Nice work.

Absolutely.

Xash 3D?

Bleh. Between those two, use Spirit.

Honestly, I only noticed the pre-disaster flag was missing in SoHL recently as well. Sorry to say but the only solution I found was to open a map using the vanilla Half-Life FGD, place the entity, check the pre-disaster flag, then copy and paste them into the SoHL map.

Speech group will not help in this situation. That is a way of changing the sentences they use, so you could enter BA for a scientist and they would use barney's lines (assuming relevant lines exist). Some spirit mods use this method to add Otis into their maps without needing to code a new NPC.

SoHL also comes with a selection of maps that show you how to create certain entity setup which include player controlled, laser guided miniguns. Not sure if these were included in the latest version, but definitely one of them.

Truth be told, after basing The Core on the SoHL engine, I've really gone off it. It's a butchered mess of an engine with more problems than positive additions.

I really ought to keep an eye on that page. There's stuff in there I've never tried using and I might be making things far more difficult for myself as a result...

I would prefer if you would start a new map for the competition. Part of the challenge is seeing what can be accomplished within the time limit.

I actually have no idea how that works... Basically, if I should happen to play through Half-Life 2 again, I shouldn't encounter your custom content. Likewise, installing another entry that changes the same thing shouldn't stop your custom map from working correctly... if that makes sense.

Another mini competition is upon us! Check out the brief here and ask any questions... well... here.

As this is a mini competition, you must manage your time effectively. Don't bite off more than you can chew, and leave plenty of time for testing. Good luck and have fun!

That is about as useful as posting "My map doesn't work." and leaving it at that. Describe your current setup, show screenshots, post a link to an example map.

I shall wait on the full release.

That's absolutely stunning and it certainly makes up for all the content that was cut out of the game particularly the "On a Rail" and "Surface tension" which were reduced in size by 75% each.

Surface Tension has now been extended in the Steam release, in case you didn't know. It was a LOT longer when I did another run recently.

This looks good though. A Hell of a lot better than what we got with HL1, but then that was their goal in the first place.

All these teams are doing it wrong if you ask me. They should be creating the final episode as a retro shooter as a proper send off for the GoldSRC engine.

I'm keeping a very close eye on Project Borealis, but it's clear that a lot of their fans don't know how game design works...

"Looks pretty rough."
"The sounds are pretty bad."

Just... urgh.

Oooh, nice find. Always happy to see more Half-Life mods.

I've never mapped for Source or Black Mesa, but I've worked with the original Half-Life content for longer than I care to admit.

The Black Mesa Research Facility has very distinct sectors that are very different from one another aesthetically. The "style" of each area really depends on the sector's function, its age and the people who work there.

The Anomalous Materials labs are all teal and poured concrete on the upper levels, relatively modern compared to the more industrial, heavy panelling of the lower levels. The office complex is very much stuck in the 1950s, all plaster walls and chequered floor tiles. The back areas and stairwells are less appealing to the eye, as they are not meant to be occupied for an extended period of time. The Questionable Ethics and Lambda Complex are far more modern and deal with a lot of high tech stuff. As such, they are clean and organised, but also full of exposed piping and wiring. The storage areas in We've Got Hostiles or Forget About Freeman are obviously basic concrete structures with wide open spaces for trucks and forklifts to move without hindrance.

It really does depend on what area you are building and what it was used for.

It's an underground complex, build into a decommissioned missile silo complex. Some areas are going to be refurbished, some completely disregarded and run down. Newer areas will likely be as cramped as possible, to save costs on the tunnelling and construction involved. Areas with a lot of employees during the day will have much easier access to cafeterias and restrooms, while the storage and freight areas will have smaller break rooms and very few places to do ones business.

To summarise, you just need to consider the following things and then design your map accordingly:

• What does this department do?
• What kind of people work here? How many?
• Is it new, old, refurbished or recently built?

It's an interesting concept, but a little open ended for a competition. I would suggest reeling it in a little for a competition pitch, but even then I would prefer a game play challenge over an environmental one.

Yeah, a Switch looks like the next thing going on my gaming shopping list... Dammit.

The Outer Worlds - Out October. 25th
Cyberpunk 2077 - Out April 16th

Thanks E3. That's all I need.

I am waiting on details about two games: The Outer Worlds and Cyberpunk2077

I guess that means I should just check out the Microsoft presentation and then... I guess just sleep until E3 is over.

You might be out of luck with vanilla GoldSRC in that case. I've only ever seen targeting lasers on a func_tank in the Spirit of Half-Life engine.

Actually i am using the big box to get rid of leaks since as you may already know i copied the map from Opposing forces and deleted many many things

Yeah, I suspected as such, but that doesn't change the fact that it's bad practice. As painstaking as it can be, it's far better to actually seal the leaks in your map that simply throw a box around the whole thing.

I took a brief look at this last night, compiled it and ran it and I'm honestly stumped. I created a simple test map where I triggered two grunts to run to the player through a series of corridors and they worked without any issues...

What I will say is, though it's obviously an unfinished map, that big box surrounding the map is very bad practice. You're going to be compiling and rendering so much more that you actually need to. I doubt that's the cause of the issue, but it's not great.

I got a little lost amongst the entities and triggers, but what is actually prompting them to move to the first room after killing the houndeyes? I couldn't find a trigger.

Haha! I knew I'd be overlooking something really simple.

Do you mean that fires a laser? Or has a targetting laser?

If the former, this certainly is possible, though haven't done it in a while and would need to review one of my maps. The latter might not be possible with Vanilla GoldSRC.

NPCs can be triggered to move at any point, you don't need to see them.

Dayum. That looks pretty nice.

Gonna have to check that out.

Yeah, as Jessie said, func_pushables will fall when the object below is broken. What you could do is make the top crate pushable and slightly embed it into the crate below which is a standard func_breakable. It will still be pushable once it drops to the floor though, so your options are indeed fairly limited.

Might be an issue with your JACK setup? Personally I've never run the game through the compiler. I always just compile and then run the map via the console in-game. The command is "map mapname" but I assume you've already figured that out.

So, just to confirm, your compiled map file (start.bsp?) is present in the D:\Sierra\Half-Life\valve\maps directory? That's where hl.exe will be checking for it.

If so, does the game also freeze if you fire up Half-Life as normal and try to run "map start" via the console?

D:\Sierra\Half-Life\gearbox\maps\start

Your map appears to be saving in the gearbox directory. Are you mapping for Opposing Force?

D:\Sierra\Half-Life\hl.exe

If so, you will need to launch Opposing Force to play it. It seems your setup is incorrectly launching Half-Life. It won't be able to find the map in the gearbox directory.

if anyone wants to take over the world, I need to know very quick

Well, it seems that a lot of people still like the mini-competitions. Very well. As mentioned on Discord, I will aim to keep them coming and possibly extend them by a week or two, but I'm unlikely to enter them myself.

As you know, I've run the last couple of competitions on the site. Mini competitions that tend to span no more than four weeks. Both of these have had a moderate turn out and produced some fun little maps, and even introduced some new members to the community, some of whom have stuck around.

You may also remember TWHL Tower, a collaboration project which I also headed up back in February 2015 and released a year later.

Both of these have their pros and cons and I was just curious as to what people would be interested in seeing more of in the future. Would you want to see more quickfire themed competitions which can be hammered out within a month or are you on board for more collaborations, ultimately much longer in development but releasing in a much more polished format and more easily shared with other mod sites?

Competitions

Pros

• Shorter development times
• Freedom of choice for engine and base game
• Single, multiplayer or coop
• Little expectation for plot
• Potential prizes!

Cons

• Limited time for testing and polish
• Entries will be lost in time (like tears in rain?) after the voting period is over

Collaborations

Pros

• Plenty of time to developer and polish your contribution
• Testing and feedback from everyone involved in the collab
• A full mod/map pack release, shared across multiple sites and communities

Cons

• Overall plot can mean a stricter focus on consistency.
• Limited to a single engine or base game
• Singeplayer only (a pro in my eyes, but not everyone is experienced with SP mapping)
• Internal debates regarding plot, theme and individual entries

I was just curious what you guys and gals think. I personally enjoy working on larger collaborations, but my time to manage such a project can become very limited (which ultimately lead to the death of TWHL Pockets last year). Also, bear in mind that if I were to head up another collab project, it would be limited to GoldSRC as I do not work with Source. That still leaves things fairly open in terms of the game, be it Half-Life, Opposing Force, even a Sven-Coop entry we can all play through together when it's done.

You may prefer the simple and more rapid fire nature of the mini competitions, and that's fine too. As I said, I'm just curious.

I always figured that this was just to emphasise the gauss gun's experimental and unpredictable nature? More hilarious than annoying to be honest. I wouldn't say this needed to be fixed in Half-Life, but I can see why modders might not want it to work this way.

Those poly counts are incredibly low by GoldSRC standards these days, so that shouldn't be an issue. As Admer has said, and based on your screenshot, it looks like your paper cup model is essentially inside out. GoldSRC culls backfaces, so you won't see the models if their polys are inverted.

As for the model that doesn't appear at all, it's not really much to go on. There could be any number of reasons why this is the case. I'd need to actually see and test the model file itself.

This is done by lighting the train in a separate room outside the map and controlling switchable lights with the "Target on pass" keyvalue in the func_tracktrain.

I never knew that... How delightfully hacky. Haha! Well played, Valve.

For the rotating blocks, you will need to create your block, create another block with the "origin" texture to act as the point of rotation and then turn it into an func_rotating entity. You can see an example of how to do that in this tutorial.

For the pistons, there are a number of ways of doing it. The simplest method would be to use func_train. Check BrattyLord's response in this thread.

Very cool!

Lots of good looking stuff in here from the last couple of days. Bravo everyone.

Note: The competition has been extended by a day in order to take advantage of the whole of the last weekend, rather than cutting it short for some people.

Here are some more shots from my attempt at an entry. I have absolutely no hope of finishing it by the deadline, so nobody besides me is likely to ever play it... so enjoy the screenshots I guess...

Have you tried in a different editor, such as Sledge or JACK? VHE is pretty damn dated and has all sorts of quirks. Hell, 3.4 isn't even the latest available version if I recall.

While I enjoy sniping in videogames, for multiplayer I much prefer a higher skill requirement. One thing that is annoying about the crossbow in HLDM is the complete lack of travel time, despite it existing in singleplayer, and the ability to kill players with a single body shot. Therefore it requires very little skill needed to kill players with it. It's just "click on enemy player to win." It's almost as bad as the egon gun and I basically consider it a troll weapon, going as far as inconveniencing a player greatly in my maps, having it spawn far from any ample sniping positions.

It's the same reason I dislike the AWP. Counter Strike has even less mobility compared to HLDM, and you don't even have to score a headshot to get the kill.

Games such as Battlefield require you to lead your target based on distance and their movement, and you have to score a headshot for a one shot kill. Same with even arcade shooters like Unreal Tournament. The sniper rifle was an instant hit, but you had to hit them in the head for a quick kill, otherwise it required three body shots.

I shall flesh this out later

The one weapon that comes to mind is the bolt action hunting rifle from new vegas. I enjoyed it so much I made a video about it 8 years ago. I preferred to use it without a scope, even though the ironsights on the model weren't lined up correctly. Made me feel more badass about my long range headshots.

You'd be hard pressed to find anything "up to date" with GoldSrc. A lot of the apps mentioned in the tutorials are no longer available or updated beyond the realms of 1998

I could be wrong, but I think you might just have to work with the older tutorials as best you can. I've never really made a custom skybox from scratch, instead resorting to taking the existing ones and combining / colour swapping them. Heh.

Hey! That's awesome. Congratulations.

That's the one.

The player would indeed get the usual array of pistols, rifles and explosives, but as JeffMOD correctly pointed out, no bullets. The player might get their hands on a classic handgun of some kind, but this would be a powerful one off pickup with very limited ammo.

Something else I thought up yesterday was a poster for lab grown food stuffs.

"From Hydroponics Lab 3, the people who brought you Basically Beef and Practically Pork."

"It's FUNDAMENTALLY FISH!"

"Everything tastes better when you don't think about it!"

Should give you an idea of the kind of tone the series would go for.

Well, the idea is that humanity is largely spread throughout the galaxy by the time of the first mod, so it's likely that in the following mods you would hear about the previous protagonists rather than actively bumping into them.

That said, I'm not ruling it out entirely by any means.