Journal #8400

Sounds fun, I'm looking for good excuses to fool around in Sledge.

Half Life: The Cleanup. Play as a pest control man dealing with an particularly difficult job after an event about which nobody will talk details.

Basically a scavenger hunt w/ crabs?

Could be an interesting variation on Deathmatch, with the players being scored on how many 'crabs they get rather than kills. Might be difficult to rig that up though.

A simple model change and you could be hunting rats, giving a whole new meaning to rats-maps.

On second thought, you could use a monster generic for that too right?

Probably would be more interesting in source with grav gun and moving things around. And an advanced headcrab A.I. which could send crabs hiding say when a player is getting closer.

Would be fun to see players tearing open a place to find crabs

I'd probably throw in some detailed rooms for this. Actually sounds kinda cool.

All you need is a few multisources!
I made a zombie hunt map before It was fun.

I like the vanilla asset idea because then we don't need coding.
However, it'd be neat if you could toss a counter in there and have a 'Par' like doom.
Secrets found / Total Secrets.

It'd be like finding the 8 red coins in super mario 64

I want to do this!

Ok this is happening, I'm going to do some more experimentation and maybe formulate a template to build from.

"this is happening"

/beginhyped

Yeah no template really necessary.
Manually place all of the crabs and have them target a game_counter on death, then have the counter target the game win stuff. I'm thinking the system vox basically say something like "doop level clear" then quit or level change. Simple simple simple stuff.

Go nuts.

We should have an ending area that drops confetti when you win.

If you really want that, go ahead.

So baby crab are a lot bigger than I thought. Though they are the smallest enemy in the game aside from the roaches.

I forgot about the rats. Though you can't shoot them, they are killed by explosions only.

Leeches work. Killed by anything, tiny, fully working code. I'm going to use leeches. Though rats sound incredibly tempting....

Could you use the rat model (generic or whatever), and an invisible button that triggers on hit, with some multi_manager trickery...?

Sounds fun rimmeh! =P

if the monster is stuck in a wall, fireflies will show up and give its location away.

There are so many ways to do it. Possibly a map pack could be made of this.

Also, I stand corrected that leeches don't work for this. Rats it is for then :] But geez everytime I go to do something kinda cool, the HL code or otherwise just gets in the way.

EDIT: I tried fixing the rat's hit boxes but it didn't work. So I guess we'll just have to be clever with the grenades...

I was thinking each time you kill a rat, you get some grenades. That way the game is perpetuating, but if you waste all of your nades guessing or missing, you run out and essentially lose. I have some triggerwork to do but, once again, its simple.

I'm fuzzy with Goldsource, so insult me if this is stupid, but when you say the roach code is incomplete and won't trigger on death, is that just with the monster_cockroach? Can we use a monster_generic with 'Take Damage' to trigger it, or something like that?

Good question Strider, I haven't tried a monster_generic yet.
The roach has the trigger and target stuff respectively, but I found that for no reason it doesn't trigger anything on death.

I also tried a work around using a giant trigger brush. Monsters only trigger it when they move, so its unreliable. Interesting findings all around....

Since when are there rats in Half Life? I don't remember them AT ALL...

I dunno, sounds kinda like a glorified scavenger hunt, really.

Though, I just got an idea for a map where you're chasing after a headcrab with a crowbar, and the headcrab jumps away wherever you find it, and you have to solve puzzles to progress towards it...

Hmm... give me a moment.

You can find some in the hazard course, in the target range. Only place I'm aware of.

Just went there are had a stuff around with them. They seem to be able to take some kind of commands, as some are walking around when the map starts, then they reach a certain point and don't move again. Don't know whether that's coded or just entity work.
When stationary, they seem to turn to look at you if you're nearby to some extent, like scientists. You can't hit them with bullets, the egon gun or the crowbar (or snarks, obviously), or so it would seem. The gauss gun I'm not sure about, I killed one with it (and gibbed it with it afterwards) but I couldn't do the same to another. Explosions kill and gib as per usual. Also worth noting is that the crossbow seems to have no trouble killing them.
On the topic of killing them, their death animation loops about three times and then they freeze. Obviously wasn't coded too rigorously.

Tested the monster_generic/roach idea, and it sort of works, but you're stuck with a giant bounding box and the roach bleeds human blood/gibs a giant skull.

monster_generic 'Take Damage' > Relay (kill monster_generic) > Multi Manager

Roach disappears, leaves a big red splat when you whack it, triggers the manager. Not totally ideal. Bloody Goldsource!

Rats might be a better choice.

This game sounds like a pretty cool idea.

I couldn't manage to kill a rat with anything other than explosives like grenades, ar grenades, satchels, rockets, and tripmines. Rats DO have hit boxes around their hip and torso, but the hbox ID is 0 being generic where as 3, 4, 9, are hip, torso, and head.

I wonder if I had an HD pack version of the rat or something. None of my attempts to fix anything worked.

Crossbow didn't work? Huh.

I think this game calls for spirit of half life. Imagine making a func_train that was also a button with shootable flag enabled... Bam you have a critter

Rats can walk very slowly along path_corners.
I haven't looked into SoHL and if the rats might be different in some way.

Why explosives work so well is because the origin, which is just a point, is calculated for explosives. It makes sense because it's one point to calculate rather that calculating blast damage for every hitbox. It's what I would do to. :/

In theory a crossbow bolt could work if the bolt's hitbox has the rat's origin inside it. It would then deal the damage... only in theory though. That kind of aim is uncanny and would be unreliable.

Should we make a thread for this? Call it "Black Mesa: X-Squad!"

EDIT: If this becomes a mod thing, we can do more. I could reskin the keycard or the weaponbox to look like the rat... or red coins for the lulz.

Yea i'd be willing to help make caves that don't compile

So why not regular headcrabs? They're difficult enough to find sometimes.

This sort of reminds me of scientist hunt.

Does anyone remember this mod? It had one of my favorite half life maps to date "endless rain".

The game was simple, just run around the level and kill scientists. You also were equipped with three extra weapons, a double barrel sawed off shotgun that could fire single shot or duel, a huge hammer that flung scientists into the air or smashed them, and of course a chainsaw.

You could also play as a scientist and inject enemies with a needle.

Scientist hunt looks like a kill box. :/

Anyway Started a thread.

Scientist Hunt is a lot of fun when the maps have creatively made traps to kill the scientists in.

Aka this is me kinda pushing a map pack I made a few maps for for the mod for fun. Please click me.