Second Garg & Tactical Map

Black Mesa Archive The Cafeteria
#1

I’ve played up to the end of Surface Tension, and I just played through the part from the vent-shooting to the tactical map. What really struck me how the game really changed at this point, quality-wise.

Many things happened simultaneously:

  1. The soldiers shoot the vent, and it sort of crumbles in a quite unrealistic way
  2. You expect the soldiers to keep shooting you, yet you find a Garg shooting them instead, what? Where was that giant monster just 2 seconds ago?
  3. The garg starts chasing you, and kind of just walks through cars that explode, it’s almost impossible to see that it’s actually pushing them to the side at all, in HL1 this was quite spectacular, here it’s just a bit messy and weird
  4. The framerate drops to like 5fps (the rest of the game was smooth as butter)
  5. You exit the tunnel and you arrive to the outdoor area, at which point I quickly hid in the water
  6. What do I see? The garg attacking one of the towers and ignoring me… WTF?
  7. Then I realized that you’re supposed to climb that tower, of course… but the Garg is scripted to attack the tower, regardless of whether you’re on it or not
  8. The tactical map was a pain in the ***: you can barely see what’s on it, and it took me ages to figure out that I was meant to click with the mouse to set a point, instead of using the “Use” key. Not to mention the whole thing is vibrating as the Garg attacks the whole tower, and the frame rate is at 5fps.

Did anyone else feel like this part was quite poor quality, especially compared to the very high level of detail of the rest of the game?

#2

I agree on all accounts.

The garg definitely needs more of an entrance, to justify the guards shooting at the vent, because at this point they see a giant monster robot running towards them but they decide to shoot the vent open?

I knew I had to use mouse click to set a point, but the vibration really threw me off most of the time, I didn’t even bother killing the garg, just blew up the antenna and ran the fuck out of there. At least the tactical map didn’t flicker like for some people.

Also later in the game, when you have to kill the first sniper, it took me at least 5 grenades to kill him, it seems like increasing the throw distance would fix this.

#3

The framerate drops didn’t happen to me (not in that moment at least) that must be a problem on your part.

Also while I kind of agree with your point 2 you should remember that the aliens in black mesa con appear spontaneously. Agree with everything else though.

#4

I did exact the same thing >.>

And the map did flicker for me :frowning: It took me like 5 minutes to kill that garg.

#5

The tactical map wasn’t an issue for me, but combining those two scenes was rather jarring.

#6

Yeah it kind of takes away from both scenes.

The vent getting shot isn’t as cool because you can see the soldiers that are shooting you, so you don’t really notice the bullet holes they’re putting in the vent. Also, it’s really hard to care about the vent getting shot up once you see the Gargantua behind them. And then the Garg totally ignores them and goes after you, which is just really weird.

#7

That sequence was the highlight of the game for me. When I dropped out of that vent I nearly shat a brick when I saw that fucking Garg right behind the marines. I ran like fuck and didn’t look back. =P

#8

You played it by the book, if you look back you see it clip and glitch through the cars and teleport out the door and back before starting to make love to the tower, while you’re safe on the other side of the road.

To me, the way it was scripted made it seem like I shouldn’t even have control of the camera, the whole sequence looked like an HL2 preview at e3, designed to be played by a developer.

#9

Agree with this… yet I also agree a little with the other comments… :3
I was also a little disappointed that you couldn’t DESTROY ALL THE THINGS with the air strikes…

#10

I have to agree, this section looks like it was playtested only by people who knew exactly what to do. If this was executed less sloppily this certainly could have been one of the best parts of the mod. It was really awkward hiding behind the antenna and staring at the Garg slam on the tower.
The way I passed this part was fall through vent, squeak in terror, turn around, run, jump in water. Climb up, hide behind antenna, stare. Move closer to garg, he runs towards me, run back, he goes for the tower again. Eventually I figured out I could trick him into standing next to the antenna while I pegged it to the tower to blow his shit up.

#11

They said that the developer of this part of the game dropped out of the project. And it’s pretty obvious. A whole section in and around a building is completely scrapped between the vent and the garage Garg.

I’m fine with the scrapped part; it was pretty much filler (although it does mean there are less scripted battles between Aliens and Marines, which should be solved in future patches), but the vent thing and the garg battle should be different events. By making them happen literally at the same time, the iconic scene of the marines shooting at the vent is completely overshadowed.

Also, yeah, in the original HL you had time to actually look at what the Garg was doing with the cars and the marines. I didn’t have a problem with the Mortar mouse-based UI, personally, but it did felt incredibly underwhelming. The rest of “iconic HL scripted sequences” have been expanded in some way or another, but this felt slightly worse than the original, instead of better, like the rest of the game.

It just felt… awkward. The vent shotting being overshadowed (and what about the Garg? What the heck were the soldiers thinking, shooting at a vent, when there was a Garg right there?), the ridiculous chase with, indeed, much more tension, but much less spectale too, the fight that should’ve felt epic but was just slow and awkward with the Mortar UI…

I don’t know, people. It was one of the scenes with most potential for improvement, and they didn’t. It’s not really “bad”, but dissapointing. But even beyond that, it does look like an underveloped section. It wasn’t thought-out well enough: from the marines shooting at the vent when there is apparently a Garg right there, the increase in danger in the chase (which sounds good, but makes it just lose its spectacle), the iconic words through the radio being completely overshadowed by the music, the potentially epic Garg fight being reduced to a clunky anti-climatic UI…

It’s a small part of the mod. It doesn’t hurt it. But it’d be great if they reworked it somehow. Make the vent shooting in a different room, followed by the Garg and the garage; make the chase more visually interesting by giving you some time to look at it (in other words, make it more difficult for the Garg to maneuver around the cars and add soldiers); lower the music or change it up somehow so that you are able to hear the iconic radio words (“Forget about Freeman!”), and letting it be the audio focus, above the music and the Garg.

#12

the garg is the main thing causing the framedrops i think (if its not that, then its the tactical map)

and i agree the HECU soldiers didnt have logical consistancy in that scene

#13

That is my main concern. Make those events separate, in two different sections. Not only will it flow better, it will make SENSE. In HL you heard the soldiers first, and the vents made a lot of sound… so they shot at it. In the current version, what is happening exactly? “Oh, look, we have a loud, big Garg right here trying to kill us… wait a sec, we have magically noticed there’s someone inside that vent… why don’t we focus on that and then completely forget about it two seconds later?”

#14

If I get the BM SDK set up sometime this century, I’ll try decompiling the garg map to look at the entity work in it. I have an idea about tweaking the vent shot scene. I’d add the garage sequence back in but modify it so that the garg tunnel is relatively close to the garage workshop. Perhaps the shooting sequence would take place after the player has moved through most of the air vent, and instead of the bottom falling out the duct splits and the player falls backwards into the garage to add to the disorienting feeling.

#15

I think they should keep it like it was in half life… They have to do bug fixing in the map files anyway they should just try to update the maps now with the missing content.

It’s really only a small amount in the game that is missing.

I am glad they released what they had… But the beauty of modding is they can expand it and improve it all they want.

surface tension should be restored to it’s former glory… On a rail perhaps a little exapnsion here but not much an extra track and junction would do.

Nissing content from office complex like the zombie behind the door and the big fan that chops up the headcrabs and the scene with the alien grunt pulling the doors open in lambda core should also be in.

It’s actually not all that much that got dropped. I am sure they can find and recruit mappers / animation scripters to work on these parts now the mod is hugely successfull

#16

I experienced no frame rate drop, so I guess it’s purely down to individual systems.

I also did the same thing as OP and ran past the tower. When I turned around he was hammering it. It was pretty amusing.
So I decided that I may as well try and climb it since that was obviously where I was supposed to be…and then he one shotted me.

#17

I shat a brick when I saw the garg breaking through the door, then I ran like hell without looking back, then I used the trampoline-like thing to jump up the tower (instead of hiding in water, like almost all other ppl) then I tried to break the wall and the door like in HL, but then it turned out you must only destroy the pillar and open the door by hand -.- I had framedrop here as well.

Maybe the soldiers heard something moving inside the vent and shot at it, but then they suddenly heard garg coming and they focused on a larger threat ;p that kinda makes sense.

This section is one of the best twists from original HL, where player expects to fall to the garage with some soldiers instead of fucking garg, and thet’s why it’s so shocking. I didn’t look back at garg, so I didn’t see the clipping glitches, but only because I played it like the devs expected it to be played. So it should be corrected a bit.

#18

Did you people never look towards where the bullets come from? The Garg breaks up the door behind the marines as soon as they start shooting. They didn’t know he was there.

Though, it doesn’t take away the feeling that the garg hunt was sort of an anticlimax.

#19

They heard it coming? Unless it’s supposed to have teleported into the room, it does not make sense. They shoot at you, and literally two seconds later the Garg is right next to the soldiers.

But anyway. It’s not only about making sense; mostly, it is about pacing. The vent shooting should feel like its own great little scene, instead of being instantly overshadowed by the chase scene.

And again, the garg chase (mostly because of its music) overshadows the iconic “Forget about Freeman!” line.

It’s just… strange pacing throughout that section.

#20

Yeah I agree - Surface Tension was the least well done part of the game for me. The parts which were good, were really good. The vent shooting and the Garg chase was just awkward. It worked fine if you played it as intended - not looking back, going straight up the tower. But I jumped in the water, and the Garg just started attacking the tower. It was certainly an awkward scene.

If they were able to fix it up a bit for their steam update it could have a lot of potential to be really exciting. There also need to be way more scripted fights between the HECU and the aliens, so we can see them losing and thus having a reason to pull out. This Garg chase is a good place to start. Perhaps you could be legging it alongside loads of other marines also running away from the Garg. Kind of like in HL2 in Nova Prospekt where the mother Antlion appears, and you and the Combine briefly forget your differences and try to kill it. It could be like that - you’re running away for dear life alongside them, and they’re being crushed and killed all around you while you’re all trying to get away. Could be a very exciting and poignant scene.

Oh and the monitor was really glitchy for me too.

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.