Just a dream - it would be awesome to see that map included in bms steam-release… 
Great work anyway.
Maybe insted of tall skybox just to use mini model of fighter and aliens fighter?
They can with melee. They can’t with the hive hand and the Abrams won’t croak from that.
For those of us who play with a customized skill.cfg make sure to add a little cover near by with the TOW scene, I rigged the Agrunts to tank 6-7 shells from the front in normal…
The lowness to the ground does make it feel alot more intimidating like an invasion if their altitude were lifted it should not be by much because to me it had the right effect to feel encroaching and intimidating but after the manta deatroys the osprey it should fly off at the same speed if possible as it flys in out or slow it’s departure down a bit.
To follow-up, seems to me that the OaR level was the start of the on-going escalation in the conflict between the aliens and HECU. There are several battles in OaR between Vorts and HECU that you hear off in the distance prior to coming upon and witnessing them first-hand. You end up mopping up the survivors. At first the HECU appear dominant but then the Vorts turn the tables and become dominant. I agree, it’s not as crucial a plot point as ST is, but to me it lays the groundwork and is the prelude to the beginning of the end for the HECU, which eventually occurs in ST.
Know this is unlikely to ever happen but here is something I would like to see in the next map.
have a road with a APC and some solders moving along it, as they move along a manta drops in a grunts only to get shot down by the apc half way through, the apc in turn gets blown up by a manta a few seconds later. leaving the hecu grunts and a grunts to fight it out.
reason I don’t think this will ever be added by you, 1. it would be a lot of work, 2. no clue where it would fit.
also could you add an explosion and crash sound after the damaged aircraft flies over, it looks like its going down do to the manta so it would stand to reason that it would crash.
Not sure which map it is in Surface Tension, but there’s a tank as well (you can take a security guard with you) and in both HL1 and BM, Gordon is meant to destroy it, but I think it could serve instead to be just a scripted scene where Gordon can sneak by and watch HECU and Aliens killing each other.
Also according to your commentary, the map is C2A5F but youtube says C2A5G
I personally didn’t have a problem with the aerial vehicles being low. I’ve put the models as high up as they can go without clipping into the skybox - but I wonder if moving the path_tracks higher up would work. I’ll test it out. Might be able to make them a little higher. Not a great deal, but enough to be a bit better, and perhaps prevent clipping.
I understand that. I agree with you. I’m just not sure whether I feel the omission of all the fights between aliens and HECU is worth my effort of extending the chapter, in all honesty. I’m going to finish extending/modifying ST first, then I will see how I feel about it.
Is there actually anywhere in BM where Mantas do drop off Alien Grunts? I can’t recall, and I seem to remember either thinking or hearing that they’d purposely removed that.
I CAN, realistically add in that kind of scene, it might work, it might not. It would be about as much work as the fight I scripted on the Helipad. I think it’s important not to overdo it with the scripted scenes. There are problems with this idea too.
-
How does a Manta “go down”? I don’t know! It needs an animation, and the stock Manta has just a flying animation and that’s it. I could have it fly off into the distance, but there’s no easy way to make it seem like its damaged. Would it catch fire? Would it bleed? Would it explode? Would it just drop out of the sky?
-
Can an LAV realistically shoot down a Manta ray? That seems…implausible to me. I’m not sure.
It’s a nice idea though. If I can find a way to implement it, I may very well do so.
And to address your comments about the crashing Harrier, it does have a crash and an explosion. But it happens close to the Osprey exploding, and in all honesty pretty much everyone’s attention would be on the Osprey by that point.
I think he’s saying the Jet should crash actually.
I’d agree for sound and shaking behind us.
replace the lav with the tank, have the manta pull up and the nose dive right out of site with an explosion occurring after words (think it would bleed).
for the harrier swap the mantas income direction form directly a head to from right above the hanger, and change the timing a bit, the harrier crash would be more noticeable if it accrues right before the manta enters the area… but that might be to much of a change.
edit: on the manta getting shot down idea, have it player run into a rag doll or crashed one later in the map, (if it only has sky box model have a none animated one crashed half way into the ground.
Here is something I’ve noticed:
1-
2- You said that Aliens usually wins…
have you tested your map with default configuration?
Maybe with it, the Hecu beat the hell out the Xen Visitors.
3- Add 1 explosive barrel in the ambush room.
Please consider my application as a tester.
A really hope that your maps will be part of BM.
Valve added community maps in Left for Dead 2 and Team Fortess 2…
I think the altitude is fine but the speed of the manta that destroys the osprey needs to feel more graceful as there are 2 different speeds set on the path track
I don’t think too many more massive scripted sequences should be added as the Garg sequence will suffer for this… The level needs to cool down in a way before the Garg sequence so that it really has an impact
@Darkone and Textfamguy1 I like the idea of a dead crashed manta with a pool of slime burried into a concrete building… Static like it’s already happened offscreen and it will make apparent the difference in technology and Dead Organic Matter up close and personal
Maybe it would cool to have a bunch of HECU on or near the heli pad when it blows up?
I thought about the area the helipad sits on and it would not be a bad Idea for some of the metal grate floor to be broken making a jump across to the door on the raised platform like in the warehouse to get on to the next area.
I just noticed the harrier taking off and thinking about this It might be better to set the trigger for it’s take off as you drop out the window of the garage perhaps this way it would seperate the events a bit more as a lot is happening at once during the attack of the mantas
A good place to do the ambush in question would be in the road after you blow open the gate with the TOW.
The Manta is technically biological tech, so it would bleed as far as I’m aware. A shell wouldn’t be able to easily hit that thing out of the sky though, that thing was designed to dog fight with Jets, so it has supersonic capability, the chances of hitting something moving that fast are slim to none, but it can be done with proper aim (play Unreal Tournament sometime).
You could also inturgrate the tank exploding with another manta giving chase break off and blow up the tank that comes in during the final battle scene.
Another Idea to add on is the jet that’s getting harassed by the Mantas, even though damaged it should aim to go at super sonic speeds. If I was a pilot and I had some otherworldly thing on my ass I would be going at the maximum speed to try to out-run the sucker. Flying at supersonic speeds would cause a shockwave (known as a sonic boom)to go through and would be unbelievably loud, usually it destroys windows and such. Which is why the AF has regulations about going super sonic over a suburban area.
Anyway beyond that, having the jet zoom overhead and in the process blowing out all the windows as well as causing a shake on the screen would be fucking awesome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrier_Jump_Jet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_boom – for reference.
There explosive canisters in the garage ambush room, they’re bright orange. They look a bit different to the other explosives.
I would be happy to have you as a tester. In fact, it’s getting to the stage where I need to consider some sort of playtest. I’ll keep it simple: just state outright that you want to be an alpha tester and I’ll add you to a list. When the time comes I will send via PM the download link to my map to all the testers on the list. I’d really love some wider feedback to help me prepare for a beta test.
Though the idea of a dead manta is interesting sounding, my parts of Surface Tension attempt to show the HECU losing badly. I think this conflicts with that philosophy. Plus I don’t want to add aspects which might conflict with what the dev team might want - they may have already decided how Mantas bleed/don’t, and I just don’t know.
They are, it’s just a bit dark and difficult to see. There are 2 Marines on the Helipad scripted to defend the 4 Marines who are running away from the aliens towards the helicopter.
The harrier take off in the background screwed and is going to be tricky. 3D Skyboxes in Source are built at 1/16 scale and then upscaled in game. I built my 3D skybox with this in mind. What I didn’t realise is that the skybox version (model) of a Harrier is only about 1/7 smaller than the normal Harrier. It looks really bloody strange on the runway - way too big. I’ll have to shrink it myself. I probably will move it back to the garage scene to spread things out a bit.
That IS a fucking awesome idea, actually. I might try and implement it on C2A5H.
As someone mentioned earlier, there is starting to emerge a little problem of too many scripted sequences. They begin to lose meaning if there are too many. So far we have:
-Vent Drop
-Garage Satchel Ambush
-Manta destroying Osprey
-Tank Bursting out of Gate
-Grunt throwing Marine through wall
-Satchel Pipe
-Garg Chase
All in my 2 levels. I may add…one more but anything more might be overdoing it.
Geeze, it’s getting difficult to keep up with the flood of ideas and suggestions! I love it! Keep going!
I think having a huge amount of scripted sequences is fine, considering this is the ending of Surface Tension. And to me, Surface Tension is basically the climax of the game.
To add on, after I watched the video the Manta flying in was a little lazy on that, I know it’s supposed to be able to change speeds on a dime, but I think it should be in hot pursuit with the other, you see it fly over then break off chase, fly in a circle and then go over the osprey and the sequence continues as normal.
It would seamlessly blend in if you did that, over all, stellar work. I can’t wait to see more. 
Edit: You COULD do 3 levels instead of 2, maybe add in a crash site of a manta or Harrier in one of them. Just a thought.
Also, having a huge amount of scripted sequences doesn’t hurt imo, you may overload the map in some cases, so pay attention to the entity count.
Edit #2: Adding on to that, I see where Ronster is coming from, I would recommend cooling down on the big scripted sequences as you get later into C2A5H, having it transition between HUGE battles between the two to getting to the aftermath of one and seeing the results (Aliens examining things or HECU examining aliens and cleaning it up), a crash site of a manta or Harrier would be a great idea to add as a transition or aftermath area. You may also want to PM one of the devs and maybe get a little bit of inside info, no guarantee they’ll respond, but it’s worth a shot.
Edit #3: … I need to stop doing this…
Let us know when you get to the garg fight, I got some ideas for that.
Edit #4: actually, now that I think about it, have the garg fight a transitional area, Marines come through the emergency door as I said, then the garg smashes through, an Abrams comes through the doors that the garg originally came out of and then the garg precedes to kill everything in sight before turning on you. The Abrams won’t die to the fire unless you plant it in there, so take your time.
The old path (at the machine gun shooting on vortigaunts), is this one still possbile or did u close this in some manner?
all in all everyone is very excited for this I am sure and it’s great to see such a great iteration of this part of ST.
I know the scripted sequence part has blown everyone away myself included but the car park was really well done and let’s not forget that part too
Hats off
It’s a warzone god damn it!
Perhaps taking things too far again but someone, sorry cannot remember who it was had an idea about a HECU surrendering… I wonder if it’s worth putting a deserter in the room that led to the snark vent in BMS version and keep the room valid and have an unarmed HECU hiding who would get up and hold his hands up and be unarmed.
You can either blow him away or leave him there