HEV Suit's armor

Black Mesa Archive The Cafeteria
#1

So I’ve been playing Black Mesa and I remembered one thing.
Suit’s armor functionality is different in HL1 and HL2.

In HL1 if you have at least 1 armor point, the suit will reduce all incoming damage by 33% and then the armor will absorb about 66% of this reduced damage (for example if you’re at 100/100 and take 100 damage then the suit will first reduce it to 60 then absorb 40 pts of it, so you’ll be left at 80/60). So a player with full health and armor effectively has 300 health.

In HL2 the damage reducing has been removed and in compensation the armor now absorbs 80% of all incoming damage. So having full health and armor means you have 200 health.

This is a significant difference you can sustain 100 more damage pts.
Doing a quick test in Black Mesa revealed that developers did not bother to carry over HL1 armor features and just leaved HL2 fuctionality. So, if this is an oversight, it would be nice if developers reimplemented HL1 armor functionality.

#2

Is it actually the same as it was in HL2? I hardly ever noticed a difference between when I had suit charge and when I didn’t there, but I’m noticing a huge difference in Black Mesa. :frowning:

#3

It actually matches HL2 running on old Source engine. After 2010 update when HL2 was moved to Source 2007 engine the suit now additionally reduces incoming damage by 50%. So Black Mesa is replicating the suit’s behaviour from pre-update HL2. You can see for yourself by using hurtme command. Type hurtme 100 into console to inflict 100 damage to yourself. In BM and pre-update HL2 you’ll be left at 80/20 and in post-update HL2 you’ll be left at 90/60. That’s a big difference.
I was wrong, in HL2 damage received depends on difficulty.

#4

Oh wow. I… legitimately never really noticed the suit charge helping me much in Half-Life 2. Interesting.

#5

If something is done right, you might not notice anything has been done at all.

#6

lol you call this a significant difference? i never noticed, the incomming damage is balanced around what a player can take, altering the armor formula would essentialy mean all incomming damage has to be boosted up to gain the same balance

#7

Except most enemies in BM deal more damage than in HL1. While the armor is less effective.

#8

I was wondering why my armor went so quickly.

#9

I was wrong about HL2. Again. In HL2, all damage received (including self-damage) varies depending on difficulty - on Easy all incoming damage is halved while on Hard all incoming damage is increased by 50%. I’ve yet to check if this affects Black Mesa. Even hurtme command’s damage is affected. In HL1 though, difficulty only affects damage dealt by enemies and exact damage values for each difficulty are specified in skill.cfg. This isn’t the case with HL2 where skill.cfg just specifies the damage for normal difficulty and the game increases or decreases it by 50% depending on difficulty.
Still, armor is less effective in BM while enemies deal more damage. This needs to be fixed.

#10

Well whatever the reason. I wonder if it’s the reason I’ve burnt through armor so quickly in BM. I mean on my 2nd+ playthroughs I was able to keep myself more ‘healthy’. But on the first I was nearly always out of armor. :S

#11

Bumping 1 year old thread to say that I’ve discovered player_old_armor variable (common to all Source games). Setting it to 1 restores HL1 armor behaviour (see above).

#12

Interesting find… Could be a nice tick box in the options menu for the purists

#13

Note that this significantly affects difficulty of the game as HL1 armor is more effective thanks to damage reducement - you can survive 100 more damage with full health and armor. This also makes fighting soldiers far less annoying since full suit energy allows you to soak much more gunfire before suit energy is depleted.

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.