Mid-Game Objective Indicators

Black Mesa Archive Suggestion Box
#21

Objective indicators and hints would kinda ruin any thinking or initiative involved with the game. For example, in Half-Life 2’s chapter Route Kanal, what if once you approached that floating ramp a little box popped up that said:

“Use the floating blue containers to lift the ramp.”

Or more relevantly, in HL1, a box popped up with:
“Crouch or move slowly to evade the tentacle’s attacks”

Most of the puzzles in HL and HL2 are based on common sense. Personally, I never got lost except in “On a Rail.” Everything else is pretty straightforward. But it’s designed to often make you feel like you’re going the wrong way.

#22

that’s one of the things I loved about HL!

#23

Okay, I’m a dolt. I’ve been playing Half Life for years and didn’t realize that. I must have done the tentacle room in Blast Pit a 100 times without knowing that it couldn’t see me. My methodology was to run like hell tossing grenades across the room and getting through the room as quickly as possible and into the surrounding corridors, quicksaving often. I got quite adept at it.

Then, after reading your post, I played through that part again and this is the first time I heard the guard whisper, “Be quiet! This thing hears us.” I was too focused on the BANGBANGBANGBANG!

:fffuuu:

As for the room with the crates hanging (what Ross Scott’s Gordon Freeman calls the “Box Smashing Room”), I actually have an idea what the room was meant for:

At the top of the ladder is a catwalk where crates come up. Originally, there was a floor but it was destroyed in the RC. Anyway, the crates open from the side and you could load or unload materials. At the bottom of the room, the crates are passed through an opening which leads to a shaft that leads up to the surface. It’s a delivery staging area. And, since Black Mesa also has military style equipment (see the rocket during the tram ride), this is the room that they store the high explosives, just in case they go off – the walls are metal, y’see, thick metal able to withstand a nuclear blast.

Well, that’s my theory anyway.

#24

^This, this, a thousand times this.

#25

You’d think so, but you’d be wrong.

#26

Ditto. lol

#27

bing
Just a Friendly Reminder From The Black Mesa Team: You Are Supposed To Kill the Aliens and Move Forwards Until You Kill All The Aliens and the Game Ends

#28

haha wow.

#29

I think that the friendly reminders shoulden’t be signs but people like security guards or scientists who tell you to go there and do this before they get killed or bleed to death. :freeman: they had those in the original game but more would help.

#30

Please tell me you didn’t think Psyborg’s ‘suggestion’ was genuine…

#31

I don’t understand what phyborg was saying

#32

He was being sarcastic…

#33

Nah, one of the strengths of HL1 was the way all the objectives were presented to you implicitly, in the game itself. As everyone says, its more immersive that way.

One thing I didn’t like about HL2 though was that most of the game I had no clue where I was going or why I was going there, other than the fact the structure of the game was sending me that way for no logical reason. It was kind of funny, perhaps deliberately so, the way other characters had such faith that ‘you’ Gordon, knew exactly what to do and how to solve everything, when in reality you are thinking ‘I dunno, I’ve no clue whatsoever what the hell is going on, what I’m doing here, how I got here, or why I’m going in this direction’.

Good job Gordon never spoke or he’d have given away how totally clueless he really was. Keep your mouth shut and appear as if you know what you are doing - one of the many life lessons found in video games.

I still don’t really understand what was going on in the plot of HL2 (why was I put on a train that appeared to be sending me to imprisonment and doom till Barney just randomly happened to save me? Why didn’t Barney just throw me a rope and let me back into the first transporter lab and save me a huge diversion?)

But in HL1 I seem to remember mostly knowing where I was going and why most of the time, so I don’t think any change is needed.

#34

732×823 78.1 KB
In HL2, Gordon Freeman is Tech Support and NPCs are Parents, Grandparents, Coworkers, and other “Not computer people”

#35

Seriously, this game should not and will not have mid-game objective indicators. That is meant for James Bond games where you have to fulfill mission objectives as an secret agent.

#36

Any reason why? Other then the fact that Half-Life didn’t have them?

#37

As everyone said, half life is a pretty linear game and doesn’t need an indicator!thats for half life — and for the mod, its also not needed because i think 80% or more of the fans played trough half-life at least once!

#38

Put some 'You are here X ’ kind of maps here and there :stuck_out_tongue:

#39

If you’ve played Republic Commando, where the main objective is displayed right at the top of the screen in enormous bright blue ALL CAPS lettering, you’d have realized that for the most part, blatantly prominent objectives just distract you from the environment of video games.

#40

^i played it :smiley:

but the indicators get annoying as fuck after a wile.so does the game.pure 07 (was it he?)

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.