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Posted 5 years ago2018-07-29 16:37:23 UTC
in Half Life: Blue Shift map for Source Engine? Post #340323
in Half Life: Blue Shift map for Source Engine? Post #340323
I think tools like HammUEr work with Goldsource .map or .rmf files as well as Source's .vmf files. You'd still need to open up the game's pak files and decompile the .bsp files though.
If you hadn't told us you only started a week ago I would have assumed you've been mapping for years! That's some amazing work, and great use of the original HL textures! Looking forward to it!
While I'm sure everyone else is going to write up detailed reactions and reviews for Bethesda's E3 conference, I have only one thing important enough that I have to say it first:
I forgive Todd Howard for not delivering the dynamic economy he promised for Skyrim way back in the middle of 2011, because this is a thing that actually exists.
I forgive Todd Howard for not delivering the dynamic economy he promised for Skyrim way back in the middle of 2011, because this is a thing that actually exists.
This is gonna take some getting used to, but I'm glad it's here.
JeffMOD Approved!
JeffMOD Approved!
Surface Tension
Oh god I think this is the hardest decision we've had to make this entire tournament.
I think I have to go for Unforseen Consequences, because it takes the great level design of Anomalous Materials, as well as the environment that level design represents, and turns it on it's head. I'm a big fan of how the game makes you familiar with the Sector C labs and then has you go through a ruined section of it - it was also great seeing that happen to the trainstation in City 17, and basically every location you visit in Neil Manke's HL mods.
Also, UC is full of iconic setpieces - Waking up in the ruined AMS chamber, the entirely optional falling scientist, the first Vortigaunt (who is deemed important enough by Valve to be referenced in Ep2's G-man Heart-to-heart!), the Akira-inspired funicular ride, the giant canal, the box smashing room...
I think I have to go for Unforseen Consequences, because it takes the great level design of Anomalous Materials, as well as the environment that level design represents, and turns it on it's head. I'm a big fan of how the game makes you familiar with the Sector C labs and then has you go through a ruined section of it - it was also great seeing that happen to the trainstation in City 17, and basically every location you visit in Neil Manke's HL mods.
Also, UC is full of iconic setpieces - Waking up in the ruined AMS chamber, the entirely optional falling scientist, the first Vortigaunt (who is deemed important enough by Valve to be referenced in Ep2's G-man Heart-to-heart!), the Akira-inspired funicular ride, the giant canal, the box smashing room...
It's 100% possible, since Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines was a Source game, and it had a dialog system. Not sure what you'd need to do to implement it but it'd be using VGUI.
Surface Tension. QE is a masterful use of bounce design, but Surface Tension has more length and bombast.
Prepare for... Unforeseen Consequences.
To be fair, it's a really picturesque backyard.
The rest of the area looks equally good.
The rest of the area looks equally good.
How comprehensive is SMU? Does it change stuff like the dialog when entering Diamond City, or interactions with follower characters, stuff like that, to totally scrub the main quest, or does it just defer the main quest until you go to Vault 111?
If it's the former I should give it a shot.
EDIT: Was looking at it on Nexus and found you by happenstance. Small World.
If it's the former I should give it a shot.
EDIT: Was looking at it on Nexus and found you by happenstance. Small World.
Anomalous Materials
To be fair to Bethesda, the core gameplay loop vis a vis combat was excellent. It's just that they removed any non-combat options from the game. If the next Fallout game plays exactly like Fallout 4 but has the 4-option dialog limit removed and more attention given to writing and quest design so players can make some actual choices, I'll be happy. If it brings back skills and skill checks, I'll be ecstatic.
Of course there are other improvements that can be made, like making enemies overall weaker and just adding a couple more per encounter to compensate so they're not sponges, replace Survival Difficulty with a NV-style Hardcore Mode (plus the disease system 4 had), implement backpacks and other wearable pouches since those have been mods people have put in every Bethesda game as far back as I can remember...
Oh, and if they're gonna re-use the settlement system, doing a Sim-Settlements style "settlers can actually do stuff on their own" option would be appreciated, as well as making settlements actually have some depth and benefit besides "You have now completed Radiant Quest #623, now go do #624 wherein you walk halfway across the map to shoot 3 dudes in another settlement. Also you will be timed."
Of course there are other improvements that can be made, like making enemies overall weaker and just adding a couple more per encounter to compensate so they're not sponges, replace Survival Difficulty with a NV-style Hardcore Mode (plus the disease system 4 had), implement backpacks and other wearable pouches since those have been mods people have put in every Bethesda game as far back as I can remember...
Oh, and if they're gonna re-use the settlement system, doing a Sim-Settlements style "settlers can actually do stuff on their own" option would be appreciated, as well as making settlements actually have some depth and benefit besides "You have now completed Radiant Quest #623, now go do #624 wherein you walk halfway across the map to shoot 3 dudes in another settlement. Also you will be timed."
Questionable Ethics.
That's a very tough one, but I'll throw my vote for Unforeseen Consequences.
Damnit Urby, I swore off Skyrim after the 10th playthrough.
...Installing OG Skyrim.
...Installing OG Skyrim.
Black Mesa Inbound.
As with Urby, I feel like an atmospheric train ride is better than fighting a giant armored testicle.
As with Urby, I feel like an atmospheric train ride is better than fighting a giant armored testicle.
Questionable Ethics
Surface Tension
Not only is it a science pun, but it shows the full force of the HECU and lets you dismantle it piece by piece.
Grunts? No problem.
Snipers? Their "use wounded guards as bait" just make them higher priority targets.
IFV Bradley? Wiped off the map.
M1 Abrams tank? Nah.
Friggin' Apache Attack Helicopters plural? Killed dead.
It is the action setpiece of the game and it even manages to keep a decent pacing so you don't get combat fatigue.
Not only is it a science pun, but it shows the full force of the HECU and lets you dismantle it piece by piece.
Grunts? No problem.
Snipers? Their "use wounded guards as bait" just make them higher priority targets.
IFV Bradley? Wiped off the map.
M1 Abrams tank? Nah.
Friggin' Apache Attack Helicopters plural? Killed dead.
It is the action setpiece of the game and it even manages to keep a decent pacing so you don't get combat fatigue.
These are both kind of bad chapters as far as Half-Life goes IMO, but Residue Processing is probably the more interesting of the two. Just try to not swallow any shit-water.
You are from the Anomalous Materials lab. Yes, I recognize you.
It is the chapter that differentiated Half-Life from all other games of its generation. Entirely non-combat, 100% worldbuilding, no cutscenes or text boxes.
Inbound showed you the facility as a real place, but AM let you live in it.
It is the chapter that differentiated Half-Life from all other games of its generation. Entirely non-combat, 100% worldbuilding, no cutscenes or text boxes.
Inbound showed you the facility as a real place, but AM let you live in it.
Ooh, this is a tough one for me.
I know most people are probably gonna vote BP, but I think I've gotta go On A Rail - there's nothing quite like your long, less-linear journey through the atmospheric old rail system, and along with the aforementioned Power Up, OAR is part of my earliest memories of watching my brother play HL1.
I know most people are probably gonna vote BP, but I think I've gotta go On A Rail - there's nothing quite like your long, less-linear journey through the atmospheric old rail system, and along with the aforementioned Power Up, OAR is part of my earliest memories of watching my brother play HL1.
Forget about Freeman, partially because I prefer the earthbound levels to the Xen ones, and partially because it's more than one map.
Gonna have to go against the grain with this one and vote for Office Complex, because it teases the arrival of the HECU and shows you how far-flung the effects of the resonance cascade have become within the facility.
While I do love the Hazard Course and it has a special place in my heart since I remade it, I gotta say Questionable Ethics wins by a small margin. That feeling of sneaking around the labs while you're slowly building your arsenal up again after the previous two chapters... It's a good feel.
Power Up. Endgame is important to the story but has no gameplay. In Power Up you get to fight a garg, and it's also the source of my first memories of ever seeing Half-Life.
I'm terrible at choosing favorites, so assume most of these will change next time I'm asked.
Food & Drink
Snack: Approximately 6 Nutra-Grain bars. (Self control is hard when those are involved)
Meal: I have a lot but right now I'm craving the pizza from the local corner store near my hometown.
Hot beverage: Hot chocolate
Cold beverage: Milk or Sumol, depending on whether I want smooth or fizzy.
Alcoholic beverage: Rum and Coke.
Entertainment
Movie: No clue.
TV show: Dunno, but I recently binged Altered Carbon on Netflix so I guess I'll recommend that.
Youtube channel: Man on The Internet/Internet Remix.
Videogame: Going by playtime/time owned, it'll have to be Hitman (2016) or Fallout: New Vegas. I've sunk a bunch of time into Fallout 4 (around as much as I did with 3 and NV, though they aren't logged on steam due to offline mode/retail purchase) but while its got good combat it kind of falls flat on the whole "RPG" part of "Open-World RPG"
Book: The entirety of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time counts as just one book in this context, right?
Band/Artist: Uuuhhhhhh
Track: It's probably part of a game soundtrack or an anime opening. Almost certainly a cover.
General
Colour: Green
Season: Early Autumn, when it's crisp but not cold.
Animal (domestic): Tied with cats and dogs.
Animal (wild): Fennec Foxes are pretty cute, what with the big ears.
Hobby: Gaming, Modding, Writing (I need to devote more time to that one)
Physical activity: Swimming
Day out: Out? Where's that? (Have lunch at the local Sushi place then head back for some gaming I suppose)
Foreign country/culture: Japan
Food & Drink
Snack: Approximately 6 Nutra-Grain bars. (Self control is hard when those are involved)
Meal: I have a lot but right now I'm craving the pizza from the local corner store near my hometown.
Hot beverage: Hot chocolate
Cold beverage: Milk or Sumol, depending on whether I want smooth or fizzy.
Alcoholic beverage: Rum and Coke.
Entertainment
Movie: No clue.
TV show: Dunno, but I recently binged Altered Carbon on Netflix so I guess I'll recommend that.
Youtube channel: Man on The Internet/Internet Remix.
Videogame: Going by playtime/time owned, it'll have to be Hitman (2016) or Fallout: New Vegas. I've sunk a bunch of time into Fallout 4 (around as much as I did with 3 and NV, though they aren't logged on steam due to offline mode/retail purchase) but while its got good combat it kind of falls flat on the whole "RPG" part of "Open-World RPG"
Book: The entirety of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time counts as just one book in this context, right?
Band/Artist: Uuuhhhhhh
Track: It's probably part of a game soundtrack or an anime opening. Almost certainly a cover.
General
Colour: Green
Season: Early Autumn, when it's crisp but not cold.
Animal (domestic): Tied with cats and dogs.
Animal (wild): Fennec Foxes are pretty cute, what with the big ears.
Hobby: Gaming, Modding, Writing (I need to devote more time to that one)
Physical activity: Swimming
Day out: Out? Where's that? (Have lunch at the local Sushi place then head back for some gaming I suppose)
Foreign country/culture: Japan
All the guys above are correct - any name will prevent the door from opening unless triggered. I picked up a convention of using "nevergonnaopen" for all locked doors from one of the HL1 SDK maps to ensure they never get triggered by accident.
Having used both, I can say that while GIMP has some useful features (being able to open things as layers and have them be centered without going through Adobe Bridge, being able to paste things and not have them be offset from the image size because there was alpha in the corners, as examples) Photoshop is a lot more user friendly.
Also you can select and move multiple layers at a time, which is a huge timesaver when you're rearranging your stuff either visually or just putting them into groups.
That said if you're getting a copy of photoshop these days, you've missed out on your chance to actually own it, since after they ended support for CS6 they decided to move to a rental model. It's something like $20 a month for the rest of your life, so up to you if that's worth it or you would rather work around the poor UI decisions GIMP's devs made.
Also you can select and move multiple layers at a time, which is a huge timesaver when you're rearranging your stuff either visually or just putting them into groups.
That said if you're getting a copy of photoshop these days, you've missed out on your chance to actually own it, since after they ended support for CS6 they decided to move to a rental model. It's something like $20 a month for the rest of your life, so up to you if that's worth it or you would rather work around the poor UI decisions GIMP's devs made.
Yeah - though looking at the cached page for downloads there doesn't seem to be much that you haven't already gotten your hands on - Tool Box Lux RAD and Gen Surf are the only things that pop out at me as not having a mirror or an easily accessible alternative, though snapshots from '08 also have Radiant, QuArK, and a mess of FGD files that might come in handy for someone and are a bit harder to find these days.
Oh thank god, I've been thinking someone should do this for a while now before all the older hosting sites disappear but haven't had the required webhost or server space to do it myself.
It's too bad Vladitude has been down for years now, I think there were a couple things there that Slackiller's site didn't have.
Anyway, really happy to see that you've gone and set this up for future generations - game archival is undervalued and ensuring tools continue to exist alongside them is a vital part of keeping games like HL fully preserved. Keep up the good work!
It's too bad Vladitude has been down for years now, I think there were a couple things there that Slackiller's site didn't have.
Anyway, really happy to see that you've gone and set this up for future generations - game archival is undervalued and ensuring tools continue to exist alongside them is a vital part of keeping games like HL fully preserved. Keep up the good work!
I'm thinking of replaying the earth sections again just to see all the ways they used the improvements, and when Xen comes out I'm going to do a playthrough of BM, HL2, and the Episodes.
Yeah, they delayed Xen because they realized they couldn't get it as good as they wanted it in the timeframe they had given themselves. IMO it's still worth buying now, even if you don't intend to play it until it's finished.
Also if the earthbound sections are any indicator, Xen is going to be awesome, unlike Xen in HL1, which is meh.
Also if the earthbound sections are any indicator, Xen is going to be awesome, unlike Xen in HL1, which is meh.
Hey! Welcome the community - We've heard a lot about you, it's nice to finally meet you!
Also, yeah, the new BM engine improvements are super exciting. I'm going so far as to use up my mobile data to download it at my Dad's place so I can play with the dynamic lighting sooner.
Also, yeah, the new BM engine improvements are super exciting. I'm going so far as to use up my mobile data to download it at my Dad's place so I can play with the dynamic lighting sooner.
Yeah, Vladitude has been gone for a while, which is a shame because it had a lot of good resources on it.
I wonder if we could use the wayback machine to salvage some of it's info the way the VERC archive has.
I wonder if we could use the wayback machine to salvage some of it's info the way the VERC archive has.
^
I find it hard to believe that meat is a toxin, considering we've been eating it for millennia without becoming extinct. Heavily processed meats, I'll concede, have a lot of stuff in them that probably shouldn't be in our bodies, at least not at the levels they are, but again, we haven't had a mass die-out in the 50 or so years since they started being consumed. To each their own, but I'm not going anywhere near vegan until synthetic meats become economical and widely available.
Even then, with the water system in my town being the way it is, I think I'll stick to drinking milk over water.
I find it hard to believe that meat is a toxin, considering we've been eating it for millennia without becoming extinct. Heavily processed meats, I'll concede, have a lot of stuff in them that probably shouldn't be in our bodies, at least not at the levels they are, but again, we haven't had a mass die-out in the 50 or so years since they started being consumed. To each their own, but I'm not going anywhere near vegan until synthetic meats become economical and widely available.
Even then, with the water system in my town being the way it is, I think I'll stick to drinking milk over water.
Okay, gotta say, this was magnificent. The Inventory system added a bunch of depth to the survival part of your survival horror formula, the new weapons were great, and those big Ned Kelly motherfuckers with the shields were a blast to fight.
I have to admit that, like the previous mod, I had to enable god mode for the final boss (Massive spike in the difficulty curve there, especially with how the environment is laid out) but it was a fitting end to the story.
Definitely a good way to spend my Halloween!
I have to admit that, like the previous mod, I had to enable god mode for the final boss (Massive spike in the difficulty curve there, especially with how the environment is laid out) but it was a fitting end to the story.
Definitely a good way to spend my Halloween!
Just as a note, the transparent area in a { texture doesn't have to be pure blue - any colour will work, as long as that colour is the 256th colour in the palette. I've seen people use green and purple for their transparent colour when the actual texture included shades of blue, etc.
Glad to hear it, I can't wait to see what happens next!
I have made it to the church. Very much enjoying it so far!
EDIT: I am getting a CTD on leaving the church, both in the regular and 1.0.0.0-safe branch.
EDIT: I am getting a CTD on leaving the church, both in the regular and 1.0.0.0-safe branch.
Nice!
That was a fun half-hour. Really like the 80s action-flick style.
Now to see if I can get all the achievements...
Now to see if I can get all the achievements...
Yeah, I've never had good experiences running HL1 on Direct3D. It was always sub-par compared to OpenGL, which has always been buttery smooth on the machines I've run it on.
Also, what's with using "Penguins" as a slur against Linux users?
Also, what's with using "Penguins" as a slur against Linux users?
Looks neat - make sure to post again on the release date, because I don't want to risk missing this one!
I read somewhere recently that monster_human_grunt's squad code only expects around 4 grunts per squad. Maybe assign a couple more seperate squads?
As for the "SQUAD GET FREEMAN!" lines, I expect that Urby will be disabling those in the mods sentence.txt, and I'm also pretty sure that standard grunts have an equal chance of yelling that, so I wouldn't worry about not having squad leaders to prevent that.
As for the "SQUAD GET FREEMAN!" lines, I expect that Urby will be disabling those in the mods sentence.txt, and I'm also pretty sure that standard grunts have an equal chance of yelling that, so I wouldn't worry about not having squad leaders to prevent that.
This post was made on a thread that has been deleted.
Yeah, there was no way something based on Marc Laidlaw's Epistle 3 was going to be done this soon and without fanfare leading up to it. Not if it were to be both real and any degree of quality.
Can we get a moderator in here to sanitize the links or something, please?
Can we get a moderator in here to sanitize the links or something, please?
I've said it before other places - This is not a good way to have your voices heard, and could damage relations between Marc Laidlaw and Valve. Please stop this.
From my understanding, between the slipped initial release date, the massive ammount of hype leading to pressure, and the fact that F2P multiplayer games were a lot more profitable, all of Valve's devs just lost interest in it. And since Valve has a (technically) flat hierarchy, there was nobody to say "No, we still have to finish this game"
So they didn't.
So they didn't.
Yeah, I wouldn't expect a release ever at this point. I'm pretty sure the reason that Marc Laidlaw and basically all the other writers at Valve have left is because there isn't active development happening on Half-Life or any other story-based franchise - there just wasn't anything for them to do anymore.
Valve is gonna release Artifact, maybe some new skins for DOTA2 to go with that, and then we won't see anything new from them for another decade or more. That's just how they do things these days. They aren't really a developer anymore, they're a storefront, and as far as the evidence points, they have no desire to be anything else.
Valve is gonna release Artifact, maybe some new skins for DOTA2 to go with that, and then we won't see anything new from them for another decade or more. That's just how they do things these days. They aren't really a developer anymore, they're a storefront, and as far as the evidence points, they have no desire to be anything else.