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

[darkone]

could you get the jet to shoot at the manta?

[Dragunov2]

What I mean, u speak about the time u need to make them, well, there is still some amount of extra time left on them if u read the feedback and do something with it.

Sorry my native language is Dutch, so I try to express myself in your language, at least I try.

Cause I don’t think alot of persons here do speak Dutch aswell…

[D3lta]

@dragunov2

What I mean, u speak about the time u need to make them, well, there is still some amount of extra time left on them if u read the feedback and do something with it.

Sorry my native language is Dutch, so I try to express myself in your language, at least I try.

Cause I don’t think alot of persons here do speak Dutch aswell…

I speak it :3.

[Dragunov2]

So two of us

[bur]

three (and bolteh), but i never use captions

[Mr_GameCrazy]

Last bit of feedback here before you release ST Uncut 2.0 Beta.

Surface Tension Uncut V. 1.11 Feedback(cont.)

Map 5H

27. In this area, it seems that one of the military cases clips through oart of the left side of the sandbags. https://i.imgur.com/QJhUrwe.jpg
    Closeup: https://i.imgur.com/xKjox5W.jpg
28. In this area, this part of the handrail is not connected. I suggest that you get this part of the hand rail to connect to connect them.
29. In the same area, get that small part of the handrail to look like this one over here.
30. In this area, the fire seems to disappear and reappear depending on how far you are from it.
31. In this area, the stairs are not aligned to the floor.

[D3lta]

Aint you guys Vlaams (or however you say it in english).

[Flatline]

@TehBoxNoob

Aint you guys Vlaams (or however you say it in english).

That would be Flemish.

[DivineShadow208]

I’m Afrikaans. We understand Dutch perfectly!

I’m am very much looking forward to the new version of ST Uncut, because the previous release was perfect but this will make it flawless. With the added uncut v1 I find myself replaying ST over and over again.

[bur]

Flemish is a group of Dutch dialects, so I don’t see how that matters (@ boxnoob) but yes

Afrikaans is wonderful It sounds so funny and delightful to Dutch-speaking people

[Dadster]

I love the smell of an updated level in the mornin’!
.
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[Dragunov2]

So a release is imminent?

[TextFAMGUY1]

[COLOR=‘Red’]Update: v2 Released![/SIZE]

Latest Version: 2.0 Beta. Download here.[/SIZE]

Here it is. After a week and a half of solid blood, sweat, tears, and far, far more work than I’d anticipated, here’s the beta for v2 of Surface Tension Uncut!

I’m really proud of just how much I’ve been able to improve something I’d previously thought was the best I could do. Just goes to show how much I’ve learned about mapping since working on OaR Uncut, and how there’s ALWAYS room for improvement. Kind of a poignant life lesson really if you think about it.

But deep, meaningful philosophical discussions aside, I hope you guys enjoy this new version. I worked really hard on it and I now think it’s every bit as good as anything the BM Devs could have come up with. G is the most improved map BY FAR but H has seen a fair few improvements. I and C3A1A haven’t seen much at all aside from a few minor bug fixes, but then they didn’t really need much IMO.

The biggest focus of many of the major changes I’ve made have been with the purpose of making the maps feel better connected, both to one another and within themselves. There are far less dead ends and weird connections now, everything should flow a lot better and there are lots of hidden goodies and side routes for the curious player to explore and be rewarded.

The scripted scenes remain largely the same but the aesthetics and design are dramatically different in a few places - most notable the TOW Courtyard and the Helipad. Performance wise it’s a little bit of a tricky story. I’m going to do more detailed benchmarks (I’ll record avg/min/max FPS for different areas and compare the results from v1.11 to v2) tomorrow, but for now I feel like from my test runs that performance has improved in most places on G, by quite a large margin in some areas. The TOW Courtyard and the Helipad probably perform a little bit worse than before, or possibly the same. I consider this to be acceptable as I’ve dramatically improved their visual fidelity, a little performance loss has to be expected. It’s not ideal, but it’ll have to do.

As usual, let me know if there are missing textures, and all that horrible stuff. I don’t think there will be, I checked the packaging quite a few times, but you just never know. I’ve also fixed the soundscripts with thanks to Ysrael and Ulrik who both helped me out a bit there, and some of the captions have been tweaked too.

I’ll be making a video tomorrow most likely for these of you who can’t/don’t want to play it for whatever reason. As usual I really look forward to hearing this great community’s feedback, as it always helps to improve my work even further. The next version will be the final release version of ST Uncut v2, assuming there isn’t a vast swath of bugs reported. And I mean real bugs, not things clipping into walls by 1/10th of a unit (DADSTER!).

So, I move onto OaR Uncut, most likely starting on Friday. B2 still has yet to be finished. We’ll see how long it takes. I really ran out of inspiration on it which is why I switched to working on ST Uncut, let’s see if this break from it has helped recharge my batteries in that regard.

I’ll leave you with some screenshots, and the changelog (warning: it’s huge!).

@CHANGELOG

Assorted/General
-Reworked a lot of the closed captioning and subtitling (thanks Ulrik/Ysrael). Lots of the sound volumes were the same, changed the scripting to make certain sounds louder and others quieter.
-Fixed a whole host of clipping and other weird visual bugs. All major visual anomalies should now theoretically be eliminated. I won’t mention many specifically as otherwise this changelog would be worth a dissertation.
-This one’s quite big and a little embarassing. Finally actually landscaped the displacements. I was a little shocked, upon revisiting ST Uncut, to find that nearly all of the “natural” landscape within the maps were completely flat. I’d “painted” the alpha rock textures onto the displacements like you’re meant to but hadn’t actually added any height variation, which looked weird. Now all the displacements feature slight bumps and ridges, to make the natural landscape, well “natural”. An embarassing oversight on my part to have not done it before.

C2A5G
-Reworked the flourescent lighting scheme in the car park to be uniform.
-Removed the small brush cracks in the top floor of the car park, and replaced them with decal cracks. Though it doesn’t look as good, it has improved performance a lot.
-Lowered the windows on the second floor to make them easier to look out of. Also replaced the window on the right with a slightly different model to make them non-identical.
-Added a side window to the top floor of the car park which overlooks the airstrip. Pretty view!
-Added quite a few new areaportals to the car park to hopefully improve performance a bit.
-Switched out a destroyed Humvee for a truck on the ground floor of the car park, and put an explosive crate or two around the debris, to signify that the exploding supply truck carrying TOW missiles/etc caused the damage.
-Fixed a bad visual anomaly on the garage doors on the street, causing some of the door to poke through the frame.
-Added a flickering light to the bottom of the infested vent, for enhanced moodiness.
-Made the dust motes in the garage a bit more subtle.
-Fixed a broken bit of AI logic in the vent drop scene where the HECU didn’t actually shoot the vent at all. I must have broken it at some point and nobody noticed.
-Made the exploding window initially transparent and redesigned the frame a bit. Though performance suffers a bit, it does look much better/more believable.
-Reworked the explosive ambush scene quite a bit. It is now much less elaborate and looks like it was thrown together very hastily using military supplies.
-Added some more new destruction to the explosive ambush scene. Not only does the wall with the door actually explode now (which makes the explosion seem much more real), the door flies off towards you. It’s cool!
-Added a high shelf underneath the exploding window, making the jump significantly easier. If the player messes up a bit, they’ll drop onto the shelf, and can just climb out the window.
-Added a small clip brush to the lip of the car ramp you’re meant to jump from. Also makes the jump a lot easier.
-Almost complete redesign of the TOW Courtyard, to a new design which is superior in almost every way. Switched out the weird curve into two lanes for a T junction/intersection.
-Completely reworked the side area next to the TOW Courtyard as well. It is now a small outdoor car park with a tunnel leading into the building at the back. It fits the theme an awful lot better than the (frankly) terrible and slapdash generators I’d put there before. This side area also allows a much better view of the 3D skybox.
-Quite a lot of additions and changes to the 3D skybox. Expanded it further by adding some more hangars, roads and buildings. It looks pretty beautiful now, I think.
-Put some military supplies on the massive M1075 truck and put some near it as well, to suggest the military were unloading here prior to your arrival. The stash of military supplies/explosives near the truck also suggests where the military would have got the explosives for the ambush from too.
-Made the fence leading to the fuel station meshed instead of solid. Makes it much easier to see now.
-Removed the weird ribbing/extension part from the building at the back of the TOW courtyard. Looks a lot cleaner/more sensible now.
-Changed the door at the end of the TOW Courtyard a little. There are now satchel charges rigged to it with a few explosive crates beneath it. This suggests the HECU were trying to blow through the door prior to your arrival. The switch is nonfunctional, and there are scorch marks on the door to suggest the TOW alone wasn’t enough to punch through it. The door is now destroyed by ANY explosive damage, not just the TOW. This is an experimental change to try and make that scene more intuitive and sensible, but I’m very on the fence about it. I’d be happy to change it back if the community didn’t like it.
-Eliminated the failure condition from running out of TOW rockets, as the door can now be destroyed by any explosives/by shooting the crates.
-Reworked the AGrunt ambush significantly after the door is destroyed. Now instead of all 4 charging at once, 2 charge at first, and the other 2 spawn at the far end of the road and run towards you. This gives you a few seconds gap between the two waves, making it both easier and closer to its HL1 counterpart.
-Redesigned the building behind the red wall just to look better.
-Redesigned a very large portion of the Helipad and its surrounding area. Though I was happy with how it was before, it’s actually way better now. Some of the changes include:
-Redesigned the helipad itself to match the ones found in Apprehension, which frankly had a far superior design to the ones I’d used on G’s helipad. It’s also a bit less claustrophobic underneath the helipad now, which is good.
-Redesigned the ramp leading up to the Helipad which the HECU run up. The previous one looked ugly and didn’t make a great deal of sense, as well as obstructing the view of the Osprey quite significantly. The new design is a modular staircase, which is still visible but does not obstruct view, as well as looking a lot better.
-Moved the players “camping space” from the Army Tent to a barricade in the middle of the road. The previous design wasn’t intuitive and watching LPs and videos, many players simply sat in the middle of the road instead of going into the tent like I’d intended. Also the tent obstructed the view of the battle a fair bit. The new design should be far more intuitive and give the players a great view of the battle. I imagine all players will choose to hide there now.
-Fixed up the scripts for the Harrier/Manta flyby sounds. Should be audible now.
-Totally redesigned the interior of the bunker the LAV comes out of. It now has an accessible interior and resembles the one found on C2A5D/E. The previous design was very soulless, this one makes sense and has a few goodies.
-By proxy, the battle itself is now a bit more balanced due to the new layout of the Helipad/the area under it. The humans get better positions for cover now, which makes the battle less one sided. The Aliens still usually win, but it’s normally a bit closer now, so you’re not left fighting 1,000 aliens.
-Removed the second (far bunker) and substituted it for an Surface Tension styled building. Not only does it look a TONNE better, but its allowed me to add a whole bunch of new secrets, goodies, and hidden areas. Explore, have a look around, enjoy yourself!
-The top floor of the helipad now connects to the now accessible roof of the building. I’ve added an ENTIRE, fairly large office block complex which connects to the roof/interior, in the style of Surface Tension. I tried very hard to keep the office/hallway design similar to those found on C2A5F, while giving them their own unique flavour. Again, lots of goodies and fun things to find, a few new fights added (Zombie ambush, Houndeyes, 1 headcrab, and some fights with Vorts/AGrunts). It makes the map feel a whole lot more connected and alive, I feel, and also makes the Helipad placement make a lot more sense. This floor of the office block is visible from C2A5H, which again, gives a nice connectivity/flow to the maps.
-The new office block also features a stairwell leading down into the security office at the start of C2A5H/end of C2A5G. It is now possible to kill that poor Zombie trapped in the security office. In addition, the door next to H’s “regret Vort,” is now openable, and transitions the player into H, as well as the “traditional” route by the big blast door being usable. Moreover, the player can now transition back and forth between G and H via this route, as many times as they’d like.
-Redesigned the security office a fair bit, to accomodate the new layout.

C2A5H
-Lowered the health charger by the Regret Vort. For some reason, this was the only charger in ST Uncut to have an inconsistent height.
-Redesigned slightly the Barney/break room by the Regret Vort. Its appearance is now consistent with other offices in Surface Tension, and the “phantom” staircase has been removed in favour of being able to see the green door from down the hallway.
-Redesigned the Gruntwall scene a fair bit. The hole the Agrunt creates when throwing the Marine through the wall is now A LOT bigger, and he can climb through it now! This eliminates the weird problem where the AGrunt would stand there and stare at you stupidly after he roars. He now comes at you immediately, and you have to react fast!
-Totally redesigned the room the AGrunt was standing in. Firstly, to match the appearance of other office rooms in ST, but more importantly:
-Completely reworked the destruction of the ceiling in the Agrunt room. In addition to it looking a load better, the ceiling has partly collapsed through the wall, and forms a ramp which leads up to the balcony area (thanks Intooblivion for this great idea!). The player can now climb onto the balcony area to observe the Tank Battle.
-To complement this, of course, redesigned the balcony area a fair bit. Looks a lot better now. Gives a really nice view of the battle too, I suggest you take a look at it on your next playthrough!
-Alternatively, the player can still wait by the wall, as you had to before, to allow the scene to trigger itself. The wall still blows up and all that good stuff.
-Added a few hidden goodies which can only be accessed from the balcony. Interested to see how many people can find them!
-Lowered the gun rack in the guard shack.
-Fixed up some of the piping by the first alien jump pad to look better.
-Retextured/designed the hallway with the Zombies and Snarks, so its appearance is consistent with other hallways in Surface Tension. It has a much darker and grimier look now which fits it better too.
-Also reworked the scripting for that sequence. The Zombies are now initially “playing dead,” and wake up after a few seconds. The Zombies waking up and the human fighting them in the room then causes the Snarks in the vents to get disturbed, and they start jumping out now. This should help explain how the Zombies and the Snarks were initially “getting along,” before you turned up, as they weren’t disturbing one another. It should also mean the player will be in the middle of the room when the Snarks start pouring out, as they’ll be fighting the Zombies beforehand. Should make the scene more intense.
-Fixed up the Sniper AI and I/O a little bit so he’s much more likely to shoot the explosive crates when you’re in cover near them. He still doesn’t do it enough/quickly enough for my liking, but it is better.
-Lowered the “climb pipe” in the water tank quite a bit. This should dramatically reduce the instances of being “popped up” by that pipe, when trying to climb up. It hasn’t eliminated it completely (it’s a REALLY ANNOYING BUG) but it has reduced it a lot.
-(Experimental change) added a small section of grate near the end of the Satpipe, to try and explain why the player couldn’t shoot the Marine while he was laying the Satchel. I had to make the spacing between the bars quite large though, otherwise it obstructed the view of him while he was placing it, so I’m not sure it really works. Let me know what you think. I’d be quite happy to remove it to. Bear in mind that making that Marine killable initially IS NOT an option.
-Reworked the effects for the Satpipe scene ever so slightly.
-Redesigned the room at the end of the Satpipe a bit. Got rid of that visually buggy pipe (NO IDEA what was causing it) and added an accessible stairwell where the locked door used to be. The stairwell itself is nothing special though it contains a few hidden goodies. The ground floor is where the Satpipe is. The 1st floor leads up to the Zombie/Snark room, which can be accessed from the Stairwell (the door was blocked from the inside, which explains why you couldn’t open it from the Zombie/Snark room). The 2nd floor, though inacessible, leads up to the storage room on the roof where the Zombie was eating the RPG Marine. Should help make the map feel far more connected. Also allows for some backtracking.
-Redesigned a few of the pipes in the furnace room. Nothing major though.
-Redesigned the area behind the furnace. Removed that ugly and nonsensical giant tanker at the back, and replaced it with a few better looking, smaller ones.
-Made it so that all the Valves in the furnace room turn clockwise.
-Redesigned the pipe exit into the janitor’s closet. It now actually makes sense instead of the stupid nonsense that was there before. Though it was possible to jump out of the pipe without getting hurt by the fire, it was a little bit of a weird trick. It’s significantly easier now, and can be done normally. The pipes also no longer suddenly end, but instead go into the floor.
-Added a bit more destruction to the janitor’s closet, and removed the fallen shelves, as they were really annoying to dodge around while fighting in there.
-Redesigned a fair portion of the gasworks, though no major changes. Some of them include:
-Added a curb to the far side of the gasworks road, as well as lengthening it out a bit to remove a long-standing clipping but with the sandbags. Though the road itself isn’t perfectly uniform now, it looks better.
-Added stairs to the walkway by the janitor’s closet, so the AI can climb up to your height without floating in mid air (due to an NPC clip brush) a very simple fix which I should have thought of before.
-Switched out the ugly barrel stand by the impellers for some small pipes/valves. Looks better and suits the theme better.
-Added a clip brush to the M1075 truck so players can no longer climb up on it to bypass the jumping puzzle.
-Reworked the jumping puzzle a fair bit. Roughly halved the number of steam hazards in an attempt to improve performance and make the scene a bit less in your face. It does look better now. Reworked the “main pipe” you run across so it no longer terminates into a crossbeam. The final “hazard” on the main pipe now, instead of being another steam jet, is that the pipe has collapsed from some of the destruction present in the gasworks.
-Removed some of the “fire pipes” which originated from a crossbeam after the “main pipe”. Simply made the fire come out of the pipe running alongside the walkway instead. Looks significantly better.
-Fixed up the pipe near the security office so it no longer has weird clipping issues.
-Fixed up some more railing issues.
-Re-added the flickering light by the windows to the security office, as I now know how to do them properly. When they were implemented before (around v0.82, I think) they didn’t look good because I didn’t know how to do them properly, but now I do.
-Changed the guard’s dialogue a fair bit. His previous dialogue contained a repeat of a line (“Don’t take this the wrong way…”) from the guard on C2A5F. The changes can be seen here:
-Old Line: “You’d better stand down, buddy! Oh thank God! It’s about damn time! How are ya Freeman? Don’t take this the wrong way buddy, but you’re the best damn thing I’ve seen all day!”.
-New Line: “You’d better stand down, buddy! On thank God, my prayers have been answered! Just the kinda help I was looking for! How are ya, Freeman?”
-Fixed up a bug in the Guard’s AI at the end of the map where he wouldn’t automatically follow you again after pressing the button for you.
-Right at the end of the map added some vents to the interior road section, to reflect their appearance on the exterior.
-Moved the level transition to right when you open the door, rather than when you walk through it.

C2A5I
-Fixed up a few miscellaneous clipping issues.
-Improved the light placement at the drop down part of the vent to make the lighting more uniform.
-Fixed some clipping issues present in the road leading down to Forget About Freeman.

C3A1A
-Added subtitles to the Freeman speech (thanks Ulrik!)

[Chickenprotector]

Excellent, doing a play through now.

[Mr_GameCrazy]

Just downloaded it and extracted it to my BMS folder. Will play through it soon.

[Chickenprotector]

Did a quick play through. Gotta say, awesome job making some additions and revisions of your original works. A few bugs here and there:

End of G: Get an engine crash and it says this: “Can’t load lump 53, allocation of 13713721 bytes failed!!!” - I’d check the I/O with the zombie and the trigger associated with it, because that crash only occurs when I kill the zombie and then walk through the blast door when the map changes. You could also make the door behind it stop functioning all together to get rid of the problem anyway.

H: Look at the images and look where the fan blade is and compare it to where it’s supposed to be. If you can’t spot it look at the top-left of either image.

All in all, great revision.

[Dragunov2]

1. What’s the purpose of those cabine in the middle of the field, where u need to blow up those gate with grunts behind it? 2. Cause the panel is missing one button it seems (not supposed to work of course)–> level after those ambush with airport

2. U go through the blown up gate, u continue, passing truck and a bit further on your right u have those old gate with the blown up tank in it, on your left there is now a control room with a working panel it seems, but no gate opens, possible to change this, so it seems the panel is broken?

3. So u go up the stairs, on the helipad, to the right and u enter the new door completely on the right, in front of u, u see first a door which seems to be open, but with an inaccessable room and no obstacles in the doorgate (like on other parts in those building), when leaving the building again, vorts span and when u return, the door is now almost closed.

• When entering the control room (previous unaccessable in previous builds with those zombie agent) to the next map, I get an out of memory error! So for now it ends here for me (8GB RAM here)

[TextFAMGUY1]

@dragunov2

• What’s the purpose of those cabine in the middle of the field, where u need to blow up those gate with grunts behind it? Cause the panel is missing one button it seems (not supposed to work of course)–> level after those ambush with airport

• U go through the blown up gate, u continue, passing truck and a bit further on your right u have those old gate with the blown up tank in it, on your left there is now a control room with a working panel it seems, but no gate opens, possible to change this, so it seems the panel is broken?

• So u go up the stairs, on the helipad, to the right and u enter the new door completely on the right, in front of u, u see first a door which seems to be open, but with an inaccessable room and no obstacles in the doorgate (like on other parts in those building), when leaving the building again, vorts span and when u return, the door is now almost closed.

• When entering the control room (previous unaccessable in previous builds with those zombie agent) to the next map, I get an out of memory error! So for now it ends here for me (8GB RAM here)

I’m sorry, I know English isn’t your native language, but I don’t understand anything you’ve just said. The only one I understand properly is the last point. If you can’t put it any better don’t worry about it. I get it. Sorry.

@Chickenprotector

Did a quick play through. Gotta say, awesome job making some additions and revisions of your original works. A few bugs here and there:

End of G: Get an engine crash and it says this: “Can’t load lump 53, allocation of 13713721 bytes failed!!!” - I’d check the I/O with the zombie and the trigger associated with it, because that crash only occurs when I kill the zombie and then walk through the blast door when the map changes. You could also make the door behind it stop functioning all together to get rid of the problem anyway.

H: Look at the images and look where the fan blade is and compare it to where it’s supposed to be. If you can’t spot it look at the top-left of either image.

All in all, great revision.

Does the crash occur EVERY time you kill the Zombie and then walk through the blast door, or only sometimes? If it’s every time, then we’ve identified the problem and I might be able to fix it. If not, it might just be the standard crash which happens during the transition from G to H, which happens because both maps are relatively HUGE and PACKED with content, and the Source engine doesn’t always agree with it. I have to say though, I’ve NEVER had that crash personally.

As for the fan, lol, that’s fucked up. Will fix that.

[Chickenprotector]

@TextFAMGUY1

Does the crash occur EVERY time you kill the Zombie and then walk through the blast door, or only sometimes? If it’s every time, then we’ve identified the problem and I might be able to fix it. If not, it might just be the standard crash which happens during the transition from G to H, which happens because both maps are relatively HUGE and PACKED with content, and the Source engine doesn’t always agree with it. I have to say though, I’ve NEVER had that crash personally.

As for the fan, lol, that’s fucked up. Will fix that.

Pin pointed it’s the blast door… got the crash again, but this time I didn’t kill the zombie. I think it’s because the player walks through the transition before the BLAST door closes… why exactly the crash occurs is beyond me. It COULD be due to memory issues, but that’s speculation.

Edit: To answer your question: No. It doesn’t occur each time I make the transition. Only in certain circumstances (the blast door being ajar) cause it to fuck up.

[MrSnaztastic]

Haven’t quite finished playing through, crashed due to physics props going nuts with those Houndeyes. Loving the new version though. These maps are HUGE!

The only weird thing that stuck out to me so far is that this blast door sticks through the ceiling:

Apart from that, I just think it’s a pity that the cracks in the wall after this explosion… https://i.imgur.com/PTSA0dvl.jpg look so dodgy when there’s smoke in the air.
Edit: Just finished. Great work as usual.

Yeahh… the fan in that area was acting crazy, like it was on some sort of giant loop. https://i.imgur.com/jQUJd8V.jpg
I thought it was a plane at first, since it was zooming up into the sky.

The only other “glitch” was that the Garg failed to follow me to the end of the level, must’ve forgotten how to open gates or something.

I did think that these pipes looked a little weird though- https://i.imgur.com/g0wQjlj.jpg
Shouldn’t they be hollow? Plus, if anything should have steam coming out of it, it’s those.

But still, this is a wonderful update. Love that there’s multiple routes and that even small areas like the Snark hallway got a nice facelift. I just hope that some more performance can be squeezed out by further optimizing the maps.
Been getting constant stuttering with the usual suspects (parking garage, furnace room, steam room).