I’d like to think that I’m in the majority in saying the following: you’re progress has been nothing short amazing, the quality well up to par, and the speed with which you do all this is incredible. When he does release the finished product, it will be like it belonged in the initial release.
As far as the garg getting confused can you add triggers to the pipes that would make him go to a certain place and try to flame grill you?
like rally_point / assault_point system for this in the courtyard?
keep the pipes collision disabled with no clip brush but add triggers so he reacts to this in a certain way?
Don’t know if you plan to implement the service hatch to the canal idea fencing off the courtyard but I am also now curious if the garg actually has the stomp animation but obviously unused. If he does it would be a good use for it while down the hatch to make the ceiling cave in if you linger too long without going in the pipe. Just another idea and brings back a bit of half life 1 if only for a moment.
Instant death if you get caught by the ceiling… crawl into the pipe to survive this part of the chase…
anyway hope this helps
my curiosity I had to see if the animation was there… It is not… But I think that it could be pulled off with some clever trickery, jiggery pokery.
first a roar1 then powerup_tramholding04_enter + Idle + exit would suffice for the stomp if looking up through a hole at the garg towering above it… On the first stomp would work and a big screen shake and perhaps some kind of particle effect like the houndeye shockwave blast but 5 or 6 of them simultaneously.
anyway I think this is a good idea
I’m not sure what you’re referring to I’m afraid, but even if I knew I’m not planning to make any changes to FaF yet, aside from linking it to my map.
Thank you for your kind words sir, though there is a problem with that - my maps certainly won’t feel like they belonged in the initial release! Why, you ask? Simple. My maps are messy as fuck in the editor. I simply make shit up as I go along, not much in the way of forward planning or work flow. It’s a terrible way to map really, and causes me many many problems. My maps are a nightmare to look at in the editor - stuff doesn’t sit on a grid 8 nicely like they should. The BM Dev Team’s maps look beautiful in the editor, they really do. Everything slots together wonderfully, no overlapping brushes, nothing. Mine aren’t like that. It all looks great in game, I’m not going to be humble about that, but in the editor you can tell that someone not from the dev team assembled those maps! But I guess in the end it doesn’t make a difference to most people. End rant.
As far as I am aware, the staged assault system (what you are describing) only works for combine soldiers in HL2 (and the HECU are just reskinned combine). It doesn’t work on other NPCs as far as I know. The path_corners work fine for the job anyway.
You’ll see what I’ve done to the courtyard in C2A5I. Not quite your idea, I did it way before anyone suggested anything, though what I’ve done is similar.
Actually, I’m pretty sure it’d work for the garg, but to be sure you’d need to examine the internal code to even see if it’ll accept the command points.
Hi,
Does ur map take more resources with those messy things? so more heavy to process by a computer?
What else can u change? I guess AI is handled in another part of the folder?
^ The cores for the AI are stored in the DLLs inside of your BM directory (… Steam/Steamapps/Sourcemods/BMS…) The rest of it is stored by the level.
No. It does not. The only part of the messiness that may cause a performance hit is me not cornering things properly. For example when making an L shape out of brushes, you do it with two brushes meeting at a join. The best way to do THAT from an optimization standpoint with brushes is to have the join at a 45 degree angle, rather than at right angle. It stops the engine from having to render 1 additional face on the brush. Doesn’t sound like much, but do it on an entire map and it’s quite a few saved faces. Though I know I should, I don’t normally do that. My maps are demanding for other reasons - lots of scripted events, AI events, highly detailed in a small area. The messiness is not to blame for poor performance. And if that were to cause a performance hit, it would be very, VERY tiny. A map that is messy and off the grid, as far as I am aware will not perform slower than one which is tidy and on the grid. But when it’s messy and off the grid it’s harder for the mapper, and makes compiling take longer. That’s the biggest problem it causes.
I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t! The Garg doesn’t have combine AI, does he? The Developer Wiki says it only works for the Combine. I tried doing it on Vorts/AGrunts and it didn’t work for them, so I took it to be true.
Shame about the assault / rally points thought it might work 
RE: Garg Stomp attack
my curiosity I had to see if the animation was there… It is not… But I think that it could be pulled off with some clever trickery, jiggery pokery.
first a roar1 then powerup_tramholding04_enter + Idle + exit would suffice for the stomp if looking up through a hole at the garg towering above it or the animation in general… On the first stomp would work and a big screen shake and perhaps some kind of particle effect like the houndeye shockwave blast but 5 or 6 of them simultaneously.
anyway I think this is a good idea
based on escaping down a hole this animation in a scripted sequence I think would work 
or integrated into the escape somehow but somthing would have to cave in on the stomps occurance for it to have effect. This could work equally aswell if your in the water and he stomps making some of the wall fall away as he follows you along the edge…
the stomp action is on powerup_tramholding04_enter the added bonud is he also looks down after this during the idle
Not doing it. Too much work and strays too far from what the BM Devs set as the design for the Garg scene. I’ve simply fixed things which were clearly broken. Feel free to try it yourself though, I’d be interested to see how it looks.
And a small update: I am getting rather frustrated by C2A5H now! I just managed to fix a VERY long standing bug with the scripted battle where the first wave of Marines would for some unknown reason wait for the tank to die before rushing out, when they were supposed to come out alongside it. I was delighted when I finally saw them actually come out when I’d intended. Except now the battle is horribly HECU sided! 5 - 6 of them live! So now I gotta spend an hour mucking around trying to get the scene back to its original balance where the aliens just about win. Grr.
best way to do that is use the manta, re work its beam to strait the road instead if just go down it, this would hit more of the soldiers. another thing you could do is have some A-grunts portal in behind the tank entry point and mop up the soldiers from behind.
This will definarley work check the animation for yourself when you get the chance… It’s cheating but I think it’s doable but I may have a crack at it
Perhaps haveanotber wave port in shortly after the tank goes down. Like the guy behind me said, up where the tank comes from would be good. If the player did decide to run out amidst the chaos, this final wave would go off without seeming too contrived, and give that player a chance to use the fifty caliber.
@ronster: He’s not not doing it because it’s not doable. He’s not doing it because it really doesn’t fit into he level in an way without feeling too forced, if not completely out of place.
I am the only one that thinks that his maps (atleast the ones shown to us) are perfect, no changes needed at all?
I think you probably are, and that includes me too! You certainly won’t think that when you see the improvements I’ve made to C2A5H, it’s in an entirely different league. But thank you for your kinds words anyway!
Eh. I rebalanced it a bit and now the aliens absolutely kick the crap out of the HECU. A bit too much. Ah the pains of trail and error. Need to tone the aliens down now!
I wasn’t suggesting to use it, but you did confirm what I was suspecting (the variables that the assault uses aren’t utilized by that specific AI), to make them use it you’d need to adjust the internal code to accept the variables given.
Looking forward to playing with these maps included for my next play through of the mod. You sir have done some amazing work with this and I’m sure there are a lot of other lurkers like me waiting for the eventual finished product eagerly. I don’t have a lot of time to give feedback, but it seems you have enough of that already. Good luck and keep up the good work.
This balancing thing with the scripted sequence is turning out to be a right pain in the arse, though I’m almost there. I wasn’t forseeing something like this happening, so I’m set back a little. Luckily nothing like this needs to happen on C2A5F which I will completely clean up and finish tomorrow. Even just adding 1 alien can completely change the tide of the battle and make it seem less interesting, though that’s pretty much all I have left to do.
C2A5F - Visleaf, Areaportal, Soundscape, Cubemap, Minor Cleanup (Fix the LAV and the fights a little)
C2A5H - Will be finished once I’ve got this fight correct
C2A5I - Garg Entrance and fix the pipe navigation
All maps - link them together.
Definitely doable in a day.
If the Garg is having issues locating the player, you could try squadding the Garg in with some npc_enemyfinder entities to keep track of the player’s location. It’s a bit hack-ish, but it could assist with keeping the Garg in a position to pressure the player to the tower.
That’s an excellent idea, but I don’t think the Garg locating the player is the problem. I’ll give it a try but I don’t think it’ll help. My AI debugging tools aren’t working properly which is really annoying, but making an educated guess I think he’s failing to navigate over the pipes, and that his AI then bugs out and constantly tries to either navigate over the pipes when he can’t or tries to figure out a way of doing so, cuz he’s his buggiest by the pipes. He doesn’t lose sight of the player or anything, just when you jump on the pipes (which are at knee height). Sometimes he snaps out of it but most of the time once he hits his trance he’s not coming out of it.
Couldn’t you just have him break through the pipes? Or am I missing something here?