On A Rail Uncut - Re-Adding Cut Areas/Scenes (Expansion Project)

[k3nny1550]

I wouldn’t go that far. Text doesn’t have to add as many art or animation assets. From what I’ve heard from Ram, just trying to add animations to a model is a royal pain in the fucking ass. First, you would have to decompile the model, then work out the animations in an outside program, and recompile the model into the .qc to add the model to the game. It’s a very inefficient process.

Level design work is NOT easy, though. Having slaved away on maps for HL2Ep2 for years, without ever adding art assets, I can speak from experience when I say that mapping is very difficult. There’s often technical problems or glitches that make things more difficult, the Source SDK’s updates often being chief among them.

[Salk]

@Kaweebo

As much as people complain about him not being able to keep up on promises, you gotta give him props for endurance. If he was on the BM dev team, he probably would have knocked the whole game out in maybe a year and a half. At most.

I was actually thinking the same!

Text is really a one-man modding army. I have no idea how he can be so productive. Of course he goes through intense hours when he’s 100% focused on his work but how quickly he can accomplish this level of quality modding is almost unbelievable.

[RK1]

@k3nny1550

I wouldn’t go that far. Text doesn’t have to add as many art or animation assets. From what I’ve heard from Ram, just trying to add animations to a model is a royal pain in the fucking ass. First, you would have to decompile the model, then work out the animations in an outside program, and recompile the model into the .qc to add the model to the game. It’s a very inefficient process.

Level design work is NOT easy, though. Having slaved away on maps for HL2Ep2 for years, without ever adding art assets, I can speak from experience when I say that mapping is very difficult. There’s often technical problems or glitches that make things more difficult, the Source SDK’s updates often being chief among them.

Quoted for truth.

There is much more to making a level than simple hammering it out in Hammer (haha, geddit? I done made a funny? Because the program is named Hammer, and… I’ll shut up now). TEXT has gotten a lot of slack in his level design because all of the things he needs to make these maps are already coded, modeled, textured, and everything else. And even then, it still takes him a few months to refine the things he does. Making these things is a very long process.

That’s not to say that he’s doing a fantastic job, because he is. But you have to remember that the devs have done lots of work too, and they are also fantastic at what they do. I wouldn’t want to go around and say things that undermine them, yeah?

[TextFAMGUY1]

@Kaweebo

As much as people complain about him not being able to keep up on promises, you gotta give him props for endurance. If he was on the BM dev team, he probably would have knocked the whole game out in maybe a year and a half. At most.

Actually, I don’t remember anyone ever complaining about me not being able to keep up on promises. I would assume that’s because most of the members of this community understand that I’m an inexperienced final year university student, working on this very large project - in my spare time; which isn’t a great deal of time. While I’m very enthusiastic about this work, I am in the end only a single person, not an entire modding team or a professional game studio. I make this stuff for free, and for love of the game. I don’t see how people can get mad with me breaking promises here and there, with all that considered. It’s not like I “break” promises for any cynical or selfish reasons anyway - life is busy, and I’m pretty picky when it comes to releases. At the end of the day most of my “broken promises” have been because I simply just want to make the release better, and haven’t had the time to do that. The A maps are literally twice as good as I wanted them to be for the alpha release, by this point, and I regret nothing - I’m very glad I decided to carry on working on them in the fashion I did. I do regret being overeager and making a lot of promises which I couldn’t keep - but I hope people realize that it’s really just an honest mistake caused partly by a lack of experience and partly by my over-enthusiasm.

That’s one of the great things about the Black Mesa community anyway, which I love. They know how to wait for stuff!

@.RK

Quoted for truth.

There is much more to making a level than simple hammering it out in Hammer (haha, geddit? I done made a funny? Because the program is named Hammer, and… I’ll shut up now). TEXT has gotten a lot of slack in his level design because all of the things he needs to make these maps are already coded, modeled, textured, and everything else. And even then, it still takes him a few months to refine the things he does. Making these things is a very long process.

That’s not to say that he’s doing a fantastic job, because he is. But you have to remember that the devs have done lots of work too, and they are also fantastic at what they do. I wouldn’t want to go around and say things that undermine them, yeah?

I’ve never encouraged talk which undermined the Black Mesa devs, I’ve let it be known many, many times that I’m inspired constantly by the quality of their work and that I have the upmost respect for what they’ve been able to do. I do know the sheer amount of work involved in an endeavor like this, particularly one of such high quality - and the fact that they’ve done it all for free is just remarkable. If Black Mesa were a full priced game, I would pay for it without question. That’s not to say BM doesn’t have its lion’s share of issues, it really does - but the parts which work, work brilliantly.

Anyway - more relevant to the topic at hand - I’m currently packaging and preparing the map set. Expect it in a few hours. I won’t make a joke about it being for real this time, either.

[DivineShadow208]

At first I was very pleased that the BM Dev team shortened OaR becuase I didn’t like the HL1 version that much at all. Played it thru twice or so. But when I played BM OaR again I realized the beauty of what the devs accomplished and the atmosphere they created. After that I wanted more OaR. And I can’t wait the get my hands on the alpha’s!!!

[Dragunov2]

SooN!

[TextFAMGUY1]

[COLOR=‘Red’]Update: Released! FUCKING FINALLY[/SIZE]

Latest Version: OaR Uncut Alpha 1A. Download here.[/SIZE]

PLEASE REPORT ANY MISSING TEXTURES TO ME IMMEDIATELY SO I CAN FIX IT AT ONCE. This refers to when you see purple checkerboxes, or giant “error” signs around the map, it normally means I’ve forgotten to include a texture with the map. As this is the first release, those are to be expected.

Well, it’s finally here guys. Sorry it took so long, I’ve worked very hard to bring it up to scratch, development time took a helluva lot longer than I thought it would. However, this does mean that the maps are a lot further along in the development cycle than I thought it would be - it’s looking great, I’m really very proud of it! It’s tied into the Black Mesa campaign seamlessly - you should be able to play OaR from start to finish and my maps will be added without any problem whatsoever.

A few notes about this Alpha which you should read before playing. Firstly - it is an alpha, it’s still clearly a Work in Progress, things are subject to change and will be adjusted over the course of development, which still has a ways to go. Currently the least worked on aspect of the expansion is the optimization - the Office Complex is not well optimized - though everything else on the maps should run smooth as butter. Of course this is something which will change further on down the development cycle, as the designs of areas are cemented and I have more time to work on the technical details of optimization.

It might also be useful to bear in mind that I am absolutely sitting perfectly on the edge of the entity limit for A2. Expanding areas and adding more content is actually out of the question. The suggestions I’m looking for here are more to do with modification than addition.

This release is technically representative of how OaR Uncut Lite will look on its final release - or rather it’s representative of the amount of additional content that the Lite version will add - as the Lite version will implement A1 and A2.

Any and all feedback is welcomed as long as it is constructive and phrased in a civil manner. I will try my best to address all concerns in the time I have, and incorporate them into the next update - and I will be studious and try and respond to all of them. Community feedback is very important to me. I’m using a slightly unconventional release method here - my definition of an alpha is probably 3 times more developed than people would expect an alpha to be. This wasn’t particularly intentional. However - this is my testing roadmap (I posed this a couple pages back but wanted to highlight it)

Alpha
Beta
Release Candidate
Final Release

And that’s it. It’s not the same as ST Uncut which had 4 beta versions, and 4 Release Candidates. As such I’ve brought the Alpha up to a much higher standard than you might expect, and it’s because of this plan. Only 4 test versions, rather than 9 or 10 like ST Uncut had.

And that’s it, enjoy it guys. I’ve had a blast making this, I hope you have a blast playing it. This thread has had a lot more ups and downs than ST Uncut did, but I hope that hasn’t put anyone off, and if it has - sorry!

There’s more to come, sit tight! In a few weeks the B maps should be in a presentable state, and they too will have their own alpha release.

[Chickenprotector]

@TextFAMGUY1

[COLOR=‘Red’]FUCKING FINALLY[/SIZE]

Lol. Downloading now and going to test the shit out of it. Thanks for the amount of work you put into these things. It makes BM all the more enjoyable.

[jone4s]

holy shit… so fast o____O i ll dowload it now

[RK1]

Damn school web filter…

I’ll be sure to download it tonight, then I’ll be able to test the maps.

[Marooner]

Alright, downloading it
Gonna take a fuckton of screenies for providing feedback

[omegalucas]

D’loading it. 2 minutes to go

[Artic_Xiongmao]

It played great. But first I will mention the bugs I noticed, before praising the level or doing any in-depth critical analysis.

Well, just one thing before the bugs: in the battle between vorts and soldiers in the toll bifurcation (where the track divides into two for the toll gates, and then unites again, by the side-entrance to the offices), if you enter it by foot from the track on the right, you will be surrounded by a dozen of vorts. By the time I got there, none of the soldiers were alive; just a dozen of vorts, most of them in the same side as I was. If I hadn’t been on god-mode, I surely would’ve died, without much opportunity to do anything about it. Most of them zapped me at the same time.

Another thing, though; apparently the vorts don’t have much range or something. Those on the other side didn’t even look at me until I got really, really, unrealistically close to them. I guess there’s nothing you can do about that.

These are the two missing textures I noticed. Same thing, different color:

Then there are some lighting errors. The plants in the cafeteria (two of which are very, very low-res, btw) aren’t affected by the environment at all, it seems. It’s like the models are full-bright or something. Then there is a window which looks way too bright too, from most angles, and it interferes with the fan model, which isn’t affected by the same light. Look:

And finally, the computer:

The problem? Well… why is it there? The video image is so low-res that you can’t literally see anything. Either put it in a bigger screen or just take it out, that’s my suggesiton. Also, as you can see, it’s not centered on the actual screen correctly, and you can see the switched-off screen from the original model behind the superimposed video-feed, on the right side.

[Dragunov2]

Downloading it NOW!

[Strider397]

Wow text your ST experience really shows on these maps, truly nice work.

1. When I got to the “running over the grunt scene”, I was going kind of slow and he ran off the planks and to the side. When I continued going forward I ran over the wood and he gibbed while he was alive even though I was nowhere near him with the train.

2. Under the loading ramp in the crane room this big steel piston should be removed from under the loader; out of place I think.

3. As said before these pipes are missing their corners.

4. Same room, the gibbed soldier has a missing torso and his arms are off in another corner. I would pile them together, it would look better I think.

5. Nice hidden zombie area just add some blood on the walls.
   

   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

[Chickenprotector]

I get the same error with the pipe corners. Didn’t notice it with my first playthrough.

I’m limited on time, so I’ll do a quick run down. Over all, pretty well fucking done. Atmosphere in the Office complex couldn’t be any more ideal. The early parts reminded me so well of F.E.A.R. There’s a few bugs I noticed aside from what Artic posted about with the plants:

A1/A2:

You can spam the button on this lift.

Shouldn’t these doors be closed at first?

You can collide with Debris (tools and such in the office undergoing reconstruction) you stuck on the third level.

The gun doesn’t turn (Client side, the game recognizes the turret turning, but the model stays in place for some reason, it may be because of the vort killing the grunt on the turret, a simple fix would be to have him get off the turret before the vort kills him).

I believe this door was supposed to lock it’s in the third vort battle scene:

[Artic_Xiongmao]

Those doors were closed at first for me. Couldn’t open them, as intended. Weird.

And yes, you can collide with too many debris. In the crane control room, which is pretty small and crammed, one of the chairs becomes a real nuisance.

[Strider397]

Continued from before…

6. The 50 cal in A2 gets jammed movement wise still functions normally when used. Also to add to the grunt on the 50 I would remove the vort that spawns behind him for the sake clearing the hoard of vorts that spawn in the area.

7. As said help the 50cal gunner clear some of the vorts or have the ones that spawn on the fare side only spawn once you get close to this area (they sniped at the 50).

8.Very nice job on the office battle the music really set the tone. However the scene where the grunts run in front of you into the room with houndeyes is very dark. they should be highlighted with lights like in your first promo video not sure why its SO dark right there.

9. The bullsquide in the office should be munching on the scientist rather then standing idle in the corner.

10. As said before, 2 of the plants in the cafeteria look like there from xen or something really out of place. Other then that, that cafeteria looks better then ever.

11. One of the doors in the yellow hallway, down by the vort vs HECU battle opens to reveal more hallway.

And that is all that stood out to me, AWSOME JOB SIR!!

[KyuuGryphon]

I’ve finished playing through these maps, time for feedback.

First off, these are brilliant! They fit in with Black Mesa’s OaR maps just fine, and are a good reimagining of Half-Life’s OaR maps. The cafeteria and the offices both fit in without feeling out of place.

Now then. Two thoughts on gameplay improvements:

• The Houndeye pack in the first map (setpos -1820.687866 -1862.785889 200.031250) isn’t unfair, but I’ve managed to get caught on Houndeyes a few times. I dunno if there’s anything you can do about that, or if it’s worth looking into. Also, the door starts out open and can’t be closed for me.

• The player can run across the electrified rail if they have enough health/suit charge, meaning they can skip the office complex/tram area (setpos 7163.311035 1116.195801 219.031250)

As for some other smaller things…

• The room with the two Bullsquids and Marines is missing some pipe models (setpos -885.136108 -1638.783203 200.031250):

• The lighting on a set of doors near that room is kinda glitchy (setpos 590.338806 -2002.993042 248.031250):

(They can also be lit independently, didn’t get any screenshots of it while playing)

• The lighting on the rails near the crane section is a bit off (there’s also some minor z-fighting going on, not sure if you can do anything about either of these, setpos -427.736023 -402.020599 248.031250):

• One of the windows by the cafeteria is really bright for some reason (
  setpos 5690.971191 5047.655273 456.031250):

• One of the doors in the Vort vs. Marine battle arena is unlocked, but it’s a dead end (setpos 7024.941406 3605.043457 247.531250):

• The blinds in some of the larger windows in the office complex do some z-fighting (setpos 5778.684082 4129.627441 680.031250, setpos 3256.871826 4984.781250 616.031250, for instance):

• The rolled-up carpet in the office complex has some z-fighting (setpos 4640.005859 5339.384766 680.031250):

Overall, everything works smoothly, even if the office complex isn’t that well optimized yet. I’m looking forward to more, this was fun!

EDIT: Also, I’m not sure if this is something to do with the maps or the tram in BM, but there are a few spots where you can jump off the tram and it’ll keep going even if you’ve got it set to stop in the options menu. I don’t know if that’s something you can do anything about, I’m not sure what causes it. I’ve noticed it happen at the start of the first map and near the military ambush at the start of the second map.

[Dragunov2]

Just played through it!

Wonderful job done to it!

Found some bugs aswell, but first had a look here and they are already posted!

• Bug with the door opening and rock behind

• Maybe a bug related to the engine, there is a light above the door to illuminate it and if u go forward and backward, the shine on the door disappears and reappears

But not alot of extra bugs (not posted) found in this release