What’s even weirder is that he died at the start of Office Complex, and then 5 minutes later I met him again near the cafeteria! I had to leave him behind, and then I saw him again at the start of On a Rail, but he was black this time! He said he’d wait there, but I ran into him again 5 minutes later, only he was a white guy now! What’s with Barney? That guy’s crazy! I must have bumped into him 30 times during the Black Mesa campaign. I’m glad they changed it so you only bump into him a few times during HL2!
I’m going to put it on ModDb in a few days once the second RC is finished. It’s nearly ready now, I’m just procrastinating because I haven’t been that into the mapping recently.
[COLOR=‘Red’]Please stick to the topic. This is about the added areas and scenes. If you have criticisms about Black Mesa, take them elsewhere in this forum and be constructive.
Let me just re-iterate, for the record: I do not, by any measure, think that Black Mesa is shitty, in ANY area. Mapping, sound, AI, modelling, texturing, it’s all EXCELLENT. Something can be excellent and still have flaws. Black Mesa is no exception. I even thought Surface Tension was exceptional. I did think that C2A5G was shitty, but not through incompetence or laziness. It was cut due to manpower constraints, and was rushed. I’m trying to correct that. Hopefully I have. It won’t do much to make you think Black Mesa isn’t shitty, if you already think it is crap.
RC2 on Wednesday or Thursday. Partially waiting on Conti to get here with the feedback he promised .
While waiting for the feedback from Conti so that I can release RC2 knowing as much is fixed as possible, I decided to go ahead and make a ModDB page for my mod.
Please, if you have some free time, go there, post comments on the pictures/news, whatever. Let people know about my mod. The time has come where I’m going to be widely releasing this to a larger public audience and a little publicity could go a long way. You’ve all done so much for me so far, I really appreciate everything.
Look forward to the release in a few days. I’ve set the date to the 20th (Thursday) provisionally.
No rush Conti, I can wait. Thank you for doing this for me. I would ideally like to release for late Thursday (and am dedicating tomorrow to mapping, I’ve been incredibly lazy with it these past few days!) though if you could bear that in mind, but don’t rush anything on my behalf. Please. I appreciate what you’re doing.
In the meantime, those of you who are interested in this project can help me by promoting my ModDB page to a wider audience!
Due to time constraints, I will post only the feedback about the important details that I think deserve more attention to adressing before the RC2. They are details that I felt more jarring, aestheticaly wise. I already made lots of points about minor details, but they are really small and can wait until the next release (so giving me time to gather more of them and post it in a systematic order. They are already filled with tons of explanation and BM maps comparisons for reference).
The feedback is in the images itself. The “bonus suggestions” means details which are nice-to-have (things generaly good in the way they are now, but could be even better if changed in the suggested way).
Tons of examples for the bonus suggestion (mostly from Blast Pit. Valve puzzle in the room right after the giant fan; other examples from the Blast Pit beginning):
Actually I’m pretty sure it’d be easy to carry the wall texture on the right wall, over to the left wall.
If I was doing it, I’d try to do a division of the left wall into parts, so that I could do an angle down the slope, like on the right wall, but flatten out on the ceiling and the floor. That would make the whole texture look like it’s spreading out. Then I’d make the whole thing a decal and have the real wall behind the visual wall. I tend to find that cutting an actual solid wall up tends to make divisions in the visual leafs, in such a way that it slows the compile of the map down in a stupendous way. However func_decal doesn’t always work for lighting up the surface.
I’d only keep what I suggested if it actually works out and looks convincing. Else might as well do what Conti said.
Quote from TextFAMGUY1
“@Dadster - just so you know, I read over your big feedback post, and I’m addressing what I can. I won’t reply as I’ll be here for an hour and I want to get some mapping done, but I read it. About 50% of what you listed are things I will/can change.”
Only “About 50% of what you listed are things I will/can change.”!!! That’s it… I’ve had it… I’m taking my feedbacks elsewhere!!!
Glad to see and hear you’re takin’ it easy. You’ve come a long way, baby!
What’s the definitive word on spark mechanics? I’ve mentioned, on several occasions in my feedbacks, about sparks passing through walls and floors. Here are some observations I’ve made concerning this matter:
a) In the carpark, there was a light fixture on level 1 that was arching and the sparks from it were passing through the concrete floor to level G below. I believe you solved this issue by stopping the light from arching altogether. That’s a shame because everyone loves anything that sparks. I can’t recall if the sparks from this light bounced on the ground upon contact or not. I suspect not.
b) Behind the security hut in the tank courtyard there’s a storage room. It also has an arching light fixture and the sparks from it pass through the wall into the security hut and adjacent area (this problem still exists). The sparks from this light do not bounce on the ground upon contact.
c) On the second floor of the security office in gasworks, there are two arching light fixtures on the same wall next to each other, near the stairs. What I noticed is that the sparks from these two lights DO bounce on the floor upon contact, which is different from the two instances above. As a result, NONE of the sparks from these two lights pass through the floor to the level below.
Can the same design parameters for instance “c” be applied to instances “a” and “b” (and any other instances in other areas that require it) so that these sparks behave in a normal manner? If so, please re-enable the carpark arching light fixture on level 1.
Please excuse my apparent fixation with sparks (and certain other feedback issues… I’m a fairly sane person… just a stickler when it comes to details).
Came across this oddity in C2A5I:
This ladder brightens and darkens repeatedly off and on every few seconds (see pictures). The time interval between changes varies.
Concerning the bathroom mirror shards and hand dryers:
Hope I’m not flogging a dead horse here, but is there a way that the assets/models/textures or whatever from C2A5F be incorporated into C2A5I’s bathroom scene? See picture of bathroom from C2A5F.
I remember an attempt to allow for a recess or cavity in the frames of large doors to depict a space where the door would retract into when opened, after someone mentioned it in one of their feedbacks. The picture below is for the large door that you destroy in the TOW yard. There is no slot or opening for the door to retract into. I thought I saw you had incorporated something along these lines in one of your previous releases (including the door in the picture). Just wondering if you’ve abandoned pursuit of this, due to its assumed complexity, or is something you’re still working on.
And to make it a point on its own, the sparks from the light in the security hut storage room pass through the wall into the security hut and adjacent area.
Can a similar single flame be added in front of and behind this existing row of three flames in the furnace (see picture)? The volume of flames seems kind of sparse considering the size of the furnace. I know you had to reduce the size of the flames to eliminate them from clipping through the furnace walls, but maybe you could add one in front and behind while still avoiding any clipping issues. Apply the same idea to the furnace chambers above/below?
Glad to see Conti made the same observation, in the first part of his detailed feedback, about darkening the lighting in the furnace room to heighten the overall visual effect. Can’t wait to see the results!
First of all I want to thank you for pulling this of. Your maps are a great addition that I will sure as hell keep included to my Black Mesa Installation. I think with some tweaking here and there this deserves to be included into the main package and I hope the devs will soon get in contact with you about that.
I have zero experience in mapping but from my perspective it seems you did a great work in a very short time.
I have made several walkthroughs now and I want to provide some feedback, I hope these points have not been adressed yet:
It looks like it is moving slowly on a rail and the sudden acceleration looks very unrealistic. Would it be possible to animate it like this:
The Jet is entering the scene at an already high speed and the nose already lifted slightly. The jet then starts rising slowly (at a lower angle, than it is the case now). Given that you only see the jet for a very brief time, the speed does not need to change during the whole animation, because this would be barely visible from that perspective. Like this:
Also in both videos you hear very loud engine noises (the camera in the first video should be at about the same distance as the player is in the map). In your walkthrough Video there is almost no sound at all. So the inclusion of a loud sound would be cool, it might even draw the players attention towards the jet?
Also the jet flying above the player when entering the helipad is flying at very low speed and couldn’t possibly make that narrow 90 degree turn (although most players likely won’t turn around to see where the jet is going with all the fighting going on in front of him). Also a loud engine sound is missing (think of the scene on the cliff when three jets pass by to bomb that distant building). How about you add a loud sound, speed it up little and just tilt the jet and it starts to turn slightly and then leaves the scene?
Before entering the Helipad, there is this huge red and grey wall that seems like it should prevent anyone from entering, even tanks (I do not know what other purpose it could have, other than looking cool). However at the landing pad, the wall just ends and the inside area is only protected by a fence, which makes the whole wall a little unnecessary.
Would it be possible to connect the wall to the Bunker?
A little later, when the Hole into the wall is blown, I have no idea what was causing it. The only visible thing to be able to blow a hole into wall ist the tank, but it can not have been responsible since it is just moving into the scene and it could not have shot the hole around the corner. Or did I miss anything?
Since it is not possible to cut the cables in half during the following manta attack, how about the cables do not cross the streets, just connect the poles on each side of the street seperatly? The Manta Ray is after all cutting a huge wound into the street (and I think it is awesome that you have modeled this) and killing a tank so the cables shouldn’t remain intact at all.
These are of course very minor issues. I really enjoy the additional fighting scenes between the aliens and the military, you did an amazing job, so thanks a lot, and again I really hope this gets included into the main package.
Hm. Some stuff here I’ll definitely address. There are problems with all this, however.
Parking lot walls: I like them the way they are. It creates an immediate visual difference between each level and I don’t find the tilted nature to be that bad either. I’ve designed it like this on purpose. Sorry.
TOW Courtyard Gate: Didn’t notice this weirdness, but I’ve changed it.
Tank Courtyard: I’ll see what I can do. One could perhaps assume that they’re rotating, rather than sliding doors, but I can’t remember if there are any instances of this in Black Mesa.
Furnace: Changing the valve for the machinery is a very bad idea as I will not be able to have the large set of pipes running through the room, which I really like. It will require MAJOR overhaul to implement - not something I’m willing to do at this stage. However, I did take a look at making the valves look better. Here are my results:
Which one? Old or new? I still personally prefer the old one, but am happy to go either way. The red shows the importance of that particular valve, but whatever.
As for relative darkness/brightness of the furnace, I’ve found that when the rest of it is darker, it looks a lot worse. That’s why those other lights are there in the first place. I’ll turn down their brightness a bit, but no way am I getting rid of them.
C2A5I Vent: It’s better the way it is. I might embed like you suggest but having the grate already dropped down provides a jump up for the player from an awkwardly narrow surface.
If the spark’s bouncing is inconsistent, it may have something to do with them being over world geometry vs brush entities, in which case there is fuck all I can do about it, short of turning the brush entities into world geometry, which is not an option. There’s no other real reason why the sparks bouncing would be inconsistent, there’s no option for it under env_spark.
Ladder brightness and props changing brightness randomly seems to be a feature of BM Props. No idea why, though. If you played Hezu’s Uplink remake, you’ll see his doors do the same thing my ones sometimes do, as do several on Black Mesa by default (particularly on WGH). At this point, there’s nothing I can do about it. At least it’s a consistent bug though!
The assets used in my bathroom are identical to that in C2A5F, including the mirror. They don’t like the cubemapping in the bathroom. Not much I can do about that.
I’ve fixed the door on C2A5G.
I might increase the flame size.
I’ve already done a lot to redesign the jet’s takeoff for RC2, but if that doesn’t work out I’ll probably scrap it altogether. It doesn’t add much to the level and func_tracktrains have TONNES of limitations which I’ve been working around up till now.
As for louder noises, that’s already done too.
I’ve already explained my reasoning for that. It provides a nice view of the 3d skybox for which I’m willing to sacrifice realism. However, to make it a little more realistic I’ve added a minefield there for RC2.
You did miss something. By the sandbags is a dead marine with an RPG. If you listen carefully you can also HEAR the RPG round travelling towards the hole before it explodes. Under the hole is an AGrunt’s torso, perhaps explaining why he fired.
I’m trying a method now for cutting the cables. It’ll look fairly rough, but hopefully that’ll be concealed by the beam.
Thanks for the feedback everyone, sorry I couldn’t be more thorough in my replies. I’m mapping currently and it’s going well, don’t wanna lose my flow.
Rather than decrease the other lighting in the furnace dramatically (though I did reduce it somewhat) I thought increasing the red effect might help. What do you think?
Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.
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