You either do not pay enough attention, or delight in asking the same thing over and over again.
Yes, he’s said he’ll update his mods if Xen breaks them.
After complaints that there hasn’t been an update for a while, I managed to find a bit of time today to work on B1. I must confess part of the reason which I haven’t made any progress was because I was very demotivated with the layout of B1 - every time I opened up the editor for B1 I kinda just held my head despair for half an hour then went to do something else. Creative blocks suck. I finally bucked up today and just decided to revise the layout to remove the interconnectivity between parts of the map.
That changed today, I was finally able to pretty conclusively (I think) solve the layout issue.
For those of you who don’t know about the layout issue, it’s one of the two reasons (the other being university being CRAZY BUSY) I haven’t made any progress at all in the past few weeks. I figured I’d make a post here detailing the problem and how I’ve “solved” it. The map’s layout has moved through 3 major iterations, settling on the final (current) one.
INITIAL LAYOUT
The major flaw with this design was that the enemy tram would have to APPROACH the player (from the track to nowhere) rather than run alongside them, which would be less intuitive than in HL1, and also much tougher to board. This was pretty much the only flaw I cared about with this layout, in all honesty. The player would be stuck on the loop unless they switched the rail to let themselves off the loop, or were quick and commandeered the enemy tram. The player can reach the turntable room via tram either way.
The community stated that this alteration to the tram boarding was a bit of a deal breaker, and it bothered me too, so I decided to change the layout to fix this. The other problem with this layout which I was hoping to fix is it might result in overuse of loops in OaR Uncut (B2 is based on HL1’s F map, which is basically also a loop, so there’d have been at least 5 - 6 loops in OaR Uncut if I’d kept this layout).
LAYOUT FIX ATTEMPT #1
I attempted to follow Someguy’s suggested fix. This fix was good, and I probably would have settled for this if I hadn’t found something I thought was better. My main issue with this layout was that it wasn’t possible to reach the turntable room if you did not commandeer the enemy tram. The layout’s inherent limitation made it so that it was actually not possible to create a path which did so (if I tried to the path would intersect the crane room).
One of the things I really loved about the previous 2 layouts was the interconnectivity. The turntable room was connected to a tunnel you’d previously moved past, meaning the whole thing slotted together to form a believable and connected rail system. However, it’s all a matter of perspective! I later came to realize (as in pretty much today), that this interconnectivity is kind of a double-edged sword. The problem with this interconnectivity is that it can make the travel seem kinda pointless and long winded. If it’s obvious to the player that they spent the past 15 minutes going around a blocked door (which is how it would have gone with initial layout and fix #1), it can cause frustration and break immersion.
So I finally decided to go for a more linear path and to try and break the weaknesses of the previous two layouts with compromises-a-plenty.
CURRENT (AND PROBABLY FINAL) FIX
Ignore the slightly disjointed and unfinished pieces of track. The important thing here is the layout.
While it’s lost a lot of what I really loved from the original layout (I REALLY liked the original dual loop design), this layout is probably the best possible in the limitations of the B/C design. Bear in mind I have to slot in the B maps within the layouts of Black Mesa’s B and C maps, which was why I was having so many problems in the first place. I think this layout has the best compromises. I was initially a bit displeased with it because it created the “hairpin” problem I’d rotated the C map to specifically try and avoid, I eventually realized it’s kinda unavoidable when mapping around the B/C layout. In this context, the “hairpin problem” simply refers to the player traveling away from their point of origin, up slightly, and then back towards it again, but offset slightly - which can be seen in this layout, but not to a criminal extent (at least I don’t think). There simply isn’t enough space, and there is nothing I can do about it. I shortened some of the straights a fair bit to try and minimize the hairpin effect and to that effect I think this layout is the best it can be.
One of my personal favourite things about this layout is that the player is able to reach the turntable ambush room regardless of whether or not he commandeers the enemy tram. The way I will make this more interesting is that commandeering the enemy tram puts the player in a much better position than if he stays on his own tram. The player will enter the turntable room next to a 50 Cal with nice cover, some ammo, and open space if he commandeers the enemy tram. If he stays on his tram and fails to commandeer the enemy tram, he still makes it to the turntable room - but he gets hardly any good cover and extra room. He can still move across the room to where the 50 Cal is but during that time he’s vulnerable. This will hopefully make it so that an astute player who’s quick and skilled can commandeer the enemy tram and be rewarded for it, without completely screwing over and confusing the guy who doesn’t quite make it (or figure out that they’re supposed to do that).
I’m hoping to make it fairly clear that the player is meant to steal the enemy tram, using 1 of 2 methods I’ve thought of. Some feedback on these would be nice. Which do you prefer?
-
Where I’ve marked “blockage,” there’s a door which is HALF lowered, and sparking. The Tram can fit through the gap, but only if the player crouches. This would serve as a nice hint to the player that they might be better off stealing the enemy tram, as I’d imagine >50% of players would see that and assume that they’re meant to use the enemy tram, and then make the jump.
-
Where I’ve marked “blockage” have some form of debris (or something) blocking the player’s pathway, but with some explosive barrels or something similar nearby (suggesting the HECU were trying to clear the blockage). The tram cannot pass through this barricade unless the barrels are exploded.
I’m probably going to do 1 but 2 is an interesting idea which might be fun to toy with.
I cannot think of any superior alternative to this layout, really. Unless anyone finds any serious flaws in it (and seriously, I invite you to, I want this to be perfect!), I’m sticking with this. Hopefully that’s cool, I’m quite glad I finally figured out the solution to this pain in the ass, and I’m excited to try and move forward from this couple of weeks’ stagnated progress.
Luckily I won’t have problems like this on B2, once I start working on it. B2’s layout is much more straightfoward to implement.
In terms of wider mod progress, I’m planning on doing more work on it this week - I’m still aiming for a B map Alpha in 1 - 3 weeks time. I’m probably going to full complete B1 before I even start ANY work on B2 though, for one major reason. My musical friend (who is now going under the artist name of “The Empire,”) is coming down to visit me on Friday, and is bringing with him his current progress on the song he’s writing for me, which I THOROUGHLY look forward to seeing. I’m hoping to have the basics of B1 completed by then so that we can test the song in action, and make appropriate adjustments to the scene/song accordingly. It’s very exciting for me. We’ll continue to work closely to come up with something that fits well.
I hope this has satisfied those of you who’ve been waiting for some kind of update. You’ll probably have to wait a while longer for any kind of release though, sorry guys!
Thanks for the great update!
I do like your proposed layout because I think that having two options (stealing the enemy’s tram or staying in your own) which have no fatal consequences but with the former fairly giving an advantage over the other is good level design policy to me.
The “hairpin” issue is indeed a bit of a bother but I’d not know how it could be avoided.
Keep up the good work, TextFAMGUY1!
Any kind of update is fine with me as long as there’s progress involved.
I’m actually having a harder time thinking of which option to choose. Both are pretty reasonable in terms of story, it just depends on which you think is more appropriate…
I dunno. I honestly can’t decide. I guess I’m cool with either one, which doesn’t really help at all.
Both are great solutions. The first one I have no problems with (I should hope so, it’s based off my design). The second one only concerns me because I wonder if the segment where the two trams meet is long enough. It takes about 2-4 seconds of SMG Fire to kill an HECU trooper, I just worry it might be too short. I’m also wondering how you get the Military tram to the turntable, I assume you drive it forward, switch the track, and reverse?
The military tram allows you to drive the tram directly onto the turntable and switch it once, thus putting you at the correct orientation to reach the lift. Using the player’s default tram, you’d have to wait on the track OUTSIDE the turntable (as by default it’s oriented towards the other track), and then switch the turntable which straightens out your track and allows you to drive towards the lift. This is the best way of doing it, I think, as this means no matter where the player approaches from, they HAVE to switch the turntable. The player who stays on their own tram is put at a slight disadvantage because they get “stuck” in an area with limited movement options, just outside the turntable. But it’s not a massive one, they just have to cross the room briefly or hide by their tram and fight it out there.
As for the tram meeting segment being short, I reckon it ain’t a problem. It’s slightly under 1024 units long, which gives 5ish seconds of travel or more. The fact that the image was very zoomed out makes it difficult to tell. The rails are also very close together. All the player would need to do is a double Shotgun blast, 357 Headshot, MP5 Nade, Satchel, etc etc. In addition, maybe it wasn’t clear on the diagram, but the enemy tram will approach from the bend, through a loud opening door, just as you pass the TOW Marine. This should mean the player will be very aware of the tram before they even reach that segment properly, so they need even less time to prepare.
The Hairpin is really an inherent limitation of the way B/C is designed. I was hoping rotating the C map (a long debate we had around page 10 or so) would solve it, but the space around the two maps is just so limited it’s impossible to build large maps around it and still make it feel like complete progression. You can see that ALL of my layouts possessed the hairpin issue, but the final suggested one has it the least by far. The first two layouts show pretty much a 100% double back, while the final one is maybe 50%. There’s pretty much no way to solve it. This issue would also be present if I’d built downwards (from a top down perspective) relative to the silo, instead of slightly down and then to the right of it. Unfortunately, there’s not much in the way of a perfect solution for it. I do think, however, that my current layout makes it acceptable.
Heh. If you’re on the fence, then that pretty much means the final fix is the best - because it reduces the hairpin issue far more than the other two, allows the player to reach the turntable room no matter what they do, and keeps the tram segment like it was in HL1. Allowing the player to reach the turntable room no matter what they do was pretty important to me because it creates a small sense of non-linearity and allows player choice to take effect here.
That new solution seems perfect to me. I like the idea of having a tactical advantage if you hop on the enemy tram.
Did you take notes on all of the A maps feedback so you can come back to that later? With surface tension uncut I believe you were updating all of the maps at once from the first public release on.
With this it’s a bit different with you releasing a playable version after each map is finished. Does this mean it could be a month or two down the line before A is updated, after finishing the initial alpha/beta release of the B and F maps or are you planning on throwing in updates to the A maps when you release the first playable B maps and so on with B when you release F?
There are 4 (all full-sized - I’ve got some further changes to A1 planned to make it more full-sized) maps here, slotting AROUND a chapter, as opposed to the 2 and a little bit maps that ST Uncut had, sitting at the end. Development here is far more complex, as a result. The B Maps will NOT be released with an A map update. That will come after. I will also not release B1 and B2 separately - those will be released together, as the “B Map Alpha”.
Planned release schedule is as follows:
A Maps Alpha - Done
B Maps Alpha - Next
A+B Maps Beta
A+B Maps Release Candidate
A+B Maps Final Release
Eh, it’s not my favorite solution, since I would have wanted to commandeer an opposing tram, but it’s just like where I was with the cafeteria.
Overall, this really is the best solution and there’s no flaws with it. It’s correct that trying to take an enemy tram wouldn’t be as intuitive if it were coming from an opposing direction, but more importantly your fix addresses that issue from HL1 that players couldn’t get to the turntable room if they missed the opportunity. And really, that whole idea makes getting past the gate at the beginning of the section much less of a waste of time. And, as you said, it does go a ways towards addressing the hairpin issue.
So kudos! Glad you got this all sorted out!
I have been mapping since 2006, that means I’ve been mapping using Hammer for 7 years now. Never really did anything particularly great until the past few years, when I really got into it.
Today I discovered that the “Flip Objects-Horizontally” function in Hammer essentially mirrors brushwork/objects.
I now want to cry, thinking about the tens of hours of my life I’ve wasted manually mirroring brushwork and cursing Hammer for not having a function which does it for you. I’m serious, it probably borders on hundreds of hours.
I do wonder whose idea it was to hide away that tool in a fairly obscure place, and name it “Flip,” instead of “Mirror”. Flip horizontally, to me at least, implies a 180 degree rotation, which is what I always thought it did, and thus never used it, because I can just use the translate tool for that.
It’s still entirely my fault for having never tried/used it or seeing it myself, but it’s just painful to think of all the wasted time.
On the plus side, knowing this now WILL make mapping a lot easier. I no longer have to manually mirror symmetric elements, which is something I do wind up doing A LOT. It will also save me major amounts of time on the big tunnels and designing them, which is handy Harry.
In other news, I ended up having to REDO for a second time my layout redesign (still the same layout as the final fix I showed before). This is again because of Hammer’s really impressive ability to fuck up even the most simple of tasks. This one actually isn’t my fault. Kind of like the Furnace on C2A5H which kept getting screwed up because Hammer sucks at remembering vertex positions, when I moved around large segments of the map for my redesign, even time I loaded up the map, the brushwork would distort slightly. Corners for brushes might move 0.01 units off the grid, and this would happen inconsistently across the entire map. Any mapper will tell you that when stuff starts to move off the grid on its own, it creates hell. You never know where stuff has shifted slightly from where it’s supposed to be, and on my map it was nearly everywhere.
So I ended up having to redo the layout shift from scratch - this time taking extra care to enclose everything in giant SKIP brushes. For some reason this prevents the vertex shifting. Now everything’s done and spiffy, and I’m moving forwards at a pretty steady pace. Work continues.
I also heard the first draft for my piece, whose working name is “Year of Chon,” due to its influences from Year of Death. I found it most amusing. It’s final name will obviously be far more fitting for Black Mesa. I want to call it “Lights Out” or something, to fit the progression of the ambush, but ultimately it’s up to my friend to decide on a proper name for it. The piece is great, I really liked it, but it certainly didn’t have the aggression and menace necessary for an action piece. It actually sounds like OaR 1 mixed in with a bit of Year of Death, with a few influences from that Dark Drone song people wanted me to use at some point during OaR. I was quite tempted to try replacing OaR 1 with it just to see if it creates a more HL1-y mood. Anyways, we’re working closely to kick things up a few notches, so it fits an action sequence better. I’m excited. Two of my OTHER friends have also been recruited for this chords, and they’re going to record some guitar lines and bass lines for us. Very excited about this song, I think it’s going to suit the battle scene perfectly. Stay tuned for more news!
Is it bad I cracked up at that? Eh, you learn new things everyday I suppose. Kudos for figuring it out.
Well, better late than never I suppose. It’ll definitely help you in the future, at least. Perhaps this is why it’s always good to press every button? 
Glad to hear things are back on track though (pardon the pun).
Are we going to see a B-Maps demo video before the public alpha release?
Holy achin’ nellies !!! :sick:
Wait a minute… what you’re really telling us is that we could have already had OaR Uncut Final…:what:. Now MY nellies are hurtin’.
I found it out while I was talking to my musical buddy. He thought it was hilarious too. It’s funny as fuck, but not when you’re in my boots!
Things are certainly very much back on track. I’ve made much more progress in the past 2 days than I did in the past 3 weeks or so. The basic layout is looking top notch, and I’ve got a few cool scripted sequences I’m going to put in. Overcoming this layout barrier has really helped restore my motivation. My biggest problem right now is finding inspiration for the ambush room. I’m trying to figure out a convincing way to expand it vertically and make it still feel like there’s lots to explore in it.
Song’s coming along great too. My pal’s coming down from Kent for the weekend and we’re gonna do some more work on it. I’m excited for it. Never been part of a songwriting process before!
Will play this one by ear. My gut tells me probably not. I’m not taking as many risks with the B maps, compared to the massive original expansion of the A maps. I’m kinda hoping to keep B2 a bit of a surprise, which may prove to be a double edged sword as I will end up changing A LOT from the original F/G maps. The layouts will mostly be the same, but there’ll be an interesting combination of indoor/outdoor areas. I haven’t really planned it out properly yet though.
I know you’re joking, but that’s definitely not what it means. Would have saved me a lot of time for sure, but nothing like enough to make a huge difference in that regard. I was also pining for the wasted time throughout my work on CS maps too, which at this point is probably in the region of 1/2 - 2/3 or so of all the time I’ve spent mapping (I’ve spent ridiculous man-hours on Black Mesa by this point).
Yeah Text, I was just pullin’ your leg. Certainly glad that your discovery will greatly help you, going forward.
I too got a chuckle out of this because I completely know how it feels. Heck, I had no idea there was that sort of function either and I could have used that for one section in particular of Loop Mod.
Well, at least that will save you buttloads of time in the future~
I really can’t wait to hear this new piece. You wouldn’t believe how much I’ve been listening to Year of Death lately. Actually, I do wonder. How did you find about that? I remember it being something like a Black Mesa community project but I never found anything about that…
I think it was Wangman specifically who first brought it up, then everyone else started suggesting songs from that community project. I went and listened to every single one of the finalist songs from that community project, at least 4 times each. Year of Death stood out to me by an absolute country mile, as the most fitting for Black Mesa and On a Rail. It’s just…brilliant. It’s really got that special something that makes it fit the mood it’s trying to build just perfectly.
Out of curiosity, what’s the setting you’re planning on going for in the Night Time Vista that’s going to be on B2? I was thinking and it could be an excellent piece to tell the story from my prospective about the marines mobilizing with Ospreys, Apaches, and light armor (the LAV) wizzing around in different locations. Just some food for thought when you reach that particular point.
To ressurect Someguy’s idea with the LAV being a “boss” or autogun of sorts, there was an osprey in WGH the player had to avoid, why not make it the same here? If they’re on foot, the player could weave in-and-out of cover to get to a door on the other side of a court yard or something to progress to the next map… this is all assuming the player needed to abandon his or her last tram somewhere along the line. Again, it’s some food for thought.