allow a lot more “life” from the facility’s inhabitants than the one-action animations they are doing currently. This also results in “pre-disaster” scientists and security guards occasionally appearing bloody, and the npc_human_security “office workers” wearing full armor- these issues will have to wait for the Black Mesa developers to make adjustments on their end, so please don’t repeatedly post about them.

Additionally, I would like at some point to record some custom dialogue- I have a terrible voice for VA (if the scripted sequences come out soon, you may hear me in placeholder sound files), and am wondering who recorded voices for the Uncut, Uplink, and Hazard Course mods.

Media[/size]
These have to go as links because they can overrun the character count:
Map A
Map B
Map C - OUT OF DATE

[/size]Credits[/size]
[/size]Thanks to Citizen[五] for coming up with a solution to the “sticky” character manifest bug.

I also think a special shout-out should go to the developers, for releasing map sources as quickly as they did and generally being very supportive of the mod community.

#2

Looking good, it’ll be nice to see the two separate depiction of pre-disaster Black Mesa. Can we expect more interesting scenarios and scenes like the med emergency? This type of stuff happening can make the facility seem more alive (ironically).

Oh, and a tip for the lighting, experiment w/ linear/constant/quadratic lighting, and toy around with a tonemap ent until you get your bloom looking good.

#3

Personally, I wouldn’t have the scattered-papers decal on the floors or other post-disaster messes. I understand them there for after the disaster, but a working facility would have someone around to clean up any messes left and the people would use the trash cans if they are provided.

Just a suggestion.

#4

I think the scientist dropped the map with papers

#5

Looking good. I’d be very interested to see what you can do with the labs in Questionable Ethics, I like how the Black Mesa devs redid them.

#6

If I can get custom LCSs working (and possibly voices as well), I plan to have many different Anomalous-Materials-style vignettes throughout the complex, as well as a proper actbusy system where scientists actually move around and work on things as opposed to just sitting in one place.

Well, the tonemap for this level is already .2 units lower than normal (relative to Anomalous Materials) and some of the lights have bloom scales down in the .3s, but I’ll make it work. Those drop-ceiling textures don’t seem to like to show up very bright.

I cleaned up most of them and put more papers on the desks, but people are messy and so sometimes there are a few places with scattered papers around trash cans, under desks, etc. In this particular case, he very much did drop the documents- if you look closely you can see a brown stain and an overturned coffee cup. I suppose someone might have had the presence of mind to scoop up his important documents for him, but they all seem pretty busy gawking at the guy potentially dying.

#7

I’m referring to the last picture (of the hall with the trash can).

#8

So in fact u are building a RPG?

I hope we can play as scientist or as guard or whatever

So we get missions to collect a sample at point B, but first we need to ask clearance at point C, so we can get the sample at point B to bring it to point A

#9

At the moment, the map is just a walking tour of the pre-disaster facility. I was considering adding some kind of story to it, but thought such would be too hokey- if people want something like that, however, I would definitely consider it.

#10

I don’t think he said anything about roleplay, and you already play as a scientist in base BM. :stuck_out_tongue:

Have you already tried using a separate light_spot to illuminate it?

#11

Yeah, that resulted in an awful-looking “rim” effect on the walls, but thus far I’ve been having good results with phantom lights up near the ceiling with HDR turned down really low.

#12

The second floor of Office Complex has been released! Workshop link is here.

It’s also time to decide which parts of Black Mesa are going to get the pre-disaster treatment once Office Complex has been taken care of: I will welcome comments in that area here or on the workshop page, but here are my initial thoughts. Currently, I am thinking the way this will be done is by assigning maps a “priority”- that is the order I will be doing them in, and I will get as far down the list as time and other concerns permit.

  • Lambda Core[/size]:[/size] This area certainly could use a cleanup… I for one can’t wait to figure out what’s behind all of those locked doors that are just marked “LAB”… However, the other predisaster mapper, SB7766, is already working on that area and I don’t want to step on their toes.
    [/size]

  • Forget About Freeman[/size]:[/size] FAF doesn’t immediately jump out to me as an area that would necessarily take well to a pre-disaster map, as it seems less a proper section of the BMRF than a run through a number of different areas that happen to be geographically semi-proximate. That said, a lot of the areas in question would be interesting to explore more thoroughly, including the Black Mesa Central Complex (where I am assuming the control facilities for the PA system and tram lines are) and the nuclear waste processing level. So, I guess it’s not a high priority, but not a low one either.
    [/size]

  • Surface Tension[/size]:[/size] Some maps, like the cliffside, might be entirely inaccessible. Others, however, pretty much demand that we see what’s inside all of those various buildings. High priority.

  • Questionable Ethics[/size]:[/size] This is another map that people have specifically mentioned as wanting to see predisastered, and that SB7766 wants to work on, so I’ll leave it be for now.

  • Residue Processing[/size]: [/size]I actually have kind of mixed feelings about this area. On one hand, it’s nowhere near as badly hit by the Resonance Cascade as, say, Office Complex or Surface Tension’s armory map, but on the other hand there’s some catwalks and control rooms that aren’t easily accessible the way the map is now. It might be nice to see the place in operation with forklifts moving everywhere… and get to the HEV suit room that I know is hidden in there somewhere. Medium priority.

  • Apprehension:[/size][/size] [/size]This area looks like it was abandoned a long time before Freeman got to it, heck it looked abandoned in Half-Life, and I have absolutely no idea what things like the piston room, the pit room, and that giant multilevel silo were even supposed to be. Not to mention “fixing” it would require changing a lot of detailed models and textures, something I really don’t want to deal with. I might do something with the ichy-tank room or the cryogenic tanks and associated control room as those look more like they are actually used, but for now Apprehension is a low priority.

  • On A Rail:[/size] [/size]Back in the original Half-Life, I always thought that the rail system was still in active use and dedicated to preparing and designing rockets like the one Freeman launches. The BM devs seem to have taken the area in a very different direction, and while you can do a lot with lighting changes I think most of OAR would still look abandoned. The rocket-launch facility itself was obviously still in active use, though, so I might put it inside of Surface Tension to make up for the loss of the cliffside map or something. Pretty Low Priority.[/size]

  • [/size]Power Up:[/size] [/size]See above. Possibly abandoned (at least the upper part) and not especially conducive to pre-disastering. This was another area that looked disused in Half-Life originally, and only got more so when it was moved into Black Mesa. Low Priority.

  • Blast Pit:[/size][/size] Back when I first played Half-Life, I was of the opinion that while the structure Blast Pit was built inside of might have been one of the older parts of the base, the rocket propulsion labs themselves were still in active use. Again, Black Mesa has kind of changed that. There’s some evidence that the place was recently being used like the existence of modern computers and the fact that the equipment is mostly in working order, but not as much. I’ll have to play around with the lighting and see what that does. Not sure about the areas before and after the proplabs, though, but I’m guessing the rail line you take in was abandoned back in the fifties while the slime river might have been actively used. Pretty Low Priority.

  • We’ve Got Hostiles:[/size] The storage facility really just doesn’t seem to be that damaged by the disaster, and it’s all just warehouses anyway. I suppose there’s nothing stopping it from being given the pre-treatment, but I just don’t have a very strong interest in it.

  • Office Complex: [/size]Already in progress, and shaping up nicely. I sort of wanted to include some of the other floors like IT or the Administrator’s office (judging by the elevator shaft in c1a2c the place has like six more levels), but to prevent feature creep I am limiting the remaster to mostly the areas explored in-game. Current plans are to add a cargo receiving area on the other side of the freezers, an expanded tunnel in c1a2c (which might split into two maps) and elevators that actually go in between the floors.

  • Unforeseen Consequences:[/size] The first two maps in UC already have pre-disaster versions in the form of Anomalous Materials, and both because parts of it are already in good shape and the areas that are damaged involve complex models, the canal maps don’t immediately jump out to me as good candidates. However, the submarine-like coolant reserves would I think take very well to a remaster, especially since I always assumed there were chemical labs and all sorts of other things down there as well. High Priority.

  • Anomalous Materials:[/size] … really?

  • DM Maps:[/size][/size] I’ll admit, something like Subtransit might be cool to see populated, but since the sources aren’t accessible and this project is big enough as is and the MP maps are just mapped out differently from the story ones… probably never.
    So I guess that gives me a tentative work list of

  1. Office Complex
  2. Surface Tension
  3. Unforeseen Consequences
  4. Residue Processing
  5. Forget About Freeman
  6. We’ve Got Hostiles
  7. Blast Pit
  8. On A Rail
  9. Power Up
  10. Apprehension

I’m also considering ways to connect the different areas, such as by tram line or elevator, and would like thoughts.

#13

Additional media:

Originally, Office Complex was going to have an entirely separate system of stairwells for the personnel who worked there, since I thought the original stairs were too rough and “maintenancey” for that purpose. However, with a lot of additional blue-white lighting, they worked out quite well.

1600×900

I wound up expanding the rear of this floor a lot more than the front section, simply because the corridors that lead off from it didn’t point directly towards already-filled-in areas of the complex. That area also has kind of its own visual style that isn’t quite like that of the main player-traversable area.

1600×900

1600×900

c1a2b contains very few maintenance-related areas, especially compared to c1a2a which is like half maintenance. If it was fully accessible to the player, the middle one would lead into the first map of Black Mesa Inbound (since if you put the maps together they end up in approximately the same place).


1600×900

1600×900

1600×900

#14

Looking great! :slight_smile:

#15

We come now to the issue of elevators: I am planning to have working ones that can take the player to any of the three mapped floors of Office Complex (possibly four, depending on how much of the cafeteria balcony I fill in). However, the way the elevators are currently set up is a bit odd.

Office Complex has at least two elevators in it, as we can see from the map c1a2b: one near each stairwell. I’ll call them East and West.

Now, there’s also the elevator the player takes up from the canals at the start of the level, which stalls at c1a1a’s floor. When I overlayed the maps in Hammer, it didn’t exactly line up with East, but the two elevators literally share a wall so I am thinking they are the same (the developers obviously put more thought into inter-map continuity than the original Half-Life mappers, but areas don’t always perfectly match up and sometimes overlap each other- in particular, if the Office Complex stairwells on the same side of the map are supposed to occupy the same plane, they, well, don’t).

There is no evidence of the West elevator in bm_c1a2a, but it does end up in the area back behind the freight lift that I am planning to expand in pd_c1a2a, so I am assuming it goes down there as well (and possibly to a different section of the canals too). Since I will be the one adding that elevator, unless there’s something else that I really want to put in that exact spot the one on c1a2b will match perfectly with it.

The East elevator is extant in c1a2c’s first floor as well (it’s in the lobby area immediately after the stairwell), and since East’s shaft is the one you travel through to get the Permeable Infrastructure achievement, the positions in c1a2b and c1a2c match perfectly. The second floor (with the cafeteria balcony) is very small and I don’t intend to expand it into a full map for semi-obvious reasons of feature creep, but I’m sure there’s a way to get to East up there too.

However. When I compare the West elevator shaft you climb at the very end of the level with the West shaft as it exists in c1a2b, I find that they are a substantial ways apart- not on opposite sides of the map or anything like that, but they are pretty much across the c1a2a stairwell from each other. So I have no idea if they are supposed to be connected or not- I could see there being a separate elevator that connects to the High-Security Storage facility, but since Office Complex is a lot taller than just the three maps we explore, shouldn’t that be someplace other than Admin 3?

So, ultimately, here is where we stand:

#16

Awesome, I was always asking myself the same question, how did it look like before accident. Keep it up :smiley:

#17

Я вижу первый и третий этаж еще не готовы. Большое спасибо разработчикам, что они отдали нам на растерзание исходники карт для одиночной игры.

#18

sigh…

Третий этаж, когда это будет сделано, будет довольно большой и может на самом деле быть разделен на две секции.Первый в настоящее время отказались, но не слишком много удерживает меня от возвращения к ней кроме того, что я хочу, чтобы третий сделано.

The third floor, when it’s done, is going to be pretty large and may actually be split into two maps. The first is currently tabled, but there isn’t too much keeping me from getting back to it other than that I want to get the third done.

#19

While I work on some very special areas in c1a2c (absolutely huge map, by the way, may have it split into two maps before this is all over and done with), have some WIP media from c1a1a:

If I can get custom scripts and better VA working (not there yet, but getting closer), the maintenance guy and the scientist will have a little argument over the latter’s upending of the water cooler.

1600×900

I think that as it currently is, this area looks a little bit too dim.

1600×900

“Gordon, do I barge into your office unannounced and proceed to wreak havoc?”

1600×900

I’m sure that’s just a small leak, no reason to worry…

1600×900

I still think the lighting isn’t quite blue enough in the offices, even though the values are identical to those in map b. Looking into colorcorrect, etc.

1600×900

I wanted to have G-Man on the TV in the break room, but the monitor brush didn’t fit well with the position of the screen.

1600×900

#20

These are all awesome, but I think (as others have mentioned before) you’re a little too liberal with the litter/mess decals on the floor everywhere. It feels a bit unrealistic for a professional workplace that surely has janitorial/cleaning staff.

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.