Forum posts

I have't posted here in a while - but I just have to chime in that watching Alyx and playing it are not comparable.
I admittedly bought an Oculus Rift S just to play it. Here is my Steam review:

"When I was 12, I played Half-Life for the first time in 1998. I remember running next door to excitedly grab my dad, all to show him that a character was talking to me. "His mouth is moving!" "He is looking at me!"
I did the same when I discovered I could break windows, push boxes, drive a train - I had never experienced anything like it before in my life and it was a feeling of awe that I still remember to this day.
Half-Life Alyx is my first experience with VR, and I cannot understate how impressed I am with how VR engages you with the world and your interactions within it. Once again, Valve is making me feel like a 12 year old boy playing something that will have a profound impact on my gaming life.
VR may be at the beginning of its journey, but it is here to stay, and is only going to get better.
What a start to it."

The Half-Life series evokes emotions that only Valve seem to be able to create for me, and this was no exception.
The only downside is that I want more, and for their next game to be in VR now.

Edit:

Do newer VR solutions still require those pillar positional sensors to be placed around in a room? I thought the new Oculus uses cameras mounted on the headset and a gyro or something?

-
To add to this - The Oculus Rift S has internal sensors, so does not require external devices - that is why I bought it. Also, unlike the Quest it connects to your GPU with a 5m cable, plus it has haptic feedback and touch sensors on the controllers which add to immersion - running your "hand" along a surface will give you a false sense of touching something which is cool, and it has thumb, index finger and "rest of hand" detection. The only downside so far to the headset is that the room must be lit for the cameras to work for positioning - but all that amounts to is not playing it in the dark!

Hello again - the vent cache was one of the things You have done amazingly to find most of these!
Thank you for the compliments

The textures are from the cancelled Nightwatch mod - so the reference is theirs - but I did recognise it as someplace else myself and put it in. I just love that mod. Adam Foster has made some of the best maps I have ever played.

So - the last thing is on map 14. Kill all the aliens, get Agamemnon (the green suited worker) to open the door. Proceed out until you reach the Military arrival on map 14b. Go back into the parking lot on map 14, and look out the giant door near the security booth

Regarding the last image - I could not figure out that one sorry!

EDIT - and yes, what Marphy found! The game over is very hard to get but was included as a fail safe. The Garg has maybe 9999999 HP or something similarly stupid

Congratulations J-M!! You have really done well You have however missed maybe one scene, and perhaps one secret ammo cache. I could tell if you want? Especially as you have done this well!

Thanks for the feedback on the sound ZikShadow - maybe if I do another patch I will fix the quality of it.

Well done - I think you are the first person to post about it that I am aware of

Thank you so much solokiller - I am removing the junk values now and will give it a test!

EDIT
Version 1.3 has been released - hopefully the crashes have been taken care of

Hi Mad Carrot - sorry to hear about your issues!

I suspect it seems to be some kind of memory leak or similar - perhaps caused by spirit of Half-Life? I used version 1.5 - unfortunately I was a few years into this before I found out how unreliable it was. This was my first big project!
It seems to be related to saving. The more frequent someone saves, the sooner the crash happens during the mod. I never got this issue myself, nor did my testers, and so I really only found out about it on release. I'm not entirely sure how to fix it at the moment, and it is not tied to a specific map - however time wise most people who have it get it around map 12. If anyone has any suggestions, I can maybe work from there.

Thank you for the responses everyone I am just happy that everyone found something to enjoy in this - I did not have any specific goal in mind when I started aside from making something I would like to play! I know there are flaws here and there, but overall I am very content with how things turned out.

A little aside about your video 2muchvideogames, I noticed there is a problem with the lightmaps. Lights which are off and turn on are all on permanently from the start oddly. This means that the car park was all red initially before the flares are dropped by the marines, and the final map with the housing complex is already lit by the massive explosion, sorry if that killed any of the scenes for you! Just curious, did you play on the Steam version of Half Life on opengl?

Hello all - I have finally managed to lift the heavy burden of making this mod off my shoulders and released it to the world!
An announcement post should be up on moddb.com when it has been authorised, but in the meantime you can go straight to playing

https://www.moddb.com/mods/half-life-echoes

Enjoy!

I'd rather that it was fully playtested before I get it out! I really hope I don't need to release any patches post release

Thank you everyone - I am just waiting on a few more playtesters getting back to me and I can release not long after I'll post here once it is up!

Thank you for the kind words
I've just added a new trailer:

Hello everyone!

I've been on here quite a few times for help and assistance with GoldSrc mapping - and the tutorials have been a life saver!
You lot have been a very helpful bunch.
I just wanted to tell everyone here that I am on the final testing phase of my long overdue mod, Half-Life Echoes, and imagine I will be releasing in the next couple of weeks at most - provided nothing goes horribly awry!
I've been working on this in my spare time for a good few years. It started as a small map pack and grew larger as I learned more about how to design levels - this is really my first mod attempt, and I hope the time spent on it shows!

It's a new angle on the Black Mesa Incident, with a strong emphasis on environmental storytelling and a good few surprises along the way.

I hope you all enjoy it when I release

Check it out here:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/half-life-echoes

That looks fantastic!

From my experience, I coat every surface not view-able or accessible by the player in the NULL texture and it helps performance.

For all my levels, I create the basic room box or bounding area as brushes, and fill every single element as a func_detail. I am talking hundreds of them. I am getting away with a lot of brushes - for example:
http://www.moddb.com/mods/half-life-echoes/images/clean-up
http://www.moddb.com/mods/half-life-echoes/images/signal-fading

Seems to run fine even on my older laptop!

You NEED to make a full infowars map! But I get the impression you have made that decision already

And outsource my work! Excellent idea!

Congratulations on #2! I have my first on the way - so I am really making a push to get my mod finished before early next year haha....

I am using Spirit of Half Life - which allows you to play scripted sentences through the player's "HEV" channel - which I initially used for VOX sentences. After realising some players might strangely turn down the HEV volume, I just opted for making sound files of individual VOX lines.

I use Audacity, which is really easy to drag and drop the files in sequence and output an 8bit wav file, it is really quick and easy to do!

I use J.A.C.K and generally love it. However, I do quite often get a crash when opening the properties of some entities on my more complex maps. I just got used to it!

Don't worry - I will have a quick round of playtests once I have put together all maps. I've been working on this periodically for so long I just want to put an end to it haha!

Haha I would love to make it hard as nails but unfortunately it might not be liked

I have edited the code to decrease the ammo available to the player for all weapons, and some weapons (such as the machine gun) have a smaller clip. I hope to have the player need to look for ammo more often!

I was hoping to have the atrium battle above get harder the longer you take, but the more marines that enter the arena, the more likely they are to get stuck on each other, or rappel onto each others heads haha. I considered explosions to clear the areas needed, but this is unfair for the player. I might just stick to good old waves. I have 26 maps now! I hope to finish after 30...

I am trying out an arena style battle... instead of ramping up the difficulty I decided to try and make it as hard as possible and will scale back from there! At the moment, it is impossible hah

Hi all,

Another question! When making a func_mortar tank, if I allow it to move up and down, the whole brush moves. In good ol HL1, the tank body rotates, and the barrel moves with it, but this can also move up and down without moving the rest of the brush. Are there two func_tank entites that are linked in some way?

Thanks as always!

Thanks for the info! Is it possible to add the cl_ values in a config file rather than code it in?

Hello again guys!

I am somehow failing to find the player speed variables in the Half-Life code. I am hoping to make the player slower than the breakneck speed of the one free man. Hopefully someone can point out the obvious place I am missing!

Cheers as always

I had a dream I submitted a map, where you exit the portal into a fleshy maze fighting giant floating globs. You have to destroy various pulsing tendrils, and each time you do the camera pans to Gordon doing various wacky things. Surprise! You are fighting inside his body! In the end your path of destruction of various important body bits leaves him mute and the kind of person who ruins other people's microwave dinners. Maybe best I didn't make this.

He works great!

And Urby - I really hope I release before you guys haha, I don't want to be overshadowed

That's very nice of you and makes me feel like this mod is worthwhile haha! I bet when it's released all I'll get are complaints about there being no new weapons, being set in black mesa, and I bet people finish it in ten minutes

Do these things reproduce? Is this a family? Are they happy?

Oh and not to mention env_model!

Well, at least I have my answer - thanks!

I know there are many issues with SoHL but I decided to start using it for my mod 4 or so years ago and I'm a bit too far deep to back out now!
Really, the model replacement and move-with feature are all I am using it for!

Hi all,

I assume this is a lost cause, but is there an easy way to fix the issue where any MP3 music cuts out during a level transition or a save load?
I believe this was an issue that arose after the steam release of Half-Life...

If it is a simple coding fix, I have the source code for SOHL 1.5 and could maybe put the fix in. If not - I will live - but I feel having the music cut out at the beginning of a fight if the player dies just robs the scene of atmosphere

Thanks as always guys!

This is brilliant - thanks again Qwertyus!

If all goes well, I'd like to say I could release the mod by the end of the year... time is hard to come by these days!

I love these mods. I'm focusing all my free time for my mod but once I'm done I'd love to join in the next one!

This Barney has a HEV suit and is based on the PS2 model, unfortunately I've not managed to find a version of this one with a magnum!

Hi all - Would anyone be able to help with what is hopefully a simple request?

I would need a Barney model to be wielding a magnum instead of a pistol.
All files:
https://1drv.ms/f/s!AvduZE1x8dO4gZMt1-SbBTiy-a7y-Q

Is anyone able to swap this out for me? You will get a credit in Half-Life echoes

Thanks!

Excellent - thank you very much! It's going to be used in an important scene

Hello all!

I am hoping to use this osprey model for a particular (VERY IMPORTANT) scene in my mod:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tqqok0q3d2iy708/osprey.mdl?dl=0

However, I want to have it absolutely stationary, but the rotors continue to spin, even when placed as an env_model (spirit of half-life entity) and setting the animation to freeze once complete.
I assume this is down to the model itself, but I have no experience editing models!

Is anyone able to modify this model to let me do this? You will get a credit in my mod for your effort!
http://www.moddb.com/mods/half-life-echoes

Don't worry about having a separate state where the rotors do spin, I will use the two models individually in my mod.

Thank you, James

You can't hide the tabs from the .res files (from what I have found), but only the content. So I would be left with Multiplayer and Content tabs that just lead to empty option windows. It's just to tidy it up

Thanks for the reply!

Hi all!

I am hoping to remove some Half-Life steam menu option tabs (such as multiplayer and content lock).

Is there an easy way to do this?

So far I can only see how to hide elements within these tabs through the .res files in the resource folder, but not how to remove the tabs outright.

Is this a case of modifying the dlls?

Thanks, James

To add to this - are there any other major issues you have come across with spirit that you had to amend?

Oh wow, I wasn't sure anyone would know what I was talking about, but here I get an instant fix! Just need to read up about compiling this all now... and resist the temptation to dabble with the code. I am too far in to try anything too new, but maybe on my next (definitely shorter) mod

Thanks so much for that Urby!

Regarding the monstermaker issue, I have been using spirit from the beginning unfortunately. I haven't had an issue with teleporting npcs or monsters in other parts of the mod yet, so I will give this method a go, thanks Unq!

Hello everyone! I really hope someone can help with this problem.

I am quite far into the mod I am working on, and have been using SOHL 1.5.
http://www.moddb.com/mods/spirit-of-half-life/downloads/sohl-v15-with-no-source-code

I used this version due to the description "SoHL v1.5 with no Source Code is highly recommended because of its stability and numerous features." Who knows how true this is, but alas, it's a decision I made a few years ago. At this point it's probably too late to change the codebase without breaking everything!

My issue is with Alien Grunts. I have just put them in my mod, however they do not play any hornet gun attack noises, and possibly death noises. All other effects work fine. It's not an issue with the model, I have tried the default low-def Valve one to be sure. I also moved all related agrunt sound effects into my mod and this did not fix it.

I am not too familiar with the coding aspect or compiling anything, however I looked up the agrunt.cpp file and there is code to trigger the relevant sound effect. I am at work and don't have the exact file name sorry, but there are three sound effects involved, and all when the grunt fires the hornet gun.

Furthermore, this issue has made me think another one might be related, when I spawn any enemies with the monstermaker, they are propelled in a random direction, but I have specified no velocities or speeds, and also they take 3-4 seconds to be alert to what is going on, which can ruin some ambush situations! Is this something anyone has come across

Does anyone have any clues? Thanks for your time!

<Edit - Sorry, somehow I screwed up the title, should read "Alien Grunt issues" !>

It worked! You crazy fool it worked!

Thanks guys!

Sorry Urby I think I was a bit obtuse about how I described this
Basically, remember that valve in surface tension under the dam that you use to open the grate underwater? As you hold down use, the wheel turns, and the grate opens, and once you let go it begins to fall back into it's starting position.

My idea was to have a scenario where the player is under attack, and has to fully turn a valve until it is fully rotated, then that will trigger all the doors in the area to open. But instead of the doors opening slowly with the wheel, I wanted them to only open once the valve is fully spun, and that having the player under attack will cause them to have to choose between fighting enemies and turning the wheel!

The main problem is that this momentary_rot_button appears to only allow you to work with a door that moves as the wheel does! I think the situation I'm hoping to have was done in HL2 episode 1 in the car park with the antlions!

And DiscoStu, that idea is genius haha! I honestly think this should work, I will give it a go and report back!

Hi everyone, I have been using this website for support for months but finally have to ask a question so I created an account!

I am struggling to get the following scenario to work,

There is a useable valve behind a pane of glass.
The player is to smash the glass, and then the valve can be used.
The valve is used by holding the use button, letting go will allow it to spin back to the beginning.
Once the valve is fully rotated, it will lock into place, and then trigger another event, but only once the valve is fully rotated.

The idea here is to have the player attempt to fully spin the valve while under attack, so that turning away will allow it to spin back, hopefully being tense and not annoying

So far, the main issues are:

A momentary_rot_button allows the valve to work like above, but if I get it to trigger something in the target field this will be triggered the second it is used instead of when it has completed it's rotation.

A func_rot_button will begin spinning on it's own once used and just complete the cycle itself, but will trigger something at the end of rotating. Not what I am looking for though!

And also, only allowing this button to be used when the glass is broken. I know it is to do with master entites but I am unsure of how to get this to work.

I am also using spirit of half life 1.5 if this helps!

Hope you guys can help!

If you want to check out my mod as well, I am updating frequenty here

http://www.moddb.com/mods/half-life-echoes