are you kidding? close this thread? heck! we are up to page 238! no WAI we gonna CLOSE it!
Popularity now determines whether a thread gets closed or not?
THAT MEANS WE GET THE “YOU ARE IN HALF LIFE, YES YOU ARE!” THREAD BACK!!!
The irony is that lines of off-topic posts have been removed from this thread in the past. The actual number of posts made here has exceeded 238 pages.
Anyway, I’ve made all the suggestions I can make. These are the two I’m saddest to expect not to make it:
- Beta-like tongue-dropping ambush-barnacles for Hard-mode (beta-style here)[/size]
- Green glowing footprints trailing the player after emerging from green toxic sludge
Green glowing footprints wouldn’t fit in because Gordon doesn’t have legs, he’s a hoverhero. How it would look like if footprints would appear behind you.
For the barnacles I have also a suggestion: Maybe you can make them hurt the player if he kills them while standing under them so the acid of the barnacle falls on the player and causes some damage.
To answer the question more seriously, if we close this thread, there will be others that will come in and create new threads saying “oh hai I have a suggestion! Make the gonarch have two types of armor! yeah! that would be kewl!”. We would prefer to NOT have the section filled up with tons of small suggestions. It would invite that much more flaming, spamming and uglyness.
This is just to at least have a single place for those that really feel the need to suggest something.
We already know that the idea isn’t going to be in, and it’s been discussed to death a long time ago, so is it really necessary to start listing reasons why it shouldn’t be in?
What was the reason for the barnacle tongue-ambush idea not going in? I can’t recall - was it simply because it wasn’t in the original? That would be regrettable if it were true, but I can understand I suppose.
I might have mentioned this a long time ago, but if not - I’d prefer to see barnacles hoist their victims up but only close their mouths around a small part of them, perhaps a third or even half. This will avoid that awkward and ugly clipping that occurs when they try and eat a large enemy. The NPC - bullsquid, houndeye, human, vortigaunt etc. would hang there indefinitely, and all you could hear from them is a creepy sucking sound occasionally. I’m hoping this will play on people’s fears of being eaten alive, making the barnacles a far more haunting enemy, like the zombies.
The only other two alternatives are either:
a) Gib large enemies as Valve did in Episode 2 with the antlions, but this looks horrible in my opinion. It doesn’t seem as though the barnacles are eating anything.
b) Make the mouthparts much wider so that no clipping will occur, but this involves changing the barnacle model itself, perhaps to become larger and bigger - canon etc.
To my mind, leaving them dangling half-way in provides a good solution.
- It effectively negates the threat of the barnacle, but players never really stay round long enough for the barnacle to finish its meal and to lower its tongue again. They either kill it or leave.
- It would make them far more creepy in my opinion. Although it’s never shown, I imagine the barnacles to be almost like spiders in the way they feed. They use their mouthparts to kill their prey, but they lift the entire body inside the mouth, suggesting that they either have strong acid or they suck out the bodily juices. Since we can’t see any jaws inside, this makes sense.
- It won’t affect canon.
- It doesn’t make the game significantly easier. Since barnacles only eat NPCs, you can’t negate the threat of the barnacle easily. You’d have to bait an NPC towards the barnacle, and if you do that, you deserve to have the threat neutralised.
- It should be easily modified.
Holy balls, long post for a short suggestion.
I see it’s a Harrier now but something with the perspective of that particular screen-shot still makes it look like an engine-less heavy to me.
The barnacle beta thing is the most practical suggestion I have seen in this thread for months.
It adds a new element to the barnacles; an surprise.
I support this beta tongue. 
Tell the others JamesKane.
No, James, NO.
He’s got Fongeritus.
I love an surprise!
Me supports Fongeritus…and that barnacles beta tongue.
I’ve always loved that trick. Maybe you could add it for only a few “special” barnacles?
Not this shit again.
This wouldn’t really work, since no actuall “acid” is ever shown to come out. All the barnacle regurgitates are the remains of its last meal. The closest thing I can think of is Acid Lion juice being splurted out when the barnacle is killed by the exploding creature.
Hey,
This is not really a suggestion, but I was wondering ( no critics! just wandering ) why the devs felt the need to make a new Spas 12 model, as this weapon already appears in HL 2. I mean, of course I can see that the BM version has more details and looks great, but I thought that one of the devs main target was to make the switch from HL1 to HL 2 easier. For exemple, they re-used the 357 magnum model (and reskined it a bit?).
I know it doesn’t bring much to the thread, I was just wondering and thought it would be unapropriate to ask it in another thread.
And again, I am not complaining!
Sorry if this has already been asked, or if it is useless (it is, a bit, I have to say…lol ^^ but that’s the definition of being a fanboy…), and sorry for my english (I’m french);
and most of all, much thanks to the devs for their amazing job and all the time they’ve spent for us.
They also changed the way it sounds too. 
The SPAS-12 from HL2 is a Combine adaption of the weapon, much like how the Pistol is an adaption of the USP.