[Death Match] First Impressions

Black Mesa Archive The Cafeteria
#1

Hello there! First of all I want to introduce myself shortly. I am crowbar /`, leader of the HL1 competitive team Xen-Raiders since 2009 (yes, there is still a comp scene in this freaking old masterpiece) , and developer of the HD mod Half-Life: Gold. I got like 4000+ hours in HL1.

As a very experienced HL1 player I wanted to share my opinion on the Death Match part of Black Mesa. I am also curious on your thoughts.

The Pro’s:

+ I really love the maps
+ I like that some weapons work in a very similar way as they did in HL1. For examaple: beegun, shotgun, glock, rpg, egon, colt.
+ weapon models and player models are beast! Great job there!
+ gaussjump is a bit weird, but at least you didnt get rid of it.

The Contra’s:

- maybe its just the servers, but hitreg felt really bad. Maybe its just the bucking playermodels that made me think like that.
- no bhop
- no circle jump
- no strafe jump
- Longjump noise is annoying
- Longjump physics are annoying
- Longjump animation looks really unnatural
- Gauss animation and particles look odd
- no settings to change crosshairs in game
- recoil of mp5

Overall it just doesnt feel like Half-Life 1 at all. Besides that, the lag and model issues are even more annoying.
Nower days Deathmatch games can only stay allive, if there is a competitive scene. But if you leave the game like that, there is no much hope of long survival.

Looking forward for updates and bug fixes.

Greetings, crowbar /`

#2

Just to post my impressions… My Steam Review here:

This is a Multiplayer review. Be aware that I review this from my perspective as a HL1DM player with ~12 years of HL1DM and Adrenaline Gamer experience. (I mostly play AG, which doesn’t count up your Steam Hours for Half-Life 1)

Pros:

  • It’s Half-Life
  • Great looking maps and models
  • nice music
  • lots of character-models, great customization options
  • Workshop integration
  • classic pistol firemodes
  • adjustable fov
  • you can bind your weapons from keyboard options
  • Hivehand and Egon are really well done

Cons:

  • walk-key doesn’t work
  • you can’t hear any footsteps because all other sounds are too loud
  • bad netcode (same like hl2dm I think), gauss and crossbowshots seem delayd
  • delays after each charged gauss-shot
  • gaussjump way too powerful
  • no wallgauss (in HL1 you were able to shoot through walls with charged gauss shots and it caused explosive-splashdamage behind the wall)
  • no insta-zoom with crossbow
  • there is a shootingline-effect after zoomed crossbow-shots
  • killed enemies don’t always drop their weapons
  • spawnprotection and spaws don’t make any sound (or are very very quiet)
  • slow weaponswitching
  • you can’t switch your weapon right after shooting your shotgun… shotgun takes a lot of time to reload
  • the jumphight still seems to be wrong… the jumphight for the longjump is 100% wrong
  • the longjump has a cooldown after each jump… it should have cooldown after each second jump in a row
  • the groundacceleration seems wrong aswell… atleast it’s not optimal… dodging is very very hard
  • reloadspeeds and ammolimits are wrong (especially the RPG reloads very quickly)
  • no circlejump
  • no bunnyhop (since there is no real option to gain speed, either add bhop and strafejump or add unlimited sprint and do not allow shooting while sprinting (otherwise it just breaks the mechanic)
  • map layouts heavily changed (everything is bigger… some areas have strong weapons that should not have any - it seems poorly balanced… or maybe it’s just different… we have to see what weapon-balancing updates will come in future)
  • very big gauss and RPG viewmodel
  • bugged particle effect on the gauss (if you press “last used weapon”-key while charging the gauss you will have particle effects on the weapon you switched to)
  • delayed respawns in FFA and TDM (no reason to have this… this is not Capture the Flag…)
  • so far there is no crossfire, no datacore, no boot_camp
  • you can’t select empty weapon-categories in your weapon selection popup-menue and the popup-menue closes itself after very short time
  • when you shoot some enemy with armor, a very annoying shield effect pops up. it’s a nice idea to have something like that, but this effect is too big and covers too much of the enemy model. It makes it hard to read the enemies playeranimations (where will he move next?)
  • bad visibility: from the distance it’s hard to see if there is a weapon or ammo lying on the floor… maybe items should be outlined (Left 4 Dead style)
  • bad hit-feedback… yea there are blood effects but it’s not obvious if you hit the enemies head… there are no hitsounds and no hitmarkers on your crosshair. In my opinion you should have 1 big and one really small blood-effect. The big effect should only be used for headshots.
  • autoaim (not sure if it really does anything in multiplayer)
  • compared to HL1, you seem to die rather quickly. Maybe the armor is less usefull in BM?
  • respawning items and weapons don’t play any sounds or are very very quiet
  • dynamic crosshair on the glock’s secondary firemode is a bit extreme. Players would like to customize their crosshairs aswell. You could add some option to include custom crosshairs similar to how it works with the spraylogos. A hardcoded dynamic crosshair is most likely not replacable by custom image files.

Should you get this game for multiplayer? No. Rather get the original Half-Life 1.
For singleplayer? Why not? Get it.
I hope they will improve the Multiplayer part of the game. They have to make it faster, less laggy and change the gamebalance and player-movement to make it more like original Half-Life 1 Deathmatch.
So far I can not recommend this game.

#3

Visually, this game is stunning and I think you guys did an excellent job reinterpreting the original half-life 1 game. I was excited to see that a multiplayer version of this game was planned too, as HLDM and Adrenaline Gamer (AG) [the pro-mod for HLDM] was one of the best early multiplayer games.

However, I feel the multiplayer requires some work to make it both faithful to the original half-life multiplayer experience and bring it up-to-date with good multiplayer support.

First of all, I don’t fully understand the scale of this project (in terms of multiplayer support), but I know it has great potential. Why do I think it has potential? Because half-life is among the most iconic action FPS games ever made, it gave rise to Counter-strike, Team Fortress, Half-life 2, and to this day is still reminisced about.

HLDM developed an extremely high skill ladder over the years because a lot of players put a lot of time into the game. There is a massive difference between a casual player and an experienced player. Ultimately this should be seen as a good thing - people obviously really enjoyed the game. Early on in half-life, a mod called Adrenaline Gamer was created (the “pro-mod” for half-life) which provided support for organised games and team matches (something valve perhaps should have done). As you can imagine, this split the community - you had top level players pushing up the skill level in Adrenaline Gamer meanwhile half-life remained the same. This meant that when an AG player played HLDM, they were miles ahead of the competition and ultimately put a lot of players off. Unfortunately, Valve never supported the game with regular updates, decent anti-cheat, or implemented a system of dividing players into skill brackets (match-making or ELO), and this is what eventually lead to its depleted player-base.

HLDM is a beautiful game both at the beginner level and at the top level, and I believe now with BMDM there is a chance to create a fun competitive multiplayer scene with features designed properly for both beginners and competitive players.

As it stands, BMDM is missing key aspects which will give it a chance at longevity and playability for years to come. I understand it is early days and there will be updates coming, but I hope you can consider some of these important elements.

  • Match-making system (or skill-tiered servers)
  • Gamemodes
  • Fun movement system
  • Weapon balance similar to HLDM
  • Inbuilt automatic competition bracket system
  • Spectator support for streaming matches
  • Community driven content creation
  • Awards for creating content, winning competitions etc.

Match-making system (or skill tiered servers)

This is very important to give players a chance at this game. Right now, the game is very early in development and so players will be at a relatively equal skill level, but as time goes on the skill gap will increase and for a game to survive it needs to remain fun for all players, both new and experienced.

Gamemodes

I like the fact you have already implemented some early forms of gamemodes, and I can only imagine you will work on these further. Right now I feel as though the current map pool is catered more for toward FFA, and that other gamemodes need further development, for example TDM and 1v1 (DUEL) require maps designed specifically for these gamemodes. I think the Steam workshop will be a great platform for players to contribute maps for different gamemodes and I look forward to seeing them.

I would be interested in seeing some different gamemodes come out of this game, for example, round-based team games similar to CS, where 1 team must defend an area from the opposing team - or a round based CTF game where one team tries to capture a flag from another team. These styles of gamemodes are very popular in other FPS games and I think they could be implemented nicely into BMDM.

Fun movement system

A progressive movement system - movement techniques that keep players coming back to practice and discover new tricks. The movement in half-life is what gives the game depth - it is a huge area for creativity and expression. In half-life there are a whole bunch of unique movement techniques that a player can refine to change the meta of the game.

Of course the source engine is a very different beast compared with the original goldsource engine, and a lot of the old movement techniques were unintentional bugs in the goldsource movement code. However there are key movement techniques which could be implemented properly this time, for example, bunnyhopping with air acceleration and using a charged gauss to boost your movement speed in a given direction. And any unintentional bugs which could arise could either become new features, or removed if they are unbalanced.

Half-life’s original movement system is clearly entertaining and impressive - quadrazid’s Half-Life in 20:41 speed run video has almost 2 million views on youtube.

youtube.com/watch?v=VtI5HM7GVGY

Weapon balance similar to HLDM

HLDM’s weapons created some unique gameplay which I feel is lacking in BMDM - weapon switching was a key feature of half-life’s gameplay, and in right now it feels slow and clunky. I understand that there will always be varied opinions on weapons, but I feel that there are tweeks which could be made to give them more of the original half-life feel.

Inbuilt automatic competition bracket system

This would be an excellent feature for running tournaments. As a tournament organiser, you could set specific skill tier requirements for tournaments and when players signup to the tournaments they are automatically placed into a bracket and set a deadline to play their games.

Spectator support for streaming matches

At the very least, a customizeable HUD for spectators with features such as a mini-map overlay, live player statistics (accuracy, damage dealt) etc.

Community driven content creation

I’m not sure what your plans for the Steam workshop is, but it is an excellent platform for people to create custom maps, skins, huds, models, sprites, crosshairs etc. However, please do not implement a pay-to-win system or something similar, where important game content such as maps are only available to those who pay.

Awards for creating content, winning competitions etc.

Awarding people with badges or the ability to make money for themselves and the game for content they create is a win-win. Also awarding badges to players for winning competitions gives players some prestige.

These are just some ideas I hope will be considered by the devs and the community. I will continue to watch the development of this game and I sincerely hope this game will succeed.

Cheers,
rammy

#4

Thank you for your suggestions.

Unfortunately, most of them are very out of scope for the scale of this project and go far beyond what we’ve ever intended to do with the multiplayer, or our future plans.

One thing we are interested in is the possibility of simple future gamemodes. I’d be interested in trying to find a nice implementation for some simple ones, like a duelling gametype, or an elimination style mode (where players have 1 life per round), or anything else which exists within a relatively straightforward framework. We are also planning on CTF but it remains to be seen how that turns out. We’re buzzing with cool ideas for other gamemodes so hearing from the community what you guys would want to see would be pretty helpful.

As for your comments on the steam workshop, we’re never charging for any content updates ever, and will accommodate the workshop in whatever way we can.

I have heard a few complaints about the weapon switching at this point. I have compared Black Mesa and Half-Life myself in this area and am unable to spot the fundamental difference. Would you be able to explain/demonstrate what the issue is in greater detail and I can look into it further?

#5

Watch what you say; chances are somebody will bitch about this in a few years for no legitimate reason.

#6

I have 4 examples that slow down the game… For me these are the most important ones:

  1. When you attack with the shotgun and you shoot, you have to reload after your shot before you can switch your weapon. In HL1 you were able to switch your weapon (for example to the crossbow) after a shot. You were able to reload/pump the shotgun when you switched back to it. You were also able to instantly abort reloading. In HL1 when you are reloading your shotgun and click attack, the reload animation instantly cancels and the weapon shoots (just like in CS).

  2. When you use your crossbow in HL1 you mainly try to quickscope your enemies, because you are able to zoom in instantly. I like how you buffed the primary firemode in BM (because it was useless in HL1) but zoomed crossbow shooting feels underpowered in BM. I’m not sure but when you are zooming, your shots seem delayed (maybe it’s my comp because I play with 50 ~ 70 fps) or maybe the zoomed crossbow shot in BM is coded as a very fast projectile? The crossbow in HL1 is hitscan while zooming. In BM quickscoping (in HL1 community this technique is called quickbow) is not as effective as in HL1 because it’s slower and the ascending zoom somewhat hinders your aim while tracking your opponent.

  3. In HL1 you can start charging your gauss and fire a charged shot. After that charged shot you can instantly start charging your next shot. In Black Mesa there is a huge delay after each charged shot and I think it has to do with the animation. I think in Black Mesa you have to wait until the weapon finished the playback of it’s secondary fire animation until you can start charging your next shot.

  4. In HL1 you can use the RPG in a very different way compared to HL2. It works like this: When you shoot a rocket and have the laserpointer on, you can’t reload your weapon until your rocket (that follows your laserdot) explodes. But when you shoot a rocket without the laserpointer, you can reload your RPG right after your shot. It doesn’t matter if your rocket is still in the air or not. Just press reload right after shooting. This gives you a reason to turn the laserpointer off sometimes, because you can reload faster.

Generally speaking you can say that in HL1 weaponswitching works like this:
Whatever you do with your weapon, if you press a weapon binding to switch to a different weapon (or use the weapon selection popup - doesn’t matter… You just switch your gun) your weapon instantly aborts the action you were doing at that point. If you were reloading an empty gun, the game does not forget this and you have to reload when you switch back to that weapon. In HL1 you can also abort your weapons draw-animation by pressing primary or secondary fire.
Today I had some other interessting issue when playing Black Mesa:
I emptied my RPG (no more rockets left) then I switched my weapon to a different one and picked up some RPG ammo. When I switched back to the RPG it was already reloaded.

#7

hey,
in half life weaponswitch is canceling all current weapon animations and so on. so you basically change weapons instant. then you only have the draw animation of the weapon you are changing to left - but this one is also beeing canceled when you shoot.
However i also played some black mesa multiplayer and mostly agree with the other guys arround. the graphics and mapoptics are really nice but the gameplay is not like half life at all.

I feel like a bag of potatoes when i play this - everything is slow and unaccurate. half life on the other hand is a game of direct, nearly perfect controll. with moving a lot of the movement and weapon behaviour from black mesa’s singleplayer to the multiplayer you get a totally different game of course. but you implemented the weapons so you could change things over time. half life 1 still has quite an active community for its age, so the gameplay is definately worth beeing aimed for.

#8

I am with Fury and Crowbar 100%. The mechanics all seem very delayed. I played competitively in clans back in the day, but never really got into AG. I don’t have the time for games like I used to.

BM multiplayer isn’t polished at all. It was just released. Hopefully the devs will read our posts and make the appropriate changes to keep the competitive scene alive.

Below it something I posted before I found this thread. I don’t want to spam, but I want my fixes to be heard.

Hello forum,

I am a long time fan of this project and have been playing Half-Life since the release back in 1998. Mainly, I played HLDM religiously for about 4 years straight along with Quake 3 (I still play both on and off). Fast paced first person shooters that are movement and aim driven have always been a passion of mine.

Enough about the formalities. I am here to talk about a few “fixes” for multiplayer BM. The following are foundings that I believe will make MP as close to the original as possible, while holding true to the fast paced long jumping shotgun to the face roots.

-Satchel takes too long to explode after release. It should be able to explode in mid air.
-RPG should start off with laser sight
-Faster zoom with x-bow.
-Be able to change zoom fov, not just zoom sensitivity
-No cool down for long jump. Long jumping is an integral part HLDM tau jumping and overall fluid control. It slows down the game tempo too much by having a cool down.
-Slow down health and armor regeneration on wall kits. Maybe not to original speed, but it can be slowed a tad.
-Decrease amount of hand grenades to 3 or 4, not freaking 10! I do not enjoy spam for breakfast.
-Widen/increase hit box for tau/357/crossbow? They all seem to go through enemy while strafing.
-No tau spread on walls or corner shots? I thought it could be OP in original, but not to have any spread completely changes the game in my opinion.

  • Tau cannon takes too long to start it’s first charged shot. Should be quicker to charge and shoot.
  • Tau charging sound is too loud when fully charged. Can’t hear anything, but the weapon.
    -Fast weapon switch & zoom switch between weapons. The game pace seems very slowed down. Been a while since I played original, but it certainly has a delay which hinders game intensity.
    -RPG is sometimes auto reloaded after switching weapons.
    -Faster placement of trip mines. Also trip mines should be able to be placed at a slightly further distance.
    -Trip mines hit box seems messed up from different angles. Shooting it with xbow (should be most accurate weapon) from the side may or may not explode it.
    -Xbow recoil cooldown takes to long to be centered. Always seem to be aiming high on second shot. Reload time seems very long as well.
  • Sound goes dim when getting hit by anything - even a crowbar?
    -Machine gun has no recoil - too accure from far length.

I thought $20 was a fair price to charge for a game that has been without funding for years. All these stupid kids on the forum are just trolling. Keep up the great work & I hope my input can be of use. I will update this post as I discover more “fixes”.

-FuNke

#9

You raise some interesting points here. We will look into quite a few of these.

#10

Can I just say that I also agree with many people here in regards to movement dynamics, especially with the Longjump

I dont want bunnyhopping back, but more air control, faster jumps, less slowdown, and quicker weapon switch/draw would be nice to have

#11

These guys have a lot of love for the game.
From the hassle and criticismn the dev team had about BM single player, I think near to none came from this die hard community.
Imagen the competitive scene from hldm was like cs1.6 & csgo now.
These people can back you up with organizing tournaments, hosting servers, content creation, clans you name it.

There is some good criticism now about the multiplayer which shows you passion and likely can reverse when some points are met within updates.
It is a recreation of the original half-life afterall.
At first glance the game looks amazing, I am temped to join in.

Ofcourse it wont be the same, nor should it be expected.
I’m not sure where you guys want to go with this project, what it is that you aim for.
But think about that.

Its fan base is not COD oriented, nor am I saying that BM Multiplayer is that.
Im trying to get a sense across.
These guys know every successful ingredient that the game owes its legendary legacy too.
If you want to listen and make BM multiplayer the hl1 recreation it deserves to be this is the place.

Lol I just noticed I’m a cockroach :smiley:

#12

We have compiled a list of things to address that have been brought up in this thread and will be looking at them for a patch. I can’t guarantee what we’ll fix, but rest assured that we are looking carefully at MP concerns and want to improve the gameplay to create the best experience possible.

#13

Thanks that is appreciated!

I’m looking forward to see what some back and forth experimenting can bring to the table.
Ofcourse not too much, we got lives to live besides this :smiley:

#14

-No cool down for long jump. Long jumping is an integral part HLDM tau jumping and overall fluid control. It slows down the game tempo too much by having a cool down.
Nonstop lj spam was rather bad part of hl1 gameplay, so the idea of adding energy (which is also pretty logical) looks very good for me. However, sometimes in the game its necessary to do more then one jump in a row, so, as I already said before, it would be better to reduce energy cost of a single jump and reduce energy recovery rate.
Of course some people like nonstop lj, but I think its better when people need to manage a resource well and spend it for distinct actions, not just spam it.

#15

In my opinion, what made hldm so successful was the competitive nature of the game that kept people coming back for more. Too many games now a days never make it out of Early Access because they rush the fine details. I realize that the game will get better in time, hence Early Access. Nevertheless, we live in a NOW society where people want things to work right away and if they don’t, we move on to something else. That is why too many games that start off in beta or Early Access release to the public don’t make it because of all the early review criticism. Everyone is a critic… Believe me, I am a chef and deal with this on a day to day basis. People do not give second chances.

My point is… to make this games multiplayer successful, the devs must keep people wanting more. The way to do that is to make it as skill based & competitive as possible. Therefore, all the things that we aforementioned in this thread about fast weapon switching, no delay on long jump, & overall movement, must be addressed in order to grab and keep people entertained. As hldm fans, we do not want to see this game fall by the way side.

I really do enjoy this games MP so far (love the balanced recreation of classic maps). I am just giving my humble opinion and am not trying to sound negative. Let’s make this game as successful as the rest of the Half-Life series :smiley:

#16

The way to do that is to make it as skill based & competitive as possible.
Lj spamming is not skill based at all, but energy management is, and thats why I want it.
Everyone can spam lj, this doesn’t need any skill. But if we add energy, people will have to consciously dodge (nades or rockets for example), not just “I press these keys and it makes it harder to hit me, because the animation is bugged”, like it was in hl1.
This Lj in itself is similar to rolls in console games, they usually make you invulnerable, and once you learned it, the game becomes very easy. On the other hand, if you add energy management which wont let you just spam rolls, the game will become harder - look at dark souls for example, its roll system looks pretty competitive for me.

#17

One Mode that I can definately recommend is the Arena-Mode. This mode basicly is a round based 1v1 mode where multiple players can be on a server and the gamemode puts 1 player vs another. These two players play against each other with the full arsenal weapons, full health, armor and the longjump. When one player kills the other, he as the winner will play against the next player in the queue. This mode is very popular on not too complex maps with about 4 to 6 players on a server.

#18

The idea we’re having at the moment is to have it be something like charge based. You have 100 long jump charge, and a jump consumes 50 charge. You recharge at a steady rate, and will recharge 100 in something like 2 seconds. This lets you do 2 consecutive jumps before waiting for a recharge. If you are impatient and need to jump again, you don’t have to wait for a full charge, you could jump again when it charges back up to 50. We already have a meter which shows up on the screen the cooldown for the longjump, we can repurpose it to illustrate this charge.

This is just an idea I’m toying with at the moment, what do you guys think? How many consecutive long jumps would you like to be able to do? We don’t want to allow infinite jumps, so please don’t suggest that as an option. 2? 3? 4?

#19

2 soudns fine to me although I can udnerstand when some fear that the game may be toned down a bit speedwise with less long jumps available… so I stand between 2 - 3 long jumps in a row.

#20

Actually I like that. 2-3 jumps sounds like a good tweak.

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.