What’s with this hostility towards the BM devs? O.o They gave you an awesome game for free.
BTW, haven’t replied since the video release, but it looks freaking awesome, Text 
Can’t wait to play it!
I’ve played the revised maps now. I’ve noticed, that there is more xen-flora (and some dead headcrabs) added to that destroyed bathroom. its too exaggerated/too cluttered now; i found it way better as it was before.
Second suggestion: there is fast paced action music during the combat scene (with manta ray destroying the tank and so on…). Can you try instead some of joel nielsens quieter, more ambient tracks? it would be a nice contrast to the scene maybe, underlining the drama/making an interesting contrapoint/giving it a creepy feel maybe… it would be more inventive maybe. could you try that?
maybe this or similar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wyCpWPGgB8&feature=relmfu
I found some more bugs! I don’t know if this is reported already but I’ll show them anyway.
There’s a black part in the top of the mortar screen.
Second:
At this part, that door can be passed through (I’m not requesting the invisible wall by the BM Devs). I found that bug when the garg is doing that animation and tried to go back where we came from. I can pass through the door. I didn’t use noclip just sprint.
Guys, can we please keep the dev bashing away from my thread? It’s not productive and it’s not pleasant. Ultimately it’s up to them what they do with my work, Black Mesa is their child. It’s up to THEM what they do with it, for whatever reason. I hold no ill feeling towards them and you shouldn’t either. I had never intended for this to be integrated anyway so it sits just fine with me, though of course I would be delighted if I were approached. I have a lot of respect for them because their work is fantastic and they delivered it to us free of charge.
Thanks for the report. I didn’t know about the black part at the top - almost certainly the result of me nodrawing faces a bit too liberally. I’ll fix that.
As for the clipping through the door, I knew about that already, but had forgotten about fixing it. So thanks for the reminder.
EDIT: Though I would like to add, if you guys WANT to bring this to the attention of the devs and lobby for support to get this integrated, I certainly would appreciate that! The community support behind this is great. I just don’t appreciate people badmouthing the devs in this thread, it might give off the wrong impression.
EDIT 2: Here’s something for those of you that are paying attention. I’ve been adjusting the destruction in the Garage to try and find a cheaper and better way to do it. Focussing on just the hole itself (ignore the lack of props and stuff in the new way, I just hid them to make it easier to work on), would you say use method 1 or 2?
Method 1 uses the more “modern” I guess approach of combining displacements with models of destroyed floor. It looks smooth and SHOULD render better than the old method. This “new” method also copies the style of destruction the devs used on the office block in C2A5F, whereas the “old” method was entirely my own creation.
Method 2 is simply square brushes I shaped to look destroyed. It looks jagged and not so good (I don’t think). It’s the method of destruction they used back since the days of Half-Life 1.
New
Original
Is there any evidence in the garage to suggest what caused such spectacular damage?
There are a few TOW crates lying around buried in the rubble for the most astute player.
On another note, the parking lot is looking really rather very nice. I wasn’t expecting it to turn out this good, but I just did the first test run I’ve done in days for C2A5G and it’s really damn good!
Though occluders used to be a bit of a no-no for optimizing maps, I’m finding them to be EXTREMELY useful for optimizing C2A5G, where there’s an awful lot of open ground to cover. A few cleverly placed occluders seem to have significantly improved the performance.
Unfortunately there’s next to NOTHING I can do to increase frames at the helipad, really. I already have a VERY harsh areaportal forcing the engine not to render the rest of the map (that’s why the pylon disappears when you get to the helipad, I may have to delete it because as far as I know there’s no workaround and the optimization method is just too effective). You can’t actually see it de-rendering anything except the pylon, it was quite cleverly placed though I do say so myself!
However, performance should increase quite a bit for the rest of the map now, which is good news. And I’m going to mess around with occluders on C2A5H as well, which may help performance. Remember that the biggest reason for frame loss during the helipad/tank scene is due to the number of AI in operation.
Possible to work with low detail objects when u are far away and they increase in detail when u got nearer?
Nah, the LOD technique looks pretty horrible, especially combined with the suit’s zoom function. Everything in the helipad is already close enough that it needs to be rendered properly anyway. And as I said before, the majority of the system load comes from the NPCs being in action.
On an unrelated note, I’m retexturing the pillars in the parking garage to make them fit in a bit better, and to make them look a bit less Half-Life 2ish. It’s a VERY simple retexture, no bells and whistles or anything.
There are 2 ways I can do it. The pillars are textured using a very bog standard concrete wall texture from Half-Life 2 itself.
-
Recolour the texture. Replace the texture in the BMS. ANY instances of that texture in Black Mesa will now be replaced with my version.
-
Name MY own version of the texture its own unique name. Recompile all of the pillar models to use that texture. Nothing else gets changed.
You can see the problem - method 2 is a lot more work. Though I CAN do it just fine, it also means I have to repackage the pillars with my work and that will increase file size and potential for issues.
My question is this, does anyone know if Black Mesa actually uses this texture at all? I can’t remember seeing it ANYWHERE in the game, I was wondering if anyone else can recall. If it doesn’t use this texture anywhere in the game (as it’s a Half-Life 2 texture) I can safely use method 1 without worrying about it messing up other segments of the game.
Is it in the SDK? If not, it’s definitely not used in BM. But I’m guessing that it is.
Yeah, it is in the SDK, it’s called concretewall020a. It’s a Half-Life 2 texture. But I know that Black Mesa doesn’t use a great deal of Half-Life 2 assets anyway, and I certainly don’t remember seeing it at all throughout my playthroughs of Black Mesa. I think I’ll operate under the assumption that it’s fine to replace. If anyone comes across it changing the appearance of somewhere else, I can always delete it in the future I guess.
@text
that’s really a hard question.
i Don’t remember them but i would not bet a dime on
it.
you have 2 options:
1- is there some kind of devtool on source console(ingame) that generate a list(txt file) of all the requested files by a map(or you can write a script that does it).
2- send a pm to cpl1.insane(he and catzeye are the only devs on these forums) and ask this question…he must know it.
I’m gonna check my screenshots…
Edit:
Why do you want to replace them?
I think it’s easier and simple to add a new file in steam\steamapps\sourcemods\bms\materials… Is it?
Edit2:I’ve checked my screenshots. I haven’t found it.
Does this potentially conflict w/BMS standards? As I recall, you’re not supposed to use any assets from Valve.
Also, what’s the ETA on the next beta and are you gonna release a vid or just a list of changes?
MY HP ENVY can handle the mod, just some stuttering on some places, even with an Intel Core I7 2nd gen and 8GB RAM
I lag horribly with certain particles, and one time actually crashed because I hacked in infinite amounts of tripmine’s and satchels and blew them up all at once. It was awesome.
And it takes forever, and I mean forever, to load a single map
No, it’s not. I think you’ve misunderstood what I was saying. Replacing them is the easiest option by far. Trust me.
No. They’ve used plenty of HL2 assets throughout Black Mesa (if you conveniently choose to ignore the engine itself, too), and even if THAT was a problem I’ve used tonnes of HL2 assets, so this won’t be the place to start. Frankly, I don’t really care, personally.
Next beta? Day or two. I’ve pretty much finished up the next version of C2A5G and I’m very, VERY happy with it. I’ve made subtle but very marked improvements to the parking lot. The parking lot is looking pretty damn polished now. The fight on the top floor works well, even if it is small. The fight by the road next to the parking lot is much better balanced, 50/50 with nearly always just 1 survivor.
I’ve also used 5 occluders to GREAT effect. Overall optimization has improved a lot, though the bottlenecks are still present.
The biggest problem which presents itself currently is fixing the regular crashing which happens in the first parking lot fight. It seems to occur most regularly when the aliens decide to turn on the player. I’m working on it, trying to figure out what could be causing it. No cigar currently. The other crash, for the road fight, I think I’ve fixed.
As for C2A5H, I’m about halfway through changes to that one too.
I wouldn’t chance it using that texture simply because you never know where it might be replacing something.
My 2 cents about the texture dilemma:
Stick with the option that doesn’t change the other assets of the game. I like a lot what you are doing on your maps, but at least for me (and other that think like me), I want to keep testing your maps confident that all the rest of my original BM experience will remain unchanged.
Don’t get me wrong here: This project is meant to be fully integrated with the complete experience of BM, but a least at this beta stage, I still see it as a separate thing and I don’t want to mix both worlds.
I wouldn’t really call it a “dilemma”. It’s 1 texture, which I’m 95% certain isn’t used anywhere in Black Mesa. It doesn’t overwrite anything (because the texture used in HL2 exists in the game’s GCF files, you can just delete my texture file to restore it to normal), and it’s for testing purposes. The moment I get a report that a texture somewhere else in the game has changed (which is HIGHLY unlikely to happen), I will delete the file and tell everyone else to do the same.
Not a big deal really.
Having a bit of a bad time with C2A5H, messing around with the last bit of the level. And it’s made even more of a pain by the fact that I then have to make the same changes to C2A5I because those 2 levels overlap.
Hi Textfamguy,
I just played the latest version of the levels and they have turned out splendidly. Your dedication to addressing player criticism is incredible and I wanted to thank you for your on going efforts to improve this already excellent project.
There was just two things that occurred to me though and while they are minor things I was wondering what your thoughts on them were? Firstly in the pipe scene where the satchel charge gets chucked in it has a red light glowing on it. I understand you did this to draw the player’s attention to it so they could react in time, but it bothers me every time I see it as there is simply no reason for it in game. The player gets to use the same satchel charges throughout the game which have no red light and in fact having a red light would decrease the effectiveness of such a weapon (it sort of works in the garage trap in the previous level as I assume the lights are part of the wires etc.). Do you think the light is necessary, as there is no light in the original half-life version? In fact when I first played the red light actually made me stop and wonder what it was for a moment. Anyway I was just wondering what your thoughts were on this? (Maybe the presence of the satchel light has something to do with the floating red light that appears at the beginning of that level)
The only other thing I noticed was how peculiar the sign on a stick looks in the furnace room, it just seems very out of place. Could you not just put this on the wall at the end of the balcony for the same effect. I assume you put the sign in such a over the top way to ensure people read the sign to know what to do, but I think it is fairly obvious what to do anyway. Also by subtracting the obvious sign placement you may increase the difficulty of the puzzle (infinitesimally) which may help with the concerns you mentioned some people having about it being a proper puzzle. What do you think?
Anyhoo thanks again on your superb work!
Hey, I have a question. In the satchel charge scene, did you use the unused “CATCH” audio clip? I ask because I’ve watched your videos, and I didn’t hear it, but it could’ve just been drowned out by the ambient noises and such, and I didn’t think it was worth downloading the beta just to check that issue.