Just finish them and release them, they suit perfectly in BM
Maybe I’m jumping the gun but if the application as BM dev doesn’t end up well, you should upload it on Moddb
That’s my intention.
That’s my intention, application or not. Once 1.0 has been cemented (once it’s passed the Release Candidate phase), then I’ll ModDB it.
In terms of progress, they’re pretty much ready to release right now. I’ve done most things which I wanted to do. One or two things remain though. I could probably release it tonight if I pushed hard and worked fast, but I’m not going to do that. I’m gonna take it a bit slower, take my time working out the final few kinks. It will definitely, 100% be ready to release the first RC tomorrow.
Cause we are all nitpickers 
I finished playing through the campaign last night and when I got to the transition the tank you’re supposed to kill with the TOW never came out of the garage. When I went inside and it started your maps it was actually still there inside. You might want to load up that map a few times and play it into yours and see if you can’t recreate it or just make sure it doesn’t happen on the RC version.
Edit: Playing around with it today. It took me three times playing that osprey scene to recreate. I guess there’s probably nothing you can do about it actually since it’s caused on the map before yours. I don’t think it’s the osprey gibs because I saved after killing everything up there and then went down and climbed up to the TOW room where it triggers the door opening and the tank coming out. 9 times out of 10 loading from that spot after the osprey and everyone was dead it would work fine, but then it would fail randomly sometimes and just sit there inside. I even pushed all the osprey gibs right in front of the door and it worked that time so who knows.
https://i.imgur.com/t7UIa.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/uRSGu.jpg
I think that happens when the osprey gibs fall down and collide with the tanks pathing. Its happened a few times to me.
There is absolutely, positively nothing I can do about that. It’s got nothing to do with my maps, rest assured, it’s just a bug in the tank on C2A5F.
I took a poke around the entity setup on C2A5F to see what might cause the tank to get broken and not want to come out. The tank’s relay (the thing which causes the tank to spawn and the doors to open) is activated by a math_counter, when it hits its maximum legal value, which is 2. It has 3 inputs which change its value.
The death of the Osprey adds a value of 1 to the counter. The player touching the invisible trigger surrounding the TOW adds a value of 1. The player leaving the invisible trigger surrounding the tow subtracts 1. The entity logic, therefore, provides no explanation as to why the tank wouldn’t be spawning, unless you didn’t go to the TOW. So, I can’t help there I’m afraid. I’d guess it has something to do with the tank’s spawn being blocked.
New version’s on its way, the final compile is starting now. 45 minute test run after that, and then…you’ll have it. It should be there in an hour and a half, tops. Be excited. It’s ready. It’s looking FANTASTIC. I’m very happy with it. I’ll probably do a video to accompany this version as anything after that which I do will be bugfixes, and you won’t see any bugs on the video.
Sounds good. I look forward to the next playthrough.
[COLOR=‘Red’]Update: Released![/SIZE]
Latest Version: 1.0 Release Candidate 1. Download here.[/SIZE]
This release is v1.0, Release Candidate 1. This means the maps are “complete”. At this point I will only fix bugs/visual errors. By now, the maps are basically 99% representative of the finished product. I will aim to get another Release Candidate out the door within 1 - 2 days, if it is needed. I will repeat this process until I deem it “ready,” but I highly doubt I’ll need more than 1 more release candidate, if that. Once I release v1.0 Final, that’s it. I will finish working on this project and move on. I’m working on a tight/fast development cycle here, so if you can, please report your issues as quickly as possible, so I can be as timely as possible with subsequent releases.
I am in the process of putting together a very detailed and comprehensive video, appealing to newcomers (to my project) and veterans alike. Look out for that in the next few days.
As always, 2 things:
-
Please report any gamebreaking/serious bugs ASAP. Modding is a tenuous practice, it’s possibly that while I was packaging/compiling I reintroduced/added some kind of problem which wasn’t there before. It’d be good if I knew about it soon so I can get out a hotfix!
-
Please don’t be upset/offended if something you’ve reported hasn’t been fixed. I either haven’t had the time or disagree with what you’re suggesting. If you think it’s important, please re-iterate it and I’ll endeavor to fix it for the next release candidate.
Changelog:
13/12/12
==1.0RC1== <–Surface Tension Uncut - It’s about damn time! Edition
Assorted/General
-The final layers of polish have been added. What you’re seeing now is essentially the finished product. Changes at this point will be mostly visual/bug related.
-More clipping issues nipped in the bud. There are still clipping issues around (mostly pipe related), but at this point any clipping that’s left is pretty much unavoidable.
-Lightmap optimization/detailing performed on all 3 maps. Significantly decreased scales on faces with low contrast, saving memory at no visual cost, and increased scales on faces with high contrast, increasing shadow quality. Shadows in general should be much improved now at little cost.
-Fixed the spawn positions of many of the pre-deaded corpses on the maps so that they no longer spawn in weird positions.
C2A5G
-Added 3 Satchels and 3 Tripmines to the player’s initial inventory if they start from C2A5G.
-Fixed the door near the start to prevent shadows from bleeding through it (hopefully) - also did this with the window at the end.
-Made it so that all vending machines dispense Soda like the rest of Black Mesa’s machines.
-Realigned the columns and parking bays. There should be no more major alignment issues now.
-Removed the healthpack from the dead Marine by the Zombie.
-Significantly thickened the hole in the wall leading out onto the street (24 units now, used to be 8). Also improved the look of the destruction by substituting brush based damage for model based.
-Redesigned slightly the exterior of the parking lot. The windows have been retextured, and moved to be symmetrically aligned with the large door. Added a pedestrian door and some vents. The vents are also all around the parking garage, for decoration.
-Removed the battery from the breakable crate and switched it for a Satchel+Tripmine.
-Added some extra cubemaps near the buildings in the background so their reflections are no longer illuminated red (because there weren’t any before they were using the nearest available cubemap - the ones in the vent).
-Moved the lights in the vent to be properly aligned with the wall.
-Added several light pattern decals to the wall in the vent. Very nice visual effect.
-Switched a human Commander in the garage for a human Grunt.
-Lowered one of the car lifts to reduce the likelihood of the player experiencing a physics/clipping bug. Unfortunately this bug is not fixable (engine bug) so all I can do is to safeguard against it slightly.
-Increased the lightmap scale under the windows so the shadow looks less blurry.
-Altered the Marine layout in the TOW courtyard, to make the combat more interesting. Switched 2 grunts for 1 medic and 1 commander.
-Adjusted the Harrier take off so it no longer turns off to the side, which looked very unnatural. The flight path itself is good now, the problem lies in the adjusting of angles which looks jerky. It’s still much better now, however.
-Implemented a failure condition where if you use up all the TOW rockets without destroying the door, it reloads your previous save and displays the message “Failure to preserve mission-critical resources.” It’s foolproof as well, it works every time.
-Moved the sentry to a much more obvious and easy to set up position.
-Adjusted the “Rungrunts” pathing a little bit so they normally go near the edge of the helipad when it explodes. Should result in them being flung off like they were in old versions.
-Increased the speed of the LAV bunker doors a little bit to minimize the chance of the marines getting stuck behind it as it opens.
-Fixed the first LAV-killing Alien Grunt from teleporting over to the LAV rather than running to it.
-Adjusted the bunker near the LAV to be symmetric rather than having one sticking out.
-Fixed up the railings around the helipad to the best possible standard. Any problems left with them not connecting properly or being at weird angles/clipping are pretty much unavoidable at this point, sadly.
-Switched the 3d skybox in the far distance for one which more accurately represents that you can see on C2A5H.
-Fixed a bug with decals on the bunker at the end of the map projecting themselves onto the ground when they shouldn’t.
-Adjusted the Zombie at the end of the level. He used to start banging on the glass immediately, then when you transitioned to C2A5G he’d wander around the level. It’s reversed now. On switching to C2A5H he will then start banging on the glass.
-Changed the security camera so that it’s just permenantly facing into the room rather than rotating into a wall.
C2A5H
-Made Barney’s break room a little bit less bare. Added some vending machines for a splash of colour.
-Added a metal beam to hide an ugly little texture seam near the hole in the wall.
-Fixed a pretty serious and obvious visual leak in the room with the AGrunt.
-Fixed a bug where the player could get stuck inside the debris which spawns by the massive hole, by making it so that if the player is standing by the hole when it gets broken, he gets pushed back before the debris can spawn.
-Serious lightmap optimization to the street, should save a lot of texture memory.
-Switched the control panel in the guard house for one which says “security door”. Also made the red and green sprites which illuminate it much more obvious.
-Finally, after a lot of troubleshooting, fixed the light bleeding in the hallway by the bathrooms. The corner being mysteriously lit should no longer happen now.
-Added a third crate to the roof to make the concept clearer to the player. It’s out of the way.
-Significantly increased the lightmap scale on the distant Hangar roof (from 16 luxels to 1, an increase of 16X!) to make the shadowing smooth rather than jagged. It looks way way less ugly now. I hadn’t figured out that this was the reason it looked bad until I started the lightmap optimization pass.
-Gave the rooftop vort the “Long Visibility/Shoot” spawnflag so that if he survives he CAN actually attack the player.
-Swapped a healthpack by the eating Zombie for a battery.
-Added some fires to the left of the pipe in the Satchel Pipe, to make it clearer that the players can’t go that way.
-Several significant changes to the Furnace Room aesthetic. It looks BRILLIANT now.
-Adjusted the layout of the room so that there are now only 1 or 2 instances of unavoidable clipping.
-Added a vent with pipes and block light running through it lit from undeneath, like that seen in Blast Pit. Creates a wonderful lighting effect.
-Significantly bumped up the lightmap scale on high contrast/shadowed faces in the Furnace Room, to produce sharp, dramatic shadows.
-Toned down the ambient sound of the light in the furnace room to be way less annoying.
-Added several ambient pipe sounds around the room. The furnace room should feel VERY alive now.
-Gave some pipes smoothing groups to make the lighting less harsh.
-Added a few more details/groups of pipes to make the room seem less empty.
-Added light decals underneath some of the lights, for improved visual effect.
-Tightened up a bit of timing where the red glow of the furnace would go out before the fire did.
-Fixed some very poor geometry which could be found on pipe joins.
-Attempted to repair the seams in the furnace caused by Hammer’s absolutely terrible rounding of co-ordinates for lathed cyliners.
-Several more clipping fixes in the gasworks. Also removed a few pipes here and there.
-Adjusted Barney’s sequence a bit to make it so the events correspond with him pushing the button, rather than happening slightly after.
-Moved the evac Ospreys slightly to the right to make them more visible.
-Fixed the beam clipping through the pipe at the end of the map.
-Reverted the vent at the end of the level to its old design, with the grate hanging down onto the pipe. Made the destination slightly more obvious, and much easier to jump onto.
C2A5I
-Fixed the same clipping found at the end of C2A5H.
-Fixed a bug where one of the 50cals appeared to be floating in the air. I’d actually repaired this in the last version but did it WRONGLY (I set the boxes to prop_static when they are supposed to be prop_dynamic).
-Fixed up one of the Garg’s patrol paths so he shouldn’t get stuck moving in circles anymore.
-Reduced the speed of the doors opening at the end from 1.5X to 1.33X.
-Fixed a bug where the Garg would stop performing his opening door animation halfway through.
Thank you for listening, hope you enjoy the latest version!
fuck yeah
I wish you could hear how excited I am right now.
i miss your videos whit commentary 
Just played it and it’s just minor details:
First level:
Garage:
- Replace one soda machine with a candy machine on each level
- Under stairwell u have a legless zombie, the stair is not completely on the ground
Maintance garage:
- Sunholes don’t disappear with falling vent tubes
- Missing ramps on lifts (can u try this?)
- Make blockade on the easy way to get to the end of first level, it’s way too easy, no obstacle in the way and u have a ladder aswell, I loved the jump puzzle, where u need to jump down to the exit from the landingpad
- Where u have those big fight at the landingpad, u have those ‘tank’ coming out of a gate, when u walk in those gate u see a big door, possible to add an entrance pad aswell which is red, like those where u jumped down out of the window of the garage in first level (those with several parts)
Second level:
- Please let the door to the toilets (with the two headcrabs) open the other way
- Had this in furnace room:
- Barney is a black person again (can u use a fixed model, like they did on Eli and Isaac?
Level 3:
Please let the wheel stop turning when opening the two big doors
I really hope u address this issues, details. Once this is fixed I have no longer need to give comments on your maps
I wish I could too!
One’s coming. Just recorded the gameplay + commentary. Just started editing it together now. I’ll probably upload it overnight and you’ll all have it by tomorrow.
Video came out well. Not brilliantly, but well enough.
Have to say, I don’t consider most of these to be an issues. I’ll explain, to be fair.
I’ve explained why I ditched the candy machines. I like the purple and orange lighting when they’re next to each other. I think it looks lovely. It’s not the same without the purple and orange. It’s simply a personal preference.
The stairs are on the ground, there’s just light bleeding. There isn’t much I can do about it, it’s the way Source handles func_details. I’ll switch them out for func_brushes, see if that helps.
Can’t fix the holes in the vent without editing the particle effect, and I don’t really want to do that because it’s not an easy effect to muck around with.
Adding ramps to the other lifts is annoying as hell, and I have said in the past that I don’t want to do it. Pretend someone took them off or something.
I don’t want there to be a jumping puzzle at the end of that map. In HL1 it made more sense from a design perspective because the player interaction with the big fight was minimal. It gave the player something to do. It’s not needed in my map, because player interaction in the fight is pretty big. There’s no easy way to make it make sense, either. Plus, I added a jumping puzzle on C2A5H. They’d be quite close together, breaking up the action too much on an action oriented chapter.
The door in the bathroom can’t open the other way, that’s why it doesn’t. It would block the cubicles, which doesn’t make sense. This is fine, doors in real life often only open one way too.
Can’t do anything about Source’s screwy collision. If it bugged through the grate, it bugged through the grate. It’s nothing to do with me, weird as that may sound.
I’m also not bothered about Barney’s face being different on different playthroughs. Loads of NPCs in Black Mesa are like that. It’s not a problem.
Hope this addresses some things.
Just play it and it’s amazing, that’s well almost finished and that’s a wonderful work. Congratulation.
But I saw one or two little bugs and as a perfectionnist I have some suggestion (I already did).
c2a5g
https://i.imgur.com/xlb8p.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/iNPW3.jpg
There are cars which are made of concrete.
https://i.imgur.com/8GV1c.jpg
By climbing on this car the jumping to the window, I start the script of the street battle. Don’t know if you want to correct that.
https://i.imgur.com/oEJcw.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/RIHFa.jpg
There is a flying mp5 when you jump from the window
https://i.imgur.com/n1Qak.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/MXKPN.jpg
There is one light in the vent which has not the new effect. Same in the last vent before the garg and all over your maps for the same type of light (but not red.
https://i.imgur.com/GL81q.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/wxKlx.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/hnl9N.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/Bd7hl.jpg
In tow court, lights are flying
https://i.imgur.com/d9rqK.jpg
Just funny
c2a5h
https://i.imgur.com/OYnRP.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/5AU9i.jpg
After I turned off the fire (so there isn’t red light anymore) there is always red reflect as if there is always the red light.
https://i.imgur.com/2ycrf.jpg
I suggest that this should be more in a mess. Like I did in this next screeshot but with the battery on the floor
https://i.imgur.com/xrugX.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/xsyQO.jpg
I suggest to add concrete at this point to hide cross pipes
c2a5i
https://i.imgur.com/hiyqG.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/9JTfw.jpg
The only thing I suggest is to add a explosion decal to the mortar. The mortar seems not powerful at all. A bonus would be to add more destructible environment but I imagine that’s quite difficult.
Voilà ! Could you please comment why you can’t or don’t want something I suggest. Thank you !
Great job on the levels, the vending machines on the second level of the garage, if you whack the orange one with the crowbar, they’ll both dispense all their soda for some reason.
The snark vent (the first one) do you mind allowing the player to move the snark nests around?
Cheers for the feedback. Will go point for point. I warn you though, 60% of the things you suggested won’t/can’t happen.
Cars being made of concrete is an error in the prop. Nothing to do with me. Black Mesa devs have compiled the model of the dynamic (the static one works fine) Crown Vic so that it is made of concrete, for some reason. You’ll notice all other dynamic cars are made of concrete too. The annoying thing is, only the dynamic model has multiple skins, so I had to use a dynamic model for the static prop, instead of the actual static one. Otherwise you’d have 4 of the same colored car in the garage. I cannot fix this, and I’d rather have multiple different coloured cars made of concrete than 1 colour made of metal. Trade-off.
I’ve tried to reproduce that bug myself and have been unable to, but to safeguard I extended the playerclip to inside the window. I’m not sure how you’re doing it. Can you make a video or something? It’s kinda baffling me that you can do that as the trigger for the street battle is on the floor above, and definitely doesn’t go through the floor.
I’ll sort out the flying MP5. It’s fucking annoying though, when you have “sleeping” AIs (the Marines in the TOW courtyard), their guns stay floating in the air with the rest of them invisible. Why can’t all of them be invisible? Annoying.
I know it doesn’t have that effect. It would look terrible there. It would be cut off round the edge. No good. The Garg vent I didn’t really think about, I guess I can change it, but it’s not a big deal.
I’ll ground the lights. Never noticed that before.
The piece of the Osprey on the vehicle is pretty hilarious, but sadly there’s nothing I can do about physics bugs!
The cubemaps reflecting red is not something I can fix, I’ve known about this bug for a long time. Cubemaps are non-dynamic, and cannot be changed. There is no workaround for it, and it’s not that terrible anyway.
I could mess the janitor closet up a bit I guess, but I think it looks fine as it is too.
I’ll cover the pipe seams with the same material I’ve used in a few places. I hadn’t considering covering those particular ones, but it’s a pretty good idea.
I cannot add an explosion decal to the mortar. The mortar is a hardcoded entity in Black Mesa’s code, thus I cannot change it in any way. The same is true for the splash in the water.
I probably muddled up/interconnected the I/O on the top vending machines by accident. I’ll look into that. Cheers.
And I don’t understand your second question. Could you elaborate that?
EDIT: As per my commitment to get the next release candidate out as quickly as possible, I’ve already addressed ALL the feedback I’ve received so far which I agreed with and said I would. That is to say, I’ve already implemented those fixes. Nice eh?
You can’t press E on the snark nests to pick them up in the first vent for some reason (while you can do that to the others perfectly fine). It was like that in the original BM.
They have the spawnflags “Start Asleep,” and “Motion Disabled” ticked, and that wasn’t my doing. I’m guessing the devs left them like that so that a player who decides to grenade the Snarks which spawn doesn’t get punished by having 15 more Snarks appear when the nests are blown up by the grenade. That would be a bit cruel for the first Snark encounter. My 2 extra encounters later on are a bit mean like that - if you throw a grenade you will just end up spawning 10 more angry Snarks. I think it’s alright like that.
Fair enough.