I say houndeyes and zombies. Houndeyes because I don’t really recall seeing them during FaF, (except for just after the start, which is still kinda sparse) and so this is the last we see them for a while. As for zombies, I almost feel like they start tapering off towards the end (especially since they don’t exist on Xen) so one last encounter with them would be nice.
A mock up of the lay out of the offices would give us (at least me) a better idea of how to set up the encounters.
On the note of aliens, I don’t mind a mix. Up to you for distribution though.
I’ve never posted on this thread before so first thing first, thank you TextFAMGUY1 for bringing such excellent maps full of details and battle heat for both Surface Tension and On a Rail. I’m also rather curious to see which improvements you can bring to ST. 
Well, considering the chapter as a whole it didn’t really bother me to have more HECU against Xenian battles in your maps than simple fights. In fact, I enjoyed watching those as long as they didn’t spot me. Still, I reckon the office block you plan to add can be a good opportunity for more player-oriented fights. That place can conceal ammo and other goodies, but players will have to fight for them!
As I see it, this is how you can place at least two fights:
First, I don’t think having Xen fauna would be realistic. The way I see the area near the office block, the HECU already cleared the place and made a fortune camp before being attacked by Vorts and Agrunts, so having houndeyes and bullsquids in this particular building would seem strange. However, I wouldn’t mind having a locked meeting room full of corpses and zombies. You can see this as the office’s employees barricading themselves only to be slaughtered by headcrabs coming through vents or the ceiling (through which we will be able to enter the room). Maybe have the room in pitch dark too to create some surprise effect, and some available flares too (like in that chapter in HL2 Episode 1).
Then for some real fight, I would have thought of a small squad of HECU withdrawing into the office blocks to stand back against a new alien assault or simply to take cover and re-evaluate their situation, until they find the player. Still, that would only work if the office is big enough, so the different rooms can provide good cover and escape path.
But in case you’d prefer to have Agrunts and vorts storming the place, maybe you can have them ready to charge in as you exit the place, also have an alien aircraft passing nearby (or just the sound of one) to indicate the new enemies’ arrival as you reach for the exit door.
I like the burricaded zombie room idea. You could also have it so that it’s like that room in EP1 where the floor suddenly collapses and you end up trapped in the zombie room.
I don’t think there should be any HECU inside the building, not even ragdolls. Realistically if the HECU were in that much trouble, they’d either retreat outside or have the outside troops come inside to assist. Besides, I think they get kicked around enough as it is.
Perhaps one thing you could do is put wooden planks over the door, that way it seems as if the HECU blockaded the door. They room would either be cleared, or be barricaded off. As Mr. Someguy said, it just wouldn’t make sense if they included HECU dead bodies in there. This seems like a possible solution.
Seems Zombies and Houndeyes are particularly requested among the community. I’ll have a Houndeye fight in the office block as well as a fight with the Xenian military (Agrunts/Vorts). You’ll also now have the chance to kill the Zombie in the security office at the end of G, which will be where the Zombie fight will come from.
Paulo argues that having Xen Fauna would be weird in the Office because the HECU have already cleared it, and that would be true - but the Xenians can teleport in at a moment’s notice. What’s to say that they didn’t clear the Office, then have a whole bunch of Houndeyes teleport in and kill them all? Seems very plausible given the circumstances.
I’m going to keep the combat in the office block relatively simple. It won’t be complex and scripted, just straight up combat, so as not to overload the player with scripted combat sequences. You’ll likely fight the Xen military in the hallways, find some Xen Fauna (Houndeyes) in one of the side offices, and then maybe some scientist/guard corpses in another. Should work well enough to keep the offices interesting without being overcrowded. Hopefully this satisfies the community’s requests too.
In terms of work I got a good amount done today too, and the prognosis is looking good for a late Wednesday/Thursday release for the beta 2.0. I’m hoping by the end of this week to have ST Uncut 2.0 completely finished, so I can swiftly move on to OaR Uncut. One particularly good thing I did today was I went back and re-func_detailed most of the car park and tidied up a lot of the detail setups. The end result is the car park -should- (haven’t properly 100% tested it yet) be much better optimized than previously. I can’t estimate accurately just how much performance will have improved, but it should be a decent gain. I found several flaws in the way I’d optimized it before which I’ve now fixed. I’m working swiftly through my bug list and am thinking G will be completely finished by the end of today, if it all goes according to plan.
So I bring up my next question as it pertains to the area I’m currently working on. I asked this before but didn’t get too much of a response, presumably because I wasn’t particularly active at the time.
I’m changing the way the TOW scene works firstly by staggering out the AGrunts a bit to make it a tad easier (2 + 2, instead of 4 immediately). I’ve had some complaints from less experienced players that the scene with the TOW is unintuitive because none of the other doors in the entire game are destructible with a TOW. I can understand that criticism, but my personal argument is that a) the exact same is true of HL1, and b) the TOW’s pointing right at the door with alien noises behind it, it can’t be that hard to figure out. However, it could stand to be changed to be a bit easier on a beginner.
So, I might change the way the scene works. I currently have 3 ideas, and am leaning towards the first:
-
The door is destructible now by ANY explosives. The door has satchels attached to it (like the ones in the ambush) to signify that the HECU (before you so rudely interrupted them) were trying to blow through the door. The satchels blow up when an explosion is triggered nearby, and should hopefully explain why a door which is normally indestructible can be blown up. Can still also be blown up by the TOW.
-
Leave the scene exactly how it was in 1.11.
-
The door is only destructible by the TOW, BUT after 1 minute or so if you don’t destroy the door yourself the Agrunts burst through automatically.
So, let me know, which solution do you think is the best, if any? 1, 2, or 3? Maybe you have an idea of your own which you haven’t listed. That’s cool, let me know, I’m more than willing to implement any good ideas.
Thanks guys, I’m excited to hear what you all think!
1, but with a detonator and keep the TOW, but (maybe) put a .50 cal near by as well.
1 and 3 sound fairly realistic when combined actually. It gives the purists their method to play it like the original, while giving the beginners some help, and by adding the agrunts bursting through the door eventually, it makes the xenians a bit scarier!
1 and 3 if possible to do both if not just 1.
1 and 3 seem the best solution. Also for the latter, I would suggest adding some banging noise (like for the tentacles in the blast pit, but less repeated) to clearly show something is trying to burst out. And to add more realism, I wouldn’t mind having on the door some physical damages instead of blast marks to give a better hint of where to go, but I fear that would need a new texture, if not a new model.
Also, I’ve thought back of the Xen fauna presence in the office block. I reckon they can teleport anywhere in Black Mesa, but you don’t see much of them all along ST. Apart in the wildness (and the snarks apart), I don’t recall seeing any of them in or near the topside buildings, same goes in HL. I believe that they would have been dealt off by the HECU since they seemed to control topside facilities before the massive arrival of vorts and Agrunts, and I assume they would teleport less often as the resonance cascade lasted. Still, those office blocks topside don’t seem to be of any strategic importance to the soldiers, so having some of them there wouldn’t be weird after all.
I would say leave it the way it was. If your new to playing this game which I doubt anybody is then just go on youtube and watch a walkthrough. The way the map is designed I say its pretty much fool proof, the player is stuck in a rectangular courtyard, with on giant steel blast door that they were already on one side of, another door that leads to a small warehouse(goes nowhere), with finally a tow launcher aimed at the door you need to travel through (light bulb should come on). Plus the failed message is there should you use all the missiles as well. But if you cant figure out a way to go in this small area based off of a map that’s 15 years old then that’s just sad. I think its safe to bet that a very LARGE amount of people have played the original HL and know where to go. But that’s my opinion maybe Im wrong. And if your still stuck sv_cheats 1 noclip
Can you have, like, a grunt with a pack of Houndeyes on some kind of leash?
No that would require a scripted sequence and several entities/animations that don’t exist.
I personally like option 3. I think the beauty of this area is being able to use something very big and powerful to destroy scenery. No where else in the game are you able to do this. But at the same time though, forcing newer players to figure it out would put a slight hamper on things, so having it occur automatically after a minutes or so would prove beneficial.
I like 3 as the first option, 1 as a second (and a mix of both would be fine).
Seems almost nobody is in favour of leaving the puzzle the way it was. That’s interesting, and I kinda agree. It doesn’t hurt to tweak it a little to make it a bit easier on newer players. It isn’t the most intuitive segment although most people probably would get it anyway.
I’ve opted for option 1, for now. Literally all I’ve done is attach 3 satchels to the door and made it destructible by ANY explosives now instead of just the TOW. I’d imagine most players would probably use the TOW anyway. I know I will.
Most people seemed in favour of 1 or 3, and this argument helped me determine that 1 was a good course of action. Having some kind of “timer” on the AGrunts breaking down the door just detracts from the player’s time beforehand searching around the courtyard and planning with Satchels/Tripmines (if they choose to do so). There’s no need to put an unnecessary hamper on the player who likes to plan ahead.
While this is true, I’d imagine most players’ first instinct would still be to shoot the door with the TOW. That’s more of a conclusion an “experienced FPS” player would probably jump to. Making it vulnerable to OTHER explosives simply opens up the puzzle to those people who haven’t quite figured that part out. The satchels on the door might give it away a bit better. I’ll try it, and see what the community thinks.
That sounds hilarious. Potentially doable, actually, and hilarious. Not gonna happen though.
It’s too bad you can’t like, attach a laser sight to the TOW.
If you could, you could easily point the tow at the door, put a large dent and a scorch mark over the dent in the door to signify they started shooting the door down but didn’t finish.
I think that way logically most players would see the laser sight and figure out - oh, they shot the door and damaged it, so maybe I should try.
Uhm. I used to just shoot the door with the RPG or some similar device and just let the Agrunts and Hgrunts duke it out in HL…
You may want to have a trigger to make the door destructible once the player gets out into the yard.
I don’t like 1, it seems too contrived. Plus, satchels don’t blow up when hit by explosives, test it yourself. They only detonate when you press the detonator (as military explosives should).
I’d say go with a modified version of 3. Instead of 1 minute, 20 or 30 seconds.
EDIT:
Right, I forgot about that. I always just blow them up with the TOW and be done with it :3
Maybe a minute, after which time the grunts make angry sounds and thump loudly on the door, then it breaks? If you have to do option one, you could have a crate of explosives or something instead. I don’t like the satchel idea because it isn’t consistent with how the satchel functions.
I’ll go with 1 minute after all HECU soldiers are killed. The door must be destructible by explosives after 30 sec for logical explanation that the door will be broken eventually by the agrunts. Must have sound to notify. So a modified versions of 1 and 3.