They were bugged.
When Deniz re-did our AI, he fixed this.
This sounds damn cool.
But will said scientist say something special if you kill the sniper before he shoots the scientist?
I always wondered if they would make him say something as well, since it seems kind of funny that he just stands there after saving him.
Edit on a side note nice forum update
Maybe he could not freeze up, but I think it’d be a bit strange for him to acknowledge a sniper he didn’t even know was there. As far as he knew, Gordon just threw a grenade in a random direction.
There are a lot of instances in the game where people just refuse to interact with you, sometimes in really strange ways. You know they “accept” your use button since their heads turn to look at you momentarily, but they don’t say anything. The original Half-Life had filler lines for this, hence the “Catch me later. I’ll buy you a beer.” line that made it all the way to Half-Life 2. Example - the lady in the cold storage area, which I saved from headcrab zombies. She ran into a corner and then just… Stood there. I tried speaking with her and she’d just look at me, but wouldn’t talk or do anything. OK, lady. If you don’t want armed guy in power armour to help you, you get yourself to safety.
Granted, the same was true of Half-Life, but Black Mesa generally does things a lot better. Previously, NPCs would follow you until you reached an obstacle they couldn’t navigate and they’d simply stop. Black Mesa actually has scripted events where NPCs will stop following you and assume specific positions, usually giving you verbal reasons why they can’t go on. It makes the game feel far more immersive when the guy says “Wow! I can’t make that jump!” vs. when you just have to leave him with nary a word. Trouble is that those sections are so good, it makes sections where this isn’t accounted for feel… Awkward. Hey, I just saved a scientist from a soldier. Can I speak with him? “I do believe he was trying to kill me!” Good on you, Dr. WhatsYourName, but do you want to come with me? Maybe hide somewhere? Do you have a reason why you don’t want to ride the elevator up? He just stands there looking at me. OK… Good luck with that.
Finally, a request: Can we get the “move order” command from Half-Life 2? You know, the one which causes followers to stop following you and go to a specific location for a while? I replayed Half-Life 2 recently, and found this incredibly useful for getting my companions out of trouble, so they don’t get killed. For instance, I knew there were going to be many enemies incoming, so I ordered them inside a building while I fought the Combine soldiers off, thus saving their lives. Or is that too big of a departure from Half-Life?
I’d like something like this as well. Worked nicely in HL2. I’d say pressing “E” on a person would make them join/leave your team, and using “C” would call them to you or send them elsewhere.
And, of course, their dialouge would be more casual than in HL2, where people see you as some sort of leader. They’d say things like “Good idea, doc.” or “Hey, good call.”
Hey guys, we’re doing a bunch of work on multiplayer currently, and we’d love to hear your ideas. Maps, modes, features, whatever! We’re gonna be doing constant content updates post-release, so what the community is interested in is super important to us.
What gamemodes are you already planning, besides DM? I think someone posted you were also doing Team DM and CTF, both of which I’d like to see. Some kind of King of the Hill/Control Point mode seems like it would be pretty fun, and could be set up on the maps you’re already making.
Also will you be remaking any of the maps from the Further Data disks? I remember having fun on a couple of those maps, though I don’t remember their names.
Many people have suggested this over the years and the Black Mesa team has said over and over again that they won’t implement the system for whatever reason.
Some will return and some will not. You’ll have to wait and see which ones…
But if your favorites don’t make the cut, you can always try out our mod tools and workshop access…
We’ll be launching with DM and TDM, but other modes are in the works and we’ll be rolling those out in regular updates after we launch.
Simply for the sake of saying it again: I really enjoyed the “BM Tower Defense” concept map a while back. As somebody who’s not super competitive, I’d love to be able to cooperatively fend off marines/aliens/enemies.
As multiple users have pointed out, there are multiple instances where dialogue is needed/appropriate to negate awkward/unnecessary silence. Sure, it doesn’t have to occur, but sometimes it just comes off as strange without any scientist or officer speaking to you.
Ex. 1: In “We’ve Got Hostiles”, if you get rid of the two trip mines right before the first H.E.C.U encounter, and bring those two scientists near the turrets with you, they do not follow you towards the elevator. It seems strange. They could say something along the lines of “age is coming to me, and climbing over a simple box is much too hard for me with these conditions”.
Ex. 2: The famous sniper scene in Surface Tension, which I see has been mentioned a lot. If you managed to kill the sniper before he shoots the scientist, the scientist doesn’t even thank you for your actions. A simple “thank you, Gordon. Continue on. I must attend to this guard,” or something would be fitting.
Those are the only things can suggest to the Dev Team. I’m (shameful plug) planning on doing a Mind Series with Black Mesa, and more dialogue for me to respond to would be appreciated. There are other things I would recommend to, but the majority of those things have been addressed already.
Not just that. The scientist right at the start, the one who normally runs into trip mines and then a sentry turret is supposed to die, but saving him is fairly trivial (shoot the tripmines, Magnum the turret). He doesn’t have anything to say about this. Worse, bringing him back to the starting area doesn’t count, since he’s not there when you circle around to the control room. Be nice if we found him alive in the control room later on, cooped up with the all-knowing scientist.
You can even have him rush back to the door he comes out of, or even drag the guard back to the little dead-end room. He will obviously refuse to follow because “I need to tend to his wounds.”
As far as multiplayer game modes go, I’d honestly like to see a sort of DOTA-like NPC-based mode. Have you guys played the old Future Cop: LAPD game? That one gave you a base and some limited resources with which to buy tanks/helicopters to slowly move towards the enemy, as well as turrets which could be captured along the map. Indeed, Future Cop predates DOTA as far as I’m aware, and it’s been copied in games like Super Monday Night Combat. The basic flow of the game would run along the lines of…
Remember the defence of White Forest from Half-Life 2: Episode 2’s chapter “Our Mutual Friend?” I’d imagine a map kind of like that, with a bunch of non-linear paths going from one starting location to another with supply caches/spawn points along the way. One team would play as “Black Mesa” and the other as early Xen alien collaborators (to explain why everyone has human weapons), so one team could spawn soldiers and tanks while the other could spawn the various Xenians, with a Gargantua in place of a tank.
The map, indeed maps, don’t have to be an open field, either. You could also do this along enclosed corridors deep inside Black Mesa. You can even borrow a page from UT2004 by having each control point be linked along a grid such that you need to have a “route” to it, avoiding the Battlefield problem of one solitary douchebag capping a point deep behind your lines.
I know this is outlandish and probably not going to happen, but it’s really the only game mode I can think of that’s not basically a rename of a Quake 3/Unreal Tournament game mode.
Why did you remove old gibbing system where you could gib an enemy without killing it first? I’d like that to be in this final version.
I’m excited for the multiplayer to roll out. I think I’d really like to see a CTF mode, if nothing else. That and the two DM modes would be great.
Ain’t that just a question of dmg? I mean if we gluon things, it gibs them pretty instant. Speaking of gibbing… whats the console command to allow the shotgun to gib the enemies? I also wanted to ask about the leeches? - are they gone for good, or they might be introduced in the next release?
Nope. I could set RPG’s damage to 5 million and it still wouldn’t work. Instant gibbing was clearly removed from explosions. There is even a gib testing video in Black Mesa youtube channel and it appears only Gluon and Tau cannon (charged) gibs instantly now.
Damn you are right! Rocket launchers should gib things all right.
Both the Gluon Gun and the Gauss Gun have their own special exceptions about how they gib people. Frankly, I prefer games without gibs at all, but that’s just me.