Just because something is iconic doesn’t mean it should be overused. In Half Life 2 valve realized the headcrab was iconic and as a consequence there were more headcrabs in the game than any other kind of alien. Damn that game lacked enemy variety.
Maybe, but it’s not a reason to remove them entirely “because it’s too hard” (which is BS btw)
When you re-imagine the game you can make it anyway you want.
I suggest you open up Hammer and get started because by the look of things you’re already years behind.
While I personally think crouch-jumping is a big part of Half-Life, it was a bit overdone in Black Mesa. That’s not to say I wasn’t able to familiarize myself with it, but I know that it deters some people from continuing early on because for some, it can be hard to learn (even though that wasn’t the case for me), so that “We want a fun and challenging game, but not a frustrating one.” in TextFAMGUY1’s earlier comment definitely rings true here. Anyway, auto-crouch-jumping can be enabled and disabled as of my last check.
Just because a person isn’t a developer doesn’t mean said person should not be permitted to voice an opinion. It’s not like this was a broad attack on the game in its entirety. That isn’t to say an opinion cannot be flawed or based on false premises, but if that is the case, ‘that’ is what you should point out.
I sense derailment.
Switching to on topic:
Since the Xen is more or less an open area, i wonder if we could climb most of the rocks there,
just for exploring pleasure.
It will also be awesome to play a mod that one would make in the future that would be like a side quest to the main story.
Modding for Xen is gonna be so incredibly difficult though… excessive displacement-work aside, the devs are outsourcing a lot of the detailing to 3DSMax etc. in order to circumvent Hammer’s (and Source’s) limitations.
Outsourcing implys hiring someone else to do assets etc, we just have a different pipeline. There is currently no way you could make even an 1/8 of a map in hammer based on model density. Modern engines are really very different from source. Look at portal 2 there were lots of areas that you couldn’t do in hammer (I think Maya was used). We are really pushing the limits of the engine.
Yeah, poor choice of words on my part.
I wonder if we’ll see color correction in the settings menu, because me and a lot of my friends prefer the more vibrant look of the pre-existing Surface Tension maps.
Also, whilst on the topic of settings. When can we see the “Black Mesa” settings tab being split up into the other tabs. The weapon fast switch should be in the controls tab, DLights in the video settings and stuff like Houndeye Tinnitus can be in a “Game” tab alongside the difficulty.
Going the extra mile, you could implement explanations for “video game settings dummies”.
A rework of the UI is actually scheduled for the future from what Chon said quite a while ago, so we’ll likely see a re-organization of the tabs along other improvements along with it.
So we’ve got a definite release date for Xen itself… but any idea when the engine update will come out?
From what I’ve seen looking at decompiles of the STU maps, either the developers have no idea what they are doing when it comes to basic level design, or there’s a lot of new and interesting things in store.
Or the compiler is messing up somehow with the new BSP format. I remember trying to decompile crossfire to find the concrete/sand blend texture’s path (Why does impulse 107 not work with displacements?!) and having Hammer just plain refuse to load the file without crashing.
I also recall one of the HL1 decompilers would hollow out every brush entity back in the day, so it’s not like there isn’t precedent for a decompiler taking a properly-made BSP and spitting out a poorly-made source file.
The crash-on-load issue actually has a workaround now. The decomps have some wacky optimization, but other than that seem pretty solid.
Just remembered about this mod and I must say congrats
I also just saw when I joined this forum and it was 8 days off of being 8 years ago
Lovely to know I can finish this off properly by the end of the year
Looks beautiful, can’t wait!! (Actually I can – take all the time you need!)
I’m getting hyped for this already, but I have a major question to ask… Just after you’ve left the test chamber and rendezvous with Isaac and Eli, you see a headcrab, Lamar, flash in, which immediately intrigues Isaac. This wasn’t included in the original Half life but it did give a bit more flair to the chapter and also made clear when Isaac found Lamar, which was a question to me throughout playing Half life 2 and its episodes, even though I searched the whole forum about it. My question would be, if you will be adding some matter of view into like, a combine invasion starting on Xen? Or perhaps Earth? Like, it doesn’t have to be long, but a few seconds of seeing their invasion fleet arrive or something. Would be amazing 
a bit off topic, but the combine invasion didn’t start until hours after freeman killed the boss (I am not trying to spell that things name). so it is unlikely that we will see the combine, though the machinery on the final boss is combine tech so that is the biggest hint we can get.
Well Gman teleports gordon to the tram wagon, so in theory nothing would stop him from teleporting Gordon to a scene with the Combine fleet invading earth.
Just put Gordon to sleep without him knowing it, wake up in front of Combine fleet, give choice: Either give up or die.
Comparing, say, Stalkers to gunships to the design of the Citadel, the Combine doesn’t really have any single design aesthetic that makes it identifiable; so I don’t think it would be possible to have Combine technology appear unambiguously in Xen without it being in the form of HL2 props or some other pre-existing thing, or having someone basically point at it and say “that’s the Combine”.
Although, fandom being what it is, every scene in the ending is going to be picked over for evidence of TEH COMBINES HL3 CONFIRMED anyway, so such measures are probably not necessary.