i think this looks pretty cool, except the squids in the sky =) would of been cool to have to sneak by an area whilst this was going on
That’s kinda too much 
That showcases pretty well the hitscan vs projectile issue I mentioned in the HECU thread. Unless the HECU are overwhelmingly outnumbered they come out on top.
I agree, actually. I’ve been bringing up Call of Duty games as counter-examples for a while, but I want to bring up a positive example out of one of them for a change: Call of Duty 2 and its battle of Stalingrad. Armed with one clip of ammunition, the player has to navigate a killing field and stay alive while not being able to do much on either side of the battle.
I know this wasn’t in the original Half-Life, but having a huge fight like this, with constantly-respawning enemies on both sides, that Gordon has to basically run through would be amazing. Threading Gordon through the same area later on, say by seeing it from above, and seeing only a few aliens lingering behind and a field strewn with dead soldiers would REALLY drive the point home.
Hell, even if, for technical reasons, the fight itself has to be skipped, seeing the aftermath would be enough. Just send Gordon through a field like this, full of craters, destroyed vehicles, toppled tents and dead soldiers and let him see, really see, just what the world is in for if he doesn’t do what has to be done. In a lot of ways, adding those scenes of dead soldiers from the cut parts back into other parts of the game would probably be enough to some extent.
Here’s the thing - the guard at the Lambda portal complex says “You may not have a home to return to.” Why? What about the preceding experience would make me look him in the eye and say “Yeah, you have a point. Send me to Xen.” What would make me think that unless I cross through the Portal and kill the creature, that the world is doomed? Because, frankly, it seems to me like the Military just need another day or two to mobilise and wipe the alien threat. They got beaten back, sure, but they almost won, right? Right?
Hey what’s the name of the first map specifically? The one with the Tank and the open area. It seems like a pretty good area for messing around with console commands.
Infinite aliens, and the coming portal storms. Then again, you wouldn’t know that when BM is blown up that there will be a huge tear that allows billions more aliens through.
Thats correct you cannot spawn on displacement surfaces i.e sand or any other bumpy terrain
But you can teleport spawn above it in hammer set up by a trigger
What about noclipping above the surface and using give instead of npc_create?
I suppose that won’t work for the grunts though because it will create them without weapons but it should work for all the alien enemies.
I agree with you completely. I never wanted a 1:1 remake of Half-Life and I’m glad that Black Mesa had tons of surprises. Every chapter is familiar and recognizable, but also new and exciting. Veterans like us are always on our toes.
(that said they totally needed a new or moved sniper in Surface Tension!)
Regarding On A Rail, I just want some of that horror/carnage revived and a bit more of the length. The thing to remember is that it is daylight (morning or early afternoon) when we reach the surface in We’ve Got Hostiles and it is apparently late into the night when we launch the rocket, so we SHOULD feel that our journey through the tunnels took a while.
I also agree that some more emphasis on the train would be good. Even the original Half-Life messed that up. In fact, I think if the train were more central you could make On A Rail much more linear than the original while also preserving the length and feel and making it very entertaining. It’s also perhaps a good place to show-case some HECU on alien battles that you can observe.
[COLOR=‘Red’]EDIT: in a sense On A Rail is or could be perhaps a “dark” version of Black Mesa Inbound.
An idea that occurred to me is that maybe that confrontation with the marines and tank in Forget About Freeman, where see the dogfight going on overhead, perhaps that area should have been another battle between the HECU and aliens? If they were more focused on each-other it would be a good transition to Lamda Core where we no longer see the military and it would also allow us to observe that dogfight, which was really cool.
I mean we’d rise out of the tunnel, see the tank destroyed by a garg and that marine camp laid to waste. Then as we venture into the building we see the troopers overcome by snarks and a level or two down we see that final battle in the garage and from there on out the aliens are in charge.
I can agree with this. In On a Rail and, to a large extent, Surface Tension, the Military are mostly focusing on Gordon, because they can afford to keep their positions secure. However, if you start making most of the Marine fights also feature aliens, this could be used as a VERY clear sign that they no longer have any sort of control over anything, because they can’t run basic operations without fighting for their lives. It’s the mixed battles that I think tell the best story.
Another good way to have shown that the invasion was underway would have been to include a HECU version of the Zombine.
Basically the odd HECU Zombie… AKA Zombine in HL2.
It would have been good to see those 
There is actually an NPC in the Black Mesa FGD file called npc_zombie_grunt.
It has no model though, and obviously doesn’t work. 
Weren’t zombie grunts planned at one point but cut for some reason?
There is a model on garrys mod kicking about…
It is possible to have one I am sure
It’s very easy to just add some agrunts and vortigaunts in some maps fighting against the HECU. The developers wouldn’t need to remap anything, just spawn some aliens, and everything would be fine. Because the ambience is OK, it looks like a real war, but you never see the actual fighting.
I’ve seen an image of him on Google that links to a thread here that I can’t view.
Certainly would have been neat to see a few of those.
That said, I was watching a Let’s Play of Blue Shift just now and I was reminded of a short sequence near the end where you look across a chasm and see a HECU squad being chased down by a Garg. Something like that in Black Mesa might have been neat. Perhaps in On A Rail or elsewhere.
No such model was ever created (that I am aware of). Awhile back someone did a half-decent photoshop a headcrab over an HECU grunts head, perhaps that is what you saw?
Well they’d also have to have the aliens winning for it to make sense. Otherwise we’d see the human soldiers gunning down aliens by the dozens, then suddenly deciding they were losing for no reason. This would be difficult to do without some adjustment because as it has already been pointed out, the human soldiers are by far the most dangerous non-boss enemy in this mod.
You know, on reflection I’m kind of surprised that Black Mesa didn’t make more use of the security monitors. Might have been cool to witness a few battles via’ video feed.
It’s not difficult to make them win, a group of three alien grunts can kill everything. You can just make the HECU a bit outnumbered and they will always lose.
p.d.:They never say they’re losing, they say they have too many casualties. That doesn’t mean they’re actually losing.