Surface Tension Uncut - Re-Adding Cut Areas/Scenes (Expansion Project)

General Development Source 1
#281

yeah I thought about that but you could do that any way the way it is now… :slight_smile:

especially as a few momments ago there was a rocket stash

Better to make the tank indestructible and only be killed by the Manta but be a threat to the player

I would also like to see a zombie with no legs is crawling in the road and the tank rolls over him :slight_smile: lol

If anything can make the player wait in the ruins the legless zombie being squashed by a tank will do the trick before it starts shooting at the player or anything else

It would be a very calm way to start things off before shit hits the fan not to mention a very memorable momment.

This just has to be how it starts surely?

#282

I have beta tested some games, one thing I have noted and others have noted, players are more likely to shoot at or look at something that if firing at them. its a good way to draw attention but its also bad in some areas. you don’t want the player destroying the tank. I have some ideas for this that would work with yours but still

  1. place a broken wall between the palyer and the tank, have it only fire at the player once destroying most of the wall but not allowing the player to pass after the shot aliens come in and become its primary target, allow it to get 2 shells off before the manta comes in and blasts the road and part of the building the players in, effectively opening the rest of the wall allowing the player into the fire fight.

2.(removed bad idea)

edit bad visual of 1. (image uplaod failed made it wider than it was)

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green=tank
red= area tank destroys with its shot (to small for player to enter or fire rpgs but big enough for good view)
yellow= manta beam
light grey= building collapsed from beam

#283

Yes this was the basic idea but to bring the tank in closer you need the zombie with no legs crawling down the road towards you with the tank hot on his heels… :slight_smile:

90% chance that the player will stop to watch the zombie get squashed from a great view from above in the ruins

After bringing the tank in closer the Manta destroying the tank is more of a surprise because of the view angle and it comes from behind where you are looking at the point of danger.

And you cannot destroy the tank with rockets only the Manta can destroy the tank here

#284

only problem tank can’t squish things in BM. that and no tank driver would run things over when there are soldiers supporting it, think it shoould move to location like it and its squad are patrolling, you see them taking a path only for one of the soldiers to point you out causing the tank to shoot giving away their position.

edit: seen idea

tank enters liek it does now, only to move down the path to the door the player is to take, half way down the road one of its suport soldiers point out freeman, causing it to turn it barrel on him and fire, this alerts the xen army to their location causing all hell to break lose. this gives the player a bit of a rest before, the seen allowing them to reload and prepair for combat.

#285

Basically I love the idea of the tank running over one of the weakest enemies… It shows their hate and that they are calling on the war they want revenge.

I don’t care what direction it comes from but as far as stalling the player to stay in the ruins this has a good chance of working.

Just for the hell of it Textfamguy could you put him in and make a video just to see what it looks like?

even if only for a laugh

Yeah I like this but have the tank stop where it is now the support soldiers spot him and then more war I guess like you said before no more than 2 shells one for the wall blocking your way back and one for the floor perhaps then theres no hiding

#286

As already noted once, there’s some lighting bug with flashing object close to a tank firing.

#287

What? It’s gunfire from the marine on the roof

#288

It doesn’t look like it should cast the light like that to me.

#289

I see my little “surprise” video has received a lot of criticism! That’s good, at least people are somewhat fired up by what I’m doing.

I’m going to take this opportunity to remind everyone that the content there is HEAVILY work in progress. Though the fact that it’s fully lit may make it seem like its close to completion, it’s not. I threw together a quick hollow skybox just to make it look nicer for the video - I haven’t done anything else lighting wise yet. The parts of the level beyond that are nothing like complete yet, and won’t be for quite some time. It was more of an attempt at a concept, particularly to do with the music.

All the major kinks will be worked out. I know the group of Mantas and the Harriers turned weirdly, I know the tank behaved retardedly, I also know the beam jumps to the right of the tank rather than through it. I think too many of you have taken this too literally as “this is how it’s going to be”. It’s not. I was testing an idea and I was happy with it as far as that goes.

I see a lot of suggestions about how the battle could be - particularly many concerning how the Tank should seem a threat to the player, engaging him, or the Marines start attacking Freeman. I’m afraid I simply cannot agree with you here. The chapter following “Surface Tension” is “Forget About Freeman”. The Alien Invasion and the HECU’s problems, by this point, are supposed to be far bigger than Gordon Freeman. The military is supposed to be getting pounded by aliens. Making Freeman the focus here, as he has been for most of the game, seems narrow-minded and counter to the aim of the story, to me. By this point they don’t really care about Freeman, they’re trying to desperately pull back this losing battle against the aliens.

So to conclude, sorry. I quite liked the way I structured it concept wise. It’s a battle between the HECU and the Aliens - Gordon Freeman is a bystander by this point. It’s all become way bigger than him - even though he’s pretty much the only one who can stop it. Of course the implementation is highly flawed - it’s supposed to be at this point.

C2A5F is very unfinished too. But I’ve been working on it for a week - which is nothing in mapping terms, and it’s looking pretty damn good I think. C2A5H, what you just saw in that video, has been the product of two day’s work. It’s going to be slower than C2A5F - this level’s got a lot that needs to be messed around with compared to C2A5F. Give me time. Perhaps it was a mistake being so open with my releases. I don’t want people to misjudge me based on what they’ve seen here. In a week or so, you will see something far more impressive. My video wasn’t really supposed to be for nitpicking, it was a proof of concept.

With that in mind, I’ll move on to my current progress, but please bear this all in mind.

Aside from that, I made some pretty good progress on C2A5H after the video. Blocking out new areas has gotten boring so I’m detailing walls and things now to make areas look less copy/paste. The gasworks factorylike area is well underway and it’s just going to be a small jumping puzzle section involving steam and fire to break up the action/set pieces a little. I did take a fair amount of inspiration from the concepts that Ronster and Chickenprotector were throwing around (think the first shot on post #253, pg13), but obviously moulded it to look more like Surface Tension does.

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HEAVILY WIP.

As for the satchel pipe and the furnace room, they basically suck. I’ll have to work something out eventually but for now I’m leaving them alone. They’re a fair bit smaller than in the original.

Sorry for the wall of text, was just spewing out stuff in a stream as it came to my mind.

Edit: On another note, I need to figure out a way to “finish up” this map, story wise, so to speak. The original had you meeting a Barney and taking him to use his keycodes to unlock the door for you. The dev team did record some lines for this, but they’re not terribly informative. I’m not sure it’s going to be easy to communicate to the player that he has to go back the way he came and go to this specific door, especially given how much more complex the geometry and stuff is on my BM map compared to HL1. And I hate escort missions. In the screenshot above you’re going to find Barney in the red and blue metal shack, which is supposed to be like the security/central office for the area. I was thinking there could be a master control panel there or something which he can switch on to open the door for you once you get there, so you don’t have to escort him. It’s not great, but I think it might be better than taking the HL1 approach, unless anyone has any better ideas?

#290
  1. For first, you don’t have to repeat yourself with “it’s work in progress” it’s obvious. If that’s because of some retarded negative comments in regards to your work from youtube and such, then ignore them. Take into consideration only criticism aimed at helping you out with ideas/changes.
  2. Escort would mean that if he dies, screen fades to black and the lastest save is loaded, right? I say NO.
    It’s pointless… try to be creative and give this “Barney” a brand new purpose in the map, like opening a passage to a shortcut for the player or something.
    EDIT: would be nice to see this map in motion as well, even if early W.I.P.
#291

Well it’d be pretty obvious about the work slowing down. It’s still a huge achievement to get a map like that done within a week’s time.

From what I’ve seen in the media you’ve posted of your project, all I can say is… damn. The battles are pretty epic and I really do enjoy watching them tear into each other.

On the flip side of the coin, did you intend the mantas to be flying at super sonic speeds? The BM wiki says they’re capable of speeds greater than Mach 1.

If not (yet), that’s alright. If you do intend to stick it in the map, I would suggest that the mantas fly at a high altitude, you’ve only got about 1/4 of a mile at least on the open area in the map (giving a guesstimate) they travel that fast per second roughly if they travel somewhat over Mach 2. The best way to do it would be to use a scaled model imo, otherwise they’d zip on by too quickly for the player to notice.

What exactly do you want to wrap it up with? I hate escort missions too.

I guess if you really wanted a good way to open the door, gather up charges and put them next to a door and blow it open could be an idea. It’s not an escort mission par-se, but you do need to carry a few parts scattered around the map to complete a circuit the grunts were going to use to blow open the door. Then again that may be a far more of a pain in the ass thing to do than escort the guard to the door…

#292

can I quote my self on my idea for the barney?

#293

Really nice work!
I was wondering why the game is so short. XD
And somehow I’ve missed these scenes
I can’t understand why these sections were removed ?
I hope the work is going progressing well and there are no problems that could delay a release

#294

Nice work with C2A5H…just saw your latest version on youtube. The one major issue that stuck out for me was the aerial battle. It seemed kind of unusual for the 3 mantas to fly away from the harrier and then have one fly back so soon and kill the Abrahms. Perhaps you could have the tank killer manta come in from behind Gordon to make it more believeable. The manta’s shadow cast over the player could be a nice “oh shit” moment.

Also, I agree with your tank comment…it should be focused on the alien battle as Gordon is a non-issue this late in the game. Plus this lets the player actually watch the script as opposed to avoiding it because of tank fire.

#295

At textfamguy… Whatever you do i am certainly not going to complain but please take any critiscims as totally constructive… More like feedback.

I do not mind the way you have the scripted scene just throwing ideas to try to help improve what is already there

i suggested the apache as A replacement only because it handles differently.

The legless zombie being run over by the tank a distraction to stall the player in the ruin

and the chimneys from hl2 as perhaps more industrial and will fit the furnace area better more of an extension to what is inside… They do not need to be dynamic props but they would perhaps fit the scene and bring something new

#296

just a suggestion in the scripted scene with the harrier and mantas:

-they are way to close to the ground, it takes atention from the fight on the ground. They should be smaller, around a quarter of the size. Also since the harrier is chasing the mantas, show one manta with a trail of blood, and tracer flying from the harrier towards them, like a intense dogfight.

THEN suddenly, the manta that kills the tank, big and intimidating , to seal the action packed scene.

#297

My favorite thing: the garage doors for the cars on the shop don’t open to an empty alley with no other exit.

#298

As a side note, when you’re working on this scene, is there any possibility of including the alien cannon as a scripted sequence? Examples:

  1. Alien grunt uses mounted cannon to take out a tank or Bradley
  2. Two grunts bring a mobile cannon into battle and use it to take out said vehicle

This could be a nice alternative to killing the Abrahms with the manta, since we’ve seen something similar in your C2A5F sequence. Plus the alien cannon cameo is nice.

Also, I plugged your videos into my “Help improve BlackMesa (post suggestions/fixes)” thread (https://forums.blackmesasource.com/showthread.php?t=15188). Keep up the good work!

#299

Just a quick update: hardly any serious progress made. This level is now frustrating me. C2A5F was really fun and I sailed through the mapping but this one is far more annoying. I’m trying to push out my work as fast as I did before and it’s angering me. So I’m cooling off a little, easing back on the throttle. I’m still working on it, but I’m not aiming for the same speed of work that I did before. Don’t worry - it’ll still get done, and still done quickly enough. I do want to finish this project and am determined to, though I am suffering from some “mapping fatigue” I guess. I’ve been mapping every day since I started last week, many hours at a time and it’s worn me out a little. Maybe I’ll feel better tomorrow after a short break from mapping. The map is entirely blocked out now and “finished” in that respects, but I’m not entirely happy with the way its gone and will probably end up significantly overhauling some areas when I come back to it tomorrow morning. Don’t lose faith in me just yet - I am close enough so that if I get a good day in tomorrow I can show another video of the map after the initial large battle up till right until the end (heavily unfinished, but a proof of concept).

#300

you have done a great job so far.
I can hardly believe that you created so much in few days.
don’t try to overdo:
take your time…

about the end of the map,
I approve your idea

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.