I don’t hear anything XP
Unnecessarily long and boring post incoming. Don’t read it if you’re not interested in the way I deal with the community, and why.
Actually, I’m not going to lie. I did have a bit of a problem with what Dadster wrote. I’m glad Ibon said something. It means it’s not only me who saw it.
I have no doubt that Dadster has good intentions and wasn’t trying to be a knob or anything like that. Definitely not, no worries there. But there are a few underlying implications and assumptions in what he wrote which concern, and perhaps insult me just a little. Again, I know this wasn’t his intention, but that’s how it’s panned out. I’ll explain myself. Bear in mind it also isn’t my intention to insult or offend, or be disrespectful in any way. I’d personally consider it disrespectful of me NOT to say anything about this - we’re all big boys here. Nobody’s going to throw a bitch fit, unlike certain others in the past.
First and foremost, I want to make it clear that I am not obliged to read, address, or even consider feedback that’s written here, just because somebody took the time and effort to write it. Don’t misinterpret this - it doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the fuck out of the lengths people go to, in order to help improve my work. I certainly do. It means something else entirely. I said it to Wangman too, but it’s true to the whole community - you owe me nothing, and conversely I owe you nothing either. I have no obligation to release work and address feedback, the same as how you have no obligation to play or give feedback on my work either. Any effort from either party is entirely voluntary, and comes with no strings attached, for better or worse.
This fact may sound like a bad thing at face value, but it’s a really, really good thing. I know it’s pretty much the only reason I’ve personally stuck around for so long here. We do what we do here (me - mapping, you - feedback and conversation) because we want to. That’s a nice thing. It’s all voluntary and kind! I put out work and listen to feedback, because I enjoy doing it, and because I want to, and love doing it. I don’t have to. You guys give me feedback, because you also want to, not because you feel like you owe it to me. It’s nice! We help one another. We don’t owe one another.
The reason I took issue with what Dadster wrote, is because it’s pretty much the first time someone has outright stated words to the effect of: “address all of my feedback, please, or it will frustrate me”. I don’t like that. Again, that’s not to say that I don’t appreciate the hell out of the feedback that I’m given, but it’s the wrong attitude to have!
See what I’m saying? The underlying implication here is that…I owe you, and you owe me. It’s not the case.
So - here’s the kicker. Dadster, and everybody else - I can’t, and won’t, address absolutely all of the feedback which has been delivered to me. If you’ve gone into the feedback process with the belief that I can and will, then you are mistaken, and I’m sorry you were misled into providing your feedback under that pretense. My work on these forums represents my best efforts to do so, but make no mistake - it’s an unattainable goal.
I’m one guy. Actually, that’s underselling it. I’m a 21 year old, final year, super busy university student, tackling this enormous project on my own. I’m not a professional, I’m not that experienced, or necessarily good. I’m not a modding team. The only reason I’m able to do even half the work I do on this stuff is because I have an extremely fucked up sleeping habit. I do make the effort, however. I put in the work. And I certainly did for ST Uncut. Here’s the thing:
- I don’t necessarily agree with all the feedback that’s posted.
- I have to prioritize certain issues over other. Many of the issues which Dadster posted are exceptionally minor clipping issues or small visual glitches. It’s an Alpha - that stuff is really time consuming to fix and doesn’t take priority in early stages of development. A few of them, such as the lights which float less than 1cm away from the wall, will never take priority, because they’re trivial, and more complicated to fix than you might think.
- I can’t physically address everything that’s ever been posted, or my uncut projects may have taken 8 years to release, like Black Mesa. This is partly due to being one guy, but also due to the fact that nothing can be perfect, especially when not done by a professional. Time and resources are limited.
- Some issues which crop up - I simply don’t know how to address, such as the Vort AI. No mapper has 100% knowledge of the Source engine, and my knowledge is still certainly very incomplete.
I tried my best to digest and implement all the feedback for ST Uncut which I agreed with. I will do the same here, and I will do the same for any future work in this field. I think it’s a little unkind and unfair to ask me to address absolutely everything you’ve posted without missing or disagreeing with even a single point, especially when there’s - what - 450 points of feedback from Dadster alone?
Why did I bother to write all of this? Because I care what you guys think. It’s important to me, otherwise I wouldn’t be here! I hope this massive wall of text has been good for something, otherwise - business as usual. For those of you who bothered to stick around and read the whole post, thank you, I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this. As always I appreciate tremendously the community’s input and look forward to continuing to move forward with all of this. Here’s your reward - a cheeky little sneak preview of B2’s current state.
B2 looks pretty awesome so far. As for the rest of the post, I’m one of those who recognizes that fact, and actually said it a few times. Beyond that - I really am glad you’ve been taking the time out of your days to do this. So far your projects have shaped up to be excellent additions to BM, more than that, they’re shaping (or rather shaped) up to be some of my favorite parts of the game. Keep up the good work, you’re almost on the next leg, then it should be down to fixing the shit ton of bugs that comes with every project.
Now I see your point XP.
Anyway, B2 looks good. It looks like Uplink that Hezus made is just the other side. Just being covered by structures and rocks.
In B2, are we going to change tram?
whats that blue thing on the crane?
Ahh I want to play it now!
Seems like my long, heartfelt, vulnerable, beautiful post about the nature of feedback caused far less of a stir than the B2 picture! I’m quite pleased about that, actually, the post itself was only aimed at a few people, the B2 picture was aimed at everyone.
To elaborate on the content of the image, it’s the product of about 3 - 4 day’s work. B2’s layout has come together very organically and very well. I’ve had none of the horrific problems I had with B1’s layout, which is great, it’s really helped keep me motivated. You can see in the picture the insane amount of curved brushwork involved, that’s been the most time consuming thing by far, but it looks lovely.
The biggest layout issue at the moment (I’ve already actually 100% completed the player’s path to the finish) is the loop element from F, which currently takes you on a massive loop. The loop is currently unreasonably big, but unfortunately I may just have to leave it like that. There’s no good way I can shorten the loop based on the current layout without significant and massive overhaul. If you look at the picture, the player emerges on the rail from the warehouse, and turns right. By default they’re on a loop which takes them through the electrical area (with the tower), back into the underground segment, and back out through the warehouse. It’s a very large loop. One single switch changes the junction and allows the player to take their tram to the finish, and the player gets taken to the open door on the top right part of the picture, where the broken lift which drops down to the C map is.
The loop’s design itself in terms of layout is completely true to HL1’s F map, it’s just a lot bigger, which could pose a potential problem. It’s also outdoors, of course.
The big blank black area behind the crane, is where the 3D skybox will be. You can see the two roads extending out past the guard towers into the “skybox” area, which obviously hasn’t even been started yet. The two roads will follow the contours of the canyon out into the very far distance (the 3D skybox I estimate will be about 1/2 as big as the canyon one from Surface Tension’s C map), which contains a lake in the middle, lower down. The two main scripts for the skybox will be an Apache flying towards Apprehension (which based on MY OaR layout is from the lake TOWARDS the player) and a small convoy of military trucks moving out in the very far distance.
It should look pretty darn good, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Thank you, I appreciate the kind words. I’ve always appreciated your good attitude and feedback.
No tram change. And let’s leave Uplink out of this.
Dead guard.
You wouldn’t have much fun if you played it now! There’s no tram pathing yet, no NPCs, no nodegraph, half the map is empty, and it’s not lit. You’ll have to wait, I estimate another week or so, but I’m so often wrong I won’t say for sure.
its not unreasonably large for a outdoor loop, to me it looks like that would be a loading area which would require large amounts of room for vehicles and loading equipment.
No worries. Just a tid-bit about the skybox - I’m assuming you didn’t see my previous post about it. Jets use emergency flares all the time during night missions to help infantry on the ground. It could be a great way to light up the map using dynamic lights, or pop it in the skybox to illuminate the buildings in the distance. This is totally up to you, on how you want to implement it - if at all.
It’d be good to use in an ambush or as ambiance.
Feels like something cut out of Surface Tension.
Not to be taken as criticism, just an observation. How far is it from the actual launch site and what do you plan to have behind the fence?
@ Text,
Wow! A shotgun blast to the face using both barrels.
It certainly was not my intention to be disrespectful towards you and your projects. That’s the furthest thing from my mind. It’s not my expectation that you resolve each and every feedback issue that I’ve reported. That would be daft. The gist of my post and the “frustration” comment stems from the reiteration of feedback issues that occurred during the development of ST Uncut. I’m hopeful that this can be avoided with OaR Uncut.
My deepest apologies for any part of my post that offended you.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go tend to my face, as it’s stinging quite a bit.
Daw, come come now. Don’t think of it as a double barrel to the face, think of it as a little prod with the Crowbar. I just thought it would be good to provide a gentle (really long, but gentle!) reminder of how I like to work. Don’t worry, I know you meant no disrespect, neither did I.
As for the reiteration of feedback, it’s unavoidable, no matter how hard I try. The main problem is like I said, I can’t address all feedback for the reasons I listed. But I also can’t explain the reason for why I didn’t implement each piece of feedback I omitted, because that would leave me writing for days. It’s a bit of a catch-22. You can’t be sure if I just forgot/missed it, or if I purposely left it, so you end up reiterating things when maybe they didn’t need to be. Not sure how we can go about solving this, it’s a bummer for both parties in all honesty. When I get the time after the beta, I might go over and try and explain to the community general bits of feedback which I’ve purposely ignored, so people know what to better report in the future. But I can’t promise anything, naturally. I ain’t perfect, very far from it! Checking feedback, implementing it, and then writing about it is seriously time consuming, time which may be better spent actually doing work on the maps!
We’ll see! Only time will tell.
I meant “unreasonable” from a gameplay perspective, not realism. It’s a very long loop, it’ll be a bit of a bummer if a player gets stuck on it more than once because they forgot the switch or something. I’m going to leave it as it is for now, and I’ll see what testers think, if it’s frustrating or not. From a realism perspective, it makes sense.
I don’t know about this idea, I’ll have to see how the skybox turns out first, though I’m not massively keen on the idea. I already did the whole “red flare, striking lighting” thing for B1, don’t want to overplay the hand!
The skybox, with the canyon and lake, is behind that fence. As for the similarities to ST, I’ve made it resemble Black Mesa’s C map, at least in pallet. Wait till the lighting pass is completed. It will completely transform it, I’d imagine the similarities to ST will disappear at that point. The Rocket is not far off at all. The building on the far right of the picture contains the tunnel which leads into the C map. The largest blue skybox texture on the far right of the picture is the skybox of the C map (I placed it there for alignment), and the rocket is just a bit further into the distance than that. It will be viewable over the top of the cliff, from B2. The lower down skybox which you can see, to the left of that one, is B1’s skybox, which will also be visible from B2.
Fair enough, but you mis-understand, I’m not talking about the flares the players use, I’m talking about the flares units use to light up a night sky, like an over-sized firework so to speak.
A little bit like this:
Out in the middle of the skybox or heck, even in the middle of the map, all you really need is a dynamic light on a path. Should be pretty manageable. 
But over all - it’s up to you. Also, usage.
Edit: Using the link, they’re called illumination flares. Just saying, it’d be a nice touch. Although that brings up the question: Can you control the duration a dynamic light stays in the map?
I don’t think the flares should be there just for the sake of ‘a nice touch’ - the situation as Text described it doesn’t really lend to using flares as there is, really, nothing to illuminate. There are no enemy positions to illuminate and the area is known to and largely under control of HECU, judging by convoys moving in on the highway.
I see you like your skyboxes a lot.
Alright, and how will you be handling this switch? Just in case I need to make a couple edits to my own map to be consistent with yours, and all that.
…And I’ve decompiled C so I know exactly how big that skybox is. Woof. o_o
Wonderful! I’m glad to hear you are doing this! 
Good point. Still worth throwing out there, imo for all we know the skybox may have a few hostile positions to lend to it, although given his description, I doubt it. That being said, I do agree with you now that I think about it, it may not fit into the map itself. The skybox, however, maybe. But it’d have to have the right aesthetics to fit in.
There’s no need to make black mesa a complete freaking warzone - if anything, it can get really old. And we don’t really know when the invasion was escalated to the proportions of ST.
at this point hecu are just doing clean up and recon… they are engaging the xen wild life and fleeing vorts and winning or the most part… at the most I would say they would be more likely to be dropping supplies and reinforcement teams then firing off flares.
random idea: place some APCs and tanks in the out door areas not the NPCs but prop versions of them to show hey the hecu are gearing up encase of well war.
I remember an Idea I had with Surface Tension Uncut was to have an Abrams Tank run over a prone zombie (zombie with no legs) but the head crab jumps off survives and needs shooting by support troops walking with the tank.
I still have that image in my brain and I will just say please make it happen. I am not asking for a battle with a tank but it may serve as a nice introduction to what will come later in the game. And show both strength of the HECU and Xen manifestations.
The scene does tell a story. I am unsure if it can be done but disabling collisions of the Abrams might make it possible.
You’d probably need an animator for that, unfortunately.