This is the thread where all you technical-minded people can discuss about the experiments in Black Mesa, what all the control panels do, and where they are for! Post your ideas here.
I’ll start off with my latest one.
There’s a control panel in Surface Tension, one that shows things to do with “outflow” and pipes. Here’s a screenshot of that one first. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=479615541
The lights are all glowy because of my Surface Tension remaster; it also helps illustrate which lights are on in the actual model.
First thing I’m going to look at is the bottom right lights, near the text that says “Main Outflow.” I think that this is the main gauge for the pipe that lets the water flow into the main river, the pipe seen here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=479615619
Then, on the left, next to the text “Lower Canals” there are a few more lights. I think these are the canals you enter just after you exit the cliffside part of the chapter. (The part with the tanks).
Now let’s look at the main area of the panel, the black area. It has four gauges on, probably indicating the water pressure or tank capacity. On the left of the black part there are four lights, which 2 of the 4 are turned on. These are pointed with arrows towards the left and appear to join up with the “Control Main Base Room” node. That pipe then joins up with the pipe leading to “Access 1” That pipe splits into two pipes. One returns to the black panel, while the other goes to the “B” main node with four lights on all four corners. They are all illuminated. That appears to head off to the right, while my crowbar blocks the text (unfortunately). The panel is fed by two other pipes, at the bottom of it, which both originate from the main black panel. Now let’s look a bit further down. There’s text called “Deep” which is next to a pictogram of a water trough. This could either be the top of the dam or the bottom of the dam. A dotted line runs from the gauge of the Main Outflow pipe to the bottom Deep line. Two lines originate from the top right corner of the main black area and merge into one at the “Deep” area. Those appear to seperate back into two lines and go off the board. Now let’s focus on the bottom left corner of the entire board. The “Lower Canals” text appears to have the pipes originating from off the map, into a tiny rectangular box which is illuminated by a single light and branches into two pipes. The first pipe going to the right. It goes along to another light and another rectangular box, which has two pipes branching off of it. One appears to go to the pipe which goes to the “Control Main Base Room” node, while the other appears to return back to the start of the first “Lower Canals” pipe. The second pipe, which runs vertically, goes up to the main round node marked “A”. This too is illuminated by a single light and goes to another rectangular box. All the pipes flowing into here go to “A” and there are no outflow pipes. Perhaps this could be some kind of storage tank?
I will give you an update on the text of the panel once I get onto my main computer and are able to zoom in. Now let’s move on to the second panel, the control panel!
Screenshot for the second panel: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=479615568
On the top left corner there are three knobs. Two white and one brown. Then at the bottom there are three levers. Now let’s move on to the water levels. The first gauge is smaller than the others, and the bottom has a light which says “NO FLOW”. This presumably turns on if the pipe is blocked. The second gauge is the same size as the others and is normal, and so is the other one. A thing to note about the gauges is the actual gauge marker is around the middle level. This indicates the water level is normal despite the Black Mesa chaos. At the top of the gauges is a red area. This must mean it’s close to overflowing. At the bottom is a striped gauge; this must mean it’s nearly empty. On the next over panel there are three different gauges. The top two are in the normal area while the bottom one is in the red area. They all have green lights. Beside the lights are three tiny switches. Now we can move on to the right side of the panel. The access hatch light is usually on “CLOSED” in the main game, and “ERROR” when pressed. In my mod I’ve set it to go to “OPEN” so ignore that. There is a big yellow striped button to open the access hatch. At the bottom of the panel there are two displays. The display on the left has six buttons on the side, three blue and three red. On the bottom there are eight tiny buttons. The display appears to show a graph of some kind. The display on the right shows information about “WATER OUT FLOW” and has four status reports on the four outflow pipes. I’ll get the numbers as soon as I can get a HD picture. At the bottom there are 10 buttons, one red and one blue, and eight tiny buttons just like the screen on the left.
That’s all for now! (I type really fast and have waaaay too much time on my hands. CitadelCore out).