The fact that they started to cut things almost makes perfect sense now. There is no way they could have made that looped track just as it was in HL1, they would hit brush limits before they were even half way done!
I am working with the current version that the devs have, and as such am doing my absolute best to emulate their style (which I could probably say I’ve been very successful at so far). I’ve thrown some of myself in but other than that it should fit in perfectly within BM’s campaign.
Oh, phew. When I read your first reply I thought you were giving up. Glad to see you’re still in business. XD
Nope. Gunna take a lot more than a simple brush limit to stop this train :3
I’ll just leave these here.
[quote=".RK"]
I’ll just leave these here.
I know you’re still in the early development stages, but the handrails in front of the electronic equipment seems odd, as it would interfere with easy access/user operation of the equipment. There shouldn’t be any barriers in front of them, unless the equipment is set back from the handrails. I suggest not having any there, to potentially help with reducing any entity count issues you have or may have, as development progresses. Just some early feedback for ya’.
I very much appreciate the feedback. Thank you!
But a couple things you can’t really tell from the picture is that the area on the right is higher than the area on the left. The machines are on the lower level, and as they are meant to be used by people on that lower level, they also face leftwards.
So ultimately the railings do have to stay. They don’t interfere with machine operation because they don’t block them to begin with, and also in the case that there were no machines there, someone could take a nasty fall. That would be a constant safety hazard. 
I’m not really worried about entity counts because as far as the numbers tell me I’m around 4/7 the entity count of what Text has in his A2 map (which is still a fairly large number). Seeing as his maps run fine, I foresee no issues on this front~
Sorry for the re-posting, but I mistakenly sent my first post before completion. My second post has more content than my first post.
[quote=".RK"]
I’ll just leave these here.
I know you’re still in the early development stages, but the handrails in front of the electronic equipment seems odd, as it would interfere with easy access/user operation of the equipment. There shouldn’t be any barriers in front of them, unless the equipment is set back from the handrails. I suggest not having any handrails there, to potentially help with reducing any entity count issues you have or may have, as development progresses.
Also, the brown colored equipment share the same cosmetic look and are probably from the same manufacturer, so they should be kept next to each other, as they probably compliment each other functionally and share related operations and data output aspects. Just some early feedback for ya’.
That makes sense. Which means I have to find a new location for the two silver towers in the middle. Do you suggest I put the both of them on one end or should I place one on both ends and have all the brown machines in the middle?
Are the gray racks identical, as far as the equipment that’s on them is concerned? If so, delete one of them. If not, keep them next to each other, adopting the same principle as the positioning of the brown machines. Real-world consistency is a very important key to believable level design! Asset duplicity, for the sake of filling up an area with objects, doesn’t go very far towards conveying a fully functional and common-sense environment.
Personally I think all the laboratory equipment is out of place anyway. Perhaps you could look at other security offices throughout Black Mesa for inspiration. Even the one at the beginning of OAR. Generally the Security Offices don’t have large computers, mostly just monitors, consoles, PC’s, phones, equipment lockers, and weapons racks.
While that is for the most part true, I might be able to justify it by the fact that the bridge control room on the other side of this same map has those exact same models. That, and this is supposed to be a monitoring station. This room controls a good deal of the railroad, so I figured. I’m still going through all the models to see what can be put in this room so they might be subject to change.
But current prop choice notwithstanding, I know I do want some tall stuff there that would block vision to the lower floor (for reasons you’ll probably see once I get around to making a video.
The grey computers on the left wall on the other hand don’t belong there and should be changed.
People are chucking out feedback already so I thought I’d point out something I think might benefit from being changed. The reason I made a special blue control panel for the rail switchers is so the player immediately and instantly identifies that the console itself is unique from the other decorative ones, and knows that it actually serves a purpose, rather than being decorative like most of the control panels on Black Mesa are. That’s the idea, anyway. Though it might hurt consistency a bit, I think gameplay may benefit from having the other panels changed to the standard Black Mesa’s grey/dull yellow colour, so more players can immediately identify the one they’re meant to use. If you’re not willing to do that, it might help if you put red lights on every control panel except the one the player’s meant to use. That could work too.
Definitely agreed with Text. I didn’t even notice that thing with the control panels, I was busy looking at the computers.
I certainly agree that attention should be called to the particular box in question. The things there are certainly placeholder while I figure out exactly where everything will go (especially since I know I’ll have to make a little custom model here too). Right now I’m considering only having four rail switch panels (and the rest would be panels for other functions). I’ll probably do both options; make these four specific panels blue, and then our panel of interest will have a green light. It will also be the only panel that has a switch on it.
I’m a bit at a loss right now though. I’m really not sure how to place all these panels. In the usual manner, they are always right next to each other. Because of the curvature of the wall here though, even though I can place 16 of them evenly, they clip just a little bit. I could place 15 of them and space them slightly, but I’m not sure of that either. How they are here has 8 of them and I think it looks pretty bad. The computers have to go because they just don’t belong there. I really have no idea how to compromise this design issue…
I just have to hope that there is a way to edit MDL files, because I’d rather not have to make the entire console row from scratch.
EDIT: For now I’m just going to fill the entire row. Looking at it, the clipping is almost unnoticable. I’ll probably fix the whole thing on a later date. This whole issue has slowed down my mapping so now that I’ve reached a psuedo-resolution I can get back to actually making things.
Actually i’m almost certainly positive that limits in Hammer had nothing to do with what they cut out.
There were two given reasons for why On a Rail is in it’s current form in Black Mesa.
The first and main reason was in response to all of the complaints about how Half-Life’s version was too confusing (Which it really wasn’t).
The second reason was that, in addition to the initially cut sections, they also had to cut some areas out because they didn’t feel those areas in particular were up to par with the quality of the rest of the chapter.
(The chapter did have different people working on it through its many iterations)
It’s true that is what they said, you’re right bout that. But I wouldn’t be surprised at all if that was a contributing factor.
EDIT 11:19 EST: Mapping is going pretty well. I’ve placed the elevator. I’ve come to the conclusion that I can really only to the elevator room in spirit, as HL1’s layout didn’t exactly make sense. That said, I do have the broken elevator button, the satchel/grenade pickups on the military boxes, and the barnacles hanging from the ceiling. The bullsquid, seeing as you already fight so many in this level, I placed into an inaccessible hall on the left, right across from the security office. I actually am going to attempt to do a pretty cool scripted scene with this guy.
I’ve also made (what I think is) considerable progress on the security station itself. I’ve figured out how to populate it as I had imagined it. The only thing that’s really left to do is to add some lights to it and install a sprinkler system (for decoration).
EDIT 6:06 EST: Glorious…
SWEET!!! cant wait to try it out.
Looks nice, but I think you should remove the elevator near the end completely. That bridge you lower is an elevator, there isn’t any reason to have 2 of them so close, even if the player doesn’t use either of them. Just leave the ending tunnel the same as it was.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about here.
The elevator I mentioned was this room:
Which in this mod is right next to the security room at the northeast corner of the map. They’re not really all that close at all, and they serve entirely different purposes.
If you’re talking about the bridge/sentry elevators, that’s not my doing at all. You’d have to take that up with the devs. I agree in that it’s slightly nonsensical, but I won’t be removing anything that was already there.
Oh hell, you’re right, I completely forgot that elevator was there be default.
Nevermind me then!..
Haha, don’t worry about it. Honest mistake 
In other news, I’m really close. But it’s very strange. Once again I am hitting the brushface limit, even though as the numbers tell me, I am actually under the limit. So it’s redflagging early. It’s really the only thing that is stopping me from testing the map for the first time. Considering I’ve practically finished building though, this isn’t so much of a setback as it was before.
There’s a couple things I can do, one of which I’ll decide on tonight. If anyone has any preference on what I should do first, let me know!
I’m not nearly as stressed out about this as I was a few days ago, as I already know the solution. Can’t do anything about it until I get back from class tonight, but nonetheless.
So again, if anyone wants the video really badly, I could pretty much start filming tonight. If not, I’ll go ahead and Prop and put this to rest forever.
EDIT 2AM EST: Okay, so maybe not.
The good news is, after propping all of the items I mentioned, all the pieces are now inside the map, plus I have a couple thousand brushsides to spare. That problem is done away for good. This means I can optimize the map later without having to worry about running into anything.
However, after playing through the map once ingame (Yessir! It compiled!), I’ve realized that the map is still not in a state for any sort of video, let alone an alpha. Most of it is a lack of lights, textures, or props, and those should be easy enough to fix.
That said, the map is not functional either, and I actually don’t know what to do. When I first loaded the map the console told me that there was a bad path at such and such track position (in this particular instance, it was a path_track at the bottom of an elevator). Therefore, when the tram reached this position (which considering at the start of the map the elevator automatically takes you there), the game crashed. This happened consistently. The only way I was able to keep this error from happening was to delete a node off of my loop that connected back into the main track.
As you can probably imagine, this is very major. If I can’t link the paths back up then players will get stuck in the loop and will be unable to go to the next level.
Man, what next in the “never ending parade of obstacles”?
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.
