Any chance of using similar textures in the vent shaft, also that curved ceiling and the red or yellow ladders?
I think if you make it visually more like the original it would be great.
How about also including some vents that lead to nowhere like in the original and or block off the Black mesa route to the door and have us have to get to the room via the vents as in the original.
Re-instate omitted vox lines?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKXO8e77EIo
Pretty big requests there but… oh well.
What’s the fun in that? That’s why RK created the side rooms, they’re dead ends but don’t feel like dead ends because there’s sth to find in there.
Also one last thing, as I went through the vent with the soldiers, I thought what if you only added dialogue to the squad leader, giving orders through the radio, it would make more sense than the other soldiers just ramdomly chatting some ramdom idle statements, that of course if doing this does not require the sript thing that you say would break the stuncut mod.
I replayed through the original level yesterday and I quite enjoyed the vent maze and that although you are in the same rooms you are in parts of it you could not reach before and the parts you are in you can’t get to the old areas either.
It’s a voyeuristic maze and for the sake of copy and pasting stretches of vents and fixing up a few walls, if you are goin to go to the trouble that RK has to do this, then really that is the easy part. It just seems a shame but perhaps this project does not set out to stick so closely to the original and I appreciate that but the chapter in Black mesa does stick very closely to Half Life of what is in the chapter. So that is what I think it does not mean I am right and you are wrong, or vice versa.
But I may do a more classic version of this either over Easter or summer if I can be bothered, I don’t envy RK I know this stuff takes a lot of work.
Black Mesa stuck close to the original while being sensible. A vent duct that leads to nowhere is not this.
There is plenty of vent ducts that lead nowhere in Black Mesa they have a see through grille blocking it off and the shaft continues to give the impression that it does go somewhere but it is still a dead end.
I appreciate the thoughts, Ronster, but what you’re describing ifs a bit of a tall order.
Now, there’s plenty of decorative dead-ends in Vent Mod as well. All of those vents in the vertical shaft? They’re there to give the place some scale.
But one thing people didn’t like about the original was that these dead-ends were playable. You’d get there and there’d be nothing to do there, which is annoying because you could spend a good-half minute going down these routes. It really dampened any feel of progression because most of the time you were trying routes and hoping that one of them actually went somewhere, and having to backtrack the whole way if you chose wrong. It’s why the section is generally disdained by the community, because its wasted time.
That definitely factored into how I designed the new sections. I made it as a sort of ‘bus’, where the correct path spans the entire length of the section but there’s things to do along the way. You’re definitely able to go off route, so the maze aspect is still there, but you get to do stuff no matter which direction you go in and, because of the design, there’s little to no backtracking.
As far as I can tell, having the red ladders / blue walls / curved ceiling is an ascetic thing that Black Mesa did not adopt. If this were a mod for Half-Life, I’d very definitely do that! But since Black Mesa doesn’t use this style in its WGH maps, I don’t believe I will be either.
Considering the VOX lines will be in the next version of Black Mesa, I definitely want to wait and see how they handle it in their maps.
And about bypassing the hallways sections in favor of full-on vents to the security room, that would take a butt-load of work to do right. Even if you decide to disregard the spacial dispairity between Black Mesa’s C map and A map, you’d have to really change how the A map operates, which you might find to be a bit of a bother. And I have no idea what you would do about all those sections behind the security office, which I’m sure you wouldn’t even use anymore.
I could be faithful to HL1’s design, but HL1’s design wasn’t all that fun to play, and that’s way more important.
I think you are doing a good job of it overall, so don’t think I am having a pop at you, I know the vent maze can be considered boring and I even think it was flogged a bit too long and was overdone.
But the important detail in that transition back to the first map is that Gordon is hiding and I think whilst the original vent maze was perhaps a bit extreme and non sensical the important detail is getting in the room with the scientist via the vent.
Right, and I’m not under that impression at all! I wrote all that only because I wanted to talk about it (and I have nothing better to do when sitting in class), nothing more. I wasn’t throwing any punches there either, rather I just felt that it would be a great amount of work for not a lot of gain.
I know its kind off late in development RK, and also want say your doing an awsome job, but I was wondering if I could make a suggestion. For your turret hallway scene, do you think you could add some hecu running through the hallway, place the turret (I think there’s an animation for it in HL2), then continue on their way, saying at the same time their infamous lines “squad, go go go”. Or just add some grunts running through the hallway, saying said lines?
[COLOR=‘Red’]VERSION 2 RELEASE CANDIDATE
As always, you can find it here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/7lortflu9g82z4r/VentMod.zip[/SIZE]
Please only report bugs. I will not be accepting suggestions for scenes or additions to rooms.
Alright, finally got around to getting this bit done. Like I said in one of my previous posts, this would have taken a fair bit to complete.
I think this warrants some elaboration; decompilers make a big difference. Up to this point I’ve been using vmex to decompile and work with Black Mesa’s maps. In the past this has given me some minor problems (random black boxes (which are really broken area portals / occluders), non-existant info_lightings, among other things). Recently I tried out bspsource (which is an improved version of vmex) and it works much much better.
Even better yet, those lighting problems on A were fixed. As of right now, four of the five rooms have their original lighting. The only exception being the cafeteria, which actually is my fault this time. And I’m okay with that I suppose.
Now, this wasn’t without drawbacks. As you can imagine, I had to port all those small changes on the A map that I have been working with with this fresh decompile of Black Mesa’s map. I’ve spent time porting these sections into a fresh copy of the map. That isn’t something that can be done overnight, especially since some of these things are subtle and easy to miss. I think I’ve gotten everything though.
As far as I can tell, the maps function the exact same as before, with the exception of the decal bug being so hidden it’s practically non-existant now. PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF THIS IS NOT THE CASE.
I’d like to get through this extremely quickly, so that I can upload a final “for real this time” version tomorrow or Thursday.
Cool, I’ll try it out when I get home after I finish my university.
I only played through the first part of the WGH chapter and it’s great to see the lighting of most of the areas in map A back the way they were. I’ve found one issue in it so far.
I’ll put some more feedback when I finish playing through the entire chapter.
Edit: Now that I played through the entire chapter, I can give you my full feedback for this mod.
Major issue: Parts of the roof in the beginning of map C do not render properly. Check the entire roof and make sure that it is rendering properly before you release the final “for real this time” version.
These parts of the pipes do not show up at all (here & here).
In this area, I can not go as far as the headcrab can go. Also, the vent cover is a little off to the left.
Major issue: You’re getting really close, but the random decal bug is still here. I found that this occurs when playing through the entire chapter, but not when starting the chapter from map C of the Vent Mod.
Edit: Well this is odd. Played through the entire chapter without dying once in the A map and none of decals showed up.
Seems like you forgot to put the barrel back over there so that we can get in the zombie vent to talk to the scientist.
This security door opens even though it’s marked as locked.
Can confirm PCgamecrazy’s bugs 2, 3 and 4, as for 5, the decals just didn’t show, maybe cause i played the whole chapter like he said.
The first time I played through the chapter, I died at least once before encountering the random decal bug when I returning to the A map. The second time I played through the chapter, I didn’t die at all in the A map and none of the decals showed up as a result. It’s a very strange bug.
Any updates?
What update would you need?
I honestly haven’t touched it in a few days. There’s one minor bug that remains to be stamped out but at the moment I can’t bother myself to make any considerable attempts at fixing it. I’m tired.
I know this isn’t exactly what ya’ll like to hear. I will get to it soon though.
It’s alright this things take time, even if it’s just to take a break from it.
Yeah. No worries. We will be very patient.
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.
