I had a dramatic last stand that involved standing on some satchel charges. I’ll take you all with me!
ROTFL! How did that turn out? 
Much obliged. Any idea where it’s from? Because I don’t.
Primarily the hornet gun, snarks, tau cannon, gluon gun and rocket launcher. I never liked the hornet gun as a combat weapon, but the latter three I don’t really have an excuse for. They’re best deployed in the heat of battle but by then I usually have a planned strategy and stick to it, with predictable, easy results. All the enemies in the game have straightforward methods of dealing with. The most challenging are probably the alien grunts, which can usually be taken down with a few good shots of the .357 to the head or trip mines.
Essentially the game could exist for me without those weapons, as I only need them when required, such as destroying the crystals in the Nihilanth’s chamber.
Anyway, Xen.
As with most of my plans, it all ended in tears
tears, blood and gibs, I’m guessing.
i would like to see also some other “cut” xen-creatures
especialy the chumtoad
it doesnt change much, looks funny, and gives a prey to exciting xen-creatures
and wild snarks maybe
Damn… that’s just given me an idea. In the Black Mesa facility, we were presented with animals that were extremely aggressive because they were faced with an alien environment. It’s been mentioned before I know, but I’d be interested to see certain animals behaving differently, even if it’s just a scripted event.
Taking Voodoo’s idea of wild snarks, you could have an arbitrary appearance of a group of snarks hunting as a pack but without their timed explosion. This is just off the top of my head, so I don’t know whether that idea would stand up.
I know that there will (as far as I remember) be a section in BM where group of houndeyes are asleep. You could easily have the same concept but on Xen, and in a little tunnel or burrow that could form part of an alternative route.
Another thing that I’d love to see is random wildlife seen in out of reach places. You already have the boids at the end of Half-Life, but what about a swarm of hornets (from the hornet gun) passing overhead in a similar way to how wasps and bees move hives. They could pass way overhead so as to be barely noticeable or they could travel so that the player gets caught in their path. It would be interesting that way - they wouldn’t have to attack the player, but it would certainly be something to throw most players and make them think wtf.
You could even have really bizarre insects or lights travelling overhead at high speeds, almost like a shooting star. It could be something so rare and quick that the player isn’t quite sure they’ve seen it, which would also allow for it to be a simple sprite rather than a full model. These sorts of arbitrary occurances are exactly the type of events to make Xen feel more alive and real, since they occur in nature anyway. I’m a great believer in attention to detail. However, they would need to be rare occurances, perhaps something that people will only notice in their second run through. Any more than that and the effect is ruined.
^^ this!
JDowney? Is that you?
hehe, if nothing else, his avatar pic should be the giveaway.
@ Floyd
I like the idea of Xen teeming with a bit more life, but there was also something to be said about the perceived emptiness of the Xen-scapes, particularly with what we know about Nihilanth’s forces seeking refuge within the borderworld.
Haha, I’m glad I can be recognised by my long Xen essays. Tis indeed.
@ Interloper - I entirely agree, so care would need to be taken to have these sorts of things appearing in areas that aren’t so barren. There were parts of Xen that were clearly meant to be more fertile areas, and others where nothing seemed to grow.
Paradoxically, perhaps having strange insects or birds flying high overhead could stress the lonliness rather than detract from it? I know I’d certainly love to see a flock of boids flying overhead somewhere in the game other than at the end.
A nice feature to Xen could be the opposite between wild lifeforms like boids or hornets flying from time to time in random direction and mantas from Nihilanth force who are going to invade earth. Organized and moving toward the same point, maybe some waiting in a queue for a portal
I like this idea alot. I think the incorporation of things in the air and around the skybox of Xen would be a very good addition. Perhaps more floating island moving a great distance away.
Is it possible to make the skybox such that it appears that your island is orbiting something larger or just moving around a fixed point.
In HL1,every island was the center of the landscape and stationary. Would you be able to create a skybox such that it give the player a sense that the island is moving?
The difficult part with straying too far from the HL1 version of Xen is knowing what’s canonical and what’s not. For all we know, Valve might work Xen into a future HL game, so the BM devs can’t take too many liberties if they don’t want Valve to turn round and do something completely different. It’s hard to say what was down to engine limitations and what’s down to Laidlaw et al’s idea of what Xen is. I don’t envy the devs on this one, it’s surely going to be a divisive one.
But then you have the risk of doing the complete opposite. If you don’t take any liberties, you’ll just have the exact same layout as Half-Life with updated graphics and it wouldn’t achieve its potential. I think the idea of revisiting Xen is a bit absurd, and I can’t really see them doing it. They’ve never revisited locations (with the minor exception of Episode 1) and Xen was fairly poorly received. I vaguely recall seeing an interview with Valve somewhere that they purposefully move each game to a different area and tell a different story. They kept the destruction of Black Mesa in OP4 as canon just so that they could quell the rumours that it might return in some form.
I get your point, and obviously you wouldn’t want to make Xen a purple marshmallow that shoots mushrooms into the air, but the things that have been suggested are in keeping with the general theme as far as I can tell. I don’t think anything’s been suggested that could contradict Xen’s canon in a major way.
Hmm, that’s a shame, I actually quite like it when you get to revisit old locations in games (Lost City in the Thief Series, anyone?). I can see why they do it, though.
Hmm… that makes me wonder if the BM team are going to let Valve have a look at the mod before it’s released to see if there’s anything massively non-canon in there. Right enough, I can’t see Valve taking the time and effort to do that. Has that one been asked before?
^
Considering Valve’s stance with Opposing Force and Blue Shift, I don’t think they’d object to what the Dev’s do with Xen, but by the same token, I don’t think they’d come out and say, yeah that can be canon.
I think they Dev’s might offer it to valve, and they might look at it as a favor, but it seems like since everything in the game has been discussed to the T in these forums, there shouldn’t be anything too messed up.
It is hard to make any comments on Xen because no screen shots have been released for it, but I can definitely understand them not releasing them and keeping that part a surprise until something really large appears in the Downloads section of the website.
I’m pretty sure the devs won’t do any more media before the release and wil keep Xen secret until we discover.
I just hope they read some Xen threads sometimes 'cause many ideas posted before and now (thanks Floyd) are good ones