It’s the latter, but me waiting for the video is delaying the release by about 12 hours, it’s no biggy. This is a much wider general public release than the previous version - so I’m getting a media release together. If there’s a video, pictures, description and FAQ in the OP and on the youtube video, hopefully I won’t hear all the same concerns and questions repeated again and again. It’s a good thing. 12 hours is okay.
It’s a 45 minute H.246 video, at 1080p. That’s an acceptable filesize.
U make a jewel of this release, that’s for sure!
Just as a point of interest, does anyone know how/if it is possible to embed Youtube videos? It’d be nice to have the video directly accessible in the OP, rather than having to link it.
Not possible here, just tried it and forum doesn’t support youtube videos embedded…
Since we’re still gonna wait on the release, I do want to plant an idea in your head. I’ve been giving some thought to what Codes was saying regarding the elevated roads and I think he’s right about it needing to be lowered to the level of the surrounding terrain. I didn’t think this was really an issue at first but after playing through ST again, it turns out that NONE of the roads use your elevated appearance. All of the roads in the chapter are at the level of the desert terrain and have some dirt overlapping them to create a realistic touch. The ONLY segment that is similar to you road layout is in the outdoor region at the very end of QE, and that’s only for a small stretch.
You mentioned that this is an absolute pain to fix, but would it be easier to raise the desert terrain to the level of the road? The part of your map that requires the most overhaul is C2A5G extending from the TOW courtyard to the end of the section. By lowering the road and then dirtying it up with the surrounding terrain, it would make the TOW courtyard look more natural (because there are 2 roads) but most importantly help get rid of the gridded and somewhat unrealistic pavement layout of the LAV courtyard (see image). Hopefully you’ve already made some adjustments here. Fixing C2A5H would be a nice bonus but is not as necessary as the way you designed the road actually makes it plausible that it would be slightly elevated.
I’m gonna wait till after the next test to see if this is really an issue. Consider this food for thought, at least for now. However, if you do decide to make these changes, I suggest you get it done by the next beta. The amount of overhaul involved seems like it would potentially introduce a lot of bugs that need to be tested out.
Upload crashed overnight unfortunately, and it was a 10 hour upload cuz the file size is so dramatic.
Recompressed, downscaled to 720p (with NOT a great deal of quality loss, actually), and am now reuploading it as a 1.3GB file. This is probably A LOT better (my previous videos were all around 1.3GB so I know it can be done within a reasonable timeframe). Expect stuff within 3 - 4 hours, as soon as the video’s done.
EDIT: 50% done in just under 2 hours. So another 2 to go.
Look forward to watching your next video 
Should be here soon, yay!
PLEASE REPORT ANY SERIOUS ISSUES TO ME IMMEDIATELY (purple textures, broken choreography mainly), so I can address them AT ONCE.
I’ve updated the OP to match the release.
For those of you who don’t want to go back to the OP, here’s the link:
Latest Version: 0.81 Beta. Download here.[/SIZE]
[COLOR=‘Red’]I URGE YOU TO READ THE README AND THE INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE USING MY MAPS. I WILL NOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY PROBLEMS WHICH COULD HAVE BEEN SOLVED BY READING THE README.
[COLOR=‘Red’]Click here for a walkthrough of all 3 maps with a developer commentary from me. I strongly recommend that you watch this, to gain insight into my reasoning for changes and certain bugs.
I’ll also post a (somewhat incomplete) changelog here for the latest version:
Assorted/General
-Made the jump pads significantly easier to use. Should work a lot better now.
-Rebalanced some of the alien vs marines fights so the aliens still win, but not by an overwhelming majority now.
-Added more health, ammo, and suit pickups around the maps, but often in places the player will need to search for them.
-Added some fancy new lighting effects to the Manta’s beam, looks really nice now.
-Repackaged the whole thing so there should be no more texture bugs.
C2A5G
-Fixed the areaportal near the start of the fight bugging out and displaying the skybox.
-Shifted around the fight at the start with the Vorts and 50Cal. Their spawning is much less neat now and a bit more spread out.
-Made the bottom floor door of the stairwell in the parking lot openable from the inside.
-Rebalanced parking lot fight a little and edited nodegraph.
-Changed the top floor of the stairwell slightly to have a Vort and some supplies.
-Road fight scene after parking lot rebalanced and layout changed. Now it’s 50/50 between aliens and humans.
-Changed the dropdown for the road fight so you can land on a truck for no falling damage. Added a sound to the ACunit so you get a better clue of what to do.
-Changed the blue keypad for a red one so the player knows they can’t go that way.
-Put a light by the vent to make it clearer where it is.
-Messed around a bit with the ladder leading up to the vent. Should be a bit better now, though ladders in BM are useless anyway.
-More red lights in the vent to make it easier to see.
-Fixed a lighting bug in the vent where the snark “infestation” wasn’t lit properly.
-Moved the marines in the garage around a bit as well as removing one.
-Made it so when the explosion ambush happens the marines can no longer see through the debris (unreported bug, but I knew about it!)
-Added a truck on the other side of the window you climb out of for a little bit of cover.
-Distant harrier take off now happens later on and has a sound.
-Added signs of visible destruction to TOW door, as well as the sound of Agrunts growling behind it to give the player an idea of what to do.
-Rebalanced the TOW courtyard fight. Player now has access to more suit batteries and health beforehand, and a deployable sentry turret to help them. No change otherwise.
-Added some supplies to the back of the M35 leading up to the helipad.
-Fixed a bit of landscape clipping through the road, as well as detail plants.
-Added a door to the walkway leading up to the helipad so it looks like the running grunts didn’t spawn out of nowhere.
-Removed some of the netting from the army tent to allow better view of the aerial battle.
-Rebalanced the helipad fight - allowed the LAV to fire as it’s on the move. Also redid the assault system for the grunts which come out with the LAV, they are really cool now. The fight is much more balanced now, though the aliens still normally win.
-HAVE AS OF YET BEEN UNABLE TO FIX THE BUG WITH OSPREY PIECES CAUSING DAMAGE. However, have placed invisible wall which blocks everything but the player on the edge of the helipad so pieces cannot fall down and block the door. Temporary fix.
-Few small landscape changes to the area around the helipad.
-Added more supplies to this area.
C2A5H
-Fixed some bad collision on the hole which gets blown through the wall, to make the Crossbow more useful.
-Rebalanced the fight a little, aliens should still win but only by 1 - 2 lives.
-Moved the final wave of Marines in the tank battle back so the player can’t see them spawning.
-Redid the destruction left by the Manta so it looks…simply better.
-Fixed quite a serious problem with the nodegraph in the general area.
-Added a bit more battle scarring to the surrounding areas.
-Moved dead Barney so it doesn’t look like he’s suspended by the table.
-Moved the maintenence access sign so it looks less stupid.
-Made the damaged ladder dropping into the water tank have no collision so players don’t get stuck.
-Changed the broken ladder model in the water tank to match the damaged ladder, made it static so players can’t move it and made it have no collision.
-Delayed the satchel detonation by 1 second.
-Moved the headcrabs in the furnace room around a bit to make the zombie army fare better against the HECU. The HECU also start the fight damaged - they SHOULD never win now.
-Made it so the fire coming out the pipe in the furnace room can damage NPCs too.
-Made it so you can’t place the valve in the furnace anymore, thus screwing yourself over.
-Remade the entity system for the valve you have to attach to the pipe. The valve you have to attach should now work perfectly 100% of the time.
-Changed the drop down from the pipe leading to the gasworks to resemble the one in Blast Pit - the old one looked awful and the lightmaps didn’t line up properly because of displacements. Should be fine now.
-Widened the pipes for the first few jumps in the gasworks - should be easier now.
-Added HEV charger and uranium pickups to Barney’s security office.
-Redid the tripmine layout to make it a bit trickier.
-Made it so that if you kill Barney before he unlocks the security system you lose the game, it displays a message, and it automatically reloads the last save.
-Redid Barney’s scripted sequences - no funny jump at the end of pressing the button now. Should be smooth transitions.
-Added a button which opens the door leading to the gasworks, but it only works after Barney deactivates the security system. Makes it so you don’t get seperated from Barney.
-Added a final wave of aliens which spawns once you get near the end of the level after Barney opens the doors for you. You can use the 50cal on them.
C2A5I
-Moved the Snark spawns back a bit to make the fight fairer on the players. Protip: USE THE HIVEHAND!
-Fixed an odd bug where you could shoot hivehand projectiles through the grates in the vent, killing everything out there before coming out the vent.
-Gagged the Garg so he can’t make noise before his scripted sequence.
-Preliminary fix to the Garg’s AI which makes it so that he no longer gets confused if you climb on the tower then jump off it.
-Made his patrols of the water more reliable. Does them nearly every time now.
-Removed the invisible walls the BM Dev team placed to prevent you backtracking. You can go back now, and the Garg will chase you if you do.
-The Garg can now chase you all the way to Forget About Freeman if you destroy the tower without killing him.
-Nodrawed lots of non-visible faces around the courtyard, should give an extra frame or two.
applause, cheering
Sounds Epic Text.
I’m installing it now…and I’ll try and get some media up on youtube so you can see the experience with a dying Compaq Presario later today.
Just for the record it worked very well on the first release.
Finished the Helipad battle with 4 health…which made me feel all the more badass.
Congratulations.
Wow…!
That’s a hell of a changelog!
Downloaded and now I’m gonna watch your video…
[b]Just one last thing…
You should publish your video not only here but also in other places:
1- Facepunch
2-reddit.com/r/halflife & reddit.com/r/BlackMesaSource/
3- Moddb
Would be cool if you increase your audience…
[/b]
I’m gonna test it later today
I forgot to tell you but the way this chap layed on the table seemed a kamasutra position. XD
Just finished your video…overall very impressive w/the amount of new changes implemented. Almost everything you have left to-do will be minor issues now. Re your snark question, it’s never really been a problem…the scenes are a nice break from the generic headcrab attacks. Will give you some more detailed feedback after testing…and lol at the Ronster credit.
^I thought it was really nice crediting him, he contributed to it after all, even if it was only a minor issue.
b2t: FUN-FREAKING-TASTIC, can’t wait to test it out, I’m busy with study stuff currently but the weekend lies ahead ^^
Thank you soooo much Sir!
Downloaded and watched the video will be playing it soon. Also, just finished reading some of the read me Lol at:
Encountered an issue with the “locked” door in the car park of C2A5G. When I came down the staircase and tried to open it from the other side, my game crashed and threw up this error:
IVP Failed at …\ivp_utility\ivu_vhash.cxx 157
Thanks! It should be even better now.
Heh, I hadn’t thought of that Karmasutra thing, that’s pretty funny. That’s an embarrassing death if I ever saw one.
I’m going to hold off on even wider release. The first release was to a small section of this forum that were following my thread closely, this second one is for my subscribers on youtube/anyone on this forum. The test demographic will grow with each release. I’m going to wait till it’s nearly “finished” before expanding to the general public as a whole.
Ronster did figure out how to get the Marine to “throw” the satchel, which I couldn’t, and he also picked out the particle effects. He had a DIRECT hand in that scene, it’s simply unfair for me not to credit him. I never thought the snarks were a problem either!
Hehe, I just wanted to cover all possible eventualities!
I’m sorry to hear that. Is it reproducible? Does it happen every time? I’ve never experienced any bug like that before and I certainly have no idea whatsoever what it could mean.
TextFam… I hate to that guy but I’ve found a weird bug with the gate of c2a5g
It litterally falls down if you press it too many times.
Anyway we’re lucky I was filming it so I’m gonna render it and upload it ASAP.
I’m working on it right now, I hope that youtube and Virtual dub won’t be too bitchy…
By “gate” to you mean the security door at the end? I’m not sure what you’re referring to.
Shouldn’t take more than 2 hours to buffer with my internet connection ^_
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