Here is a thought to chew on,will the crossfire still have the secret room? Which has the crossbow and healtpacks?
Auto crouch jump is enabled for both MP and SP by default. It’s super nice. I was actually a big supporter of leaving our crouch jumping the way it was in the mod version, but the auto crouch jump instantly won me over. Crouch jumping still helps you make some of the really long and tight jumps, but you don’t have to do it 90% of the time now.
I wouldn’t mourn the loss of Undertow’s flooding mechanic too much. Jordan did an amazing job redesigning the map and it’s a firm tester favourite. The early versions, which were mirrors of the original, simply did not play well. TDM is super fun on Undertow.
MP is only available on the paid version. We call the paid version the “steam version,” usually, and the free version is the “free version”.
It better not
So the free version is the one that is out now, and will not be available on the steam, and will not be ported to new engine?
That’s good to hear. I mean, crotch-jumping isn’t that big of a deal in Black Mesa, but it’s just a little tedious to input a button sequence for what is essentially a single action. I thought for sure this was dropped entirely in Half-Life 2, but it actually isn’t. Either the game has the same auto version or heights are set to be just under regular jump height. That said, I was still able to use crotch-jumping to get onto some taller, seemingly inaccessible platforms.
Hmm… It feels like I might have misspelled something in there, but I can’t quite find what it is.
Honestly, I hate having headshots do more damage
There’s players that have much faster reaction times and can land them with ease, even without the use of hacks
Dying again and again only drives away new players and after a while DM turns into a match like you see on dm_sniper on HL2DM
Oh man…
Is this thread dead? ;(
I’ll post some updates - fairly soon I hope.
Something I want to ask :
Will there be many new areas to the maps? A longer rail in Subtransit with a change to the layout to accompany it perhaps?
Yes. Pretty much all the maps have “new areas” and layout changes of some description. They have all been heavily adapted to fit a more modern style of game design and the fundamentals of our game. They are far from carbon copies of the HL1 originals. Undertow in particular has undergone a COMPLETE redesign.
Hey,
im surprised by the statement to be close to the gameplay of HLDM, but have you actually seen some content of “professional” hldm? because hldm offers so much more than that what you see on public servers these days
Hi.
Thanks for finally talking about multiplayer. I love Half-Life… and I am waiting for some serious multiplayer-design-discussion since the beginning of the development of this mod…
I have great hopes for this game to be my next main multiplayer game. I still play HL1: Adrenaline Gamer today… I hope the game will be really close to what it originally was, but there should be ranked matchmaking for 1on1, 3on3 Team-Deathmatch and maybe Capture the flag (if your going to add that mode…).
There could also be other modes but these modes are the most important (they have been played in leagues for ages).
About the maps:
I hope they will be really close to the originals… I don’t mind some changes as long as you can do all the great jumps and strategies that were possible in HL1DM.
Most popular 1on1 maps are:
crossfire, stalkyard, stalkx, boot_camp
The best maps in HL TDM are:
Boot_Camp, Stalkyard, Gasworks
The best competetive HLDM community maps are:
Endcamp, Ag_hidden_lab, Stalkx, Lost_village2, rustmill
Datacore is also a good map, but maybe it’s a bit too small for standard 3on3 TDM.
About the modes:
I hope you won’t add too many modes… Because if there will be too many modes competetive players will have problems to make good rulesets and tourneys. It will also split the community.
I can tell you that in HL1 the most successfull competetive modes were 3on3 TDM (red vs. blue) and 1on1 (hopefully with some available helmet-brightskin) so I hope there will be ranked matchmaking for these 2 modes (CS:GO-style… but hopefully with better ping (tickrate 128) and good voting-options for pausing the match and kicking stupid players).
About the general gameplay:
When talking about Half-Life 1 MP you need to know that this game is mostly a weapon-based game where you don’t have any powerups (like quad-damage, regeneration, megahealth or other things). The only thing that might count as a “powerup” might be the longjump-module. You can charge up to 100 hp / 100 armor and you will be able to tank some shots… But it’s not comparable to quake, since you die quicker (less hp/armor) and don’t have the item-timing-aspect in HLDM. All weapons spawn after 20 seconds respawn time… all batteries, healths and longjump-modules spawn each 30 seconds. In HL-TDM it’s all about area-control. If you take stalkyard for example, one player will controll gauss and get a really nice stack… lots of armor, good health and the longjump module… after he managed to get all these items, he just defends the storage hall to give backup to his teammates. Teammates will be able to get nice weaponary and good armor… Then they will manage to position themselfs on main and backyard to get the crossbow and spawnkill as much as they can. Spawnkilling is part of the game. Spawnkill alot means good area-control. To avoid spawnkills you can delay your spawn… Or, when you survive a spawn you can use your movement (circle and bunnyjump) to run away quickly into a more save area. This is why bunnyhop is really important for Half-Life’s multiplayer game-balance… Freshly spawned players can run away quickly. Stacked players can move fast either way, because they will most likely have the longjump-module and the gauss.
In TDM the most important weapon may be the crossbow, because you can insta-kill freshly spawned enemies with zoomed-shots. If you have a nice position and/or the longjump it’s really easy to control an area with only the crossbow, because you can remain undiscovered (The crossbow doesn’t make much noise… You can only hear the bolt-impact-sounds when you get shot from the distance). In 1on1 the most important weapon is the gauss (on most maps), because you can wallbang mostly everything. It’s really important to understand how the gauss works. When you charge your gauss to the max, you can shoot through walls. When you shoot through a wall or corner, your gauss-shot will explode behind the wall and deal splash-damage (comparable with a rocket-explosion). With the gauss you can also jump around quickly and control the map in a much better way. In 1on1 this might be considered as “unfair” by new, unexperienced players. The point is, this game has a great learning curve and good players may control the map in a very effective way. In 1on1 you have the role of the advantaged player and the role of the disadvantaged player. Like I said, the advantaged player may have a nice killstreak and might get a good lead… but if he makes an error, the disadvantaged player can still make the comeback. The disadvantaged player relies on his skills to make good ambushes (you mostly use crossbow, MP5-grenades, satchels or the RPG for an effective ambush), steal good weapons, important ammo or the longjump-module, taking good positions and being able to pick good escape-routes. It’s also important to guess the enemies players health. The spawn-weapon (the glock) may seem really weak at first, but it isn’t useless at all. It can kill an enemy with 3 headshots (just like the MP5). In HL1 you can just hold down mouse1 and the pistol will shoot slowly, so it will be 100% precise. You can hold mouse1 and shoot cross the map and if you can hit 3 headshots your enemy might die. If you know the advantaged player has good health and also some armor or the longjump-module, you might not try to make the comeback by using only your pistol. In that case you should rather bunnyhop away quickly. I suggest you to add a pogo-jump-key. This key should work like auto-bhop in quakelive. When you use it (hold the pogo-jump key), you should continiously jump so you don’t lose any speed. Normally experienced players begin their bunnyhop-routes with a circle-jump, a longjump or a flat gauss-jump to gain good speed. To move around fluidly you should keep the aircontrol you already have in HL2 and the gauss should not have any delays between charged shots. There should not be too big delays between weapon-switches either. You remake Half-Life 1, not Quake 3, not Battlefield 3, not any other lame-ass realistic game. So please keep these things true to the original (HL1 style). About the longjump-module I’m not sure. In Half-Life it’s silent. In my opinion the longjump should make some noise (because silent longjumps can be unfair… maybe it should only be silent when the player who carries it has no armor… or it should only be silent for 2 or 3 jumps in a row… after that the silence should be on cooldown), but it shouln’t be too loud… maybe only slightly louder than a normal foodstep. In Half-Life you can use the longjump-module all the time, which is cool (no delays between jumps). It makes the game really fast and brings great action-fights into the game. The problem with this is the netcode in my opinion. Half-Life’s netcode is old and not the best. It won’t register all your hits, when your enemy performs a longjump (the longjump-animation is also really cool, but it’s very abrupt and I think the game might have problems with this… So… I think a good netcode and smooth, high-performance gameplay is a must for Black Mesa MP) It’s also important to have the option to install custom-crosshairs or to have good customizing-options like in csgo (crosshair-alpha, crosshair-color, crosshair-outline, crosshair-size, crosshair-shape, crosshair-layers)… I also suggest optional hitmarkers and hitsounds, but they should not appear when shooting through walls (wallgauss). It would make wallbanging too easy… Easier than it already is in HL1. One more thing that I think is really hard to balance for MP is the Egon (Gluongun). The weapon is epic and I like to use it, but it’s really overpowered in original HL1DM and it has to be rebalanced for competetive Black Mesa Multiplayer gameplay. I would suggest you to keep the high damage and the screenshake-effect when getting hit by the egon (to make it possible to counter crossbow-players in direct confrontation), but you could remove the x3 headshot multipliers for the egon and maybe for the gauss , too (…because the gauss is really, really strong already… just to mention again the gauss-wallbang-explosion-damage, the movement-options it offers and the general high damage it deals). The Egon should be a strong weapon but the x3 Headshot multiplier makes it just too overpowered, because in HL1 the Egon doesn’t seem to deal damage on one pixel, but also in the area around your Egon-beam (also slightly around corners)… Headshots are nice and are important for the game-balance, but lucky gauss-, shotgun- (hell, the HL1DM shotgun is so random… definately needs to be tweaked nicely in BMDM, especially the spread on distance… Sometimes I randomly insta-Headshotkill an enemy cross the map in HL1) and crossbow-headshots can be annoying for people who have 100 / 100. Anyway I think the crossbow-headshot-multiplier should stay x3, because it’s a sniper-weapon for unforeseen strikes. It’s also a weapon that offers you options for making a comeback in situations where you are the disadvantaged player.
Thanks for reading my wall of text. I am really looking forward to playing your multiplayer-game and I hope it won’t be a modern-style noob-fest.
There won’t be any ranked matchmaking. We do not have the infrastructure or the resources to implement such a feature, and we’re not entirely convinced the demand is there either. It’s just not feasible for us to do so, unfortunately.
Ok I understand… All these Servers for ranked are expensive. But you should add a voting system so players can vote startmatch, pausematch, abortmatch, kick, force-spectate etc. In HL1:AG, when a match has started new connected players will automaticly join spectators. That way players can compfortably make matches on servers without getting disturbed by new players.
i still see quite an amount of players in hl and there is also still a competitive scene with hundreds of players. Of course it’s slowly dying but there are still coming new people aswell.
So I think a game with very familiar gameplay can have some impact. Also because it’s really fast and still absolutely not like quake or ut. So make this one good
I would like to see something like in left 4 dead, versus mode, It would be good for tournaments and so on…
Also check out my goldsrc mod 
(still working on it), If u need more hands on bs pm .
https://www.moddb.com/mods/left-4-dead-goldsrc-project-dont-have-name
Text, do you have any idea when we’ll see your “final” Story of Gasworks devblog? I avidly followed the first four, and I would love to see you talk about how the map got to its current state. It’s been about a month since your last one.
I want to be clear, I’m not trying to pester you. If it’s still in the works and on they way, I’m totally content to wait. In fact, if you’ve found that you need to devote your time to other stuff rather than the devblog, that’s fine too. I just wanted to check on whether we can expect it soon.
I’m working on it. It’s gonna be the biggest one and I’m hoping to include a video of some description, so it’s taking a while. That and I’ve been doing a lot of other BM stuff.
Cool! Looking forward to it!