A bunch of fans ought to get together and just MAKE Episode 3. Don't call it that, of course, (Gordon's Arctic Adventure, maybe?) but just make their own version of Episode 3 and ask Valve to let them put it up on Steam.
I'm having flashbacks from the good old days when PlanetQuake folk were making a Quake 3 Arena total conversion for the ever-elusive Duke Nukem Forever.
But it's not like the "professionals" are spitting out Half-Life content at a good clip here. Free and Paid mods are pretty much the only thing keeping this franchise alive while we wait for Valve to do SOMETHING.
-A little buggy. Captions don't fire off correctly and I noticed the HUD occasionally will be orange instead of green
-It got shipped without node graphs, for some reason, so the game hitches the first time a level loads as it rebuilds the node graph
-Difficulty is annoying. Enemies are dumb as bricks but take tons of damage (I'm playing on hard).
-Dialog is.. not great
Massive infodump from teh Vortigaunts is voiced ok, but the writing doesn't even hit close to the flow of how they sounded in the original games. The constant verbal flashbacks to your old HECU days is pretty bad "Military boot camp" stuff that just sounds terrible. Just super unconvincing dialog with some swearing thrown in.
I'll reserve comments on the story until I get deeper in.
Okay, finished it, took me a tiny bit under 4 hours, but that was probably due to the difficulty.
-As mentioned, it's a little buggy. In addition to the captions not firing off correctly, the HUD changing colors and the lack of node graphcs, you can also get stuck in some spots and I've had scripted sequences get kinda weird because I killed an enemy too soon.
-Man, that difficulty is honestly probably my biggest sticking point. It basically makes grenades into heavy damage weapons instead of auto-kills, and enemies absorb so much damage it's ridiculous. Especially in the numbers the game throws at you. I'm wondering if the Medium difficulty would be equivalent to Half-Life 2's hard. I might replay this just to see.
-Dialog is bad for the reasons mentioned above. Also, as a intended sequel to Opposing Force, he decided to make the PCV have audio feedback (blood lost detected!) like the HEV suit, even though that wasn't in Op4. Also, I wonder if whoever wrote the script isn't a native english speaker, since the faux-jarhead talk is some of the worst I've heard in my life.
-The music, while not anything I'd want to stick on my playlist, is adaquate and doesn't feel out of place with the rest of the Half-Life 2 soundtrack.
-Level design is okay. Nothing that really stood out to me, though level design can often be lost on me. Some of the combat arenas were a right pain in the ass to deal with. (Basically think of the end of Nova Prospekt with all the points of entry and you have the turrets to defend you; only there's no turrets)
The story
Okay, so basically you get pulled out of stasis by the Vortigaunts to help Freeman in Nova Prospekt. You get an ENORMOUS infodump from a vortigaunt (who, as I mentioned early, sounds okay aurally, but the script doesn't come close to how the vortigaunts are in HL2/Episodes.) You then basically wander around with no weapons for like 20 minutes while you look at all the carnage and hear combat around you, but not really engage with any of it. You get the crowbar, pistol, smg, shotgun and assault rifle in quick succession and those are mostly the only weapons you get (besides grenades and the RPG). You then shoot stuff in Nova Prospekt until you find the aftermath of Freeman's exit in Entanglement. You hop into the open Portal, get telported around to random stuff (including I think a polar station, which I think is meant to be where Mossman sends the signal, but that makes no sense for the timeline so maybe I'm wrong) and wind up in a Combine Power Facility.
At this point I would point you that you really haven't helped Freeman at all, and in fact are now nowhere near him. You aren't told to do anything else, so you're basically just blundering from room to room at this point. You eventually find a teleporter that sends to you someplace which you can probably infer from the screens around you is a Combine Space Station. (Though later it's apparently a big reveal, but I don't know why). While shooting the shit out of the Space Station, you have to use a teleporter to get to an adjacent room; but because the Combine suck at local teleportation, you have to make a pitstop in Xen!.. for all of 10 minutes. Seriously, it's one level with like three combat encounters. For being a bulletpoint in the Steam description, it was a pretty pointless addition. Anywho, at the end of Xen you teleport back, fight some more, get captured, I guess some shit goes down so all the guards leave the holding cell areas and then you see the Gman on the main screen for a half second after the force field goes down, implying he saved you (Much like several times in the original Op4)
You then fight your way through the station some more, until you come accross the station's core, which you blow it up via pushing four buttons and killing any combine who try to unpush the buttons and as the thing explodes, you get saved by the Vortigaunts, but then the Gman shows up, kicks their asses and smiles at you like a smug asshole. THE END.
It's fairly inoffensive as far as Half-Life stories go; it could theoretically fit into the Half-Life story and the idea of taking out a Combine Space Station is cool, but it does nothing with it. You see the outside exactly ONE time (during the "big reveal" I mention earlier where you can see you're orbiting Earth) Otherwise it's just like every other heavy combine facility. I feel like it's a bad idea to name the game "Prospekt" and describing it as Shepherd helping Freeman, but then only having a couple levels in Nova Prospekt before Shepherd's story goes completely somewhere else. Like, you could probably could have redesigned that entire section as more combine areas, and dropped the Prospekt detail, and just given Shepherd the mission to take out the space station right away.
The constant audio flashbacks to your boot camp days are just bad. They don't really add anything, are bad dialog, and can often be distracting if you plow ahead during one of them and wind up fighting some badguys while you're screen is all "flashback-white"
Due to the story, the monster variety is garbage. It's 95% Combine Soldiers.
Overall, not recommended, even if you're a Half-Life fan. Hopefully he'll at least patch up some of the issues like the captions and the node graphs, but even then I wouldn't recommend paying more than $5 for this, if that. And only if you incredibly hungry for Half-Life 2 content and already devoured every other mod and addon.
Linespider5ALL HAIL KING KILLMONGERRegistered Userregular
I don't want to read too much into it, but it's unfortunate that this got the nod from Valve when it ended up lacking enough expertise to feel like a worthy addition to things.
I don't want to read too much into it, but it's unfortunate that this got the nod from Valve when it ended up lacking enough expertise to feel like a worthy addition to things.
Valve has historically been VERY BAD at curating content on Steam. You'd think with this borrowing one of their IP's they would have gave half a shit, but I'm guessing this got OK'd and then nobody gave it a second thought afterwards.
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Zxerolfor the smaller pieces, my shovel wouldn't doso i took off my boot and used my shoeRegistered Userregular
Realtalk, would you rather they C&D the thing like every other publisher?
That's not the only other option, though. Most Source mods don't get the opportunity to distribute commercially, it's pay a massive licensing fee or stay free. It is frankly a bit weird that there is no generalised policy of commercial source mods (which would be great) but this one gets to do the thing for some reason
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Zxerolfor the smaller pieces, my shovel wouldn't doso i took off my boot and used my shoeRegistered Userregular
edited February 2016
See, I can understand that. Of all the mods out there, why is the one that one to get into paid status? Probably a good question. Maybe they thought it looked like a rad idea and thought, "Sure, why not?" It's not like they had a hands-on investment in it.
At the same time, I'm not going to harangue the creators in getting paid, you know? Getting your project officially sanctioned is the dream. Quality notwithstanding, I respect the hustle. Just a shame the quality didn't meet the ambition.
From what I understand, dude made the mod as part of his resume that he sent to Valve (In a custum Half-Life briefcase, no less) When he didn't get hired, he threw the mod up on Steam Greenlight and it went through.
I imagine lots of other mods could probably get sold on Steam if they went through the process, rather than Prospekt (and Black Mesa, I guess) being a unique snowflake.
I mean, maybe. It's not just a matter of getting through Greenlight though, Valve also have to swoop in and give explicit permission to charge money for it otherwise you're doin' something illegal. And even though they have done that before it's not their policy
Do we know its not their policy? Or has the industry just been so conditioned about IP usage that nobody has realized that Valve doesn't give two fucks about people using their ip, so long as they get a cut?
Anywho, I did a search and found this page about distributing/selling source engine mods and games on Steam. I dunno if they make a distinction between "mod" and "game" but they seem to be interchangable.
Entry of note is this:
Q. Can I use Valve IP in my Source Mod?
A. Yes. However, please make it clear on your store pages that your mod is a mod and not created by Valve. Also, please do not distribute levels directly taken from Valve IP games. If this is necessary for your mod, then we can make it so that users must own the base Source game in order to play your mod.
"For any Source Engine game that charges money, Havok needs to be paid a licensing fee of $25,000 for the physics engine. You will need to pay this fee up front before making your game available for sale on Steam." fuckin heck
"For any Source Engine game that charges money, Havok needs to be paid a licensing fee of $25,000 for the physics engine. You will need to pay this fee up front before making your game available for sale on Steam." fuckin heck
Well it ain't like Valve sets the licensing terms on Havok.
I was just thinking how it's been a few months since we've seen mention of Half-Life 3 in one of Valve's releases. Turns out the recent VR stress test contains references to both HL3 and L4D3.
Prospekt is sort of an interesting case study of a theoretical world with minimal copyright enforcement, where anybody can just make and sell fan games of their favorite IP. Most of those games would be pretty mediocre like most indie games, but everybody knows it's non-canonical so it doesn't really hurt anything. I think the real value of copyright is the opposite, i.e. preventing big companies like Valve from ripping off the IP of an indie studio.
IIRC, minimal copyright enforcement has already had some shared universe interesting examples in writing, IMHO. Fan fiction in particular seems like an area that shares a lot of similarities to mods for games.
Yeah they have a new one called Rubikon which I imagine is at least as good. I want them to license it for other engines, since physics is one area where nothing ever surpassed Source. I do not think this will happen.
Also, I ported Lost Coast and an Episode 2 level to UE4.
So, I just had a thought: Let's say that Valve decides they want to get out of direct game development and decides instead to act as a publisher for their IPs: Who would you want them to get for a new Half-Life game (Skipping the obvious "nobody" answer)
Machine Games made a hell of a Wolfenstein game, doing a fantastic linear, story driven FPS with a fun perks system to give a greater sense of progression than the standard RTS without going full RPG. They could probably make a pretty good, but likely not revolutionary, Half-Life sequel
I would still like to see a FarCry open world style spinoff on Half-Life; set after Episode 2 with a different protagonist in the wastelands outside of city 17. Clear out Combine outposts, scavenge their tech for new upgrades and cruise around completing some icon barf. Ubisoft Montreal would be the go-to guys for that.
First two entires are more of "What I think Valve should do" while third was is basically a dude having every idea under the sun.
Anywho, since my new power supply won't get here until Monday (Boo! I just got a cheap copy of Rise of the Tomb Raider and Superhot just came out. Boo, I say!) I'm suck on my 6-year old laptop, so I figured it'd be a great time to play some Half-Life 1 mods. I'm going to start with "Half-Life: Before" which is actually available through Steam! (Requires Half-Life 1 though)
EDIT: Well that was short, but pointless.
Literally two levels, one of which is a boss fight. I beat the entire thing in like 23 minutes.
It's not very well polished; the very first thing you're presented with is a bunch of zombies and a helicopter turret you can use; except the turret is place in such a way that it fucking sucks to try to aim it. Beyond that, the level is OK, not really difficult (I fucked up a few times and was running on one hit before I die and still managed to beat it.). The ONE npc in the game doesn't move his lips when he speaks, which is HOW DO YOU EVEN DO THAT IT'S HALF-LIFE 1.
Story is dumb
Ostenisbly this explains where they got he crystal that started the Resonance Cascade... except they apparently got it off a boat in a parrelle dimension? Like a full on human boat that's been doing genetic experiments on Xen animals.
Final boss is
A Nihilanth crossed with a barnacle.
I am not shitting you. It chases you around trying to catch you with its tongue and you just circle strafe around dumping ammo into it until its dead. Anti-climatic.
Not recommended.
Undead Scottsman on
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Linespider5ALL HAIL KING KILLMONGERRegistered Userregular
edited February 2016
I don't know who be my prime choice for developing a new Half-Life. It kind of has to be Valve.
For one, both Half Life 1 and 2 were made during an era where you could argue that the FPS was the king of gameplay genres. The best tech, the best special effects, the highest end machines, all of it was still above a LOT of the rest of gaming. Of course, a lot of this had to do with standing on the shoulders of id, who built one heck of a devil's tower in the nineties. I'm getting off point.
You could argue there really isn't a king, or apex, of gameplay genres any longer. Open world sandbox stuff was, for a while, but despite a lot of incremental advancements and nice touches, it's kind of plateaued in terms of what to expect, and given way to all this competitive online malarky built out of bits of WoW and Halo.
If someone had some incredibly ambitious new open-world tech that would rewrite the face of that plateau, and wanted to integrate Half-Life into it, I could see that happening. But that still feels like something that would be a massive undertaking, and the groups best suited to do it are likely swallowed up by Bethesda, Ubisoft or EA already, and working on one of their franchises, and likely being hemmed in from making something as drastic as I would want out of my Half-Life 3.
If such tech was being made to render a large open-world environment for HL3, I could certainly see Valve having a damn good setup for independently running an outfit that could create it. In turn, I'm sure a new Team Fortress 2 would get wheeled out for competitive gear collecting shooty people, and...who knows what else. I'm not sure why Valve would choose to build such tech and not just make the game themselves, and to hire out other groups to build their own content doesn't really fit their MO as I understand it. There was all that stuff with the lost Ravenholme episode of Half Life 2 that never came to be, and one could argue that could be considered a test run for outsourcing their future, but if so, it certainly doesn't seem to have been considered a success given the outcome.
People that want to talk the VR angle? Well, it's awful random of them to be interested in VR in the first place, other than being one of those forefront things that could be capable of redefining how we interact with games. It wouldn't surprise me if they have a bunch of HLVR prototypes somewhere under wraps, things that were made and unmade and made again but will never see the light of day. VR still feels too damn anomalous to bank on for the future of Half-Life, but I guess we'll see what the current is like in another year.
Damn, we lost another one. John Cook, co-creator of Team Fortress and Valve employee since 1998 appears to have quietly parted ways with the company, according to his LinkedIn page. He appears to have been removed from Valve's list of employees as well.
Either Valve just offered a hell of a retirement package, or we're seeing the beginnings of an upheaval at Valve. It'll be interesting to see if this positively or negatively affects their game development plans.
Damn, we lost another one. John Cook, co-creator of Team Fortress and Valve employee since 1998 appears to have quietly parted ways with the company, according to his LinkedIn page. He appears to have been removed from Valve's list of employees as well.
Either Valve just offered a hell of a retirement package, or we're seeing the beginnings of an upheaval at Valve. It'll be interesting to see if this positively or negatively affects their game development plans.
Yet more cries of "WAIT, I TAKE IT BACK, I THINK HATS ARE COOOOOOooooooollllllllll......." echo down the corridors.
Also, I'd be interested to see Frictional take a crack at Half-Life, I guess.
Apparently the idea is to add some exclusive pages and wrap the comics into their own app; with the first issue being free and later issues may or may not cost money, depending on multiple factors.
It's coming reasonably soon. We're getting there. We'll provide a month estimate when we're comfortable with doing so, but it probably won't be as far ahead of time as the December Update was, because this update is relying on a few major features which are complex and need to be extensively tested. I'm writing some blog posts for my work in the update which I want to put out within the next week or two.
We can tell you that this update is much more SP-centric than our previous updates, and the central feature is a nice update to the Surface Tension chapter. We've updated quite a few of its assets, overhauled a few of the existing maps in some places, updated the gameplay in places, and we're also adding in the missing Surface Tension Uncut maps, completely rebuilt from scratch for the retail version of BMS. And they are awesome.
There's a good amount more to come and we'll let you guys know about it when we're more comfortable in doing so.
“Not yet. But they’re in development, and we’ve got writers, and we’re working on both those stories. But nothing that would be exciting… an exciting update.”
Well, film development is kinda nuts, I genuinely think there is a better chance of a new game coming out than a movie with how some scripts seem to be written up to expressly gather dust despite how obvious it is to us fans its a [potential] gold mine [if it is done well].
How long Deadpool or Independence Day 2 took to come to fruition recently comes to mind.
Surface Tension: UNCUT Patch Notes
WIP Still Making Edits
Highlights
Surface Tension: UNCUT!
High definition shadows, with the new CSM graphical feature!
Up to 75% faster load times. Fixed “Node graph out of date” on level load.
Official translation support for Finnish, German, Italian, Norwegian, and Spanish!
New Content and Features
Note: This update does not contain Xen. We are working on Xen!
Surface Tension Uncut!
We have lovingly recreated the previously missing Surface Tension maps, and restored them into Black Mesa’s main campaign! This adds three new maps - C2A5G, C2A5H, and C2A5I.
Added many new assets (textures, sounds, models, particles), and improved quality of many existing assets.
Existing Surface Tension maps C2A5B and C2A5E have been updated, providing areas with new design and gameplay.
Updated C3A1A, first map of Forget About Freeman, to use new Xen assets.
Cascaded Shadow Mapping (CSM)
Implemented Cascaded Shadow Mapping (CSM), which adds dynamic shadows to outdoor maps.
Vastly Improved Load Times
Maps load up to 75% faster.
Official Translation Support
Translated closed captions can now be enabled in the “Options > Audio” menu. Currently supported languages are Finnish, German, Italian, Norwegian, and Spanish.
Artificial Intelligence
Alien Grunt
We made a significant number of tweaks and fixes to the alien grunt AI. Overall these fixes should significantly improve their intelligence, and mostly prevent moments where they behave weirdly or inexplicably.
Made sure multiple alien grunts can advance at once, if they belong to the same squad. This should prevent them rushing one by one and make them appear more coordinated.
Added patrolling schedule. Previously, when leaving the “combat” state, the alien grunt would drop straight back to “idle”. Instead of going straight from “combat” to “idle”, the alien grunt will now drop into the “patrol” state, where he cautiously walks around the combat area, looking for a target.
Changed fallback schedule. Instead of retreating, the alien grunt might now choose to patrol instead.
Changed behaviour when target is lost. Instead of immediately dropping to “patrol” state when the alien grunt’s active target is lost, the alien grunt will now attempt to establish line of sight with its lost target.
Target Prioritisation improvements. The alien grunt will now make far fewer switches between targets. His prioritisation for targets should now be much improved.
The alien grunt is no longer deaf. He was previously unable to react to sounds. We gave them the ability to hear things, so there will be fewer situations where he’s standing around doing nothing.
The alien grunt will now attempt to go into “advance” mode more often. This makes them more aggressive towards their target.
Implemented new behaviour when failing to complete a schedule (such as advance). This should reduce the number of situations where the AI does nothing. Instead, he will fire at the enemy or seek cover if possible. Patrolling is still possible from this situation, but should be less frequent.
Made it so the alien grunt’s advance schedule can cheat a bit. The alien grunt may now traverse the full route to a player.
Fixed the condition for the alien grunt’s melee attack. The condition which determines the alien grunt’s ability to melee attack, COND_MELEE_ATTACK1, would ignore the height of the target. This is fixed.
Lowered the alien grunt’s hivehand firerate. This makes fighting alien grunts less frustrating: you’re not constantly being pelted by bees.
Lowered the alien grunt’s rest interval min and max values, to give the alien grunt a lower rest time between firing bursts. This is to compensate for him being given a slightly lower rate of fire.
Lowered the minimum range of the alien grunt’s hivehand. This prevents a situation where the alien grunt cannot melee or shoot the player.
Alien Slave
We fixed a serious bug in the alien slave’s AI routine. An AI loop created a situation where the Alien Slaves would stop and ignore the player during combat.
The alien slaves can hear the player now. Previously, they were incapable of reacting
HECU Fixes
The HECU’s accuracy is now significantly reduced (halved) while they are running, using the parameter “npcmovementinaccuracypenaltymultiplier”, which can be found in weapon_mp5.dmx.
Balance
Did a small balance pass across the game to address some community concerns.
Reload Stops. Once a new magazine is loaded, weapons will remain loaded after a weapon switch, even if the reload animation was not completely finished.
Increased crowbar range from 40 to 56. This should make it easier to fight zombies with the crowbar.
Re-balanced explosive weapons. Previously, all explosive weapons had uniform damage and radius. Now there are 3 levels of explosive weapon:
Basic-Tier: 100 damage, 250 radius (frag grenades, MP5 grenades)
Mid-Tier: 150 damage, 300 radius (satchel charges, tripmines)
Top-Tier: 175 damage, 300 radius (RPG)
Apache health increased from 200 to 400. This compensates for the nearly doubled RPG damage; the required number of RPG shots to destroy an Apache only increases by 1. This also brings the RPG and tau’s effectiveness against vehicles closer together. These changes do not affect the Apache on the dam map, only the boss fight on the cliffside map.
Tau
The tau has been rebalanced, mostly for MP. It will still remain one of the most powerful weapons in the game, but should be tougher to use at maximum effectiveness. This forum post outlines the changes in great detail.
Adjusted the code for the tau’s overcharge bias. Previously, the overcharge bias adjusted the cosine wave for the tau’s damage vs total charge. Now, the overcharge bias value dictates the point at which the tau reaches 50% damage value.
Tau overcharge bias changed from 0.9 to 0.85. This reflects the overcharge bias’s new function, and means the tau will do 50% of its total damage at 0.85 total charge. It then abruptly ramps up to 100% total damage at 1.0 total charge. This should make it much tougher to chain together half charged tau shots, because they are now ineffective.
Fixed a bug in the tau’s overcharge bias function. This value was not normalized, effectively meaning that the tau was only taking 1 second to fully charge in MP, rather than the intended 1.25 seconds. This is now corrected.
Increased tau jump velocity from 500 to 650. This improves the effectiveness of tau jumping, and also adds utility to non fully charged shots.
Depending on how these changes play out in MP, we may adjust the tau’s damage or total charge time in the future.
Programming Bug Fixes
Fixed “Node graph out of date” message displayed on each level load.
Fixed a Windows XP crash. Fixed a bug which prevents Windows XP users from launching the game.
Cleaned and optimized shaders. All shaders below DX9 are removed.
Fixed a crash related to satchels.
“Always Run” option is fixed/updated. When using always run, the sprint animations and sounds do not play.
Added “Caption Language” setting. Caption language can now be set in “Options > Audio” menu.
Fixed outstanding bugs with crossbow animations.
Updated shotgun gibbing code. Gibbing should only occur at close range, and only from a double blast.
Added “reload points” to all reloadable weapons. Previously, weapons were only considered “reloaded” when the reload animation was complete. Now, weapons take into account the point at which a magazine was inserted to determine when they are reloaded.
Fixed disappearing throwables. Fixed a bug where throwables would appear invisible after loading a saved game.
Colour correction enabled.
Drowning sound fixed. The bubbly drowning sound would always play when you come into contact with water. This is now fixed.
Added old save notification. Loading a saved game from an older version of Black Mesa will display a notification to the user.
Extended depth buffer range to render entire scene.
Implemented Portal 2 resource caching system.
Fixed crossbow scope refraction. Refraction images on crossbow scope now display correctly when not zoomed in.
Models
Updated older existing assets with new models and textures, as part of our continued effort to unify all the game’s assets and bring them up to a higher standard.
Fixed crossbow collision and lighting origin.
Fixed the sheen effect on the RPG world model.
Lowered the resolution of the shotgun world model texture.
Fixed fullbright tau world model.
Removed empty alpha maps from some materials.
Lowered resolution of texture maps for satchel and crossbow world models.
Fixed jump pad animation in SP.
Single Player Level Design
bm_c1a1c
Fixed frozen lab soundscape occasionally not triggering when entering the area.
Fixed the coolant puzzle so that players can no longer get stuck behind a pipe.
bm_c1a3c
Fixed a bug with the rappelling marines. They should no longer fall all the way down the shaft, but if they do, the fall will now kill them.
Added air raid siren to the airstrike section.
bm_c1a4a
Fixed soundscapes not playing after descending through the lift shaft.
bm_c1a4b
Fixed a bug with some vent lighting.
bm_c2a2a
Fixed tram being unable to reverse when approaching the bridge.
bm_c2a2b
The .50 cal turret will now default to facing forwards when players release control.
bm_c2a2c
Fixed broken appearance of moon texture.
bm_c2a3a
Players can no longer backtrack to On a Rail.
Fixed bug in Ichtyosaur scene which prevented players from progressing forward.
bm_c2a4f
Fixed problems with marine encounter in cryogenics scene.
bm_c2a4h
Fixed exterior soundscape so that it will correctly play when exiting the tunnel.
bm_c2a5a
Removed the icy material property from the gravel at the start of the map.
bm_c2a5b
This map had some major sections redone. The side route should be much more interesting to explore and much more rewarding now.
Overall this map should look, play, and feel a lot more up to standard than it did before.
bm_c2a5c
Fixed a missing soundscape when exiting the walkway via the shack window.
bm_c2a5e
Detailed up the outdoor area with some new foliage and rock props, as well as miscellaneous detail fixes.
Added a set of player spawn equipment at the start of the map if the player chooses to restart the level.
Disabled the explosion death effect until the player is inside the explosive warehouse. This fixes a bug where players could accidentally trigger the explosion from outside the warehouse, or could get stuck in a save game loop.
bm_c3a1a
Made the Xen slime and growths consistent with other areas throughout the game.
Cleaned up AI nodes to improve NPC navigation.
bm_c3a1b
Cleaned up AI nodes to improve NPC navigation.
bm_c3a2h
Fixed missing texture on the alien grunts’ hivehands at the beginning of the map
Multiplayer
Crossfire
Updated some Crossfire props with new textures: Crane bridge, frame hoist,
blast doors, elevator car and frame
Miscellaneous
mp_warmuptime cvar fixed.
Added bulletproof vest to MP guard skin.
Added game_round_win and game_player_equip entities to enable mappers to develop custom game types.
Added game_mp_gamerules entity which can be set to enable or disable player canister drops on death, allowing development of class-based game modes.
Fixed some bugs with the new stats system which made players show up as “unnamed”.
sv_lan now defaults to 0.
Fixed server crash when server was empty and map changed.
For Modders
Max entity limit per map increased from 2048 to 4096.
Forced optimizations inside VBSP, VVIS and VRAD, which should speed up compile times for maps.
Known Issues
Players can become stuck in map bm_c2a5g by backing up after opening the garage door.
Bees, grenades and rockets can get stuck on .50 cal turrets.
Bounce pads in MP loop bounce animations after being jumped on.
Static props without normal maps do not receive CSM shadows.
Dedicated servers may need sv_ranked set to “0” to avoid crash after warm up round.
Ragdolls sometimes break on loading saves (Instigating).
AMD video cards may not display CSM.
Posts
I'm having flashbacks from the good old days when PlanetQuake folk were making a Quake 3 Arena total conversion for the ever-elusive Duke Nukem Forever.
Well, "Amateur" since it's made by one guy.
But it's not like the "professionals" are spitting out Half-Life content at a good clip here. Free and Paid mods are pretty much the only thing keeping this franchise alive while we wait for Valve to do SOMETHING.
The "big deal" isn't about if these people should retire or not, it's about what them retiring means for Valve developing Half-Life 3.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/399120/
EDIT: Impressions from the first 60 minutes.
-A little buggy. Captions don't fire off correctly and I noticed the HUD occasionally will be orange instead of green
-It got shipped without node graphs, for some reason, so the game hitches the first time a level loads as it rebuilds the node graph
-Difficulty is annoying. Enemies are dumb as bricks but take tons of damage (I'm playing on hard).
-Dialog is.. not great
I'll reserve comments on the story until I get deeper in.
-As mentioned, it's a little buggy. In addition to the captions not firing off correctly, the HUD changing colors and the lack of node graphcs, you can also get stuck in some spots and I've had scripted sequences get kinda weird because I killed an enemy too soon.
-Man, that difficulty is honestly probably my biggest sticking point. It basically makes grenades into heavy damage weapons instead of auto-kills, and enemies absorb so much damage it's ridiculous. Especially in the numbers the game throws at you. I'm wondering if the Medium difficulty would be equivalent to Half-Life 2's hard. I might replay this just to see.
-Dialog is bad for the reasons mentioned above. Also, as a intended sequel to Opposing Force, he decided to make the PCV have audio feedback (blood lost detected!) like the HEV suit, even though that wasn't in Op4. Also, I wonder if whoever wrote the script isn't a native english speaker, since the faux-jarhead talk is some of the worst I've heard in my life.
-The music, while not anything I'd want to stick on my playlist, is adaquate and doesn't feel out of place with the rest of the Half-Life 2 soundtrack.
-Level design is okay. Nothing that really stood out to me, though level design can often be lost on me. Some of the combat arenas were a right pain in the ass to deal with. (Basically think of the end of Nova Prospekt with all the points of entry and you have the turrets to defend you; only there's no turrets)
The story
At this point I would point you that you really haven't helped Freeman at all, and in fact are now nowhere near him. You aren't told to do anything else, so you're basically just blundering from room to room at this point. You eventually find a teleporter that sends to you someplace which you can probably infer from the screens around you is a Combine Space Station. (Though later it's apparently a big reveal, but I don't know why). While shooting the shit out of the Space Station, you have to use a teleporter to get to an adjacent room; but because the Combine suck at local teleportation, you have to make a pitstop in Xen!.. for all of 10 minutes. Seriously, it's one level with like three combat encounters. For being a bulletpoint in the Steam description, it was a pretty pointless addition. Anywho, at the end of Xen you teleport back, fight some more, get captured, I guess some shit goes down so all the guards leave the holding cell areas and then you see the Gman on the main screen for a half second after the force field goes down, implying he saved you (Much like several times in the original Op4)
You then fight your way through the station some more, until you come accross the station's core, which you blow it up via pushing four buttons and killing any combine who try to unpush the buttons and as the thing explodes, you get saved by the Vortigaunts, but then the Gman shows up, kicks their asses and smiles at you like a smug asshole. THE END.
It's fairly inoffensive as far as Half-Life stories go; it could theoretically fit into the Half-Life story and the idea of taking out a Combine Space Station is cool, but it does nothing with it. You see the outside exactly ONE time (during the "big reveal" I mention earlier where you can see you're orbiting Earth) Otherwise it's just like every other heavy combine facility. I feel like it's a bad idea to name the game "Prospekt" and describing it as Shepherd helping Freeman, but then only having a couple levels in Nova Prospekt before Shepherd's story goes completely somewhere else. Like, you could probably could have redesigned that entire section as more combine areas, and dropped the Prospekt detail, and just given Shepherd the mission to take out the space station right away.
The constant audio flashbacks to your boot camp days are just bad. They don't really add anything, are bad dialog, and can often be distracting if you plow ahead during one of them and wind up fighting some badguys while you're screen is all "flashback-white"
Due to the story, the monster variety is garbage. It's 95% Combine Soldiers.
Overall, not recommended, even if you're a Half-Life fan. Hopefully he'll at least patch up some of the issues like the captions and the node graphs, but even then I wouldn't recommend paying more than $5 for this, if that. And only if you incredibly hungry for Half-Life 2 content and already devoured every other mod and addon.
Valve has historically been VERY BAD at curating content on Steam. You'd think with this borrowing one of their IP's they would have gave half a shit, but I'm guessing this got OK'd and then nobody gave it a second thought afterwards.
At the same time, I'm not going to harangue the creators in getting paid, you know? Getting your project officially sanctioned is the dream. Quality notwithstanding, I respect the hustle. Just a shame the quality didn't meet the ambition.
I imagine lots of other mods could probably get sold on Steam if they went through the process, rather than Prospekt (and Black Mesa, I guess) being a unique snowflake.
Anywho, I did a search and found this page about distributing/selling source engine mods and games on Steam. I dunno if they make a distinction between "mod" and "game" but they seem to be interchangable.
Entry of note is this:
https://partner.steamgames.com/documentation/source_games
Well it ain't like Valve sets the licensing terms on Havok.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
http://www.valvetime.net/threads/examining-the-files-of-steamvr-performance-test-aperture-robot-repair.253841/
I think they replaced Havok with their own physics engine in Source 2.
Also, I ported Lost Coast and an Episode 2 level to UE4.
Machine Games made a hell of a Wolfenstein game, doing a fantastic linear, story driven FPS with a fun perks system to give a greater sense of progression than the standard RTS without going full RPG. They could probably make a pretty good, but likely not revolutionary, Half-Life sequel
I would still like to see a FarCry open world style spinoff on Half-Life; set after Episode 2 with a different protagonist in the wastelands outside of city 17. Clear out Combine outposts, scavenge their tech for new upgrades and cruise around completing some icon barf. Ubisoft Montreal would be the go-to guys for that.
http://www.pcgamer.com/game-developers-tell-us-how-they-would-make-half-life-3/
First two entires are more of "What I think Valve should do" while third was is basically a dude having every idea under the sun.
Anywho, since my new power supply won't get here until Monday (Boo! I just got a cheap copy of Rise of the Tomb Raider and Superhot just came out. Boo, I say!) I'm suck on my 6-year old laptop, so I figured it'd be a great time to play some Half-Life 1 mods. I'm going to start with "Half-Life: Before" which is actually available through Steam! (Requires Half-Life 1 though)
EDIT: Well that was short, but pointless.
Literally two levels, one of which is a boss fight. I beat the entire thing in like 23 minutes.
It's not very well polished; the very first thing you're presented with is a bunch of zombies and a helicopter turret you can use; except the turret is place in such a way that it fucking sucks to try to aim it. Beyond that, the level is OK, not really difficult (I fucked up a few times and was running on one hit before I die and still managed to beat it.). The ONE npc in the game doesn't move his lips when he speaks, which is HOW DO YOU EVEN DO THAT IT'S HALF-LIFE 1.
Story is dumb
Final boss is
I am not shitting you. It chases you around trying to catch you with its tongue and you just circle strafe around dumping ammo into it until its dead. Anti-climatic.
Not recommended.
For one, both Half Life 1 and 2 were made during an era where you could argue that the FPS was the king of gameplay genres. The best tech, the best special effects, the highest end machines, all of it was still above a LOT of the rest of gaming. Of course, a lot of this had to do with standing on the shoulders of id, who built one heck of a devil's tower in the nineties. I'm getting off point.
You could argue there really isn't a king, or apex, of gameplay genres any longer. Open world sandbox stuff was, for a while, but despite a lot of incremental advancements and nice touches, it's kind of plateaued in terms of what to expect, and given way to all this competitive online malarky built out of bits of WoW and Halo.
If someone had some incredibly ambitious new open-world tech that would rewrite the face of that plateau, and wanted to integrate Half-Life into it, I could see that happening. But that still feels like something that would be a massive undertaking, and the groups best suited to do it are likely swallowed up by Bethesda, Ubisoft or EA already, and working on one of their franchises, and likely being hemmed in from making something as drastic as I would want out of my Half-Life 3.
If such tech was being made to render a large open-world environment for HL3, I could certainly see Valve having a damn good setup for independently running an outfit that could create it. In turn, I'm sure a new Team Fortress 2 would get wheeled out for competitive gear collecting shooty people, and...who knows what else. I'm not sure why Valve would choose to build such tech and not just make the game themselves, and to hire out other groups to build their own content doesn't really fit their MO as I understand it. There was all that stuff with the lost Ravenholme episode of Half Life 2 that never came to be, and one could argue that could be considered a test run for outsourcing their future, but if so, it certainly doesn't seem to have been considered a success given the outcome.
People that want to talk the VR angle? Well, it's awful random of them to be interested in VR in the first place, other than being one of those forefront things that could be capable of redefining how we interact with games. It wouldn't surprise me if they have a bunch of HLVR prototypes somewhere under wraps, things that were made and unmade and made again but will never see the light of day. VR still feels too damn anomalous to bank on for the future of Half-Life, but I guess we'll see what the current is like in another year.
http://www.valvetime.net/threads/john-cook-tf-co-founder-and-steam-dev-removed-from-valves-employee-page.254000/
Either Valve just offered a hell of a retirement package, or we're seeing the beginnings of an upheaval at Valve. It'll be interesting to see if this positively or negatively affects their game development plans.
Yet more cries of "WAIT, I TAKE IT BACK, I THINK HATS ARE COOOOOOooooooollllllllll......." echo down the corridors.
Also, I'd be interested to see Frictional take a crack at Half-Life, I guess.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=634663586
Apparently the idea is to add some exclusive pages and wrap the comics into their own app; with the first issue being free and later issues may or may not cost money, depending on multiple factors.
You can read the first issue at http://www.aplaceinthewest.net
Woo!
http://screenrant.com/portal-half-life-movie-update-writers-jj-abrams/
How long Deadpool or Independence Day 2 took to come to fruition recently comes to mind.
http://forums.blackmesasource.com/index.php/Thread/29002-Surface-Tension-Uncut-and-Cascade-Shadow-Maps/?pageNo=1
WIP Still Making Edits
Highlights
Surface Tension: UNCUT!
High definition shadows, with the new CSM graphical feature!
Up to 75% faster load times. Fixed “Node graph out of date” on level load.
Official translation support for Finnish, German, Italian, Norwegian, and Spanish!
New Content and Features
Note: This update does not contain Xen. We are working on Xen!
Surface Tension Uncut!
We have lovingly recreated the previously missing Surface Tension maps, and restored them into Black Mesa’s main campaign! This adds three new maps - C2A5G, C2A5H, and C2A5I.
Added many new assets (textures, sounds, models, particles), and improved quality of many existing assets.
Existing Surface Tension maps C2A5B and C2A5E have been updated, providing areas with new design and gameplay.
Updated C3A1A, first map of Forget About Freeman, to use new Xen assets.
Cascaded Shadow Mapping (CSM)
Implemented Cascaded Shadow Mapping (CSM), which adds dynamic shadows to outdoor maps.
Vastly Improved Load Times
Maps load up to 75% faster.
Official Translation Support
Translated closed captions can now be enabled in the “Options > Audio” menu. Currently supported languages are Finnish, German, Italian, Norwegian, and Spanish.
Artificial Intelligence
Alien Grunt
We made a significant number of tweaks and fixes to the alien grunt AI. Overall these fixes should significantly improve their intelligence, and mostly prevent moments where they behave weirdly or inexplicably.
Made sure multiple alien grunts can advance at once, if they belong to the same squad. This should prevent them rushing one by one and make them appear more coordinated.
Added patrolling schedule. Previously, when leaving the “combat” state, the alien grunt would drop straight back to “idle”. Instead of going straight from “combat” to “idle”, the alien grunt will now drop into the “patrol” state, where he cautiously walks around the combat area, looking for a target.
Changed fallback schedule. Instead of retreating, the alien grunt might now choose to patrol instead.
Changed behaviour when target is lost. Instead of immediately dropping to “patrol” state when the alien grunt’s active target is lost, the alien grunt will now attempt to establish line of sight with its lost target.
Target Prioritisation improvements. The alien grunt will now make far fewer switches between targets. His prioritisation for targets should now be much improved.
The alien grunt is no longer deaf. He was previously unable to react to sounds. We gave them the ability to hear things, so there will be fewer situations where he’s standing around doing nothing.
The alien grunt will now attempt to go into “advance” mode more often. This makes them more aggressive towards their target.
Implemented new behaviour when failing to complete a schedule (such as advance). This should reduce the number of situations where the AI does nothing. Instead, he will fire at the enemy or seek cover if possible. Patrolling is still possible from this situation, but should be less frequent.
Made it so the alien grunt’s advance schedule can cheat a bit. The alien grunt may now traverse the full route to a player.
Fixed the condition for the alien grunt’s melee attack. The condition which determines the alien grunt’s ability to melee attack, COND_MELEE_ATTACK1, would ignore the height of the target. This is fixed.
Lowered the alien grunt’s hivehand firerate. This makes fighting alien grunts less frustrating: you’re not constantly being pelted by bees.
Lowered the alien grunt’s rest interval min and max values, to give the alien grunt a lower rest time between firing bursts. This is to compensate for him being given a slightly lower rate of fire.
Lowered the minimum range of the alien grunt’s hivehand. This prevents a situation where the alien grunt cannot melee or shoot the player.
Alien Slave
We fixed a serious bug in the alien slave’s AI routine. An AI loop created a situation where the Alien Slaves would stop and ignore the player during combat.
The alien slaves can hear the player now. Previously, they were incapable of reacting
HECU Fixes
The HECU’s accuracy is now significantly reduced (halved) while they are running, using the parameter “npcmovementinaccuracypenaltymultiplier”, which can be found in weapon_mp5.dmx.
Balance
Did a small balance pass across the game to address some community concerns.
Reload Stops. Once a new magazine is loaded, weapons will remain loaded after a weapon switch, even if the reload animation was not completely finished.
Increased crowbar range from 40 to 56. This should make it easier to fight zombies with the crowbar.
Re-balanced explosive weapons. Previously, all explosive weapons had uniform damage and radius. Now there are 3 levels of explosive weapon:
Basic-Tier: 100 damage, 250 radius (frag grenades, MP5 grenades)
Mid-Tier: 150 damage, 300 radius (satchel charges, tripmines)
Top-Tier: 175 damage, 300 radius (RPG)
Apache health increased from 200 to 400. This compensates for the nearly doubled RPG damage; the required number of RPG shots to destroy an Apache only increases by 1. This also brings the RPG and tau’s effectiveness against vehicles closer together. These changes do not affect the Apache on the dam map, only the boss fight on the cliffside map.
Tau
The tau has been rebalanced, mostly for MP. It will still remain one of the most powerful weapons in the game, but should be tougher to use at maximum effectiveness. This forum post outlines the changes in great detail.
Adjusted the code for the tau’s overcharge bias. Previously, the overcharge bias adjusted the cosine wave for the tau’s damage vs total charge. Now, the overcharge bias value dictates the point at which the tau reaches 50% damage value.
Tau overcharge bias changed from 0.9 to 0.85. This reflects the overcharge bias’s new function, and means the tau will do 50% of its total damage at 0.85 total charge. It then abruptly ramps up to 100% total damage at 1.0 total charge. This should make it much tougher to chain together half charged tau shots, because they are now ineffective.
Fixed a bug in the tau’s overcharge bias function. This value was not normalized, effectively meaning that the tau was only taking 1 second to fully charge in MP, rather than the intended 1.25 seconds. This is now corrected.
Increased tau jump velocity from 500 to 650. This improves the effectiveness of tau jumping, and also adds utility to non fully charged shots.
Depending on how these changes play out in MP, we may adjust the tau’s damage or total charge time in the future.
Programming Bug Fixes
Fixed “Node graph out of date” message displayed on each level load.
Fixed a Windows XP crash. Fixed a bug which prevents Windows XP users from launching the game.
Cleaned and optimized shaders. All shaders below DX9 are removed.
Fixed a crash related to satchels.
“Always Run” option is fixed/updated. When using always run, the sprint animations and sounds do not play.
Added “Caption Language” setting. Caption language can now be set in “Options > Audio” menu.
Fixed outstanding bugs with crossbow animations.
Updated shotgun gibbing code. Gibbing should only occur at close range, and only from a double blast.
Added “reload points” to all reloadable weapons. Previously, weapons were only considered “reloaded” when the reload animation was complete. Now, weapons take into account the point at which a magazine was inserted to determine when they are reloaded.
Fixed disappearing throwables. Fixed a bug where throwables would appear invisible after loading a saved game.
Colour correction enabled.
Drowning sound fixed. The bubbly drowning sound would always play when you come into contact with water. This is now fixed.
Added old save notification. Loading a saved game from an older version of Black Mesa will display a notification to the user.
Extended depth buffer range to render entire scene.
Implemented Portal 2 resource caching system.
Fixed crossbow scope refraction. Refraction images on crossbow scope now display correctly when not zoomed in.
Models
Updated older existing assets with new models and textures, as part of our continued effort to unify all the game’s assets and bring them up to a higher standard.
Fixed crossbow collision and lighting origin.
Fixed the sheen effect on the RPG world model.
Lowered the resolution of the shotgun world model texture.
Fixed fullbright tau world model.
Removed empty alpha maps from some materials.
Lowered resolution of texture maps for satchel and crossbow world models.
Fixed jump pad animation in SP.
Single Player Level Design
bm_c1a1c
Fixed frozen lab soundscape occasionally not triggering when entering the area.
Fixed the coolant puzzle so that players can no longer get stuck behind a pipe.
bm_c1a3c
Fixed a bug with the rappelling marines. They should no longer fall all the way down the shaft, but if they do, the fall will now kill them.
Added air raid siren to the airstrike section.
bm_c1a4a
Fixed soundscapes not playing after descending through the lift shaft.
bm_c1a4b
Fixed a bug with some vent lighting.
bm_c2a2a
Fixed tram being unable to reverse when approaching the bridge.
bm_c2a2b
The .50 cal turret will now default to facing forwards when players release control.
bm_c2a2c
Fixed broken appearance of moon texture.
bm_c2a3a
Players can no longer backtrack to On a Rail.
Fixed bug in Ichtyosaur scene which prevented players from progressing forward.
bm_c2a4f
Fixed problems with marine encounter in cryogenics scene.
bm_c2a4h
Fixed exterior soundscape so that it will correctly play when exiting the tunnel.
bm_c2a5a
Removed the icy material property from the gravel at the start of the map.
bm_c2a5b
This map had some major sections redone. The side route should be much more interesting to explore and much more rewarding now.
Overall this map should look, play, and feel a lot more up to standard than it did before.
bm_c2a5c
Fixed a missing soundscape when exiting the walkway via the shack window.
bm_c2a5e
Detailed up the outdoor area with some new foliage and rock props, as well as miscellaneous detail fixes.
Added a set of player spawn equipment at the start of the map if the player chooses to restart the level.
Disabled the explosion death effect until the player is inside the explosive warehouse. This fixes a bug where players could accidentally trigger the explosion from outside the warehouse, or could get stuck in a save game loop.
bm_c3a1a
Made the Xen slime and growths consistent with other areas throughout the game.
Cleaned up AI nodes to improve NPC navigation.
bm_c3a1b
Cleaned up AI nodes to improve NPC navigation.
bm_c3a2h
Fixed missing texture on the alien grunts’ hivehands at the beginning of the map
Multiplayer
Crossfire
Updated some Crossfire props with new textures: Crane bridge, frame hoist,
blast doors, elevator car and frame
Miscellaneous
mp_warmuptime cvar fixed.
Added bulletproof vest to MP guard skin.
Added game_round_win and game_player_equip entities to enable mappers to develop custom game types.
Added game_mp_gamerules entity which can be set to enable or disable player canister drops on death, allowing development of class-based game modes.
Fixed some bugs with the new stats system which made players show up as “unnamed”.
sv_lan now defaults to 0.
Fixed server crash when server was empty and map changed.
For Modders
Max entity limit per map increased from 2048 to 4096.
Forced optimizations inside VBSP, VVIS and VRAD, which should speed up compile times for maps.
Known Issues
Players can become stuck in map bm_c2a5g by backing up after opening the garage door.
Bees, grenades and rockets can get stuck on .50 cal turrets.
Bounce pads in MP loop bounce animations after being jumped on.
Static props without normal maps do not receive CSM shadows.
Dedicated servers may need sv_ranked set to “0” to avoid crash after warm up round.
Ragdolls sometimes break on loading saves (Instigating).
AMD video cards may not display CSM.
Spoilered for length.