About that, the “airstrike shower” didn’t kill the gargantua when I lured him to a mortar. I really want him dead at that point so it has less chances that it won’t chase you to FaF.
Actually this could not be true:
Hubicorn(Webmaster of these forums) stated on facepunch this:
My Opinion is that you should apply ASAP,it doesn’t matter if we’ll wait a while…
Do it just for the sake of your work…
…and who knows? Maybe if your work will be part of BM, it would help you to start a brilliant career in the industry!
Strange. Did you try adding the entities into the subroutine with the or variable?( || – key above enter, hold shift to get it) That may allow them to target medics and commanders, dunno though.
Basically you keep the same aiscripted_schedules and just simply add to the targeting (“npc_human_grunt” || “npc_human_medic” || “npc_human_commander”) or something along that line. I’m not sure what the entity names are…
That MAY fix the issue, but I could be wrong like I have with so many other things in the past. lol Let me know if you get a solution… there’s also the possibility that the game’s engine won’t recognize the symbol(s)… I had a similar problem when I tried to use arrays for another engine, the IDE it had wouldn’t recognize it…
If it doesn’t recognize the || symbol, try using a switch statement with the same entities.
Re: Possible On A Rail rework.
Sounds like it’s a bigger and more difficult challenge than Surface Tension. Best you finish up with Surface Tension and get it behind you, then recuperate over the upcoming holidays and take a fresh look at your options and desires in the New Year. Wouldn’t it be funny if upon becoming a BM Dev Team member, that they ask you to rework On A Rail? Geez, wait a minute… from what you said about looking at On A Rail in the editor, maybe it’s not so funny. Alright… ok… yeah… forget what I said, it’s not funny.
Yeah I just played it and I saw. That’s great man ! With every new version you impress me even more ! You can do everything you want with this game ! And this airstrike looks fantastic.
2TextFAMGUY1
I totally agree with elivance. You really should contact the developers for two reasons:
First of all, your job is certainly worthy of inclusion in the project, all in the spirit of Black Mesa, and your eagerness to finish it the highest praise worthy.
Second, cooperation with a team of Black Mesa definitely help you to solve some of the potential difficulties in development. This is a good step on the way to perfection.
I regret very much that now I am on a business trip and I still can not see your own work, but I hope that I can see your work in the BM, when development is complete. Thank you for keep. (an allusion to the fact that you may want to release the video of the progress of development 
)
I could do that but, ah. That would make it too easy my friend. If you want the Garg not to chase you to FaF, kill him first with the airstrikes! Problem solved.
Aiscripted_schedule doesn’t work like that I’m afraid, I think it only recognizes one classname. Using the wildcard was my best bet and it doesn’t seem to have done much. I’ve simply tried to place the medics on encounters where you don’t come across aliens too, it’s not that bad.
Not necessarily a bigger and more difficult challenge really, the architecture is much simpler and less can go wrong I reckon, especially as there’ll be no major scripted sequences (those occupy the VAST majority of my time). Outdoor areas have NEVER been my specialty, I’ve always been more of an indoor mapper myself.
As for that whole team member thing, if I WERE to make it onto their team, it would make editing OaR much easier. I’d have access to the original VMFs rather than the second generation decompiled VMFs which I’m using. It would override all the problems which decompiling creates, which is the brunt of the “difficult” work I was talking about earlier.
Maybe I will then. Let me see what happens regarding this whole voice acting thing for 0.83. I want to see how that whole episode plays out first. So far, no responses.
Well then, if you’re going to apply to be on the team, you should definitely do it before starting a project to tweak existing content. That would get you access to original source files and eliminate these issues, right?
Thing is, Famguy’s releases so far aren’t “bug free versions”. By the team’s standards we wouldn’t be seeing betas and involved in testing, we would need to wait for a bug-free 1.0 release. So I think his concern is still justified.
Or maybe the garg can perform a specific animation (flinch or/and roar) when hit by an airstrike from the “airstrike shower” but can still chase you to FaF.
Well it was worth a shot. 
Good luck on finding a solution if you can. It’s not a big issue.
I am excited about the new version as always. A couple of things. I think you should hold off on getting a different voice actor to do that dialogue at least for a few more weeks. I think it would really be too much of a change to have one barney in the game sound completely different and throw off the fact that otherwise your maps fit in really well with BM.
You will likely end up changing other things on the maps so why not give it a bit more time and see if you can maybe work out another way of getting in contact with him if he doesn’t even know about your request at that time, after all it hasn’t even been a full week since you tried, has it? Perhaps another of the BM devs could help you or has better means of contacting him. Give it more time.
Here are a few things on C2A5H you could fix while you’re working on it (or maybe already have).
-Lower the window at the start of the chapter that looks into the room with the dead barney on a couch. It’s too high and makes gordon feel like a midget at this part and seems weird to have to jump up to see what’s in that room.
-would it be possible to have the sniper fall out of perch in the manner that they do in HL2 when killed by a rocket or a grenade? currently it feels odd when killing him because there is no indication of whether he is dead or not rather than just standing there to see if he shoots you. maybe it will look too odd, but you could try it out?
-Delay the scripted sequence of that helicopter crashing on the rooftop across the courtyard when you come out of the gasworks building with barney. Currently it’s happening before the gasworks door even opens and you don’t get to see it happen/may not even realize it ever happens (I didn’t until many play-throughs later)
-double check the sound of the glass breaking in the gasworks and stop it from repeating multiple times even after the glass has broken.
-Did you find the source of the tripmines disappearing and the turret in that room being dead when the player reaches it?
-Double check the direction that the static enemies are facing when spawned. The vortiguant at the end of the chapter, actually right after you load the garg map going up those stairs, isn’t facing you at all and is facing the wall. This makes for a boring encounter. This is usually true for the two headcrabs in the bathroom after the snark encounter as well. Delete one of those headcrabs and make the other one in a better position to surprise the player. Currently it seems like they are mating or something when you get in there.
Honestly the vortiguant at the start of C2A5H and the one in the stairwell at the start of the garg map seem completely random. Why are they there standing alone doing nothing? It just seems like they are odd filler the way you encounter them now. I still think you should delete that first vortigaunt, make the door to the room with the zombie banging on the glass a real door and move the health charger into that room as this would make a lot more sense.
And finally about On a Rail and you joining the dev team. I have been holding off on bringing up you working on OaR because I didn’t want you to decline doing it while busy with Surface Tension, but I think it would be absolutely great if you do eventually un-cut that chapter. I loved the original OaR in half-life and I think it’s a perfect project for you because, like surface tension, there is a lot of the story element missing in the BM version.
With On a Rail you would be working with the HECU versus Aliens fights again only this time there’s a bit more variety as you could use bullsquids, vortigaunts, barnacles, headcrabs and houndeyes instead of just grunts and vorts. Frankly OaR is even more cut than Surface Tension was and is one of the shortest chapters in BM. There are a lot of cool elements from the original left out and I’m sure something would come of it if you were to start working on it.
About joining the dev team. Have you considered that maybe they would put you to work on xen if you joined? I would hold off on trying to join unless you’re able to still work on your maps and release them in the manner that you have been. Working with the community just makes more sense as you get direct feedback while working on them rather than building up to version 1 on your own and then suddenly getting a ton of feedback after release. Maybe I’m just selfish, but I would rather have you working on ST-uncut and possibly OaR-uncut with the help/ideas from the community, but if you could work that out and still join the devs then great.
I’ve already fixed nearly all of the things you’ve mentioned here, so I don’t really need to comment on it all.
About the Apache crash though, it’s supposed to be tricky to notice, and I don’t want it to happen where the player can see it - mostly because it’s a lot of work for very little effort. That’s why I had it happen out of sight, you still get the effect of an Apache crash without all the hard work it involves. It works fine.
As to why the Vort faces the wall I have no idea why he does that, I’ve got them in the editor all facing the way they should. I’m probably going to give them idle animations for this version.
As for the whole dev team thing, people seem to be treating it as a given that I get on, which I find weird! I think it’s far more unlikely than anything else. But aside from that, I’ve never been on a dev team before, so I can only work based on how I imagine it’ll be. I don’t want to work on Xen. There’s a lot of displacement and subdivision work involved on it, an artistic vision which I’m unfamiliar with, and lots of fancy work involved. My guess would be if I let them know that I didn’t want to work on Xen, I can’t see them forcing me to do it! But then I don’t know how the whole process works.
You also talk about it like the devs don’t get testing sessions in, of course they do! They just use a more controlled and focussed group. My “inability” to release to the general public doesn’t suddenly mean my work, on release is going to be a buggy and unstable mess, I’ll have a top team of testers to work with me.
I’ll hold off until a bit later in ST Uncut, but OaR Uncut hasn’t been cemented yet.
Awesome sounds good. I figured you had most of those things down already, just wanted to remind you if you had forgotten any. Maybe you could have that last vort teleport in behind you instead of just standing there. How about the sniper body falling out when you kill him? It would seem really odd if you’re able to kill him with normal guns, I can’t remember if you can, but I think it would make sense for a rocket to blow him out like happens in half-life 2.
I realize the devs do test their map and have testers. I just would rather us test them because it’s fun to do and we get to see the whole process as the maps take form. Still it would be great for you to get on the team if you’re able to.
I think that a lot of people think of On a Rail and how confusing/bland/easy to get lost it was in the original and assume that a remake of those parts would be exactly the same for some reason, but really they could be re-imagined and be a lot of fun. There were a lot of cool parts left out in BM like the tripmine traps, a few unique HECU encounters and alien vs hecu battles including one where you were able to crawl under some drainage vents while seeing the battle go on above you. There’s definitely potential for some good parts to be uncut from OaR.
Anyways looking forward to the next ST release it sounds like you’ve really touched up a lot of things again.
After watching a playthrough of HL OaR, I think this chapter is going to be real pain in the ass to touch up. In ST, you had the advantage of a dev abandoning the project which left entire sections of the game missing. This gave you a lot of creative license and flexibility in design. You won’t get that w/OaR. Basically if you want to preserve the HL feel of OaR, you’ll have to decompile/recompile stuff as it looks like the dev who designed the chapter cherry-picked what he wanted/didn’t want in his maps. Rather than missing entire sections, the elements that are missing from HL OaR are kinda scattered througout the the chapter which again means that you’ll have to work w/in the established framework rather than adding new sections. To the dev’s credit though, he did distill the essence of the chapter w/his rework.
Some things that are missing from OaR (roughly chronologial order):
Rail switching
Moving crane hook objects by using a panel
More sentry turret traps
A few vort battles
Tripmine traps
Comandeering a tram from a soldier
Elevator leading to explosive crate trap
Second TOW launcher attack that does not disable the tram
Quiet outdoor area w/pre-launch sniper
Storytelling wise, you can tell these deletions really don’t contribute much, as the vort battles rarely even involve the HECU so this might not be worth your time to redo.
Re BMS team policies, if what the forum posters say is true, their policy of not letting devs showcase their work to the community for feedback is incredibly stupid. I think your maps are a testament to that as they’ve become far stronger w/community criticism than they might have been if you were working in the dark. Given that BMS is already released, there should be no reason why additions to existing sections like OaR should be hidden from the public. Also, their plan to significantly expand and rework Xen could potentially catch a shit-ton of flak if they keep the community in the dark, as some of their choices might affect canon (e.g. how they redesign the alien factory, introducing antlion family creatures w/in the chapters, which would be cool in the ending sequence but not in game). The smart thing for them to do would be to release your chapters ASAP in a steam patch along w/the latest fixes and missing features (e.g. more VOX, scientist healing players) and continue to do this periodically until the Xen release (similar to Blizzard patches) rather than release all at once w/Xen.
If you are really itching to get your creative chops going, I’d recommend you look at these gameplay videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EL72p7f2_6U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYMr8J59JxM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoYlI5RD6CA
These are from the Point of View HL mod, which tells the Black Mesa story from a Vort’s perspective, spanning from pre-resonance cascade to Shepard’s cameo in OpFor to Gordon’s cameo in ST. I was actually stunned by the quality, scope and creativity of the mod (it’s better than Gearbox’s Blue Shift) and would love to help bring this to the Source engine and make it more in line w/HL canon. While you’d have to wait till the Xen release to obtain the assets to design the first half of the game, the Black Mesa chapters could be redesigned now.
not at all, the HECU mostly wins
That’s what I said. My point is that the HECU start losing some of their battles during OaR instead of winning them all. OaR level then leads into Surface Tension, where the trend of HECU battle losses escalate and they get their asses kicked, forcing them to pullout in the end.
Oh yeah, I totally agree with you. Lots of people hated On a Rail in Half-Life and I can see why, though personally I loved it. I guess people think certain aspects of the original OaR were badly designed and boring, so the logic says that a closer remake of it will be too. I think this is poor logic, especially considering the “liberties” both Black Mesa and my own project have taken with Valve’s original work. Take C2A5F, from Half-Life 1, for example. I have ALWAYS maintained that the map C2A5F from HL1 was HORRIBLY designed. It was bland and generic, the map was scaled about 3X too big, the areas linking together made no sense at all, the only thing it had going for it was the narrative thread and set pieces. Remember, C2A5F in Black Mesa is now my C2A5G and C2A5H. Despite it being probably one of the worst designed levels in HL1, I’ve remade it, and with my own spin which hopefully takes it very far away from that category. There’s nothing to say I couldn’t do that to OaR as well.
Ech, from my experience with HL1 the HECU wins pretty much every single fight in OaR. But that’s part of the narrative. By this point the HECU have EXTREMELY STRONG control over the facility. They’re at the peak of their power. They got things under lockdown. The only thing they can’t control is Gordon Freeman. But that’s it. I liked that. It creates a wonderful contrast later on in the game when the HECU eventually lose control of the entire situation. I’m not sure it would provide the same wonderful juxtaposition if the HECU were already starting to lose at this point.
In other news, I just took the latest, nearly completely finished version of C2A5H and, oh boy, you guys are in for a treat. I’ve kicked it up a notch. It’s great, I’m really very chuffed with it. Abrams battle still needs tweaking, and a few minor bugs here and there, but trust me when I say it is a massive improvement over the previous version. 0.82 was all about C2A5G, 0.83 is going to be all about C2A5H. I’d go as far as to say that aside from bugs, balance and the choreography, C2A5H may actually be very damn close to the finished, FINAL product.
I’ve changed pretty much most of the map, the gasworks is pretty much the only area I haven’t done much to (the security office, however is pretty different now, though still bears resemblance to the old one).
There are also a few new surprises here and there for “veterans” of my maps to enjoy.
Tomorrow is hell day at uni so I doubt I’ll get much, if anything done on the maps. But I can still probably stick to the Sunday release. I’d estimate I’ve got half a day’s work left on C2A5G, and half a day on C2A5I. It’s increasingly looking like I WILL meet my goal of 0.83b being the final beta version, so I’m probably going to name it 0.9b.
that’s very nice, I have a lot of respect for you, Text
I agree it will be tough at parts, but as with the ST-uncut maps things will come together if one starts working on it and getting feedback and ideas. It does suck that the parts are scattered around and I guess the gaps would have to be filled in and maybe re-arranged at some points.
I think some of those things you listed actually did help the story in the original. Going down into On-a-Rail you’re supposed to be making your way through the materials transport system of black mesa AFTER it has been thrown into complete chaos by the alien invasion and subsequent HECU recovery efforts. You really had to explore the facility at parts to get your monorail car or yourself from point A to B and move the hooks/find the next part of the track etc.
In BM they basically left this idea of it out and made it more of a drive right through sort of thing. I think there’s one plug puzzle you have to plug in and then turn on, but even for that you only had to go about one room over to solve. In HL it was an amazing feeling to finally make it back to the surface wheres in BM I found myself going “really, already?”
Another aspect that I think BM missed out on for On-a-Rail is that this chapter is really the biggest ‘get freeman’ chapter in the game from the HECU standpoint. They have set up multiple eleborate traps for him as well as hunkering down in sand bag forts with with rapid-fire sniper rifles, mounted machine gun turrets (manual and automated), and even have a guy just waiting for him by the tracks with a mounted rocket launcher. If you took one wrong turn you could drive into an area with TNT ready to go off or accidentally set off tripmines.
In the chapters before On-A-Rail the HECU is still just mostly there to clean up the disaster and kill aliens. You encounter and fight against them, but they aren’t yet trying to solely rape your face and writing ‘die freeman’ in blood on the walls. This is where you’re supposed to realize that the HECU really aren’t having too good a time anymore between dealing with you and the aliens and after you elude all of their traps in OaR the black ops are called in.
Some of this was in BM, but much less so than the original.
Edit
You’re killing me man haha. I can’t wait to see it.
Jessiestorm88,
You absolutely nailed it, concerning OaR. You’ve voiced my sentiments exactly.
I think the BM Devs were caught between a rock and a hard place concerning both OaR and ST. The principle Devs assigned to each of these levels both left during partial development with both levels no where near completion. I think a lack of resources and the timeline pressure towards a public release forced the BM Dev Team to scramble and put something together that was less in scope than their original intentions, hence the reason why OaR and ST were released in the state they were. Don’t get me wrong, BM is a staggering achievement and some tough decisions had to be made. However, with an absence of deadlines and Devs leaving prematurely, I’m sure BM would have been closer to everyone’s expectations (but we would still be waiting for it).
Just goes to show that you can’t account for “unforeseen consequences”.