Time-limited sequences

Black Mesa Archive Suggestion Box
#1

Hello
One of my favourite moment in Half Life is when we are dropped in the garbage by soldiers. We wake up, we have only a few seconds to realize what’s happening, to see how you can manage how to get out of there, and to do it.
There is a similar sequence in Opposing Force : we are stucked in a room with green lava, and this lava is going up. We have to act quickly, climb the ladder, until we can go out. Under the eyes of the G-man, by the way…

So, I am describing this because I find these moments are simply great. And if I don’t make any mistake, there are not many sequences like this in HL1,2 & mods.
And in fact, HL1 (and other) looks sometimes like a “stroll”, a “promenade”… We walk, then we go back to take a medikit, we take time to destroy every crates… Doesn’t look like emergency escape, hu ?
Even in HL2: ep2 by example, in almost the end, there is an emergency in the rebel base : alarm, red light, voices, etc. But we know that we can take as much time as we want, we will arrive just in time (or just too late…) whatever we do… :wink:

So my suggestion is to transform some HL1 sequences in time-limited sequences in Black Mesa Source. :slight_smile:
Examples :

  • There could be a sliding door closing slowly - the player understand naturally that he has to go through, and it gives some adrenalin, and helps to feel an emergency atmosphere.
  • Or in an emergency situation, with red light, alarm, etc, we could hear a voice saying “10 minutes left before overheating of the reactor”, then “5 minutes” etc…
  • (I can suggest other situations if you’re searching for ideas)

Naturally there should be large enough time to do the action - it is only something to speed the player.

So, what is your opinion about that ?
It doesn’t look very hard to implement, and for me it could improve the game experience ?

PS: sorry if it has already been suggested, I don’t have looked all the topics in the forum, and since there has been a crash, I can’t check.
PPS: I am not english, so if there is something that you don’t understand, just ask :slight_smile: [/SIZE]

#2

Blech.

#3

It’s good ideas, don’t get me wrong, but this would change the Half Life game experience. This mod is trying to preserve the old game experience.
So I doubt this is gonna happen.
Anyways, welcome to the forums ;D

#4

I think the devs said (Before the crash) that the TestChamber would have a time limit… If you didn’t push the carrier into the beam the Reactor/Machine thingy would overheat and explode.

#5

^ In the original half life it did the same thing

#6

It did?.. I’ve never notice that :stuck_out_tongue:

Are you sure your not thinking about the big teleporter right before you get to Xen?.. It will explode if you wait to long.

#7

Yeah, I never noticed that in the test chamber either. The scientists get pissed at you, and I have found myself thinking that valve should have made it shut down or explode and cause the resonance cascade anyway, but I never noticed that.

#8

yeah, I sat for what felt like 5 or 10 minutes waiting to see what the scientists did if I didn’t push the crystal into the spectrometer. Nothing ever happened to me. I was only playing on normal though, maybe it did it on hard?

It might be an idea that on hard mode events that pretended to be timed sequences actually were, but on normal and easy, those fake timed sequences would still match up to the players progress.

#9

I think they should implement time-based sequences, but ONLY on hard.

#10

Sometimes on hard should be cool like enhanced barnacles or more complicated puzzles.

I’m dreaming for blast pit that if you don’t hurry to activate the rocket blast, more tentacles raise from the pit…

#11

^

#12

I’ve just tested on Hard… Nothing happens.

#13

I like the idea of an alarm going and a door slowly closing… but rather than it being the player’s essential route, instead it could be an area that has extra weapons/ammo/health etc, or some kind of shortcut. If you don’t make it through the door you have to go another route and fight a bunch of headcrabs or something.

Blue Shift had a nice time limited sequence for the final fight - soldiers attacking you while a teleporter warms up. (And then once it is ready, you must get into portal before it explodes.)

#14

Whilst the idea is certainly a good one… I don’t feel it’s right to alter the gameplay of Black Mesa even with the intention of improving it…

The fact is that people often prefer to take their time… to break open every crate in the universe before continuing to the next room. The players can set their own pace then, and find all of the hidden areas without feeling pressed to continue.

#15

This could be for areas where there is no room for exploration. Less significant areas. Like there could be a hallway with a door slowly sliding closed at the end, and as you run towards it a vortigaunt spawns right behind you and starts to charge its electricity. If you turn around and kill it, you miss your chance for the door. If you just run, you’ll make it and the door will block the vortigaunt’s shot. And if you miss the door, you can go back to the other end of the hallway and open the door again (security booth maybe?) and try it all over again. It seems like this would be a good thing to include in areas like We’ve Got Hostiles, near all those fire doors you can close.

Damn. With this suggestion, AND the improved barnacles in the other thread, hard mode is looking to be a whole new game! :wink:

#16

How about this:
on easy, there are NO time-based sequences
on medium, there are, but only for unimportant rooms that contain ammo/health
and on hard, there are for really important events as well.
what do you think?

#17

Both excellent ideas. I personally don’t like too many timed sequences, and since this is a reinvention of a game which deliberately didn’t have many, I feel that it would be better implemented in the two suggestions above.

If there was an area with a shortcut (albeit a small diversion), or a weapons cache, it would not only provide that short moment of adrenaline, but it would also provide incentive to replay the game. As long as the pressure or the consequences aren’t too great, then it could really work for the game, but only in more insignificant areas. As many people have said, the Valve games (and BM will certainly follow in this tradition) are highly detailed, and there’s not a single environment that I can think of in any Valve game where attention to detail isn’t immediately apparent. As such, Valve tend to encourage a slower pace of game and do without timed sequences. A lot of their clues that they hide are only found in calculated exploration and careful observation.

This sort of gameplay technique could work wonders in Xen though, where the environment appears far more dangerous than Black Mesa. I’d love to get the feeling when exploring Xen that I first got when exploring Ravenholm. In that section of the game, I was positive that I had overlooked an exit and got utterly lost, and the subsequent sense of panic and claustraphobia of getting lost made it far more enjoyable.
I’m not sure how you could implement this feeling into Xen though. Perhaps you could make the player’s goal (perhaps a portal) within plain sight at the beginning of the level and show a nice easy path towards it, before the ground collapses beneath you or a creature attacks you or something happens to make you think that you’ve totally screwed up. Maybe you could disguise a creature, like the big farting ones) as part of the ground, then the player walks onto it and it swallows them, making them fall down an intestine or something crazy. I’d love to get the feeling of falling down the rabbit hole in Xen. Anyways sorry, I went way off-topic.

An idea that stems from the original though - I quite like it in games where the most direct and obvious route is blocked (in this case it could be a fire door closing just out of the player’s reach, with and alarm and a red light flashing), forcing the player to observe his surroundings and use their initiative to find an alternate exit. To my mind, that seems very Half-Life-esque, and makes the facility seem far larger than it is by actually providing glimpses of alternative routes and making the journey seem like less of a linear course.

#18

The big farting creatures? :aah:

#19

More like :retard: :expressionless: :frowning: > :frowning: :jizz:

#20

So, you developed downs, got cured miraculously, got really bored, then pensive about how bored you were, then angry because now that you no longer have downs you’re always bored, then you came unexpectedly?

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.