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Thanks for posting the schematics. Just finished relocating so here’s the additional feedback/input: based on what I’m seeing so far it looks like you’re staying VERY faithful to HL’s B1+C, which is good as this will make it easily recognizable for the HL vet. However, I’m going to make the case that you should make a 1:1.384 remake (roughly speaking) because I think based on your abilities, you can do BETTER than a 1:1 remake. I talked in the pitch bible/other posts about expanding VERTICALLY to increase the sense of scale and HORIZONTALLY to increase the sense of distance and it’s good that you’re taking that into consideration. I’ll touch more on this later but what I DIDN’T mention is that you should also expand the VORT side. If you look at HL’s B1+C (especially C), you’ll find that the vort side is heavily underdeveloped (read essentially unexplorable) and I see it in your work as well. It would greatly benefit you to expand this further as this area would be novel and would offer the most flexibility in design. You’re basically bound by otherwise rigid constraints for the rest of this map (since it was well designed in HL) which means that this could potentially end up being the most uninspired of your 3 maps. The vort side could serve as a nice but small showcase of your creativity. Below are some additional suggestions and random thoughts for the complex (in no particular order):
-The size of the café and bathrooms implies to me that there should probably be more shared offices than what’s there currently (i.e. more employees). The nametags in these offices could have the last names of the forum members who have helped you w/ST_uncut and/or OaR uncut as well as your last name to keep spirit w/the AM lockers and QE administrative sections in BMS.
-The storage room you made would be ideal for a houndeye vs HECU battle. If you pack the area w/a lot of small boxes, it could make for some cool physics scenes w/a minimal amount of scripting.
-If possible, consider scripting a sequence where the .50 cal is DESTROYED (e.g. a vort blast blows it up). I think this is essential for storytelling as the vorts need to win this battle (they lose in BMS’ B ) and obviously they would have little to no chance of success if a marine got a hold of the gun. Note that in this scene, the player views the .50 cal from the side rather than the front which looks really stupid because the HECU do not actually hold the weapon (they just hold up their fists in midair). Also, the gun is really in a useless position for the player as it’s wedged BETWEEN both the vorts and the HECU. It’s no big deal if it’s destroyed because there’s plenty of opportunities to use it later in the chapter.
-As was noted before, the major problem w/OaR is its content, which you could improve upon both in quality and quantity. Regarding the latter, you should follow the basic rule of “more room, more content” as you don’t want to jam all the features into a tight space. Based on your track layout, which is faithful to HL and as a result relatively short, I think your best bet now is to expand VERTICALLY. It should be possible to incorporate a third or perhaps even a fourth floor to the complex, as it is located very deep underground. How much you want to add simply depends on how much new content you can imagine but the extra floors will allow you to showcase your creativity moreso than the original 2.
-If there are multiple floors in the complex, any scientists/barney survivors should be in the TOP floor assuming the HECU are the only ones killing them and nothing is teleporting in. If the player makes it to the top, you could have new spawns appear in lower floors to force the player to actually do stuff while backtracking (he could have a barney buddy w/him).
-The key thing you should always consider w/spawn placement is if the spawns actually make sense. For instance, if the HECU are fighting vorts on floor 1, would the ones on floor 2 come down and reinforce? If not, why not (e.g. are they preoccupied, dead)?
-There’s 2 additional room types that you haven’t added which would make sense in the office complex: 1) a security office/help desk w/maps of OaR 2) a mini-armory containing a gunrack; the gunrack would be useful later on for ammo balancing; just don’t overload it as OaR is kind of an ammo-neutral chapter (e.g. no net gain or loss). Perhaps both of these features could be implemented on the VORT side or a THIRD floor.
-The color scheme in BMS OaR is really bland and consists primarily of grays, oranges and browns. You could spice it up a bit in the office complex by giving each floor a different color scheme. The ground floor wall would have the same flat yellow coloration as the BMS office complex in B. However, the other floors could have like a flat red or blue wall (i.e. primary colors theme, the blue pays homage to the color scheme in HL).
-A narrow stairwell would be a really great place for a barnacle eats marine script.
-As the office complex is fairly non-linear in HL (you can start exploring it from EITHER B1 or C or not at all), you should consider a variable scripts model for the scenes. For instance, if the player is in the underground hidden area of C, he could see a pair of bullsquids chasing a marine. However this scene does NOT trigger if he doesn’t access this area. Similarly, if the player first approaches floor 1 of the complex from B1, he could see a pair of marines being chased by 6 houndeyes. However, if he approaches from C, he instead sees a pair of marines gunning down a bullsquid. This design philosophy has the advantage of ensuring that the player doesn’t SEE the spawns appearing from thin air, which is especially important here because NONE of xenofauna in this chapter teleported in. It’s important to retain this feature as best you can…imagine a large pack of houndeyes teleported in front of a group of soldiers. From a story perspective, the player might get the impression that Nihilanth was using them as troops (in actually their presence is just a manifestation of random portal storms). This would be the equivalent of Earth invading Mars by first sending in waves of zebras, lions and giraffe before the actual army which is stupid.
-Once you release your A1 map for testing, make sure to use the same ammo/health placements (ESPECIALLY the positioning of the health/battery chargers) as in HL. Additional ammo/health that may be needed can be added in different places but it’s nice to keep fidelity w/the original placements first. It’s OK if health is sparse initially…we can godmode it if need be and things will balance out over several iterations.
-At the very end of your A1 map, you could have an elevator section where the marines follow you on a separate lift (essentially a faithful port of the cool sequence at the beginning of HL’s B1). This also has the advantage of forcing the player to keep the tram instead of ditching it for travel on foot. Note that since the player has NOT encountered the rocket yet, it’s irrelevant which way the tram moves (though up might be the most reasonable).
Finally, I want to reiterate this idea from the pitch bible as I’ve figured out a way to make it fix several of the problems associated w/the office complex:
-For combat music, I’d strongly recommend The Year of Death as it’s such a nasty track. Imagine it going off once the player gets to the second floor of C2A2B1. You could give the complex extremely poor lighting, w/only flickers showcasing the nasty handiwork of the HECU (e.g. scientist/security corpses). All of a sudden you see the eerie eyes of the nightvision marines approaching you or a pack of houndeyes lighting up the room w/their biouminescent attack, forcing a battle in otherwise near pitch blackness. This reinforces the ominous nature of HL OaR which is missing in BMS but keeps to the piano theme of BMS OaR, showcases the flashlight (would be even better if it had a battery life) and requires minimal redesign of C2A2B1 and C2A2C, which were nicely done. The complex could be illuminated after the battle by hitting a power switch.
So one of the issues w/the office complex is that it’s entirely optional in HL. You could just flip one of the toll gate switches in HL’s B1 and move all the way to C and D w/o ever exploring the upper floor. From a developer standpoint, this is kind of lame as it bypasses a lot of the hard work you will put into this map, making the office complex essentially an extraneous element. One way to integrate this idea w/some of my other suggestions is to make the toll gates NOT ACTIVATABLE w/the switches (i.e. delete the switches). BOTH gates will instead be lifted by hitting a switch in a control room on the THIRD floor vort side, which will be made obvious to the player once he gets to the office complex (similar to the claw control room and its spatial relationship w/the claw). This will allow you to develop the vort side further and create a sort of yin-yang w/my idea. My office complex side (the HECU side) will retain the same architecture as HL but differ in lighting whereas your side would have a completely new architecture but retain the original HL lighting. This should create an interesting stylistic contrast. Functionally, the complexes would be designed such that you would need to explore ALL sides in order to reach the control room (e.g. certain levels are blocked off in the vort side and HECU side). This would create a subtle linearity in an otherwise non-linear section, which quite frankly could benefit from a little more structure. You could even use a HL B2 element by connecting the two sides w/a deployable drawbridge that works after hitting the power switch.
Advantages:
-2 contrasting themes in lighting and architecture which create familiarity but novelty at the same time
-integration of a community project that got shafted by the devs; I think some of these guys deserve to have their day in the sun; as OaR uncut is a COMMUNITY project, it’s fitting that their work should appear here
-darkened section and the Year of Death track reinforce the ominous nature of HL OaR, which is missing in BMS OaR; the music is thematically consistent w/BMS
-forces the player to actually explore the office complex, no longer making it an extraneous element
-provides a showcase for your creativity in the vort section while giving the office complex a fresh new take
