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

General Development Source 1
#1301

Yeah, where is it ever said to pick up barrels to use in front of you? Barely any players do that

I’m sorry for liking Houndeyes, but just having Grunts and Vorts gets boring after a while. No offense to TextFamGuy1, but it’d be nice to have a little change even if it means going against the original map. Bullsquids are very underused in both games as well, but they don’t fit in with the Suburban look of Surface Tension

I’m pretty sure TFG1 is busy balancing and actually making the map better. Ammo/health placements are very very minor. Especially if there’s a lot of them. You could only have a valid complaint if there was next to none. And stop being so hostile, he quietly disagreed with you and you went full out apeshit on him

I… I can’t see the logic in that. It could just be the particle effects of the portals and the large amount of NPC’s
Plus the HDR nearly doubles the mapsize, but HDR is just wonderful.
Jump Pads are basically props, the only thing that distinguishes them from a cinderblock other than appearance is the fact it propels you up

You can also use the other ways of getting up, like the stairs

#1302

Just throwing in my $0.02 guys, it didn’t strike me as hostile, just not very carefully worded.

But anyways, Wangman the poor performance didn’t have anything to do with the jump pads, seeing as I didn’t add any. The performance thing is likely placebo effect, because, as I said before, I actually removed quite a few props and entities.

As for the crashing, lots of people seemed to be getting problems with the parking lot/the adjacent road, including myself. My current assumption will be that those were the first areas I actually set up - back when I was learning how to do the AI. I’m going to assume that the logic and AI entities used during the scene are inefficient/poorly programmed. I know what to do now, so I’m going to redo the AI and encounters for that bit from scratch.

I don’t plan on adding any of the more “exotic” aliens, I’m afraid. The game is, at this point, supposed to be transitioning you towards the idea of an alien army, which is Vorts/Grunts. There weren’t none in the original, either. I KNOW they’re underused, but…there’ll be plenty in Xen.

We’ll see! I’m working on performance and AI mostly for the next version.

#1303

@TextFamguy
All this “passion” for your work should make you happy… :stuck_out_tongue:

I had one of these deadlock again…
Vort can’t kill the lav and the lav can’t shoot to the vort(under the range of fire of the .50cal)…

1920×1080 411 KB

Can you reduce the number of vorts?

About the Lav can you explain a thing?
Why it never uses its primary fire(that big cannon)?
In ST the tank uses it against freeman a lot…

About my previous post about the exploit in the 2nd puzzle of c2a5h…
did you fix it?

Finally my desktop has got back from its oblivion and I played c2a5g and h
@1920x1080…
man…It’s stunning!

…and It’s also easier to see mantas and harrier pop-out in c2a5g.

#1304

Quote from TextFAMGUY1 Re: main gate and the security booth in C2A5H

“I suppose I could do that, yeah. It’s a bit of a shame to see that little guard door going though, but never mind. I liked that side door. But, you’re right, a big sliding door just makes MORE sense.”

Want to keep your precious little guard door?

  1. Change the existing main gate doors into a single door. Increase the height of the building the door is attached to. Have the door lift up into the building, similarly as some other doors do in BM.

or

  1. Change the existing main gate doors into a single door. Have it open by sliding to the left, into the building.
#1305

Got one question/concern:

The BM Dev team apparently won’t accept map submissions as fan contributions to Black Mesa. Do you think they’ll make a special exception for your maps, since they add what was missing from the BM experience? Have you had any sort of feedback from them?

Even if they’re afraid of signalling that everyone can submit maps if they accept yours (which would be a silly reason not to accept them), it’d be a massive shame if they didn’t, considering the quality of your work and how popular it’s become. This really should be more than just an unofficial BM mod, and I’m hoping they decide to work with you on this.

#1306

I had a bug in a play-through today of the latest version released where none of the tripmines in the upstairs room before barney were there.

Also had the disappearing tank someone mentioned earlier. The tank that gets destroyed by the manta beam. It was fine until I came back outside when barney unlocked the doors and the bottom half of the tank was missing and the turret part fell to the ground.

#1307

The LAV…does use his main gun. That machine gun IS his big gun, isn’t it? I’ve never seen them use anything, anywhere else.

As for the exploit in C2A5H, not too bothered about that. That little “exploit” is still a little jumping puzzle in and of itself! And it’s complicated enough that I think most players won’t bother, and if they do it doesn’t have too much of a negative impact anyway.

Shrugs Eh, if they don’t want it, they don’t want it. I can’t make them change their mind. I’ll leave it here for the community to enjoy and judge separately. I wasn’t planning on submitting it to them anyway, it’d be up to them to make the first move. I’ve had comments from moderators on this thread but nothing from devs, and that’s just fine by me.

#1308

Regarding the minefield tentacle, i saw this:

https://forums.blackmesasource.com/showthread.php?t=15437

TextFamguy1, do you think you could eventually try implementing the tentacles through hammer in some of these spots sometime? EliVance mentioned that he had trouble doing this, and the only way he could get this working was by using the npc_create command.

#1309

They must. There is simply no excuse.

#1310

I agree. I just played your maps yesterday and they’re exceptional. Unless the BM team is planning on re-adding these portions themselves, I don’t understand why they cannot consider officially implementing them or offer to work with you on them.

#1311

It’s not that easy. I could probably do it, and no disrespect to Elivance but VVIS has absolutely nothing to do with a tentacle entity. I’m going to work here under the assumption that he doesn’t know anything about the Source SDK, which is fair enough. The VVIS errors were likely caused by him not rebuilding the areaportals when he recompiled the map - areaportals get messed up when you decompile, and have to be manually remade in order to get VVIS to finish calculating visibility. Otherwise it gives you areaportal leaks which cause the compiler not to work properly. The difficulty would lie in the design, however. It’s not quite enough to drop an npc_tentacle in the middle of the desert and hope for the best. There’s a lot of scripting involved, though I’d have to look into it.

I don’t really plan on doing it, anyway, I’ve still got TONNES of work to do on my maps. Consider it something I may do if I get bored one evening.

In other news, been grinding away at the car park in C2A5G, giving it some serious love. Unfortunately frames are probably going to be lost due to my visual improvements, but I’m hoping the upgrades I’ve made to the map’s general optimization may help to offset that a bit. The encounter on the top floor with the aliens is shaping up nicely.

That’s high praise. Thank you for your kind words. I will hold no grudges against the team for not choosing to use my work, it’s entirely their choice. I agree it seems like a bit of a waste of an opportunity to me if they were to decline, but it’s up to them in the end.

#1312

ahahahahah! :smiley:
you have portraited my knowledge of hammer in a phrase.

Trying to defend myself, when i tried to run the map hammer started to fix some decompiling issue(vvis.exe of course!) then crash.
anyway i’m no longer interested about this topic, you’re maps are more important, imo.

It’s funny to see that i have advocates that ask for help

#1313

makes me sad to think the devs maybe aren’t even thinking about putting your maps on the Greenlight release (or in Black Mesa in general)

#1314

Maybe they don’t even know about it?

#1315

some one point this out to them.

#1316

dude, I just saw a dev checking the tentacle in the mine pit (it was Cpl. 1nsane) thread

I’m sure they are aware of this, but I don’t know, maybe they are waiting for the final release and not betas

#1317

Or maybe they’re just too arrogant to admit that their initial release wasn’t perfect, and they’re gonna not include your maps out of spite. Sad to say, that’s my guess as to what’s going to happen. The Black Mesa dev team certainly seems that petty to me.

#1318

and what have they done to make you think that? Whether they want to add content to THEIR game is THEIR choice.

#1319

Oh c’mon guys! Let’s leave the devs taking care of their biz while we fans take care of ours. Some time in the future they could (or could not) include the maps in future updates. Who knows? We just have to wait and see.

Lets do our part to help on improve this project until the devs say a word about it.

#1320

There’s only three reasons why they would potentially reject this mod. #1 This reason (most likely). #2 They’ve already restored ST (less likely). #3 Text refuses to agree to the creative commons license (even less likely). Again quality wise, there is no excuse as these sections are overall better than most, if not all of the rest of BMS because of the attention to detail, incorporation of player criticism, scripts and balance (eventually). Visually, the only places in the game that are as impressive are the Blast Pit and the hydroelectric dam.

I’m already weeks ahead of you. Perhaps you guys should do the same.

Also, I have gotten Joel to look at this mod. Cpl.1 may have as well. As a side note, the devs do not use community projects in general. The only things I’ve seen from past projects that have been incorporated in game are the alien schematics in QE and possibly very tiny slivers of music from other contributions.

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.