Pre-Disaster Planning Thread

General Development Source 1
#61

How do you think that the tram system will work? Will the player select a location from a map or something? That would be really cool. It would also be cool if the player had the option to sit through the tram ride and look at the bustling facility during their ride, like the ride in Black Mesa Inbound, but it can extend to other parts of the facility, and have shorter or longer length.

I think that when all of the maps are finished, there should be changelevels added in the tram system so that you can choose where to go. E.g. at a junction the player either goes left or right depending on the location selected at the beginning, and the tram goes past certain points (like if at the end the tram went straight past Sector C instead of stopping)

#62

I have a weird fondness for OAR, so having a working rail system would be nice, perhaps with some controls somewhere for the few sets of points that are visible. Having both the tram system from Inbound and the OAR railway be functional means of traversing the facility would be amazing.

I also wondered, how much stuff can you reasonably get on the trains? To determine that, I tried putting crates on the trains. Every size of crate seen in SP. Exactly how many fit depends on what you consider the loading gauge to actually be. If you assume “fits below doors” and “no wider than the train itself”, you get, on the regular flatcars:

  • One of the big ones from what was the box smashing room in HL1 (just about. It’s resting on the frame of the car rather than the planking)
  • Three of the “FRAGILE” crates (do those ever appear in SP?)
  • Two of the big smashable wooden crates (the tarpless ones), on end or standing upright.
  • Three regular sized crates. If you like precarious-looking stacks, you can get six on. Alternatively, use one of the crates that’s the size of two regular crates stacked up (like the tall metal ones)
  • One of the big plywood crates
  • Four of the small plywood crates.
    The cars with controls, you get:
  • Two regular sized crates (or four if you go double-high)
  • One of the big smashable crates, either orientation
  • Four of the small plywood crates
  • Two of the “FRAGILE” crates (this or the previous one make it a bit of a squeeze for the operator to get on).
    You can also fit twice as many regular crates on if you don’t mind them being supported half by the frame and half by the planking.

It’s also mildly annoying that if you take the effect of stitching all the maps together as canon, the similar tramlines from Blast Pit have both ends pointing away from the bulk of the map. Maybe there’s more silos that we don’t see?

#63

At the moment, I am thinking that we’ll just have the player get on the train, select their destination from a map or list, and fade to black. Setting up an entire Inbound-style rail system would be neat, but sadly I think it’s a bit beyond our capabilities.

#64

Anything is possible, with the extremely obtuse and convoluted power of Hammer. :stuck_out_tongue:

#65

All right. I’ve got the technical side of the de-bloodied textures working, I just need somebody with good photoshop experience to actually remove the blood from the .tgas (I tried it myself and simply lacked the skill):

EDIT: I’d have the tgas attached to this post, but the upload feature doesn’t seem to be working…

#66

I’ve done a bit of cropping/cloning/touching up before with GIMP that might suffice for a passable attempt at this, if no-one better equipped steps up. Maybe host the files on an external file upload site?

#67

I’ve got photoshop experience, and i recommend that you upload the photos with Postimage.
It’s a simple image uploader for forum usage which doesn’t allow public viewing.
Only people with the link can see the photos, or in this case this thread on the forum.
Simply upload the images and put the photos in the comments.

#68

Good idea for the future, although for the time being I’ve managed to attach them to the PM system.

#69

Alright, if you want, you can send me the files and i’ll get down to removing the blood stains.
I am not promising anything though.

#70

Debating whether or not I should go ahead and make a dedicated Questionable Ethics thread. On one hand, there’s a lot of QE-specific stuff building up on here, on the other I really don’t see myself adding much more.

Development of new areas for F map is VERY NEARLY completed- I also made the lighting just a bit more even, and turned off the yellow lights in Cryonics that were unaccountably bothering so many people.

The holding pens gave me a whole host of problems because the way they are described on the facility map doesn’t actually fit spatially with the area they need to occupy, but after much fiddling, and revising the whole area at least twice, and pretty much disregarding any sense of a grid, I’ve finally got something that I think works pretty well:

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#71

can’t wait to see the actual map!

#72

I’d’ve had it up an hour ago, but the publisher tool is still not working for me.

#73

They released a new public-beta a week ago with some bug fixes, but I don’t know if they fixed any issues with the publishing tool.

#74

While we sit around and wait for the upload tool to get fixed, I’d like to share an issue with the expansion of Questionable Ethics:

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I’m going to be putting every room on the “Biodome” map into the mod, eventually, but that makes some of the maps extremely big- F map is already pushing around 180% entdata with no LCSs and very few triggers, and E map, fully expanded, would be like twice the size.

I think some restructuring of the maps is in order, and those little “decon” rooms provide a perfect place to insert new level transitions (once I actually get them working so that the doors are typically not open at the same time).

I’d propose making a new “D” map that covers the lobby and the non-lab service areas of E map, which in turn would free up space in E for the new labs. H map would still cover the outside areas, and the top floor looks pretty manageable in its current condition- I feel like it wouldn’t make a huge difference in performance if the little section of labs C1-C6 was part of D map, or if the transition to the completely new “purple map” (Map I?) happened in that little corridor right off the lobby.

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#75

entdata should be less of a concern now. The STU maps were so entity heavy that we doubled the entity limit in the engine to account for it. We figured it would be useful for modders too. Disregard Hammer’s “entdata” report, it was never accurate or terribly relevant anyway. The in game edict/entity reports are way more useful.

#76

:smiley:

#77

Something from the images above tell me that Admiral Sakai is a Russian.
:smiley:

In anyway, that’s a nice plan for dividing the map into sizeable pieces.
What about Biodome Facility Floor 2?
Why are the blue and purple overlapping?
You didn’t decide how to properly divide the map or?

#78

Actually, I’m a 'Murcan. I’m just using the Russian textures addon because it makes the map a little bit crisper and easier to read.

And yeah, the two-tone area could go either into Map D or Map I, depending (I guess) on which one is bigger.

#79

In the Steam Release Launch Day Livestream, Chris Horn briefly mentioned how he had to cut part of the Questionable Ethics chapter due to engine limits, and how the finished result was still pushing the limits of the 2007 engine:

#80

Hmm… any chance of there being design assets from the cut sections floating around somewhere?

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.