Here is the hotfix for the broken pipe corners. Just extract it to the BMS folder and the pipes should show up properly now.
Also, the rolled-up carpet should have lines in a spiral-like manner. It’s rolled up, after all. But it’s got circles instead. However, I commend you on actually including that detail; in the alpha video you produced, it had no details, it was a flat texture just like the carpet itself, and I mentioned it a while ago and never thought you’d do anything about it.
Possible to make a hotfix for those door aswell, those door that meant to be closed I guess (those with rock behind it)?
- There is a point where they shoot on u with those mounted gun, there is a vortigaunt behind him and those vortigaunt doesn’t kill him
Yeah, the Vort behavior is generally weird there. In my playthrough, they didn’t attack unless I had my gun up their nose.
Yes, very strange AI behaviour…
They even just continue with their business (running to the place they need to be to fight), even when I shot them with the Shotgun
First of all, amazing job, the maps fit in very nicely with Black Mesa.
Not a bug (just balancing, but I assume thats work in progress anyway), but near the end of the 2nd map (after you have gone through the office and continue with the train) the next Vortigaunt battle, that you put there, is way too big (it’s the one, where you can crouch underneath the floor and watch).
After it was finished I counted 18 Vortigaunt corpses (and I think there is only around 5 Marines who can’t do shit against all those aliens).
I tested it 3 times on all difficulties and it always ended with around 15ish Vortigaunts running towards you from all directions. I personally think that is quite a bit excessive and you should tone down their numbers.
I’ve had a similar experience with the battle near the MG, sometimes the Marine does his job, sometimes he gets killed right away leaving you with 10+ Vortigaunts to deal with.
I know, that you don’t want to balance as crazily as you did in ST-UNCUT (at least I recall you said that at some point), but this still needs some work.
Very nice! nice situation also with that vort amush… they were coming from 2 sides… very nice situation it was… to the maps itself: i dont like the crane room…looks too artificial. but the rest was great so far…
and i dont like the plants in the cafeteria… someone mentioned before the weird lightning on them…
and the map didnt load for me, when i started from the normal bm oar map… the transition failed 2 times, got a pink checker screen… i had to start your maps via console command…
greetings
Yeah, the soldiers only won once in my playthrough, in the conference room at the offices, and I’m pretty sure that’s because I killed most aliens with a grenade. The other times, the soldiers were either already all dead or about to perish, with little to no Vort casualties. I had to fight against a dozen Vorts in the toll bifurcation, and even more after going underneath the floor.
Alright, I played through it and I really have to say that you did your best, Text.
It fits smoothly inbetween the Black Mesa maps, the gameplay is wonderful, the graphical aspects, too, and you put a lot of thought into your layout. Great work!
I noticed some bugs, however:
Many of the “static” doors are lightened differently when viewed from different distances:
The turret guy in the second map is still kinda buggy.
As already said, the turret’s world model doesn’t move after he gets killed, it just tilts up and down.
When I approached the scene, he shot several vortigaunts, as usual, but one of somehow got behind him. Neither the vortigaunt nor the soldier attacked each other, but it seems that the soldier tried to aim at him. Maybe implement some kind of trigger that he leaves the turret when approached from behind?
I really love what you did to the cafeteria, even though the plants are kinda blurry and fullbright.
I did notice one thing, though:
As a staff member, I’d hate to constantly buy new dishes because of some idiots letting them slip off the sink into this abyss…
Have you considered adding some kind of glass panel/grate to seperate the counter and the hole?
Also, after the vort ambush, I ran into an invisible player_clip right here:
It disappeared after wandering around and returning to this area later, though.
You really did some fantastic work, and for an alpha version, this is pretty damn impressive, especially since you spent much of your free time doing this! Congratulations!
EDIT: Actually I figured I’d start off this angry sounding post with a big thank you to everyone who’s already sending me feedback. There seem to be a lot more people contributing in detail ALREADY than for ST Uncut, and I really appreciate people posting screenshots and feedback. Thanks guys. People always wondered why I said ST Uncut was a community project when I was the only one actually developing it - well, this is why. You guys help make it possible.
Apologies if the rest of this post sounds angry, wrestling with Vort balancing/AI is severely frustrating. I’m not frustrated with people reporting these problems - far from it. But…it’s a really annoying issue.
There are 15 Vortiguants and…5 Marines in that battle. I tested it many times and was consistently ending up with 3 Marines surviving and killing all the Vorts, I have no idea why the hell yours is turning out so differently. How the hell you managed to get 18 Vorts, I don’t have a clue - there are only 15 there. Period. If your Marines aren’t killing ANY Vorts, then something’s majorly wrong.
Are you guys using custom configs or something? Because I’ve tested these battles many times and have never ONCE ended up against overwhelming numbers. I’m serious here. Seriously - the balance has been totally fine on my end and I’ve tested the battles what must be close to a hundred times. The battle by the converging tracks is 50/50 with normally 3 - 4 survivors, the Office Complex is also 50/50, and the fight at the end of the level by the grate is consistently won by the HECU.
If possible, those of you who are reporting fighting overwhelming Vort numbers, could you turn on notarget/noclip and try to figure out what exactly is causing them to survive in such great numbers? If I could figure out why that’s happening to you and not me, then I might be able to do something about it. Obviously I’m not saying I don’t believe you, but it strikes me as odd that I’ve never come up against this problem before.
One problem I HAVE come up against, many times, is the Vorts being really fucking dumb, which I’ll now proceed to rant about.
The Vort AI in Black Mesa is really screwy, and it seems to be a particularly big problem in scripted battles, which is a potential reason why Black Mesa hardly had any involving them. All the other AI seem to cope perfectly fine in situations where there’s a lot going on, but for some reason Vorts often just blank out and do fuck all. I have no idea what causes this or why they would do that. I have the “long visibility/shoot” spawnflag set on the ones who have a tendency to do that, but it doesn’t help the issue at all. For example - by the 50 Cal battle, if the survivor on the far track is a Marine, he’ll happily start chipping away at me from over there with his MP5. If he’s a Vort, there’s a 50% chance he’ll stand there looking retarded, and a 50% chance he’ll attack me. This was a problem on ST Uncut too. Even when ORDERED to attack things by logical entities they sometimes still stand around looking dumb. It doesn’t seem to have ANYTHING to do with distance - they sometimes do it when you’re right next to them, they sometimes do it from afar. I have no idea what causes this - but I never have that problem with any other AI. The HECU are good as gold, in that regard. They never seem to blank out and start being dumb, and they ALWAYS do what they’re told.
Toning down the Vort’s numbers isn’t an option in Black Mesa, primarily because Black Mesa’s Vorts are just so shit compared to in HL1. They’ve got pathetically low health and their tendency to try and melee everything - when the HECU can stun them with MP5 rounds means that 1 HECU can often take out 5 or 6 Vorts before going down. I have to wait for the BM Devs to rebalance Vortiguants in their next update before I can tone down their numbers. I don’t know why they decided to stray so far from HL1 with the Vortiguant balance, but it makes mapping out custom battles really frustrating, because I have to throw huge numbers of Vorts at the Marines, and higher numbers increases the potential for random outcomes.
I’ll take a look at the battle myself and see what happens. I know I ended up with like, a dozen Vorts as well, but I figured it was due to the skill.cfg edits I’ve made.
Hey text, played through the alpha and wow! The maps are in a great condition for an alpha. A huge applause for you buddy!!! Love it… Heres my take on the playthrough.
- I also had massive number of Vorts everywhere with the marines dying very quickly. When I entered A2 they already killed all the marines at the duel tracks near the 50cal and I had to fight off each one of them. Through the rest of the map ALL the soldiers died and almost ALL of the Vorts survived killing me thousands of times with their zap. I don’t know why because I have the default BM files. There’s thousands of them.
- The first things I saw was the same glitch Marooner posted of the doors. When you’re a distance away they have no ‘light glow’ on them but if you approach they suddenly have.
- The 50cal turret won’t turn (also mentioned)
- The trolley in the middle of the duel tracks (on the platform) was zapped onto the rail by Vorts where my tram was and I couldn’t move it out of the way and a funny glitch happened when I tried to continue after opening the boom gate. It got stuck IN the tram and threw me off a fair distance.
- The leg-gib in the cafeteria near the vending machines also has a glitch. Like Marooner also mentioned. It’s like an invisible player standing there.
- In A2 in the ‘zombie room’ where the moving corpse used to be, in the back corner where the suit recharge is, the papers on the desk won’t illuminate when my flashlight is on them.
That’s all I could find on my fist playthrough. BTW, amazing additions on the A1 map. Gives it a very nice atmosphere and an AWESOME idea not to backtrack on A2!!!
Yeah it was 15, there were 3 preexisting corpses, so I counted wrong.
The 2 problematic parts seem to be the MG section and the very last fight.
The office complex ends up being very balanced from what I noticed.
The fight with the MG would be balanced, if the Marine manning the Turret would be consistently shooting Vortigaunts, which he does not. He is just shooting 3-4 bullets, then takes a short break and so on. Thus he only takes out maybe 2 of them, before he gets killed by the Vortigaunt from behind, leaving plenty of enemies behind.
Don’t know what to tell you about the last part, The Marines are shooting Vortigaunts and the Vortigaunts are shooting Marines. They just overwhelm them with their numbers at the end. The Marines are fighting normally and kill some of them (Usually around 4), but they obviously die when they reload and get zapped from 7 Vortigaunts at once.
Random thought that I’m just throwing out there, because I don’t actually have a clue about how AI works. The Vortigaunts seem to perform more clever, when you send them somewhere to attack instead of spawning them right next to enemies. In the office, once you open the door, you can see groups of Vortigaunts running into the room attacking right away instead of staring into random directions.
Right, well, here’s what I’m getting for the two Marine vs. Vort fights, both with notarget on and off.
Here’s the machine gun area fight, and the rail… cafeteria… area… place fight.
“THE ON A RAIL EXTENSION IS IN OUR CONTORL FOR THE TIME BEING THANKS TO YOU, QUIET A NASTY PIECE OF WORK YOU MANAGED OVER THERE I AM IMPRESSSSSSSED”
No seriously fantastic job ! Already finished it. Can’t wait for the second on a rail release ! I love the cafeteria design. And I love the way you added marines vs houneyes battles. It was missing normally.
That’s pretty much how the fights played out on my end too - that’s pretty representative of a normal test for me. They both turn out pretty balanced in terms of who wins, and number of winners. Thanks for that. For those of you who are unsure - check that video, it shows what I’d expect a typical result to be in terms of how many aliens/marines survive the fights.
Two things concerned me greatly, however.
The most pressing issue is, again, why some Vorts just seem to stop giving a fuck about anything for absolutely no reason. You can see about 4 - 5 of them doing it on that video, even when the fights otherwise played out normally. I literally have no clue whatsoever as to why they do that! NO other enemy in the game does that, and of course I’ve scripted all the AI in the same way. If ANYONE who has experience with Source AI knows anything about this, please let me know, I’m very stymied. I had this problem a few times on ST Uncut too - the two rooftop Vorts on C2A5H were really dumb as was the one who spawned on the ground floor of the gasworks. It leads me to believe the Black Mesa team coded the Vortiguant AI differently to the others, which may explain why that happens. I NEVER have that problem with any other AI type - like I said, the HECU in particular are good as gold when it comes to doing what they’re told or simply responding well to scripted scenarios.
The other issue was the converging track battle - the one where the Vort by the 50 cal would go up the stairs and just chill with his HECU buddies, and/or where they’d come down the stairs. They’re supposed to stay distinctly separate. The HECU aren’t supposed to be “awake” until the player tries to go up the stairs, and the Vorts shouldn’t try and go up there. That I CAN fix, and will for the next version.
For those of you who are having problems with this - this might help to clarify things a bit. Here’s a list of fights and their typical outcomes during MY tests, which all behaved exactly as I’d intended them to. It will be useful for comparing how I want the fights to be with the balance you’re getting while testing.
A1
Rocket Room - Bullsquid vs HECU - Bullsquid win - 2 Bullsquid survivors
A2
Converging Tracks - Vorts vs HECU - 50/50 - Nearly always 2 - 3 survivors from either side
Conference Room - Vorts vs HECU - 70/30 in favour of HECU - Nearly always 2 - 3 survivors from either side
Storage Room - Vorts + Houndeyes vs HECU - 80/20 in favour of Aliens - Nearly always 2 - 3 survivors from either side - nearly always Vorts
End Track - Vorts + HECU - 80/20 in favour of HECU - Nearly always 3 - 4 HECU survivors
Hopefully this may help single out anomalies.
^ Again, positioning. 3:1 I didn’t find it annoying, but hell, what can you do.
Also: The vorts CAN use the EP2 attacks at least the area “dispel” they don’t use the lightning melee. I just figured out how to enable them. 
sk_alien_slave_dispel_enable “1”
They’ll generally use it randomly in between melee, and when you’re in range. It’s a nice effect.
Apparently the vorts must be rasta. They just don’t give a fuck.
I noticed the AI cuts out when it doesn’t have a clean path to go in and melee. That MAY be the reason.
Alright just got done going through it and, have to say it was amazing.
Now on to the nitpicking.
So, as I transitioned into your maps there was one thing that I immediately noticed in only 1 second; how bright the lights are in your map.
Or actually not the brightness of the lights themselves, but that glow effect around them. In Black Mesa’s original maps the glow is pretty subtle and at just the right level.
But in your map:
It’s a bit much to say the least.
I know you’re trying to go for a dramatic look, but it wouldn’t hurt to tone it down a bit.
Second thing that kind of irked me (and this has for a while since I saw it) were these lights.
First word that came to my mind when I saw these was “candy cane!” (oddly enough :fffuuu
But they look really out of place for some reason and you might consider changing them or just removing them altogether.
!!!Nitpick time!!!
This could use some more detail down here; it looks really odd.
I know this is going to sound really weird, but I actually did find this kind of odd. You’re using a track texture on what I think is a metal beam.
…Maybe you should find a proper beam texture for it… (and do the same thing to all instances of this on your maps excluding the ones being used as a frame for a door)
This was another odd one too. The doors are way too close together.
I know it’s just a minor flaw that doesn’t really affect the map in any way, but maybe you could raise the elevator shaft up a bit and move the doors further a part? (Because it looks like the bottom door would hit the top one before it could even open half way)
Overall thoughts about A1:
Don’t know if it improved much from Half-Life’s version (by a lot atleast; this map suffers from what Half-Life’s map did but to the opposite extreme).
People were complaining that Half-Life’s version was “too complicated”, but this map felt really weak because everything was so simplified and it didn’t have hardly any challenge to it.
In Half-Life you had to work and figure out how the tunnel system was layed out and then do some exploring to figure out where everything was (and you were able to find some cool places and things along the way);
But in this one everything is literally right next to each other. You do absolutely no exploring and everything is made obvious to you from the start.
The map took me three minutes to get through.
From the time that I left the control booth from the crane control I went through the nearby doors into the storage area room place (thing), ran out and right into the room with the generators to turn the power on, then went back, switched the track, and off I went. And the entire time I questioned ‘Why is this map even here?’
In my opinion, A1’s layout needs a complete rework; but that’s just me.
I understand that some people are used to having things that simple and straightfoward so for them i’d say the map is fine. You can’t please everyone I guess.
Something needs to be done about the lights though.