Comments

That's a nice piece of work! Going back to low-res HL textures was a bit rough, but the improved architecture and overall character of the map more than made up for that. There's a much better sense of place now compared to the more generic warehouse style of the first version.

I especially like how the first grunt encounter was redesigned. You can now sneak up on a grunt, only the be caught by surprise by grenade-launching grunt on the other side. Gave an interesting dynamic to that fight. The area also looks more like a real functional place than v1.

Some of the other enemies felt a bit dumb though, just passively waiting around a corner until you show up. It would've been nice if the grunts in the control room had acknowledged your presence in the bridge room somehow - a 'Freeman!' shout, a gesture, one or two grunts running around. The fan obstacle setup was better in v1, because the obstacle was visible before the solution was. In v2, I first pushed the button, then found the vent, and wasn't entirely sure what that button had done.

But other than those minor issues, it's an enjoyable map and it shows good attention to detail. I like how you create ladders - much better than the standard single-brush approach. Also, '86 was a good year indeed! Now I wonder whether there are any other easter eggs to be found...

Rescued via the Wayback Machine

Worldspawn is now a thing. Of course, the engine crashes because players are still entities from the old entity system. This will be a simple fix.

Yes.

Unless someone makes a face mask with your face on it

I'm an oldbie at being a newbie

I trained myself once. I'm still stuck on these tracks.

Addicted to nostalgia

Wearing a mask to the shops is nice, that way people don't have to see my face.

Never person I, be will heard this. From again, bet?

 

its changed now, i hope you feel better now Captain

It was a short, sweet HL style and honestly a bit frustrating mission at times. In the first encounter (after switching off the fan) I was left fighting with the HECU at 8HP. Probably bad luck though. But before the last fight there were sufficient health recharges even though it wasn't as intense anymore. There are several areas that were dimly lit, and at first I thought there was a problem with my settings. My brightness and gamma settings were a bit above and I even switched off my room lights. I understand the dark atmosphere required there but it was probably overdone imo.
After the first fight, in the lift I had to use noclip after 4 retries to hit that damn ladder and almost dying :)).

The architecture denotes a skill that has been mastered over the years of mapping. It's clean, coherent, pleasant to the eye. It feels like Black Mesa while still being something original.
The texturing went hand in hand with the architecture, and it left my eyes satisfied.
The ambience - not so much. There's a lack of dynamism (I know it's HL style gameplay we're talking, but we still have all kinds of opportunities as mappers). For example, I think the area under the bridge is a missed opportunity for something happening there - a black mesa metro line for example with a metro passing from time to time. Just my imagination :P.
Lighting - overall good, but as mentioned before, there are few spots with very dim areas and I'm not sure this is actually the map or my settings/monitor.
Gameplay - It's always hard for me to judge this one, because Half-Life is an old game and I don't want to be harsh to a mapper who spent time and effort on creating something nice. For the given context, I think the challenge was sufficiently good, but after finally "bridging the gap", the show was over - well, except for a pesky turret waiting at the end.

I totally understand everyone's procrastination - such as yours with The Core. Instead of doing my chores and preparing for the next week, my brain considers that this review is much more important of a task.

The truth is, I don't even have to use VISAREA brushes. I can quite simply mark everything "between" VISPORTAL brushes as a visarea, basically what idTech 4 does. The only issue with that is the consequential existence of leaks, whereas with the system described in the journal, leaks don't have to exist.
If I gain any greater understanding of VHLT, I might as well implement this idea in HL. xD

Anyway, I moved the project from Godot back to idTech 3. A month's worth of work has been undone, for the greater good.In a nutshell, I underestimated the required amount of work to do the new entity system properly. The plan was to integrate a common entity interface between the game DLL, client DLL and the server part of the engine. But, since I need to start making a game in January or February, and finish a demo by May (for a local gamedev competition), I decided to drastically decrease the needed work (and time) by keeping the entity interface only in the game DLL.

So what this means is, the engine and client only know about something called sharedEntity_t, which is kinda like GoldSRC's edict_t and entvars_t, while the game DLL will have a bunch of different entity classes.

It's not a big deal. I can still implement entity components the way I imagined, and I can get rid of the old game entity (gentity_t) system.

Hello Crollo!

👀

So basically, instead of the CSG/BSP/VIS/RAD pipeline, you're only using a VIS process, at the expense of having to manually set up visibility areas? That's an interesting idea. I wouldn't be surprised if applying this to HL would result in similar performance to what you'd get from the 'traditional' approach.

VISPORTALEXIT seems similar in purpose to HL's SKY texture, with anything outside a VISAREA basically ending up as part of a 3D skybox. As for portals, can't you derive those automatically from where two VISPORTAL brushes are touching or intersecting? That would simplify the level-design process somewhat.

I actually had to Google "IV" to understand why it meant four, I couldn't get over my first impression that it had to do something with initialisation vector... My brain isn't working properly today
Happy XXXIV birthday, Urbyus!

Simply fantastic.

Awesome use of stock assets to create an entirely lore-friendly Black Mesa sidequest. Architecture is interesting and detailed throughout, texturing with vanilla wads is varied and colourful and the lighting is up to your high standards. Ambience could use a tickle here and there, but is certainly not lacking.

Gameplay loses a couple of points just because after what was a really challenging and fun middle section with grunts, it gets steadily easier towards the end and then has no big finalé.

Great work. Get back to The Core.

Unity is awesome!

I like they Brackeys Tutorials on youtube, though the dude resigned so his content is no longer being updated, but his existing tutorials are pretty awesome.

I started making a randomly generated FPS roguelike..
Got way too in the weeds on level generation lol

Cool, thanks Archie. I'll be sure to check that out next time i'm working with Unity.

With the age of TFC/Half-Life, it's so pleasant to see an amazing fresh map out there like this one. The FPS were spot on and the "rats" player level felt very comfortable. The custom textures were very nicely applied in the map as well as other custom sprites.

Thank you DocRock!

Thank you! I get a lot of encouragement from your comments

This is a far cry from any of my old practice maps. I'd say you're starting on the right path and I'm happy to hear that you're planning to expand this as you develop your skills.

Pretty fun to run around as well, but then I absolutely love checking out people's first maps, when it's fresh and exciting. Regardless of skill, the passion is always wonderful to behold. You just happen to be pretty skilled as well. Haha. Well done.

Tom Francis from PC Gamer (of Gunpoint & Heat Signature fame) has a wonderful tutorial series on Unity development for beginners.

Oskar Potatis got it. Well done.

Nope, my channel is just Urby, though I have seen a few people play through my various maps on YouTube.

Thanks! Yeah, I made a map a couple years ago where it was just a room crammed with examples of every entity, but they weren't examples like what you might find in a game, they were just the absolute basics (e.g. you walk into the corner of the room and a trigger_once targets an env_explosion). And so going back to it, it is hard to use it as a reference because it's just an illogical mess of entities.

But with this map, I created typical examples of as many entities as I could so that I would have real, typical examples to refer to. For example, the func_tracktrain is like the train in "On a Rail", and the env_global is used to have the generator turn on the tracktrain, and the monstermaker + env_beam + env_sprite + ambient_generic + multimanager + trigger_once is used to spawn in aliens when you walk up to the gun, which itself is a typical example of the func_tank, and so on.

This way, if I want to make more an actual cohesive set of maps or even a mod, I can refer back to this sample map to remind myself how I did things without having to remember "so, what part of this crowded chaotic room did I put the func_tank example?"

Another benefit of these maps is that because I specifically set out to make maps that just serve as examples, it allows me to take the pressure off. I can just feel free to practice without worrying that it's not perfect. I can just keep practicing, and once I feel my skills are up to the standards I want, I can start to create products where I don't feel frustrated that it's not at the level of quality I had hoped for.

Given these screenshots, I'd say it's a pretty solid work in progress.
It's always good to see someone learning by basically trying out everything the game offers you (in terms of entities), like I did when I started out. Definitely gives a very solid understanding of things and whatnot.

So with all that said, I'm looking forward to updates and stuff. ^^

plz let me outside Paul

Congratulations with your I have no clueth birthday!

Urby, is this your channel then?:D
https://www.youtube.com/c/Bomb32Game/

I swear I have seen the video of this map and a few other, but they have been removed??..
Sorry, if I am wrong..

2002?
Happy 18th birthday my bro!

Interesting, thanks for the ideas on the camera.

Messing with some other ideas:

Intravenously = IV = 4? 34!

You're correct with XXX and 30. That's only part of what I said.

Certainly is the imposter, because I ain't 30. Ha!

Okay well I don't know what number Knockaround Guys translates to and I can't find any other movies he was in in 2002 so I'm stumped lol

Unless you meant what age he was when he was in XXX...

Happy XXXth birthday