The whole “rushed” comment stems somewhat from your hotfixes and missed deadlines, associated with ST Uncut, but more so with the pressure and mental strain that you experienced and commented on during its development and at the same time trying to balance your real life issues. That was very painful to read about. I’ve repeatedly told you, as have many others, to pace yourself and take time away from development, in order to stay mentally fresh and not to burn yourself out and avoid your work becoming a burden rather that an enjoyment. You’re investing a huge amount of time and effort in huge projects aimed towards the betterment of BM, all on your own. For me, it’s heartbreaking to hear/see you suffering at times.
ST Uncut is top-notch superlative work. I do have issues with some of the design decisions you made, but they are minor, visual matters. Mostly, it comes down to a difference of opinion in aesthetics. I had asked some specific questions on some of these that I never received an answer from you. It was right near the end of development of ST Uncut and you seemed to be frustrated and very anxious to put ST Uncut to bed and get it behind you, so I didn’t pursue matters further. As a result, the end of development for ST Uncut seemed somewhat truncated. You were not your usual jovial/upbeat self at that particular point in time and were very curt and to-the-point in your dialogue. For overall cooperative reasons, I did not want to broach this mood/dialogue. Sadly, this is where my “self-imposed accelerated deadline” comment comes into play. However, I can in NO WAY fully appreciate or comprehend what’s involved in the undertaking and making of such a huge project, or the pressures, including real life issues, associated with it, and I expect that at some point in time, one wants to finally put a long and ongoing project to rest. This is reasonable and understandable. My efforts are geared towards making sure and alerting you that you don’t inadvertently shortchange yourself, by providing you with a hopefully beneficial different perspective. In hindsight, I should’ve been more forceful and persistent in this matter, but because of my high respect for the work that you were doing, I didn’t want to put your nose out of joint. Too much respect, on my part???
Next, your mods reaching “full potential” is a combination of the discussions above, but this really boils down to a matter of opinion. Full potential to you may differ from full potential to me. Ninety-five percent of my feedbacks/observations deal with visual anomalies and perceived inconsistencies in aesthetics and level design from map to map and mod to mod, and within BM as a whole. I/we’ve seen that an aesthetic/design in BM doesn’t necessarily make it correct or right. BM had numerous level designers. Understandably, there are discrepancies in maintaining consistency in aesthetics and level design throughout all of BM, as it’s basically not the vision of a single individual. The fluidity of level designers coming and going didn’t help the situation. I’m not saying that the BM Devs dropped the ball, far from it. Considering the size and scope of BM, they’ve done an absolutely amazing job and I highly commend them. BM is TRULY enjoyable, and with the release of their upcoming update/release, the quality of BM will be elevated to a far higher and polished state. You, on the other hand, are a single Dev. You have complete control over the “full potential” of your mods/levels. To some extent, you can adopt/adjust existing BM assets that you use to suit your maps, and in some cases, you can improve upon the aesthetic look. This is all that I’m saying when I say that you should extract the “full potential” of your mods. Take ALL the time you need. DON’T think that we’re overly anxious to obtain your final version of OaR Uncut. It’s NOT important to please us, it’s far more important that you’re pleased. As you’ve stated, at his point in time, real life/university issues take precedence. Again, myself and numerous others, have recommended that you take care of your life’s most important issues. We will all patiently wait for upcoming releases, whenever they occur.
I want to do everything I can, in my limited way, to raise the quality of both ST and OaR Uncut. Just give yourself an adequate development window to methodically review and incorporate the community feedback/issues that you receive, without extending either into development hell.
In my view, and many others, you’re a modding god. Please continue to amaze us with your vision and level designs.
Concerning “revisiting ST Uncut for one absolutely final pass, and releasing a “Black Mesa Expansion,” total package”, this is great news. Incorporating further additions/enhancements into both of your Uncut mods and having them seamlessly fit into BM is all very exciting.
Text, you must surely know that I have the utmost respect for you and the projects that you’ve undertaken in improving BM. They are pertinent and vital towards conveying the full vision of the original Half-Life. My post was in no way meant to be derogatory or disrepectful. If I’ve offended you in any way, I apologize.
If I didn’t keep putting my foot in my mouth, I know we’d all be further ahead (and I wouldn’t have athlete’s gum, and the nasty taste associated with it!).
Text, remember when I mentioned about the tram bug in one of my feedback posts? After I killed the enemies on the tram, I noticed that the tram is not quite aligned to the track. https://i.imgur.com/BXO1ss2.jpg. That could explain why the tram spun around before I was able to move it towards the turntable ambush area.
You mean there was a part where things stopped being civil and on topic, and I missed it? Damn! I’m all curious now.
It’s to be expected. That’s the disadvantage of not being part of a developer team, it’s all on me. There are some great positives to it and some negatives. I can live with it. I was getting pissed off towards the end of ST Uncut because it started to feel like I couldn’t satisfy peoples’ demands, and a lot of times I was getting screwed over by my own poor work previously, as well as lots of problems I simply didn’t know how to address. That was all it was. I had lots of cool ideas and pictures for OaR Uncut, and I didn’t want to spend so much time fixing really dumb, small errors when I could have started work on that. For example, those wonky parking lines in the parking lot which Wangman pointed out, took me about 3 - 4 hours to fix, and that was with a fairly inadequate solution in the end. It was getting all very frustrating. I wanted it behind me, and I think that’s fair. Dealing with very time consuming minor issues gets incredibly frustrating after a while.
Issues remain in ST Uncut and I may very well go back and address some of the more salient ones when OaR Uncut is done; with a fresh and even more knowledgeable viewpoint. We’ll see.
As for the whole hotfixes/missed deadlines deal, I’ve already explained why that happens. The missed deadlines are me SLOWING DOWN development, and not rushing it, and stems from me being poor at predicting workloads. It has nothing to do with rushing, and neither do the hotfixes. Pretty much all the hotfixes I’ve ever had to do, except for one involving areaportals, are missing textures/models. Missing textures/models are a very common thing in this line of work because they are errors in packaging which I NEVER GET. I take my custom assets and package them into the zip file. If I miss anything by not packaging it into the zip file, I’ll never know until someone tells me, because the assets are already installed on my Black Mesa, so they will not be missing for me. Make sense? It’s a common thing in mapping, really. I’ve already gone some way to addressing this packaging problem in OaR Uncut by keeping all my custom assets in oaruncut folders, making it easier for me to manage custom assets.
Already addressed most of this in what I said just above. As for you wanting to be more “forceful and persistent” in your feedback, I’ve always appreciated the way you deliver the majority of your feedback, in that it’s generally not forceful or persistent, but rather suggestions and opinions - with an understanding that I may not necessarily agree with or be too bothered by them. Like most other feedbackers on here, you treat your opinions as such; and in good perspective and I appreciate that. I think if you’d been more forceful and persistent it would probably have just ended up pissing me off, especially given I was near the end of my tether by the end of ST Uncut anyway. We’ve already seen once what happens when somebody’s too forceful and persistent with their feedback, I think it’s better to keep it civil and in perspective. There’s always going to be difference in opinion, and it’s not too difficult for us to all handle it well, if we all chip in.
Here’s the deal. I’m going to put it bluntly, but I mean no disrespect. Our ideas of “full potential” are very, very different. I want stuff to play great, first and foremost. It should look really good too, and having everything millimeter perfect is a nice little bonus. But first and foremost, I want stuff to play well. A lot of the visual issues which might bother you, I simply don’t care about. I notice that you practically never mention gameplay issues, which are what I’m more concerned about, particularly during ALPHA testing.
Again, that’s not to say that I disrespect your opinion for placing emphasis on these issues, or even that I’m not going to address them, OR that I think your concerns are unimportant. I’m releasing this FOR other people, of course, it stands to reason I’m going to want to address issues which concern other people. But it’s useful to bear in mind that I am the one who is personally addressing this feedback. It’s only human that I’ll address the issues which I personally care the most about, first. There’s normally a fair amount of overlap between what I care about and what my testers care about, which is why this whole system works great. In the instances where they don’t, most of the issues will still be addressed, but I understandably may not place quite as much importance there. Does that make sense? I hope I phrased this in a way which doesn’t come across too dickish, but hopefully you get the idea of what I’m trying to say.
For example, a light floating 1cm from the wall, in a side area which the player can’t even access, might really bother you once you’ve noticed it. To me, that’s really not too important an issue. It’s something I can fix when all the important issues are out of the way. Make sense? This is pretty much THE developer mindset, in all honesty. The BM Devs feel the same way, judging from the thread I saw concerning feedback a while ago.
I appreciate the praise, really put a smile on my face - but let’s not use the word god! Gods don’t fuck up as regularly as I do! I’m far from a god, king, whatever. I’m just a bloke, innit. A bloke who knows how to shape virtual blocks so that they form buildings. That’s my perspective on it!
There’s no offense taken whatsoever. It’s all good. Hopefully my response has been adequate, if a little late.
This script is pretty bugged, it’ll be one of the first things I try and address once I start working on the beta for B1. It actually never bugged once during my own testing but lots of videos on the internet show that same bug, where their tram freezes and gets stuck there. I’m wagering it has something to do with the script getting bugged, rather than the tram’s orientation. Here’s how it goes - the enemy tram is supposed to come out the door when the player comes round the corner, towards the TOW, on his tram. They then PAUSE at the place where the script currently gets bugged - until the player passes by on the tram, when they’re set to resume their motion. This is timed so they end up running alongside the player. The idea is, if the player gets distracted by the TOW and tries to kill him/the aliens, he won’t miss out on commandeering the enemy tram by having them go zooming by while he’s dealing with the TOW. It just gets a bit bugged at present.
I’m so very glad that we’re still cool and that none of our “imaginary” internet body parts are noticeably bruised, broken or bleeding (actually, I think I have a loose tooth, that I didn’t have before). It was not my intention to be confrontational or to dreg up past painful memories. What you’re doing is so important towards making BMS a truly whole remake (or far closer facsimile) of Half-Life. I just want to help you squeeze every juicy drop of goodness that can be had from ST and OaR Uncut.
Don’t belittle your talent or what you’ve accomplished so far. As recognized by many, many BMS community members and at other websites, not to mention comments of praise and/or support from some BM Devs, your work is really first-rate amazing stuff, Text.
You have every right to be extremely proud in what you’ve published so far, even more so in how little time it took you to do so.
You may not like the god monicker I espoused earlier, so I’ll adopt your humble suggestion and say that, at the very least, you’re a very gifted and talented modding bloke.
Sheeesh. So much internet drama. I didn’t want this. I just wanted to make little worlds in video games and shoot aliens.
Work HAS been getting done, just really slowly as I’ve only really been able to map in half hour - 1 hour increments. Finishing this dissertation is murdering my life. To put it simply, I’ve gotten more done than I thought I would, but far, far less done than I would in an ideal world. Pretty much all the interior spaces are mapped out, at least on a basic level, which is great. I’m still working on the outdoor spaces. The cliffs have shaped up and I’m in the process of working on the beginnings of the 3D skybox.
Check back here tonight and I may very well have some screenshots posted, depending on how much I get done today. I’m taking today off from work, so there might be quite a bit of progress made on the map. It still probably won’t be 100% ready for weeks and weeks, but it will be presentable.
Yeah, it’s a shame, but he was clearly causing an awful lot of aggravation among various devs and seemed oblivious to their MANY polite and impolite requests to stop. While banning him seemed very excessive to me, it’s their house, their rules. It did seem fairly rash to me, but there’s both sides to every story. I hope the ban’s temporary and not permanent though, but even if the ban’s temporary it may have left a sour enough taste in his mouth to make him never want to return. If so, goodbye Dadster. You’ll be missed. Wasn’t expecting this at all. We can only hope he returns in some shape and form, one day. Although putting it like that, actually sounds a little scary!
When he gets unbanned, it’d be wise to trade contact info with him so you can remain in touch outside of the BM forums. This may or may not apply to you Text, just in case.
Wow, that’s a funny picture. Do you think he prowls the night, fangs bared, on the hunt for clipping issues?
I kid, I kid. I hope you come back, cheerful as ever, Dadster.
Yeah, didn’t get round to posting any screenshots yesterday for that very reason. I got quite a bit done, but making the skybox is kinda doing my head in.
Making a good, seamless 3D skybox requires a lot of forward planning and careful thinking. I always try and make the “transitional area” (the point where there is a visual crossover between the actual map and the 3d skybox) to scale, and connected to the map, first and foremost.
3D skyboxes in Source are designed by the mapper at 1/16th scale, and then get “projected up” by the engine. If the edges of the 3D skybox don’t line up properly with the boundaries of the map, it can look SERIOUSLY bad, especially when displacements are involved. Building just the first area of the skybox at 1:1 scale, connected to the map properly, takes up nearly 1/2 of Hammer’s entire grid space (or around 8,700 units, whichever makes more sense to you). I got quite a bit done on that area yesterday but I need to make the transitional area PERFECT before I shrink it down and start mapping the whole skybox. The entire skybox itself should be much quicker to map than the transitional area.
Hopefully this means I should have fully lit, polished(ish) screenies for you guys to enjoy in a few day’s time. My dissertation is due on Friday so much of my time will be devoted to that, but I’m sure I’ll be able to find the time to do SOME work.
For those of you who may have missed the update because it was hidden in long messages to Dadster - I’ll reiterate it here:
[COLOR=‘Red’]REGARDING THE FUTURE PROGRESS OF THIS MOD:[/SIZE]
University is insane now I’m in my final month. Much crazier than I’d imagined. My dissertation is due next week, and my exams are from the 21st - 31st May. I have to focus hard on my studies, this impacts the rest of my life.
What this means is, realistically, no releases will probably me made until the end of May, once university is finished entirely. This is for the best. It allows me to keep my life in order, and also allows me the time and attention necessary to properly care for this mod. I’ll still be mapping in some of my free time between now and then, so things will get done. But not a huge amount, and certainly no blazingly fast progress like in the past.
After university is wrapped up, I’ve dedicated 2 or so weeks to purely working on this mod. It’ll be all free time. Shit will get done, and it’ll go brilliantly as I’ll be able to focus 100% on it. So there’s that to look forward to.
Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.
