This natural rock/cave tunnel is very great…! great connection to the inbound chapter… BUT… imho it feels slightly out of place at this very location… is it possible to add this or similar tunnels in earlier chapters of oar? Deeper in the ground? it would have more sense and add much more atmosphere… and diversity…
at the moment on its current location its out of place, couse the outer area trainstation is already diversification enough… add such tunnels in in earlier chapters please : )
This natural rock/cave tunnel is very great…! great connection to the inbound chapter… BUT… imho it feels slightly out of place at this very location… is it possible to add this or similar tunnels in earlier chapters of oar? Deeper in the ground? it would have more sense and add much more atmosphere… and diversity…
at the moment on its current location its out of place, couse the outer area trainstation is already diversification enough… add such tunnels in in earlier chapters please : )
oh… double post due to ‘‘gateway error’’… sorry
really cant wait for BM and this to be finished, for the ultimate BM experience (and insecurity, hazard course)
Me neither, but I can keep my nerves under control, at least for … 
Suggestion…in your video at 14.34 could you add soldiers patrolling around the distant shipping containers, and after you travel around the loop for the first time and come out of the warehouse fore a second time, there are a few grunts waiting to ambush you outside. You can make it seem as if they heard the gunfire from your encounter at the security hut and from the new 50cal placement. It can be a sort-of consequence for not switching the tracks on your first pass.
I have the day off work on Wednesday, so I’m aiming to get B2 released then - and I think I can. I make no promises though, so many unforeseeable circumstances arise when mapping.
Right, I figure there’s a few things I can ask you guys about - they’re mostly small things I’ve been trying to wrap my head around but some community feedback would be more than welcome.
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In the trainyard I’ve now added a Bullsquid in the green container, accompanied with with several body parts/torsos, hidden behind some crates. The idea being the player will break the crates and then the squid will surprise him. The story implication I’m trying to create here is that the HECU were feeding him scientists/guards/workers. Maybe they were alive, maybe they were dead, that’s left up to the player’s imagination. Painted on the outside of the container is a taunt to Freeman/scientists in general, but I’ve been having trouble trying to think of a good one to write which doesn’t seem too over the top. If someone could work out a good one suitable for that circumstance that’d be cool. The best I could come up with was “Feed the Frankensquid, Freeman,” or alternatively “Don’t feed the Frankensquid”.
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I need some kind of puzzle/event to replace the electrical arcing segment, which doesn’t involve electricity. Any small suggestions are welcome.
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I could use a suggestion for a small enemy encounter. Currently I think 2 Marines coming out of a building chasing after a fleeing Houndeye (maybe 2) might be pretty cool.
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I need some filler to put in the middle of the road by the army tent. I’ve already used a road barricade in one place, and I’ve got parked vehicles in another. Can anyone think of something cool and unique to plop in the middle of an empty road to make it more visually interesting?
Right, I’ll now reply to posts.
I think it’s kinda poor design for the player to be utterly screwed over by something he couldn’t have possibly seen coming, or have sufficient time to react to. Think of the sentry turret on C2A5F in the back of the truck - that was complete bullshit design. The only way to possibly have known it was there was to play it before. It’s frustrating for the player, and kills immersion a bit. Maybe if it was making whirring noises or was active with the laser or something, or if the player had more time to react when it turned on. I feel the same about the alarm idea. I don’t feel like a player could connect the dots quickly enough for it to NOT be frustrating when they fail - the only way to make that work would be to make the button super obvious with a huge sign above it, which would be really unrealistic - or alternatively to have it be a gameplay element which has been iterated before. I just don’t think it’ll work. HOWEVER, the idea could perhaps live on in the form of them just activating the alarm anyway. Maybe after you rail switch/kill the 50 Cal bunker, some reinforcements arrive from one of the blast doors or something, because the HECU activated the alarm. Making it a core part of the gameplay, rather than a punishment, might make it less frustrating and cooler. The guard towers do have megaphones on them, so an alarm would make sense.
At this point the control is already slipping away from the HECU, though it’s largely up to interpretation. It could easily be argued either way.
There is no operable crane entity in Black Mesa’s FGD. Whether they removed it from the engine or not, I don’t know. It’s not going to happen, either way.
As for physics puzzles, what do you propose, bearing in mind that there is no crane entity?
With regards to the going down only to immediately come up again, there’s no other real way to do it sadly, without either scrapping the broken lift or dramatically editing C’s opening, neither of which are things I’m willing to do. It’ll have to just be one of those design quirks that has to be accepted. I agree it isn’t ideal and I’d have liked to have done something about it, but as I said, the maps don’t line up otherwise.
I’ve seen a few propositions now that I put some HECU in the guard towers, on the crane, in high places, etc. I think you may be underestimating just how frustrating that would be to fight. Remember at this point in the game the only weapons you have which function even slightly well at range are the .357 and the Glock, both of which would be pretty frustrating to line up against HECU in high places at long range. I just don’t think it would be very fun. You either tank a tonne of damage while trying to line up long range shots with those guns using the zoom mode, or you spam wildly for 5 minutes. Not fun. I’m just not sure it’s good gameplay. The 50 Cal works because it’s a stationary target and the only one of its kind. It’s predictable.
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I’m removing the Sniper. Wasn’t the biggest fan of him anyway and it seems silly to shoehorn him in when I’ve now introduced a better element (in my opinion) in the form of the 50 Cal bunker.
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It’s all in the 3D skybox, so the Apaches can’t shoot. Pretty cool idea, but can’t be done.
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Can do that.
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I’m not going to spend a day making a crane model (seriously, it would take me a day) when there’s already a perfectly good one that’s sitting there done for me. It’s not that big a deal. A little inconsistency, perhaps, but I can live with it. I’m not going to change this.
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That platform takes up space without taking up performance, that’s why it’s there. I found having more containers there really starts to eat up performance.
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I probably won’t do this. Now that I saved nearly 200 entities from removing the electric fence, I don’t think I need to.
Not possible. The distant containers are in the 3d skybox - unless you want the HECU Marines in the distance to be giants! They’ll be 16X bigger!
It would make a lot less sense in any of the other tunnels in the entirety of OaR, which are underground. This one is dug into a cliff, hence the term “cave tunnel”. It would make a lot less sense in the middle of the developed office complex or Mat Trans system, and way less around the rocket silo. It’s the best place for it.
Breakable crates? Bullsquids tend to whack physics objects if it gets in their way. Might be better for when the player goes into the shipping container to have it burst out from behind the crates.
Not many puzzles I can think of that aren’t simple…
One or a pair of Houndeyes lead some HECU into an ambush with the rest of their pack maybe (1-3 more houndeyes in some unspecified location)?
If you can spare the entities, why not a munitions dump with some TOW missiles (and those missiles found inside of the warehouse on BM_C2A5E) along with some ammunition for the player to use?
Not necessarily. If you can tie an entity to the boarder of the skybox that is on the same path (and speed) as the apache, you could fake it shooting one. Mind you having it show a sprite will be slightly difficult as you’d need to create a custom asset for the muzzle flashes.
Gotta think outside the box, bro. Thing is, that would be a massive pain in the ass to sync it up JUST right though. I modified the soundscapes to play distant weapon sounds on my client for some ambiance it’d be alright, but you’d need to plug & play your own sounds. (I’m using modded CS:GO sounds)
If worst comes to worst, you could play the sound from a fixed position when the chopper finishes flying overhead and fade out as it goes.
Is there any (easy) way you could remove the ladder on the top of the crane (the one that goes to the controls of it). It’d make it clear that we can’t use it. Me, having played HL2, would have lost perhaps too much time trying to get inside of it… 
Q, can you make a soldier throw grenade at the player?
if so that could replace the missile launcher, just put a hecu grunt on a make shift high ground that lobs grenades at the player when they come near.
For the visually interesting thing in the road by the army tent, how about a dead Vort that’s stuck in the road with some cracks in the road around its feet, to imply that it teleported in too low, got stuck in the road, and was promptly killed by the HECU?
eehhhh that’s a little weird, most people playing through would probably think its a really bad model/clipping issue and not the idea you suggested. If there were instances of that in other parts of the game then sure, why not.
As said above by text, the whole soldiers feeding the bullsquid humans is also a little strange. I don’t think they would waste their time trying to keep something like that alive just so they could have “unique” way of disposing of the bodies, then going ahead and tagging the container with graffiti just seems comical. Now having a bullsquid tucked away in a dark corner somewhere munching away at some poor old chap then yes, that could work. Having some zombies come out of the containers could also work (not sure if its possible, maybe someone could make a hexed worker zombie to go along with the new worker model?)
I suggest he keeps the ladder to get on top of it…
It’s a shame we cannot use a sniper rifle (BM team’s fault 
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2nded
Wow, you really don’t like details that tell stories, do you? :[
Your idea, and I’ll just put it bluntly, was kinda…bad. Like Strider said, I don’t think anyone would really assume that a Vort ‘teleported in too low’.
Even with the cracks around it as potential details, it just doesn’t sound very smart or logical, seeing as it’d be literally the only encounter where it happens in the game.
Whereas something like on the A map (I think…), Text had the lined up and firing-brigade style execution of scientists to tell a story, your idea doesn’t tell anything. It feels a little too obscure and kind of too vague to go “oh well this happened”, where as, with what Strider said, it’d probably look like a clipping issue.
I don’t think Strider is against details that tell stories. They just have to make sense and be ‘proper’, so to speak.
Agree with you on both points here.
On the bullsquid thing that Text suggested, I personally don’t like it that much. There hasn’t been much against it that I’ve seen, but to me it once again feels a little too ‘out there’ of a story telling idea. My interpretation is the HECU are here to clean up, and they’ll kill everything and everyone that isn’t a fellow.
To me the idea of them feeding scientists and/or sec-guards to an alien that they’re meant to wipe out seems a bit…out of character. I see it from both sides to be honest.
- BM made them annoyingly dumb and boyish, so the idea of “haha hurr durr let’s feed them to this alien thing and watch them squirm, it’ll be funny”. Cause clearly that wouldn’t be above them, as they have a rape joke as well later on.
- On the other hand, as I said, it seems weird they’d try ‘team up’ with an alien, it goes against their objectives.
I also feel like people once again wouldn’t make the connection. If Text can pull it off well enough so that the majority would go “oh, so it looks like they fed people to it”, then sure. Otherwise I’m trying to visualise it for myself, and it’d seem like a bullsquid just ate people, and the HECU were ignorantly unaware.
That’s just me though. Like I said, if Text can pull it off, I’m all for it.
I didn’t mean to imply that I wanted the crane operable.
I just find it odd that Black Mesa tends to make very little use of physics type puzzles/events. There were a ton of them in HL2, sure some of them were gimmicky, but I wouldn’t mind seeing one here or there in BM as well.
Small things like using cinder blocks to weight something down to somehow get goodies or again having a marine standing on something flimsy and having a way to easily break it or blow up something near him. That could somewhat solve the lack of precise long distance weapons issue as you wouldn’t need to actually hit the marine, but rather somehow trigger an event that leads to his death. Or maybe have an alien teleport in and do it for you.
I know there’s a good idea for minor a puzzle to replace the arcing electricity section, it just hasn’t hit me yet. Maybe something that would make riding the tram a bit more interesting through this section or requires it to pass that part and continue.
By the way the map is absolutely brilliant in case it hasn’t been said enough. At this point it’s all about the minor details and I think that says a lot about how good of a job you’ve already done. I have a bad itch to play it.
Jessiestorm88:
I personally think that those kind of physics puzzles (such as the see-saw puzzle) should stay in HL2. It just seems a little out of place. I think its mostly due to the fact that we don’t have the gravity gun, and using E to hold something was never a game mechanic that had much emphasis within the game.
One idea that I have is have a shiping container next to the rail line on a platform. One of the shipping container doors swing open the moment before you drive next to it. Behind the door is a zombie/vort/bullsquid who forced it open. Unless you duck in time, it knocks you off your tram. The HECU then hears this commotion and runs towards your direction… Then you have a choice, to make a hasty getaway to some cover beyond where you can fight the HECU, or run into the shipping container and fight the creature, which contains goodies, thus making this a tradeoff between good cover or more resources. I don’t know how well this idea would work in practice, but I would say it seems good in theory.
I actually kinda like the sounds of this, provided the player has enough reaction time.
Thing is, the BMS OaR tram has a ‘fence’ on the back end, to stop the player falling off. If the player gets caught between the fence and a wall, they end up clipping through it, which wouldn’t look too great.
Having said that I think there might be an area in B1 where this happens if you don’t duck, so maybe it’s not a big deal?
Well with that reasoning, why not just add a possibility (as a bonus) to prevent the alarm if you are fast enough/on your second playthrough. I mean, as for you being ‘screwed over’ - it is not necessarily so if you look at it from the opposite angle. Make the alarm seem inevitable, but if you’re fast enough - there is a small possibility of saving yourself an extra skirmish. A matter of different perspectives…
And in any way, having a switch is a must if the alarm is to be implemented - sirens tend to be annoying (duh) - thus it would bring the extra sense of accomplishment finishing the marines off and finally being free to shut the bloody fucker up.
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I like the concept, but not the idea behind it. It seems incredibly unprofessional and over-the-top evil for them to go through the trouble of capturing an alien solely to feed hostages to. Maybe instead, have a forklift blocking one end and crates stacked on the other, with a “do not open” tag? That implies they were aware of it in the crate, but did not want to deal with it.
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See below*
Utility truck maybe? I dunno, military and security vehicles are everywhere, I thought something with less ‘authority’ might help even though it’s still a vehicle. Maybe a parked LAV, but I was going to suggest that to replace the Abrams near the end instead. Could always bring the Loader back
To be fair, this exact same trap was in Half-Life as well, at roughly the same area (it was in the tunnel as opposed to on the incline).
Not to challenge your design decisions, but I personally always felt control didn’t slip until Surface Tension. In OAR they get some bloody noses but they hold fast, and all the way up 'till ST the surface is owned by the military. All before then, it’s just Alien Slaves and random fauna. It’s not until about halfway through ST that the arrival of Alien Grunts and Manta Rays quickly take their toll and force the HECU to re-evaluate their strategies. Just my 2 cents.
- There’s already an abundance of ‘button and lever’ puzzles throughout Black Mesa, so I would suggest against another one of those. I was thinking something with props, moving props to complete a goal, I’m not sure what though… Maybe something weight based? If I come up with anything, I’ll be sure to bring it to the table.
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Couldn’t you extend a part of the skybox out over the… skybox? I’m not good at putting this into words, so I drew a picture: https://puu.sh/3JAOd.jpg
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All day? Dang, I thought a tower crane would have been fairly simple. I guess I seriously underestimated it, my bad.
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I meant moving the containers along the track to the rest of them beside the crane, mostly because the HEMTT looks a bit cramped in.
