There should be a reason why the HECU are attaching whichever explosives to the door. Therefore, the door control switch should be defective.
I know it’s late, but I just realised I forgot to elaborate on this.
The reason I felt #1 (attaching explosives to the door) would feel contrived is because it makes little sense beyond “you need to blow up this door”. Mainly, why did they set up explosives if they could just blow through it with a TOW that’s sitting right there, already set up and loaded, just waiting for the trigger pull? I say just go with Option 3, with some roaring and pounding on the door. I don’t think it’s that hard to figure out what to do. The TOW is fighting right at it, and it’s the only kind of door with that texture on that doorframe as far as I can remember, that alone makes it different.
Speaking of, I know it’s a bit late for this now, but what about altering the ambush trap? My reasoning is, how would the grunts know you were headed for that specific doorway long enough to set that up? You could make it less obviously ‘pre-planned’ (say some trip mines, wired beeping satchels, and some grenades, a couple TOW missiles and / or TOW missile crates, maybe some RPG rockets). That way it’ll look dangerous, but it’ll seem more like they just grabbed whatever explosives they had at their base camp or on their person (trip mines, satchels, missiles, and grenades!) and stuffed them into that room when they heard the gunfire erupt inside. That or just do it HL1 style where you get near the door, and the TOW blows it up (but then there’s a question as to why they reloaded it and moved the facing, that or the fact that now the TOW was used for something, it’s less obvious what you have to do with it).
AGrunts breaking down the door after set timer is just as contrived as the explosives idea, if not moreso. In addition, and this is the deal breaker for me - it’s probably also the only “puzzle” in Black Mesa/Half-Life (if I were to implement it) which would solve itself for the player if they didn’t get it quickly enough. That just seems totally wrong to me, having had more time to think about it. And as I said, it takes away from the player who wants to explore, set up, and plan ahead before they decide to move on. I don’t like that, and it’s enough to make me not want to do it.
As for the inconsistency with the Satchels, that’s kinda true. I would have used some kinda C4/Plastic Explosives model if there were any, but there aren’t, so I’m stuck with using them. I also used them for a similar purpose on B1 in OaR Uncut, to explode the roof by the rocket access. It’s not entirely implausible. But I will throw in some explosive crates too, that’s an excellent idea which does add to the plausibility.
A decent idea, and very easily doable actually. Might make it too obvious though, and no other TOW in Black Mesa has the laser active BEFORE you take control of it. I’ll give it a whirl and see how it turns out.
Hmm, I’d thought about this - my current line of reasoning is that if a player really wants to let that happen then maybe they should be rewarded for their creative thinking. If you think about it, only people who’ve played the maps a few times before will use this as a solution. I doubt most people would otherwise come to the logical conclusion of destroying the door while they’re busy fighting the HECU.
If this does become a problem I can easily make it so that the 4 HECU in the TOW Courtyard need to be dead before the door becomes destructible. But that too is REALLY contrived and potentially problematic too, so I’m not sure I want to do that.
An exceptionally minor detail, but yes.
Actually your first complaint is offset by the fact that there’s already scorch marks on the door (which have been there since v0.83 or something). It suggests that they already tried the TOW on the door, but couldn’t get through it, so figured they’d rig some extra explosives to it to go the extra mile. As you said, there’s no other door like that in the rest of Black Mesa, so the player doesn’t really know just how thick/strong it is as there’s no basis for comparison. It could just be a really fucking strong door. The good part about this is that even if the player still uses the TOW to destroy the door, the explosives will be there/blow up anyway, so the player can never know anyway that the TOW alone was enough to blow up the door. I think that sorts out your first complaint reasonably.
Taken in conjunction with your second complaint, I’ve done a few things though. You’re right, the setup for the ambush in the garage was always a tad too elaborate, so I’ve made it more rugged and hasty looking. It’s now 5 TOW crates, 1 box of frag nades, 3 explosive crates, 3 Satchels, and 2 Tripmines, as opposed to whatever it was before. Though that’s actually MORE than what was there before, it’s far more makeshifty and less complex than the previous setup, and as you said, just looks like the guys in the garage grabbed whatever they had outside and threw it into that area. In addition, the M1075 parked just outside the garage (the massive loading vehicle) now has many crates on it, and some explosives, with quite a few crates having been unloaded next to it (including some TOW missiles). There’s quite a few crates and boxes right next to the garage now. This suggests, albeit subtly, that they were already unloading the explosives and stuff from the M1075 to put by the TOW, when they heard you were coming at whatever point. They could have then easily just moved it from right there into the garage, just bunging whatever they had near them into that room (which explains the Satchels and Tripmines, as there’s a pretty high abundance of them in the TOW Courtyard and even before the vent). Simple.
Hopefully this adequately addresses both of your complaints.
I’m glad you loaded crates on the M1075, that way it may explain why they were in such a hurry to blast off a malfunctioning door: they were bringing supplies to the temporary camp in the next courtyard (where the big fight erupts).
Add a malfunctioning switch that is supposed to be opening the door you’re supposed to destroy. According to the radio, (this is how I interpret it) they’re supposed to flee out of the battlefield using the osprey in the next scene but destroyed afterwards by the alien aircrafts. So that could be a reason to destroy the door.
I’m late to the party. I’m really, really late to the party. In fact, the party was over before I got there, so I would love it if someone could explain for me what the party was like so I dont have to search through 122 pages of thread. These maps are amazing and they need to be in the final Steam release of the game. There will be infinitely more people who will play the game than the amount of those who contributed to it and visit this forum, and the game will be truly complete for the players if these map are included, as well as the OaR uncut maps which will almost certainly be of equal quality. I understand there was some sort of creative disagreement that made that impossible. What exactly happened and is there any way that this can be resolved? Not to pressure you or anything…
There is no “creative disagreement”. The Black Mesa Devs do not wish to use my work in their game, for reasons they will not disclose, which they say is due to their NDA with Valve. That’s all there is to it, really. Our “disagreement,” was for other reasons, which concerned the way in which they chose to divulge this information with me, which I was really unhappy about. But that’s an entirely different can of worms.
I’m not going to try and persuade them to use my work because it’s not my place; it’s their game and it’s ultimately their decision what they do with it. I’ve offered my work in the form of an addon to them, and I’ve offered my services to their team as a mapper, and they want neither, which is fine. There isn’t much else which can be done. I too would like to know why, but they’re not willing/able to tell me, so there isn’t much point pursuing it really. The best course of action, and the one which I am pursuing, is just to carry on with the work as I have been doing. And that’s just what I’ll do!
Hope this has provided sufficient explanation.
I still call bullshit on that, by the way.
And everyone is keen to hear it from you :meh:
Tank you! 
Well Text, thanks for clearing that up. I understand if you don’t want to pursue the BM devs to try and get these maps on the final product, that is your decision. However, I hope you won’t mind if I or somebody else does. While they have done a fantastic job on the game so far, the devs stay oblivious to the fact that this game is for the players. Hell, it was created because of the players, and their dissatisfaction with Half-life: Source. They deny that this game is for the players by not recognizing your effort and including these maps that the players desired after the first release. I’m tired today, but when I wake up one morning soon, energized, I am going to try my best to convince the project leaders, beginning with finding out why. If it’s alright with you, of course.
Honestly, I never thought of it that way. Like the parking garage and other places, I always saw them as generic scorch marks.
I just thought of something, but I don’t know if you’d like it, due to requiring a bunch of changes, but I might as well speak it on the off-chance you do:
What if instead of a fully usable TOW, there’s just a TOW Humvee parked in the middle of the street facing that door. The TOW on top has a coloured light where the fire button would be, maybe also a red laser pointed straight ahead at the door. When you climb up and press that button, it fires a missile straight ahead and blows up the doorway.
The advantages here are the fact that the TOW now cannot be moved or anything, only fired, and it with the light and laser, it’s incredibly obvious what must be done to advance ahead. It’s also kinda Half-Lifey, with the ‘push button to blow up door and move on’ mechanic. The disadvantages are only being useable once (this could be an advantage if you specifically want the players to make use of trip mines and satchels to ambush the grunts, rather than relying entirely on the TOW as I do), another disadvantage is that it would require more work, heh 
What part of ‘We can’t discuss that information because we’re under NDA’ don’t you understand? You’re not going to convince us while we are under NDA. We simply, LEGALLY cannot go into further details until the NDA is lifted (and that’s only if stormseeker wants to clarify). We’re not trying to be thick here. I personally recognize the work that textfamguy1 put into this; it takes a lot of effort to make decent, fun levels. Just bear with us man.
Whoa there, slow down. Even if it was their own choice not to include it (which is unclear), they would not be denying anything of the sort. Text is doing awesome work, but his efforts still don’t really compare to what the BM team has been putting themselves through since approximately forever ago. I think this deserves to go into the final product, but they have a right to be protective and extremely picky about what they label as being a part of their work.
I know you’ve made up your mind about this and I am a bit late to the party (I was abroad) but I also feel that solution 3 is the best course of action.
I don’t mind that it’d lead to the only puzzle that solves itself after a certain time. I prefer that rather than it becoming no longer a puzzle due to being destructible by other means.
As your-name-here says, I wouldn’t bother. Firstly, because they can’t. An NDA is a legal agreement. If they say they can’t talk about it, we’ll just have to live with it. Secondly they don’t even HAVE to talk to me about it, they have no obligation to me. There’s no guarantee that they would if they could anyway, and that’s fine too.
You can pursue your intended course of action if you so desire, but I’m not encouraging it, and as your-name-here said, it won’t get anywhere, it simply won’t. A bit of a shame maybe, but that’s the way it is. I appreciate the effort on my behalf though. It’s really nice to see the community so passionate about my work.
I get what you’re saying, but saying my efforts don’t really compare to the BM Team is just a little unfair to me I think. You have no idea just how much work I’ve put into all this crap. To put things into perspective, I’ve logged around 1,500 hours in the Source SDK since I started back last September. That averages, very roughly, to around 5 hours a day. Of course I’m not mapping constantly while the Source SDK is open, but we can safely average that to 2 - 3 hours a day minimum. I put in fuckloads of work. This isn’t even including the testing which I do within Black Mesa itself, OR the time I spent interfacing with the community. And this is while getting a university degree from the LSE. I’m not bragging, but don’t underestimate the work that I’ve put into this. I love doing it, but damn.
Of course the BM Devs have every right to decide what goes into their work for whatever damn reason they please, but that’s purely because they have the creative right to be in control of their own work. And that’s not to mention their NDA. That’s all there is to it really. Saying that it’s because they’ve worked “harder than me,” even though such a thing is near impossible to measure anyway, is a bit cruel to both parties. That’s not to downplay how fantastic Black Mesa is, though, or just what an undertaking it was.
That’s not a bad idea at all, but I’m not going to implement it. It’s a fair amount of work to replicate something which we already have (a TOW) and is only used once in the entire game (if we exclude C2A5G and the TOW in OaR Uncut). You know me, I’m all for reinforcing underused elements!
I can certainly see the advantages of your idea though. It would be very obvious to the player and would not create an inconsistency as the TOW Humvee is never actually seen active in the entire game. But, I think having the TOW as it is is more Half-Lifey, a fun part of that segment was using that autogun to kill the Grunts. It’s a shame we couldn’t have a slightly better gun to play with, but I ain’t no programmer, so we gotta stick to the TOW.
It’s still a puzzle. The only difference will be the puzzle is now “destroy the door with explosives,” instead of “destroy the door with a TOW,” which isn’t a particularly massive or devastating difference. The puzzle still doesn’t solve itself. As I said, I’ll gather feedback from the testers and I can always remove it if people don’t like it.
I’m shooting for a release tonight but that’s a very hopeful deadline. More likely tomorrow. I’m working very hard (worked on C2A5G from 9 - 6 yesterday), but the changes to C2A5G are proving much more complicated than anticipated. I’ve managed to introduce some major bugs while fixing others, so I’m working to fix them now.
Your-name-here: With your permission, I have a few questions. Does this NDA prevent you from adding the maps, or just talking about them? It sounds like it only prevents you from talking about them. Or is there another reason why you absolutely, positively, cannot add the maps? (Does the NDA allow you to say yes or no to that question, and not elaborate?) Is this the kind of “We’re not allows to talk about CoD Ghosts multiplayer at E3” type of thing? Which means it will likely be lifted at some point, possibly allowing for these maps to be added in a future update? Are you allowed to answer a single question I have asked?
And Text, please don’t be weirded out by the fact that I am fighting for this way harder than you. I just want this game to be perfect. I agree, I probably won’t get anywhere, but it rests my conscience to try.
All it means is that they can’t talk about any updates whatsoever until BM has been released on Steam.
Again…what part of NDA is unclear? It means we can’t talk about it…period.