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[PUZZLE ON] Research & Development: Awesome HL2 Puzzle Mod (NSF56k/Antlions)
TychoCelchuuu
PIGEONRegistered User regular
PIGEONRegistered User regular
Do you like Portal? Do you like Half-Life 2? Do you like free things? Great, that's pretty much the perfect set of desires for someone who wants to play Research & Development, the new HL2 mod.
What is Research & Development?
R&D is a new HL2 mod that casts you as a researcher at some sort of rebel research science outpost that comes under attack by the Combine. Instead of doing whatever it is you did before the attack (make coffee, poke headcrabs with a stick, whatever), your new task is to navigate the damaged facility, dodging monsters and combine and natural disasters alike, to send a distress message to the rest of the rebels who I'm sure will come right to your aid once they're finished blocking Gordon Freeman in doorways and giving him ammo.
Is This One of Those Shitty Mods? I Don't Like Those
R&D's not shitty. It's incredibly well done. For example, the room in which you get the gravity gun is such a fun mixture of puzzling that it wouldn't be suprising if it was in HL2 somewhere. In fact, this room would go PERFECTLY in HL2, because right now Alyx just hands you the thing. Frankly I'd shove Freeman into this room and say "we don't trust the gravity gun to anyone who can't figure out this puzzle. Let's see if you really went to MIT."
Unfortunately Valve didn't do that, but you have a chance to rectify that by playing this mod! It's quite fun, very well made, and overall rather professional. It has inventive, pretty mapping, and makes good use of custom models mixed with the good ol' HL2 junk that we all know and love. Of course, you can break the game, but this happens less often than with many mods and sometimes requires you to do things that are incredibly stupid.
Sign Me Up!
Aight! Here's what you need:
Ookay so there we go! That's that. Tell us how you like it! Tell us how you broke it! Tell us if you like having broke it! Here's a Rock Paper Shotgun article about it in case you enjoy these sorts of things which really you ought to. Stuck? Ask here, but spoil your spoilers!
Like so (spoiler for gravity gun room)
What is Research & Development?
R&D is a new HL2 mod that casts you as a researcher at some sort of rebel research science outpost that comes under attack by the Combine. Instead of doing whatever it is you did before the attack (make coffee, poke headcrabs with a stick, whatever), your new task is to navigate the damaged facility, dodging monsters and combine and natural disasters alike, to send a distress message to the rest of the rebels who I'm sure will come right to your aid once they're finished blocking Gordon Freeman in doorways and giving him ammo.
Is This One of Those Shitty Mods? I Don't Like Those
R&D's not shitty. It's incredibly well done. For example, the room in which you get the gravity gun is such a fun mixture of puzzling that it wouldn't be suprising if it was in HL2 somewhere. In fact, this room would go PERFECTLY in HL2, because right now Alyx just hands you the thing. Frankly I'd shove Freeman into this room and say "we don't trust the gravity gun to anyone who can't figure out this puzzle. Let's see if you really went to MIT."
Unfortunately Valve didn't do that, but you have a chance to rectify that by playing this mod! It's quite fun, very well made, and overall rather professional. It has inventive, pretty mapping, and makes good use of custom models mixed with the good ol' HL2 junk that we all know and love. Of course, you can break the game, but this happens less often than with many mods and sometimes requires you to do things that are incredibly stupid.
Sign Me Up!
Aight! Here's what you need:
- Episode 2. For real. Install that bad boy. If you don't own Episode 2 I can't imagine why you're allowed on the Internet. Cretin.
- The mod. Download it here.
- Uh, that's pretty much it?
Ookay so there we go! That's that. Tell us how you like it! Tell us how you broke it! Tell us if you like having broke it! Here's a Rock Paper Shotgun article about it in case you enjoy these sorts of things which really you ought to. Stuck? Ask here, but spoil your spoilers!
Like so (spoiler for gravity gun room)
I feel bad about the cat 
TychoCelchuuu on
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I just got past the part with that thing you build, You Know What, and I just hit a dead end and there's no obvious way to go.
edit: wouldn't you know it, I figure it out right after I post. Every single time.
I bought it for a friend and played it at his place when my computer died.
Taranis, Not sure what to tell you, the only thing I changed when I fired up the game was my resolution and mouse sensitivity, and I have a crosshair that also turns into a hand when I get to those keypads.
As for my whirley situation, if I press E, I appear to stand up but when I press WSAD it still moves the vehicle, not me.
I see. I don't have either a crosshair or a hand. I'll alter my video settings and see if that will fix it.
Edit: I had to enable the crosshair in the console. If anyone else runs into this proble the command is 'crosshair 1'.
This game reminds me why I never liked to play Operation.
This. Argh.
Other than that, I found it to be a very good mod. There were a few headscratchers that quickly became "Wow, I can't believe I didn't see that."
PSN: Wstfgl | GamerTag: An Evil Plan | Battle.net: FallenIdle#1970
Hit me up on BoardGameArena! User: Loaded D1
Yeah the mod is neat. Not incredible, but the puzzles are nice.
Sorry, can't help you there. But there are a number of glitches. Try reloading the level, and make sure you don't have cheats on. I had to noclip one area because the cart didn't spawn, but noclipping made other things mess up too.
Annoying as hell (tips would be great).
In the meanwhile... lots of minor bugs, so far. It's possible to get stuck in lots and lots of places:
- dropping the container on the Combine APC. If you go downstairs to the APC, you can't go back up. The ladder doesn't work (or is blocked by the container)
- fitting the gear on the lift, near the beginning. It's possible to lose the gear in awkward places: e.g., behind the forcefields :!:
- getting the gravity gun. It's possible to lose the colored cubes in awkward places. Like, on the table. For some reason it just sticks to the surface. O_o
- room immediately after the blow-pipes-to-raise-water-level room. The ladder doesn't work there, either
etc. None of these matter (much) because of the frequent save points, though.If you get overwhelmed, just keep tossing them away from you, and worry about the chopper when you have a moment. It doesn't take too many shots to go down.
Also I broke one of the first puzzles of the game and had to restart.
Also: Antlion fight was awesome. Strider fight slightly less-so because of terrible vehicle controls, but awesome in concept anyway.
I could give a hint if you were more specific about the puzzle.
It's
I'm going to re-do the entire Mr. Whirley level, see if that fixes my problem. I'd be upset but frankly once you know the puzzle solutions it doesn't take much time at all to get caught up.
Look at the sign in the corner.
The later puzzle with the tilting walkway felt the same way, the tilting happened pretty much immediately with no way to achieve a balance. I wonder to what extent the physics engine is actually being used for those puzzles.