Hope so aswell… But I wouldn’t count on it. From what I’ve heard they will only release the map editor and their map-source files.
Okay…If you want competitive Half-Life they better include this or just release the SDK and someone hopefully will create Adrenaline Gamer 3,but i don’t count on that because AG2 was complete disaster nobody played it…
Just “releasing an SDK” is not as easy as just clicking a button. Our game contains a lot of licensed and paid code, as well as engine code, and we are bound by legal agreements. We’d love to make this happen, but it is a very complicated process and may or may not lead anywhere. It’s on our list.
I would not call it a disaster. It came with a lot of important features. I think the problem was that there were too many rulesets and the gravitygun and handgrenades as spawnweapons don’t suit competetive playstyle (imho). In AG2 they also kept HL2 style weaponswitching, jumpheight and the netcode on the gauss was rather unreliable… Netcode issues are very heavy problems in aim-focussed games.
Migrating one of my suggestions from the non-stickied DM impressions thread so it’ll be in the right spot (maybe a mod can merge the two threads?):
An FFA gun game mode would be tons of fun. Preferably with a relatively small player count. Gun Game is the most fun with a diverse array of weapons making Blackmesa perfect for it!
Obviously it’d entail a decent amount more work, but it’d be really cool if there were a second set of maps for small servers (4-8). They could be adapted from iconic parts of the singleplayer game like the map dm_rocketfire and a whole series of other SP to MP ports currently on the workshop. It’d be cool to see some more cross-over from the singleplayer into the multiplayer and alternate game modes such as duel or gun game might be much better suited to smaller map sizes.
Bigger maps adapted from larger sections of the singleplayer might be fun too, however it sounds like more work than its worth and may push the limitations of Source beyond what is reasonable. Just had the idea because there’s currently a 32 player server running and it’s, in my opinion, a grand total of zero fun because the player density is way too high.
Also beegun spam is WAYYYY too strong right now. In Undertow, if you swim to the beegun spawn, grab it, and then swim through to the area with two health kits near an HEV wall charger you’re basically unstoppable. You can spam all day and grab health and armor whenever you want. The beegun should definitely not spawn near such a powerful position and, in general, the beegun needs some sort of nerf.
On a similar note, I feel like places with both armor and healthkits readily available are very dangerous unless they also severely expose you. I slightly less obvious over powered position in Undertow is to grab the gluon gun and then go to the outdoors area with the river, and just walk back and forth grabbing health from the wall unit on one end, gluon ammo from the other end and armor on the way inbetween.
With regards to battery/health, we’re going to be addressing their respawn timers in the next patch. We’re going to double the respawn timer on all battery/health pickups/chargers from 15 to 30. All suit chargers will have their total charge held reduced from 75 to 50. This should reduce how easy it is to get 100 suit battery.
I like that change but why not make it exactly how it was in HL1DM? It was perfectly balanced and I think it would be better to have slow rechargers.
In HL1 it was like this:
Healthpack:
- gives you 15 health
- respawn time: 30 seconds
Battery:
- same gain and respawn time like the battery has
- damage-block: not sure how much of incoming damage gets blocked
Rechargers (Health and Armor):
- 30 Armor in 3 seconds charge time
- 30 seconds respawntime
- when there were 2 rechargers on one wall, you was able to use both chargers at the same time (recharged you twice as fast)
Edit: Just to be correct: Healthchargers have always held 50 charge in HL1.
Weapons and ammo:
- respawntime: 20 seconds
I think it’s important and cool to have slow recharging (maybe not for singleplayer, but for multiplayer… hell yes), because it adds potential teamplay (“cover me while i recharge pls”) and mappers who want to build areas that should get the possibility to recharge, but at the same time it should be risky to some not so disregarding degree.
Another cool thing that I could think of is the following: each green bar on a health-charger should be 10 healthpoints. One bar respawns after 10 seconds. The mapper which places the recharger-entity in his map can set the maximum charge he wants to have in that charger-entity. But maybe that’s a bit too random and it removes the timing-aspect completely.
Don’t fix what ain’t broken pls.
Edit:
About the hivehand aka. beegun I also have a suggestion. In my opinion you could give the beegun a bit higher damage than in half-life (maybe 15, don’t know how much it is in BMDM atm), but your ammo should recover really slow (maybe 1 bee in 2 or 3 seconds). This way you can use the beegun once to spam at your enemy, but after that you have to use a different weapon. The ammo for the beegun could recover while you use a different gun. You could also consider to decrease the max amount of bees from 8 to 6. One interessting sidenote at this point: In HL1 you was able to drop your hivehand when it was empty. Then you picked it up again and it had full ammo again. (if you are going to add weapondropping for teamplay, please try to avoid such bugs…)
Here is an idea how about a map set in a classified area of the BM facility which also tests how the users deal with hostile XEN life as well as the weapons
map idea
DM_XENLAB
info: xen lab is a 8-16 player map in which player fight through 2 controlled environments all housing XEN wild life, the map is split into 5 locations.
location 1: outer ring
info: this ring is the "observation area of the map, this allows players to quickly move between the 2 controlled environments and the central hub of hte map. it contains little cover but it does have 2 shotgun spawns on either side of the map.
accessed by: controlled environments (broken windows), control room paths, maintenance tunnels.
location 2: the controlled environments
info: these are two xen fauna rooms, which contain mostly plant life, and a few jump pads placed to launch users to the control room, they also contain gates which when opened spew out a pack of hound eyes on to the battle field. weapon wise, the mp5, snarks, and hive handx2 are found in this area.
accessed by: outer ring, maintenance tunnels, control room
location 3: the control room paths
info: a set of 2 hallways connecting the outer ring with the control room, these paths contain large amount of cover as well as ceiling turrets that can be activated from the control room, the turrets are one time items unlike the hound eyes meaning once destroyed you don’t have to worry about them again. weapon wise the laser gun(keep forgetting name) is found where the two paths meet in a pool of blood.
accessed by: control room, outer ring, maintenance tunnels.
location 4 the control room
info: this is a large room at the top of the map which has an over view of the 2 controlled environments, this room as several buttons which can unleash wild life on the controlled areas, or activate turrets in the path ways, or even set of explosives in the control room blasting out its windows and opening it up. weapon wise the crossbow, revolver and come trip mines are found in the control room
accessed by: outer ring, controlled environments(once windows are blown)
location 5 the maintenance tunnels
info: a set of vents and tunnels connecting the outer ring, controlled environments, and control room paths. these tunnels are just vents and are easy to travel through but be warned a grenade or satchel charge dropped in them equals death quite easily. weapons found, grenades, gluon gun (in a small junction on a dead HEV scientist)
insperation
this location form opposing force.
I didn’t know about this thread, so repost.
Objective type 1
So the science team will try to reach an objective and activate it(Example: Signal for SOS/Rocket), while the HECU will stop them from it. The game ends when Science teams success or they run out of time which is HECU’s victory.
Or the HECU will tries to set a bomb to destroy evidences and the Science team must stop them from doing so.
Objective type 2(Insurgency inspired)
Multiple objective, science team will restore powers, fix the energy or such. With HECU team trying to stop them, if time run out, the HECU team wins or if the Science team success, they go into next stage with more spawn. And they will need to find a console to activate a blast door, note: They will need to hold the place for a minute. Then they will try escape the Black Mesa with the tram right.
This is pretty much how much I can type out with my sleepiness and shoulder pain.
Gun Game (a game mode from Counter-Strike):
In this game mode players spawn with the weapon on their current level and the Crowbar, and will receive a different weapon (“level-up”) when they score kills, the Gold Crowbar is the final weapon a player can receive. When a player receives the Gold Crowbar and made a kill with it, the player’s team will win the game.
Arms Race on CS Wiki
Zombie Mode:
In this game mode there are two playable teams - Humans and Zombies; Humans must kill the Headcrabs and Zombies avoiding them to throw Headcrabs, if a Headcrab attacks a Human he turns into a Zombie; when a Headcrab is thrown and it dies it regenerates after 15 seconds.
Survival Co-op (a game mode from Left 4 Dead):
This game mode throws waves and waves of Xen creatures (including a Gargantua in each 15 minutes) at the Players until they die. There is no way to really win this through surviving, but instead the goal is to survive as long as you can and set new records.
Survival mode on L4D Wiki
[sub]Capture the Hat[/sub][sub] (a game mode from Team Fortress 2):[/sub]
[sub]The goal for both teams is to capture their enemy’s Hat (orange for Science team and green for HECU team) continuously whilst preventing their enemy from achieving the same.[/sub]
[sub]Capture the Flag mode on TF2 Wiki[/sub]
Special Delivery (a game mode from Team Fortress 2):
The objective for both teams is to take a neutral Purple Hat to a specified area of the map, while preventing the other team from doing so.
Special Delivery mode on TF2 Wiki
I have not delved into any FPS competitive scene(I have delved into fighting game scenes) but I got to say adding in some modes and features that directly support the style of play might really help this game.
What was the most popular way(s) to play Half-Life: DM competitively(i’ll do some research to figure this out, but if someone already knows tell me <3)? If it was 1v1 for example, maybe add cool 1v1 mode with map banning and stuff like that.
When you have an actual menu option\matchmaking feature for the most favored competitive styles, you will get more people to try it out due to how convenient it is. More people trying out a competitive mode = more competitive players. More competitive players = more people thinking about the game + spending more time on the game. That = Longer lifespan + more fun + ect.
(just an idea btw; nothing I have said is certain to work)
I’ve been throwing in my support for Gun Game (arms race but FFA). Arms Race really isn’t that fun IMO because the competition to get to the last weapon is completely cheapened by making it a team game. Doesn’t make sense. Gun Game gives the same mechanics but is a lot more fun!
When it comes to gamemodes, what about King of the Hill or Control Point-style modes, à la TF2? Obviously, they wouldn’t work the exact same way, what with TF2 being a class-based game, but they could prove to be interesting.
In HL competetive matches where 20 minutes long, no fraglimit. TDM was mostly played 3v3. If both teams had more members online both teams had to agree to play 4v4 or more.
My favorite ideas are as follows:
Capture the Flag: Pretty self-explanatory.
King of the Hill: Like Team Fortress 2 King of the Hill, one central point to capture.
Control Points: Again, like the Team Fortress 2 CP mode.
I think a CS-type Defuse mode could be fun. It’d be like playing classic Counter-Strike defuse with more movement options.
Co-Op: Self-explanatory as well. Maybe have a co-op wave-based zombie mode.
Gun Game: Counter-Strike’s infamous Gun Game/Arms Race, new weapon every two or three kills due to the smaller amount of weapons in Half-Life than CS:GO and then a final kill with a golden crowbar.
MP5 < SPAS-12 < Hivehand < Snarks < Frags < Tripmine < Satchel < RPG < Python < Crossbow < Gluon Gun < Tau Cannon < Glock 17 < Crowbar, maybe.
Instagib: Tau Cannon only, traditional Quake-style free for all deathmatch. Maybe an instant charge Tau Cannon with infinite ammo?
That’s all I can come up with at the moment.
Do non-competitive players have interests in Symmertical maps? Asymetrical maps?
Do competitive players have interests in symmetrical or asymetrical maps?
Filthy casual Non-competitive here! Asymetrical team-based(CTF, Control point) maps sound great as long as they are balanced
Hey man thanks for this info. I’ll have to think of a more in depth\detailed suggestion especially if I can think of something that can reasonably help better a competitive scene and the game in general.
Here’s my suggestion - a mode where:
- A team of Black Mesa Security Guards survive against Xen aliens.
- The aliens spawn around the map via teleportation
[list][*]They have to plan their attack and work together, since these are guys who know how to use guns well.
- The headcrabs may only hump guards without helmets or scientists.
[/:m][]The guards start off with a standard issue sidearm. - They have to scavenge firearms (shotguns,Pythons) and bullet-resistant vests/helmets (since some start out with both of these, one of these or none).
- They’d probably have an objective like protecting the personnel.
[/*:m][/list:u]
It’d be similar to Left 4 Dead Versus, but obviously less forgiving to the humans.
PS: I know I posted this on Facepunch already, but now I know this is a more appropriate place for this idea.
As a noncompetitive player, asymmetrical is a lot more fun!
It’d be really silly and probably a bad idea, but imagine if everyone started with snarks. As for the golden crowbar, I kind of feel like making the weapon golden, while it is traditional for the game mode, might be too tacky for Blackmesa’s theme.