Why do people keep trying to tie Uplink to the main storyline?!
Stop it, Uplink always has been and always will be non-canon, stop justifying it
Holy shit, PC Gamer? Damn, Hezus.
yeah you’re absolutley right but the person who can handle it authentically into main storyline
will earn a lot of fame and respect! ^^
But it is what it is… the Half-Life Demo, Re-Uplinked!
I’ll just say this to the compatibility problems:
I’ve done my best to merge my version into Black Mesa, so it’s displayed in the best possible fashion. I knew there might be problems with other custom projects because we use the same files. I anticipated that in the following fashion:
- I’ve created a tool that restores the original files, so you can always revert back to the original Black Mesa.
- I’ve released the MOD in a ZIP file so people can choose which files to overwrite. I’ve left instructions about that in the release news post, in the download description and in the readme.txt file and there’s is even a warning in the installer.
There is no central hub in where BM modifications can post their latest versions of common files, so this is literally the best I could do. If we want to prevent such problems in the future, we should start looking into that. But don’t blame me for overwriting files. They’re not your files either and I’m not the one pressing the overwrite button… the user is. I’m supplying them with the best possible tools and information, so I rely on their intelligence to choose what to install on their own pc. That’s how it’s aways been in the modding scene.
And I won’t release this as a stand-alone mod, because I’m not going to distribute Black Mesa’s content.
Just played it and wow, you have done a fantastic job!
What I like most is that your maps are very close to the original, and for the love of god, do not change the lighting. The lighting in your mod is perfect, especially the outdoor night evels, it may be more realistic to have darker shadowy parts in these areas but it just makes it that much harder to see. I think I like your level design more than the devs’, well done!
Is this your final version or do you plan to release updates? because I’d be happy to give feedback.
News -> Uplink
https://www.shacknews.com/article/77096/black-mesa-uplink-remakes-half-life-demo[/SIZE]
PC Gamer & Shacknews + Top 100 upcoming on Moddb? Dude, you seem to have hit a freakin’ sweet spot!
Massive congrats! I’m sure, you will have merry Xmas…
I’m sorry, but I have to flat out disagree with that. I thought the lighting was the weakest part by far. The outdoor lighting was fine, but the indoor lighting was EXTREMELY contrasty, and it didn’t look very good. They were also inconsistent. I guess I can turn this into an actual critique:
The maps for Black Mesa provide pretty much the perfect example for how to do lighting correctly on this type of game. They’re realistic, and aesthetically pleasing. Hezus, you have too many areas which are VERY BRIGHTLY lit contrasted against areas which are VERY DIMLY lit. Often these areas are very close together which just compounds that problem. Your lights also often provide too bright a light over too small an area, the light ends up looking seriously concentrated and weird. They’re also inconsistent. I’ll use some photos to back up my examples.
For example, look here:
The light here is EXTREMELY bright for about 6 feet, at which point all light abruptly drops off. Real light, even bright light, is FAR more diffuse than that. This is something the Black Mesa devs got perfect. Another downside to this abruptness is it highlights the extremely ugly baked shadowing from VRAD (which you admittedly can’t do much about, but a higher lightmap scale/more diffuse light would help tremendously).
This scene is way too brightly lit for those lights. They’re pretty damn high up and yet the floor is essentially fullbright. This is a bizzare contrast, just a few sections ago you have a bright light very close to the floor which hardly lights anything, and now you have a bright light very high up which lights EVERYWHERE. It looks odd and unnatural.
Another example of the light dropping off abruptly. Not quite as bad as the first example but still extremely unnatural looking. It’s made worse by how bright it is. It might make more sense if the light itself was darker, but it doesn’t.
Another serious example. There’s a light about 6 feet away from that wall and it’s pitch black.
These walls are uniformly half-brightness whilst being lit by extremely small lights at the bottom, which are supposedly bright. Again, real light drop off as it projects further across the ceiling, particularly lights that small.
Simply put, your lighting needs to be a bit darker, but more diffuse to compensate for the increased darkness. It will make these scenes look SIGNIFICANTLY more natural and professional. Do with this advice what you will, but I personally believe this is a very important issue.
I have lots of other feedback I’d be happy to give to help you with your project, one mapper to another, if you’d be willing to at least consider it. But I’d like to hear your position on this kind of feedback first, I don’t want to waste 45 minutes typing up a detailed criticism with screenshots and suggestions only to find out you don’t want to develop this any further/take advice from the community or whatnot.
love your work Hezus
@TextFAMGUY1
I’m always interested in constructive critism, so please do write a detailed report. Would you please pass it to me in a PM, so we don’t get endless discussions in this thread between yay and nay-sayers.
Will do. Expect it in a day, at most.
Congratulations on the release, by the way. I was astonished to see just how much popularity this is getting on ModDB, as well as it being in the top 100 mods! That’s quite an accomplishment, so well done.
Are you actually going to release updated versions in the future and are you willing to implement suggestions by other forum users or just Text’s suggestions? Like him, I don’t want to waste my time writing a critique that’s not going to be used. He’s already addressed some of the lighting issues but there’s some major gameplay, design and aesthetic flaws that should be fixed. If you want a critique, let me know and I’ll give Uplink another pass.
Also, there’s nothing wrong w/posting a critique on the forums. Any debate is potentially helpful for gauging what’s important and reaching a consensus on those issues.
Mind if I chip in? I think the mod in general could have made more use of Block Light brushes, with that forced-lightmap baking that we discussed on the previous page or so. Some places look like the lightmap scale should have been lower in general.
Also, some of the lighting falloff values look like they are 100% quadratic, which is mathematically accurate but does not look very nice, especially in confined areas. I think that some of the CLQ-falloff values could have been adjusted to be less harsh, or possibly even the easier-to-use 50-100% falloff values.
Lighting is a tricky subject, and I understand that it’s extremely difficult to get right, and is the most annoying part of a map to tweak (since VRAD literally takes forever to do anything).
Super props to this project for getting everything done though! It’s fantastic. 
Excuse me, this is nice and all, but it completely messed up the Black Mesa credits and uplink_restore doesn’t work properly. It just removes the Uplink-related text and stops the first scene from working properly. Everything else is still half-existent.
^ He did say create a backup of your stuff I believe. If worst comes to worst, you can just re-download the client.
That’s because you’re a level designer lol, I just replayed it and still none of the lighting really stuck out to me as “okay that doesn’t look right at all”,
but if Hezus goes for a more darker realistic route so be it. I just hope he doesn’t change the feel of the levels too much in the process.
I really wanted to provide feedback, map lighting will be left out:
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Yellow warning light and earthquake tremor missing at start of the level,
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Elevator floor too similar to wall, copy elevator from Office Complex
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Soda machine animation needs improvement
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Crate needs same gravity momentum from jumping puzzle in Black Mesa
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Give player ability to climb these ladders up to the blocked part, or have the first few steps within player’s reach broken off,
not a fan of unusable objects appearing usable in HL games
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Make tow usable, you could have an LAV battle here, or just remove the tow
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Not sure about the button placement, maybe have the button somewhere on the control panel to the left, or just make the door automatic
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Need autosave after tuning the antenna, so you don’t have to do it again if you die during the following battle, the music also
restarts if you quicksave during the battle, not sure if this was a problem in BM
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(Spoiler Alert) Can’t use the valve until the soldiers have broken through the door
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Scientist should say something upon return, but you’ll need the voice actor for new lines
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Vent fall animation needs improvement
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One I forgot to screenshot, when the player returns to the turret there should be a vort shooting gallery sequence, similar to FAMGUY’s sequence in Surface Tension
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Whenever the scientist uses the PA system to talk to the player, use the same screeching sound from the Test Chamber before he begins talking, add the same voice fx
from the Test Chamber if you get new lines recorded
Again: all constructive critism is welcome… I am going to update the mod at some point in the future.
About the restore tool:
It’s a simple batch file that copies the content from /backup to the root folder of /bms. It operates from the root folder and the folder structure is the same on every computer, so if it doesn’t work something on your end must be wrong. Maybe your firewall or anti-virus blocks batch scripts or you are not running it as administrator.
If it doesn’t work: you can manually copy everything from the /backup folder, into your /bms folder. Overwrite and you’re done.
Jarekthegamingdragon plays BM: Uplink
He seemed to enjoy it, but did find a pretty big glitch that I didn’t notice
If you’ll not modidy anything, could you just remove the french translation until the release of the official one ? Thank you.
Not found the secret room?