Human Error episode 1

Technology and Gaming
#1

I see none have started a dedicated discussion on this subject, so I might as well use this account I seem to have here.

I’ve played through this mod today, and I must say that, for its relatively short dev cycle of 2 years, it’s quite good. There’s a host of fancy new models and textures, and while Noah and Olivia look straight out of the Uncanny Vally (especially Olivia), the overall quality is great; given that they used no motion capture, and I’m used to shoggy animations from my time on the HL Improvement Team forums (you there, Romka?), I find their work quite adequate.

Obviously the main reason I wanted to see the mod up close was to compare work done by their dev team on the Xen aliens with yours. Again, given the time this was done in, the fact that everything seems to work mostly in a smooth manner is quite impressive. The Alien Grunt could have used more work to stop it from running into walls and have proper firing animations, but for what it’s worth, I found it good. The controller, on the other hand, I found to be nothing short of lovely: it shoots fire at you (and sets you ablaze), it flies, it walks, it has transitions, it has a telekinesis function for nearby physics entities (it’s surely too late to implement this in BM, and nor would it have been consistent with HL1, but TK is always awesome), and they even bothered with a bit of understandable voicework. I cannot begin to imagine the amount of coding that went into it. There are even a few Manta Rays that spawn enemies. Even the rebels have had an upgrade for a molotov attack. And that’s not even getting into the controllable Manhack, pickupable turret and sniper rifle, or driveable APC.

There’s aparently another 2 episodes to look forward to, and while I am sure it won’t hold a candle to BM when it finally gets released 1 hour before the Rapture, I think it’s one of the good mods out there, and I recommend it to all.

Discuss.

PS: if anyone has any contact with the team, tell them that the Combine call Manhacks Viscerators. They should change that with a little patch; it would make them look very clever. I tried to perform the alterations myself, but I could only find one of the many GUI text files involved.

EDIT: cockroach?!

#2

I was just about to make my first post on this forum about this exact same topic. I’m glad someone beat me too it actually, taking the initiative and doing things for yourself is for chumps (uh…no offense).

Anyway, as a whole I loved the mod. Extremely professional; even down to the addition of commentary nodes, which I always enjoy. Like you though, I mostly downloaded it to see how they handled the Xenians. Overall I have mixed feelings, but it was great just having them there again. My thoughts on them:
Vortigaunts: They seem to take a bit too much damage and don’t dish out enough damage themselves (the electricity attack has been severely pussified). The fights with them in HL1 were quick and seriously tense- you knew you had to put them down as fast as possible because their electricity could potentially take away half of your health in one blast. This made being surrounded by them a great “Oh SHI-:fffuuu:” moment. Here they just seem like mildly irritating bullet sponges.
Alien Grunts: I thought the amount of damage it took to put them down was perfect. Just like the Vortigaunts though, they don’t dish out enough damage themselves. The hivehand is way underpowered. I love their voices though, and the model is fantastic. Just…let’s not have the voice actors say “Alien Grunt” out loud anymore…it sounds kind of dumb.
Alien Controller: I agree with the topic creator 100% on this one. Brilliant execution here. Great model, awesome new telekinesis ability, devastating pyrokinesis attacks…just really amazing. I loved their new ability to land and walk around also. Even though they aren’t quite as dangerous on the ground, that walk animation is just SO DAMN CREEPY.
Manta Rays: They never really had much to do in HL, so they were pretty open to interpretation. I thought using them as troop transport vehicles was pretty clever. Also they explode into gibs, which I loved since I miss gibing enemies horribly.

In short, I was pretty impressed. While I think most of these will be done better in BM, the Alien Controller is going to be hard to beat.

#3

#4

Hahaha holly shit thats funny. Bolteh, you made my day.

#5

Someone recommended it to me yesterday so I downloaded it but haven’t played yet.

#6

the apc was too hard to control and was not near as fun as it should have been
sometimes I got lost in the university and didn’t know where to go
controlling manhacks was pretty cool

I thought it was fun

#7

The programming and story were excellent, however the mapping and quality of the custom models was very questionable.

#8

Walking turd monsters! Hive of colorfully-propelled maggots: INCLUDED!

#9

The voice acting was great. Especially the female parts.

The puzzles were tricky but manageable. The story was pretty cool. The model of the ghost lady could have been better, as well as the Alien Grunts.

I agree that the APC is hard to drive, but that’s the case with every vehicle in HL2 games and mods so far, and therefore not really surprising.

The manhacks absolutely rock!

The idea to not be able to carry all available weapons was carried out well, but a pain in the ass, and, frankly, it doesn’t belong into a HL2 mod. Far Cry, Bad Company and Modern Warfare can have this feature, but Half-Life is old-school shooter action. Carrying tons of weapons is a feature! Just my two cents on that one.

#10

You’ve obviously never had one grab you by the head and kill you in one shot, then. However that’s a rather rare occurrence, so I suppose you’re right.

And, yes, the name does sound silly.

#11

Catzeyes did some voice work for this mod.

#12

You really are trying too hard to get into Catz’ panties (the ones she doesn’t wear).

#13

I was referring to both major female roles in the mod, not only to Catz’ work.

And me flirting with Catz’ is just a running gag that is supposed to provoke facepalming. If I knew her in real life, I wouldn’t even dare to make any forward comment. She’s definetly attractive and sexy, but she’s got a husband and kids, and I have principles - although I don’t really need them because women don’t like me anyway.

So, in short:

#14

So you’re flirting by faking a flirt?

#15

#16

It blue-screened after the introduction. That’s just my pc being my pc though.

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