Like in the movie Resident Evil?
A 3D map of the installation.
I’m all for some scientists being thrown in (maybe secruity guards too?) But the whole “Hecu losing to the vorts” thing has been done to death. I say let them win this one. The invasion hasn’t really picked up steam yet, and the Hecu are fresh at this point. Let them win a bit in the beginning. They lose mostly because of numbers, and at this point the invasion has just begun.
I can imagine 3 possible “events”, so to say, that could be in the vents:
First, when you go through a very dark and long vent you see a dead scientist and bulletholes in the vent like those in surface tension, it would look nice and it would bring a sense of tension throughout the vents.
Second, the HECU is not seen fighting aliens until power up, so I don’t know if the little vort fight scene would be a good idea, I mean we’re not even sure if the soldiers had any ideas they would be fighting aliens, so instead you could put one or two dead vorts on the ground and a squad of soldiers looking at them with a medic checking the vorts body.
For the third, if the animations are possible in black mesa since I’ve seen many mods that can do them, you could have an Hecu breach scene, similar to this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYu7AbjnLdo
You hear gunshots at some point and when you reach the point in the vent where you’re able to look outside, you see a door close quickly and few dead scientist, and then an hecu squad surrounds the door and breaches it like in the video, taking down some security guards and scientists. I think it would bring a sense of profesionalism to the HECU too.
This uncut seems perfect for a scripted sequence with scientist killing. Please make a scene where hecu are putting scientist in front of wall and the shoot them one by one. Because what always annoyed me is the fact you always see dead scientist everywhere (especially close to the walls) but you never get to see how they died. You could do this when player walk in vent and it would be a hole that you could see the entire scene through. I am not demanding but for me this uncut would be awesome with such scene. Please at least reconsider this idea.
watching from the vents a scene of scientists getting killed would go perfectly with the mood of this chapter.
I think it would be nice to have a scene where Gordon is crawling through a vent and he sees a few dozen marines marching by. In half life and black mesa you rarely see a lot of marines together. Usually you might fight two or three and that’s it.
Be nice to see traps the marines might have set.
Could set up an ambush. Maybe the aliens or marines might hide away and then when Gordon is out in the open you suddenly get attacked from all angles.
Oh, or have an optional scientist rescue where you see some marines setting up an ambush, and then you see a scientist walking into it, and if you don’t interfere somehow, he’ll be killed.
Liking the idea flow so far, keep 'em coming everyone. I’m seeing a few that I’m seriously considering using (and one that I’ve already started using, with some variation).
Just based on what I’m seeing, I want to throw in some things into the hat (or back into the hat, depending).
I’m seeing a lot of combat ideas. Unfortunately I have to say no to all of them, and pretty much any that are presented from here on out. The rationale:
We just escaped the clusterfuck that was the surface. We barely got passed a gigantic battle scene. The player is going to need a break from heavy combat.
It’s why I’m only adding a few headcrabs, some barnacles, and a couple Vorts, so that between escaping the surface and reaching the security office there’s nothing but light combat sequences.
Even in the original Half-Life, there wasn’t much combat between these two areas. That is okay. Heck, Valve even went out of their way during Episode One development to put in a puzzle break after slaying the antlion guard. Same thing happens in the hospital later in that chapter.
Also, the reason for me suggesting the HECU win over the Vorts is just as Swaggless said, but there’s one other thing. We’ve Got Hostiles is the introductory chapter of the HECU. Everything in the chapter is supposed to impress upon the player that these people are a credible threat (the first encounter where he nearly kills a scientist, having to fight against them and their encampments, and culminating in their total dominance of the surface). To have them lose against the Vorts at this point would be to undermine the entire purpose of the chapter, and would change the player’s view of the marines for the rest of the game.
That’s all. Carry on!
Holy sh*t, this thing is real? Damn .RK you got excited did you? Watching this now and tracking. I’ll agree that the WGH chapter did have more hallways than vents, so as long as there is purpose for going into the vents I’m cool with that. Good luck on this endeavor!
overthinking mode activated
At this rate, you might join Text as developer. Eventually.
overthinking mode deactivated
Enough of these Vorts/Headcrabs/Bullsquids/HECU confrontations, already.
Throughout BMS, the run-of-the-mill scientists are always majorly taking it on the chin. If doable, have Gordon witness a scientist coming to the aid of another scientist that’s about to be executed by a HECU, by taking him out in some manner. The two scientists then scurry away, ALIVE! Having the scientists win at least one confrontation would be a nice change of pace. They should have enough smarts to be able to accomplish this, and seeing a glimpse of some scientists taking offensive actions for once, and succeeding, would be refreshing.
Everybody want hecu vs. scientist encounter so please give the fans what they want xd
How about some scientists beating up a marine? They could smash him with a glass bottle and kick him in the nuts. lol. Stamp on his head, steal his weapon and shoot him.
Maxwell are you being a prick or what?
Huh? 
One suggestion I’ve got is to put in lots of dead scientists, guards, marines, aliens. As black mesa is a warzone, it makes sense, IMO. Aliens on the rampage killing black mesa personnel, marines also killing black mesa personnel and aliens. Aliens killing marines. Possibly bm personnel killing marines and aliens, as they fight back. I think Gordon is more of an observer than a participant. He witnesses the aftermath of the fighting more often than he participates in the fighting.
HECU are also rounding up scientists to interrogate them, like those found at the train yard in Blue Shift. Why not just having a scene where you can watch from a vent a group of scientists being leaded by two or three marines, aiming their guns at them? I’m not even sure you ever see such scene in Half-Life, though it did happen judging from the corpses found in the following chapters.
I’ve pretty much decided what I want to do in terms of the additional area now. Thanks everyone.
And, at the very least, the current design allows for more to be added later on, if it is needed.
The maps themselves are nearly ready. At this moment they are in a compilable state, and I’ll certainly be doing some tests tonight. So, I will ballpark when I say that the beta (or alpha, knowing that I switcharoo’d on Loop Mod too) should be ready within the next couple of days. Told ya’ll this would be pretty lickity-split.
So yeah, stay tuned!
Thanks for the fast progress RK, but can we see some recent screenshots of the new areas? I wanna see dem smexy compiled ventz already 
Awesome, .RK! I’ll try it out as soon as the alpha/beta (whatever you choose to call it) version comes out.
Patience young grasshopper, all will come in due time~
So, yeah. Update. I wouldn’t hold your breaths just yet. I’ve done the first round of tests.
A is looking pretty nice at this point. There are some lighting bugs on props (which I’m not surprised by, and these will be eliminated over the course of releases). There are a couple of minor bugs with the new sections that need to be taken care of before release, but I’m not worried about them.
Plus I tested an idea in this map that hasn’t been discussed yet, and it is really cool. It’s almost painful to hold the surprise, but I think it’ll be worth it.
The C map is a different story.
The most catastrophic thing that is happening right now is that attempting to compile with full vvis causes that program to get hung up. So far I’ve had to do partial vvis, which I’m sure is screwing stuff up. If this keeps happening it will surely slow down future compiles, which sucks.
I’m certainly having some epic cubemap problems at the moment, especially with a section of vents is showing the exterior landscape. That shouldn’t happen.
There’s also some hiccup where some actors are facing the wrong way. I think I know how to fix this though.
And to top it off one of the ideas I had to spruce up vent exploration turned out to not work at all. Poop.
So that’s kinda where things stand at the moment. I’ll probably be reworking some geometry anyways, so at the very least it will not be the release I ballparked earlier. As always, I’ll keep ya’ll posted on how this progresses.
To any mappers out there, you might be able to help me with this. The compile is throwing a couple of these out there:
FindPortalSide: Couldn't find a good match for which brush to assign to a portal near (796.0 1416.0 -983.0)
Leaf 0 contents: CONTENTS_SOLID
Leaf 1 contents:
viscontents (node 0 contents ^ node 1 contents): CONTENTS_SOLID
This means that none of the brushes in leaf 0 or 1 that touches the portal has CONTENTS_SOLID
Check for a huge brush enclosing the coordinates above that has contents CONTENTS_SOLID
Candidate brush IDs: Brush 10319:
Note that the map is currently not showing any leaks, and I’ve certainly seen it before without consequence. I think it’s harmless. If anyone knows what causes this in a sealed map (and how to fix it), I’m all ears. Just in case it’s the solution to my problems, and all that junk.
3 maps? Wow! This is gonna be huge! 
Any word on my music suggestion? Even if the file’s not in there, and you let us put it in ourselves.