I hear that too! Probably put by Valve to realize how far you have gone. 
I’ve found this image on twitter, it’s quite interesting…
https://twitter.com/radiatoryang/status/248261458679455744/photo/1
It’s Robert Yang’s remake of Someplace Else, a HL mod set on Xen.
This guy it’s quite famous in HL2 modding community and made a map for Black Mesa Anomalous Materials chapter.
I’ve been trying to figure out in my head how to improve Xen, while still keeping some of the feel of the original ever since I first stumbled on Black Mesa. Just the other day, a sudden thought struck me: what if the problem isn’t with Xen as much as it is with the Long Jump Module?
If this was changed to act as a double jump system while wearing it (and skip the whole crouch, then jump activation method) it could allow Xen to be just as open and vertical, (or even moreso) but a simple misstep wouldn’t be the end of the game provided you timed your double jump just before the end of your fall to keep yourself from taking excessive damage, or even used it right away in order to propel yourself back onto whatever you started to fall off of.
It could even (in theory) be set up so that pressing in a direction while double jumping would propel you in the indicated direction (no direction simply propelling you further upward) so that it could function as a double jump while still retaining the ability to function as a long jump like what the module did in the original game.
Admittedly, I haven’t gotten that far through the game yet, but it shouldn’t affect the rest of the game by much, since in the original game you pretty much got the long jump module right before heading to Xen. I’m not sure if that’s still the case in Black Mesa though.
@darkone: It would also be cool to have the HEV computer voice not working right, sort of like Zombine, for example: “WARN(malfunction)NG USE(malfunction)ATH IMI(Zombine-like sounds when radio malfunctions)NENT”
YES. Someplace else port OMFG.
If you need guidance on Xen, MAKE IT LIKE SOMEPLACE ELSE.
Oh yes! I’d love to see a Someplace Else remake. I first played it a few months ago (yeah, I’m late), and I kept thinking how awesome it’d be in BM.
[quote=“darkone”]
yes but the HEV suit has things that improve moter functions like sprinting (why else would you have a jump section in a course on how to use the thing). so that should still be engaged allowing the zombie to sprint or run… yeh doesn’t make much sense now that I think of it./QUOTE]
They would be able to sprint, but they wouldn’t because the headcrab presumably doesn’t know how to make them do that. Zombine sprint because the automatic combat routines in their brain implants are firing off in reaction to the headcrab’s control; same reason why they use grenades and keep trying to contact their dead squadmates.
doesn’t really mater if there is a legit reason for HEV zombies to sprint, it would be cool and make them harder to kill than the normal zombies where, xen in its self was a large fight with 2 boss fights in it… also wasn’t there a garg in xen that most players needed to kill to pass, how in the world would we kill that now as the garg can not be killed by player weapons.
…most players had to kill it to pass? I always ran past it and assumed that was normal.
I always killed it, Know some other people that did to, the things where a pain in the ass in the facility that one you had some easy access high ground and lots of heavy weapon ammo.
Xen needs to be longer. Maybe another chapter in between Gonarch and Interloper. Or if anything spit Interloper into two chapters and make each part longer.
I’ll be honest, and don’t bash me HL lovers, but I hated Xen.
The only truly “Alien-world” feeling was when I was in the very first section, and after that I kind of went ‘eh’.
Combining that with the fact I just didn’t enjoy it at all. The levels didn’t capture me and make me have fun, and I found both Gonarch and Nihilanth just frustrating.
I hope the BM team can somehow capture the feeling of an alien world, make the levels fun and also extend the overall Xen experience. As boring and unimpressive as I found it, I still wish it had been longer just because it feels like you get there then don’t really…“explore” or get too much of a plot going on. It just feels like platforming and 2 bosses, but strung together really poorly.
Potentially the only good thing I found about Xen was the tentacles, cause those are always enjoyable.
That’s just my opinion, and I have a feeling it’s a very unpopular one.
Xen already contains a lot of chapters and these chapters need to be expanded. Xen to Interloper feels like one chapter only in HL.
I’d never heard of Someplace Else, until, thanks to you guys, just today. I went and played it, and it was excellent. How come I’d never heard of such a good mod?
Everyone hates Xen. It even has a trope named after its dissapointing qualities.
It’s why the DEVs released All the way up until the Lambda core for now; so that they could spend time improving, elongating, and making the final section of the game a whole lot more tolerable and enjoyable.
That idea is relatively new and gained popularity from newer users that were introduced to the Half-Life series after Half-life 2 or at least sometime after 2002-4. Among the complaints about Xen, one of them is the complaint about platforming. That wasn’t really a major complaint among the majority of the first generations that played HL, as platforming was a common mechanic in games through the 90s.
It was subsequent generations, who were more used to the idea of idiomatic mechanics in game genres, and were introduced to FPSs in the 2000s, when FPSs had become somewhat formulaic and had removed certain elements and gaming mechanics that had a learning curve or required more gaming skill.
Removing those elements was part of the process that codified the FPS genre, and broadened the audience for the genre through on-line multi-player gaming. Mechanics like platforming have no place in multi-player gaming, and that has essentially become the model for the mechanics of FPSs in the last 10 years, with the single-player FPS experience becoming secondary to the multi-player experience.
In fact, a couple years ago, Valve made statements about how SP was out in the industry, which led to some speculation that HL2Ep3 wouldn’t be developed. Since then, Valve has changed it’s mind about that, but the market and focus on FPS being a multi-player enterprise has heavily influenced the SP experience. So, you have generations of players coming into the FPS genre through modern FPSs, with preconceived notions of what makes a good SP experience based on the mechanics of modern FPS.
You can see this same kind of thing with the people that complain about some of the game-play elements of Black Mesa: crouch-jumping, puzzles, challenging AI, etc. Gamers about 25 or so years old might recognize this as the expectations of younger gamers who are used to modern shooters, but those same 25 or so year old gamers themselves went through the same thing regarding some aspects of Xen some years ago. And that’s where the idea that ‘Xen sucks’ comes from.
I know that there are those on the Black Mesa dev team that have that opinion, Raminator said that outright at one point. I think you can see how this is expressed through the removal of those old-school hazardous waste vat puzzles from Residue Processing. That part of the original game was a pain in the ass, but it was that kind of gaming mechanic, and the platforming, and the puzzles, that broke up the straight run-and-gun.
A lot of the better games used to be about the skill of the player, and the generation that started gaming after 2002-3 or so, missed a lot of that. The challenges in FPS have become more about choices the player makes, rather than the skills of using mouse and keyboard. You can see this dramatically in the difference between CS 1.6 and CS-S or in TF2. These newer MP FPSs are more about strategic choices rather than tactical skill.
I’m not saying that the shift is a good thing or a bad thing, but that’s what it is, and that seems to be what happened. And in the Valve MP FPSs, it’s clear that the philosophy of the basic gaming mechanic of those games, with their emphases on egalitarianism and teamwork rather than individual skill, is a direct reflection of their basic organizational philosophy.
That’s the single most subversive thing about Valve - that they have directly influenced the social psychologies of a certain percentage of their fans. I’m a big fan of egalitarianism, so I’m thrilled by it, but on the other hand, I’m not someone that frames egalitarianism as the opposite side of the coin from individualism - I don’t frame them as opposed to each other or as comprising the yin/yang of some duality. So, I’d still enjoy pwning some noobs because I’m just simply better at mouse/keyboard rather than because I know the map or strategy of the map, or because the game rewards me for working with other players.
So, yeah, games are different now, and what gamers of different ages/experience think about the basic ideas and values of games is different, so not everyone thinks/thought that Xen sucks. That’s a popular idea among gamers under a certain age, but it wasn’t a popular idea in, say, 2002. I’m not making any kind of judgement about the differences of opinions among age/experience groups, I’m just observing that’s what’s happened and hypothesizing why (the popularity of MP).
I didn’t hate Xen at all. I do think there’s a lot of room for improvement, which I expect the devs will deliver on.
Well said Zen. I pretty much got into gaming right before that shift you’re talking about, and I still like platforming and such. I enjoy my skill with the mouse and k/b being challenged.
What I liked about cod1/2 was that it combined both elements.
In matches, teamwork and tactics were important, but individual skill was also a strong deciding factor. In deathmatch it was more about individual skill, but other modes such as search and destroy allowed more teamwork-oriented gameplay.
Adam Foster,the creator of Someplace Else, made also a mod for HL2ep2:
Minerva:Metastasis
It’s the sequel of someplace else, you can’t miss it.
Adam Foster was hired by Valve for HL2ep3 and he worked on Portal 2.
DM is still about individual skill or should be, at least. That’s one of the things I’m anxious to see in BM-DM. The Source engine seems to have a way of leveling out skill levels.
A couple of us were speculating - privately, so don’t start doing that in the threads, please - on how long DM would take to develop. We thought that creating the maps should be the easy part, but the challenge to DM would be balancing and gameplay. Ram seems to be a big fan of DM, so I think it’s going to be pretty good. I’m anxious to see what he does.
But I don’t want to be take this too far off-topic - the thread’s about Xen, I just had that thought from your comment. Someone will probably make a BM-DM thread in the future, and we can talk more about it there and then.
I’ve played Minerva, and that was excellent too. Had no idea of this little mod though.
It was actually for Episode 1. The first and second Minerva releases were on the original HL2 engine, and the third and final release that completed the mod ported the content into Episode One’s engine with some difficulty re-balancing. (The original “Downhill Struggle” was quite a bit harder than the final version.)
Yes, I’m a Minerva geek- I used to hang out on their forums and speculate on the mod’s plot. =P