My Mod Pulse: Beta 1 Release Created 15 years ago2009-07-27 14:53:17 UTC by TomCat TomCat

Created 15 years ago2009-07-27 14:53:17 UTC by TomCat TomCat

Posted 15 years ago2009-07-27 14:53:17 UTC Post #270979
Hi, everyone.

If anyone is interested, I have released the first beta version (Beta 1) of my Mod Pulse. I've been working on it for quite some time, and it is actually a long Mod (considering average Mod lengths). There are a few bugs in it, as it is a beta release, but I would love to hear your feedback on it. By the way, I'm having a problem finding out why saving the game in the map pls15.bsp will crash it, and you cannot load from pls15.bsp to pls16.bsp without the game crashing, as well. If anyone wants to help me fix those problems, I'll create a new topic to discuss the fixing of that.

Anyway, you can download it here: http://www.moddb.com/mods/pulse/downloads/pulse-episode-one-beta-1.

Thanks, all, and I hope you enjoy my hard work at this Mod. :)
Posted 15 years ago2009-07-27 15:21:40 UTC Post #270984
I'll have to check it out when i go home.
The site looks professional, but the media links (pictures) are all 404's for me.

But from the thumbnails: Gordon wielding an AK-47?
Tetsu0 Tetsu0Positive Chaos
Posted 15 years ago2009-07-27 16:06:24 UTC Post #270991
The other scientists are amazed that the Administrator of Black Mesa...
The Administrator of Black Mesa what? What about him??

Edit: Didn't notice I was at the Downloads area and had to click "summary" for the full story.
Posted 15 years ago2009-07-27 20:42:00 UTC Post #271017
I'll have to check it out when i go home.
The site looks professional, but the media links (pictures) are all 404's for me.

But from the thumbnails: Gordon wielding an AK-47?
Yes, those screenshots are quite out of date. The AK-47 isn't actually in the Mod, so don't worry, hehe. The Beta 1 released of my Mod only contains the regular Half-Life weapon set.

Also, if anyone gets a problem saving in the beginning of the "Penetration" chapter (map pls15.bsp), or if anyone has a problem loading between the maps pls15.bsp and pls16.bsp, please let me know. I need to see if I'm the only one experiencing this problem with my Mod. Also, right when the chapter "Voluntary Heroism" starts, make sure you quicksave. Otherwise, if you die before your first quicksave, you will load to a later part of the Mod (because I was too stupid to delete everything in the "SAVE" folder before I released this beta). Well, I guess this is why the call it Beta. :D
Posted 15 years ago2009-07-27 20:53:04 UTC Post #271018
downloading...

sake, Moddb is such a slow mirror -_-'
Archie ArchieGoodbye Moonmen
Posted 15 years ago2009-07-28 00:37:55 UTC Post #271030
I've uploaded a mirror to Pulse's official website so that the download will go faster (and you don't have to signup to MODDB to download it).

Click here to download Pulse: Episode One Beta 1

By the way, the beginning is a bit dull, but it gets much better as it goes on. Trust me. ;)
Posted 15 years ago2009-07-28 01:29:28 UTC Post #271035
Downloaded and stopped playing it when the game crashed searching for "custom.wad" on the map pls11.bsp, from what I played, I can say is that your mod needs serious work, I was going fine until the female assassin's ambush on the container area, with those gasworks-like towers, I had to cheat that part and a lot of some other parts of the mod, also, I was playing on Easy. Judging for the screenshots that you put on Moddb, the Mod looks awesome, that's why I downloaded it, but playing it, it's like playing another mod, A very, very blocky mod with tons of enemy npc's waiting for you at every corner of the maps, it got so boring that I stopped playing after the crash. As for your mapping skills, the part I played is very bad, the maps are very blocky, so much blocky, the only nice part I can spot for now is that HL-Uplink-Like rocky hallways, which still too narrow and very dificult to navigate trough. The boring feel was lost on the Road Trip chapter, It was nice to drive a func_train car, even if you can't control the car, the gameplay changed from the same '(A)Kill-a-couple-of-monsters-in-the-next-corner, (B)Recharge-your-health-and-suit, (C)Back to (A)', but again, I think the whole US Army was in that map.
Also another thing, your mod archive have a LOT of unecessary files, you copied TWO times the whole HL sound files, one time in your Pulse folder, another time in the pak file, you should get rid of that stuff, your mod will go like from 150 mb to 30, 20 mb, making much more easier to download it, especially on Moddb's slow mirror.
Ok, I managed to play the rest of the maps on the Mod while I was posting this, after faking many not included .wad files, I saw that you improved a lot your mapping after pls11, the maps are now less blocky, altough still full of npc's every corner, its a improvement, now that you're mapping better, you should improve your entity setup and gameplay of the maps, also, another thing I forgot to mention, I didn't saw the r_speeds counting on your maps, but most of them was like 30, 20 fps on my computer, and it's not a crappy computer (c2 duo with Hd 4850), I nocliped and saw what I expecting, the no-use of the Null texture, and the indoor maps doesn't need so much the null texture, but still lagging, so I assume you didn't compiled your maps with full vis or even normal vis, you should do that on the final version.

Well, It's clearly a beta or alpha, it's a very unfinished work, needs serious work before releasing the final, but for being a one-man mod, I respect your work and I know that you worked hard on this one, don't feel sad because of some bugs and issues, remember, these are just critcism that you can use freely to improve much more your mod and making a masterpiece, keep working hard on it and good luck!.

Edit: The website is f***ing nice, very professional, I can't say a thing about it, also your plot is epic.
Posted 15 years ago2009-07-28 15:05:54 UTC Post #271049
Thanks for your criticism, Ag3nt-X. I appreciate you being honest, and I agree with you on many points.

This Mod is quite unfinished, actually, so you are correct about that. I started it in 2006, and it was my first experience with mapping. I wasn't very good at it, so I threw in loads of enemies to compensate for my mapping skills being not so good. Then, I began to gradually get better. I stopped copying objects from other maps and started making my own. However, I got to a certain point with this Mod and then just stopped for a while. Finally, after a while, I decided that it wasn't worth just leaving this map sitting on my computer. Let me finish the last level, and then slap a "Beta 1" on the title so that people understand why it isn't as good as it was expected to be. So, you are right - this Mod is far from being finished. I just released what I had done so far. In fact, I have a .txt file that is FULL of bug fixes and sorted by map name. I just never got around to fixing those bugs. There are many leaks in this Mod, and many common mistakes. All will be fixed in the future betas and by the final release, it should be better. It would help if I could actually select objects in my 3D viewer in Hammer Editor, but with my ATi drivers and using Vista, that's currently impossible to fix.

By the way, I have one question for you: Did you have problems loading from pls15 to pls16? I think it might just be a corrupted save file that I had, but I want to make sure.

Anyway, thanks for your honesty. I really do appreciate it, and let me know what you think of the rest of the Mod once you finish it. That custom .wad problem is a surprise to me. I'll have to check that out. Beta 2 will fix a lot of the common problems, and I expect to be releasing more beta versions as the testing continues.
Posted 15 years ago2009-07-28 15:51:32 UTC Post #271050
I can't test it because I have dial-up, and the filesize is too big, but do make sure you delete the save files and HL content in the mod folder for the final release. It wouldn't hurt to wadinclude your custom textures and not have them in the final release, either.
I like the story, and how you let people know that it's not meant to be canon right of the bat. A lot of mods don't do that, and seem to be trying to re-write the HL canon.
Also, the latest pictures on the MODDB page look really good. Keep up the good work.
Notewell NotewellGIASFELFEBREHBER
Posted 15 years ago2009-07-28 16:01:10 UTC Post #271051
I can't test it because I have dial-up, and the filesize is too big,
TomCat, you could make a torrent file and seed for it until some fellows get it through torrents. Actualy give a torrent file download. That way, even though they have to wait, guy using dial-up like JeffMod can download it.
Striker StrikerI forgot to check the oil pressure
Posted 15 years ago2009-07-28 16:13:45 UTC Post #271052
I've deleted some unnecessary files from the Mod and managed to get the file size down to about 72 MB (which is great compared to what it was before). Is that still too much for those with dial-up connections, or should that be alright?

EDIT: After it's compressed into a .zip, it's actually only 30 MB for the file to download. How's that?
Posted 15 years ago2009-07-28 16:14:07 UTC Post #271053
That's still a couple of days of download for dial-up. Half that would be much better.
Posted 15 years ago2009-07-28 17:32:08 UTC Post #271057
I get about 3KB/second on a good day, but I have about half the normal dial-up bandwith.
I'm hoping that I can afford High-speed when it comes to my area.
Notewell NotewellGIASFELFEBREHBER
Posted 15 years ago2009-07-28 20:30:28 UTC Post #271059
I dunno which map was, but it do crashed on a changelevel, I was descending on a lambda-like elevator.
Posted 15 years ago2009-07-28 20:35:26 UTC Post #271061
I dunno which map was, but it do crashed on a changelevel, I was descending on a lambda-like elevator.
That's the same exact map that it always crashes on for me. I've talked about this problem in this topic, and so far I cannot find a solution to it. I think it has something to do with the game carrying too much data from the previous levels (or something like that), because if you go directly to that map using console, you can load to the next map without a single problem. But, if you're coming from the beginning of the Mod, then it won't load to the next map anymore. It's weird.
Posted 15 years ago2009-07-28 20:36:53 UTC Post #271062
That's still a couple of days of download for dial-up. Half that would be much better.
I cut it down as much as I could. The only other thing I can do to cut it down would be to start removing maps from the download, and that would ruin the Mod itself. The best I can get it down to is 30MB. Sorry.
Posted 15 years ago2009-07-28 20:38:38 UTC Post #271063
Try telling the new map to flush global entities and see if that helps.
Notewell NotewellGIASFELFEBREHBER
Posted 15 years ago2009-07-28 20:41:53 UTC Post #271064
I think it has something to do with the game carrying too much data from the previous levels
Exactly, I'm sure that is the problem, my sugestion is to name the npc's entities and kill them when you're about to changelevel, or use fade corpse too.
Posted 15 years ago2009-07-28 20:48:58 UTC Post #271065
30MB is much better. 20-40 is pretty standard I think. Just cut off all the stuff that already comes with HL, which you obviously don't need to distribute.
Posted 15 years ago2009-07-28 22:35:47 UTC Post #271068
30MB is much better. 20-40 is pretty standard I think. Just cut off all the stuff that already comes with HL, which you obviously don't need to distribute.
That is what I ultimately did, and I was quite pleased with how well it cut down the size of the download (when compressed in a .zip file).
Try telling the new map to flush global entities and see if that helps.
Exactly, I'm sure that is the problem, my sugestion is to name the npc's entities and kill them when you're about to changelevel, or use fade corpse too.
Thanks for your suggestions, guys, but hlife_hotdog told me to do this in my other topic about this issue:
Have you ever used the 'Clear Previous Level Data' option in the worldspawn entity? Use this if you have a changelevel trigger that you can't return through. This might solve your problem if that is the cause. This will delete all saved data like dead monsters, decals, ect from previous levels that you can't return to
Do you think that would work? It sounds like what I need. Thanks again, everyone. As you can see, Beta 1 was certainly a beta release. Beta 2 will fix so many of these issues. :D
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