TWHL Tower Created 9 years ago2015-02-07 21:24:31 UTC by monster_urby

Turns out the volume crash problem was due to using WON. Tetsu0's map also crashes in WON with an error about a missing model. I used steam to finish the mod.

On jeff's floor, it's possible to get stuck behind the cardboard stands where the camera is.

On tetsu0's floor, there is a chance the agrunt can be too far from teh player to break the glass and teh player will be stuck in the room.

I must say the upper 2 floors were extremely good. A scavenger hunt and a stealth section are rarely seen in hl mods. I think I only know of 2 other mods that use this stealth system, Puppy years and Invasion. If you liked this part you should check those mods out!

The roof had way too many rockets for a single apache. Think it will work to have either an osprey dropping soldiers around the roof or maybe several apaches? Well up to Urby I suppose.

Overall the mod was very interesting and certainly had lots of unique stuff you don't see in most mods. If you have already finished the mod, why not try your hand at some of these achievments below?

[green]

• Find the tape recorder
• Find the 357 revolver
• Get a kill using the tau cannon
• Find The Room
• (Insert more here)[/green]

Liked:

• 2mvg's audio room

Personal favourite:

• Jessie's level

Strongly disliked:

• Malle's level. What the hell was that.

Find The Room

I found plenty of rooms!

Ground Floor: Lobby/Logistics - Urby
Somewhat unfinished, I know. Nice to look at nonetheless. I was stuck for a while unaware of the significance of the security card until I picked it up by accident; I think highlighting that a little more could help. Otherwise straightforward and a nice introduction gameplaywise.

Floor 1: Recreational - 2muchvideogames
This floor is a little strange, but not unenjoyable. The odd banter of the NPCs is pleasant and you know exactly what you'll get from the massive speakers. That odd turret was a nice touch, I thought. The crowbar may benefit from a little highlighting. People are saying a lot about not being able to hit the security override. It wasn't 'til I played it again that I found I never pressed it the first time either. You don't seem to need to. Thus, I have no idea what that button does.

Floor 2: Lab Complex - Dr. Orange
Considering he "broke [his] knee pretty bad", that scientist can walk just fine. Anyway. Pretty simple, a nice little level. I can't think of a whole lot to say about it. No real flaws, simple design throughout. Quite Half-Life-y. Can't think of a plausible explanation for all that shit piled up in the hallway though. (Not that I can talk about plausible explanations.)

Floor 3: Rebellatrix Media Group - JeffMOD
There's a lot of files A-Z 7355608! Found that hidden (?) thing, even if I have no idea what the heck it was playing. (N.B. That parkoury shit? I can get way behind that.) I noticed my FPS dropping a touch in this floor. Didn't think much of that until Stu said it was much worse for him. Some optimsation may be needed. Otherwise, a lovely looking map!

Floor 4: Crystalline Energy Dept. - Urby
A nicely-crafted little level you have here, Urbles. The room with the grunts was very nice in particular. I don't have a whole lot else to say; it's very pretty, and where you need to go is never confusing (a nice change). It's just... y'know... grood. I mean, good. And great. Great and good.

Floor 5: Status Reporting / Admin - NineTnine
Have you submitted your status report to the administrator today? Those silly scientists. I chuckled at this one =)

Floor 6: Riddler's Complex - Malle
I'm sorry to say I have some issues with this one. Firstly, that button in the corridor. Why do you have to hit that? When every other button in the whole mod, including on this level, is use'd rather than shot/hit, it's just a touch confusing. Secondly, the beams seemed to kill me only some of the time, which was also confusing. And then there's those same beams along the conveyor, which don't kill you at all (as far as I can tell). The tile-jumping thing is not fun by any stretch of the imagination. And that last crouched room... hell, I have no idea what you're supposed to do there. It seems like an invisible maze with no actual way through it. I used noclip through those last two parts.

Floor 7: Bernier & Co - Tetsu0
A pretty little map, part eye-candy, part find-the-stuff. The "Bossman's key" isn't all that obvious that it IS a key, only really implied that it's of interest because it's concealed. Otherwise, not bad at all. Oh, except that if you walk into that room with the alien grunt, the door can close behind you and it seems like that locks you in there forever. I couldn't get out. EDIT: Apparently the wall blows open when you pick up the card. Something that didn't happen the first time.

Floor 8: Time Labs - Jessie
Obviously I'm not the most qualified to judge this level, given that I know exactly how it all works and such. I hope it was at least interesting for y'all =) My first impression in this mod was how spacious it was compared to all the others, and was frankly a nice change from the otherwise kinda claustrophobic atmosphere of a lot of the others. For those of you who can't figure out the last bit... what special thing can you do with the Gauss Gun? Oh, and to Urby, the same way that gets you past my obstacle gets you past your SecuriScan barriers =P You should probably fix that. Or I can, though I'll need the RMF or whatever you've got. Also should probably slap an autosave in for when people pick up the Gauss. Don't want them too stranded if they waste all their ammo.

Floor 9: Aerodynamics - TJB
Eye candy! Not a bad little display here. Some of the map, particularly around the entrance, is a little blocky, but for the most part, not bad at all. I don't know if you're supposed to be able to climb into that big thing, but you can. No biggy.

Floor 10: Upper Management - The Mighty Atom
As much as I appreciate find-the-stuff gameplay, I couldn't find the last one and that halted the progress! Just a bit of a bugger, really. I called in noclip. Otherwise, a pretty map, and flows quite nicely. It's hard to stuff gameplay into such a small area, but you've pulled it off well. EDIT: And after a second time, I got it before I'd started to look for it. shrug

Floor 11: Chairman - Strider
I mean, what can you say? Sexy. That's what you can say. This map is sexy. Not only is it sexy, but the stealth is a nice touch! A few times I blundered right into the cameras, and that's what should happen if you're not careful! I also found your easter egg, which I can't remark on that much, the reference isn't really my thing.

As for the roof, well, it's not bad. A nice little grunt-helicopter playground. Will be interested to see what you do with it.

Awards time!
Eye Candy Award - Strider
Fun Award - The Mighty Atom
Humorous Award - NineTnine
Entity Award - My own dang self ^^

That was a lot of fun.

Considering he "broke [his] knee pretty bad", that scientist can walk just fine.

I thought that was amusing too.

Your entry was insanely clever Jessie, I think you got the most out of the limited space!

I enjoyed everyone's entries at some level, lots of cool ideas, except I have to say Malle's was very obscure, and the crusher puzzle was nothing but quicksave trial and error.

All tied together really nicely by Urby, too. I love the health & item gates, and his floors are all really solid.

Just plaayed through it. Everyone did a great job! I can only point out a few parts that made it hard to progress, but those were mainly faults on my part.
The timelabs floor ending pretty much required you to know about gauss-jumping, and if I hadn't watched a lot of Half-Life speedruns before, I'd never figure it out. In fact, my first spontaneuos reaction was to take the crate from earlier and jam the lasers with it.
I couldn't find the first key in the chinese themed stealth floor.

Other than those two things, it was pretty flawless and a great project.
Good work everyone who participated! You deserve a cookie.

...his floors are all really solid.

A good characteristic for a floor to have, I find.

I submitted my status report the the administrator today about this sign being upside down (not sure if intentional)

intentional, its meant to be a bit odd (ie notice the 'exit' sign going into the break room)

Is it intentional they only say one thing? And that you can simply just press +use at the door and skip the floor entirely?

Just played through, that was pretty fun

Some general notes:

• How in the world is JeffMod's level so laggy?
• NineTnine has a talent for making amusing maps
• Props to Dr. Orange for actual voice acting!
• Lobby Urby looks threatening (and/or like a heroin addict) just casually holding a syringe
• What's with the habit a lot of you have with spawning enemies when the player has insufficient weapons? Stop spawning alien grunts when I only have a crowbar!
• Malle's map is unnecessarily cruel. It took me a long time to figure out what I actually had to do in the jump puzzle, and even longer to actually do it. The ceiling crusher puzzle is just trial-and-error (not very fun), and adding a diagonal to the mix is borderline sadistic!
• Jessie's map is super cool, but the hallways are too wide! If you move as far away from the doors as possible and shift left and right, you can see the doors spawning in and out. I wouldn't have figured out the gauss jump if I didn't read other people talking about it.
• TJB's map: DOORKNOBS FOR MIDGETS!
• Was initially confused by Muzz's map, but then remembered reading other people talking about hunting for items. Eventually found them all after that.
• Strider's map is fancy and the gameplay is pretty cool. I walked into a camera and got killed by turrets, but the autosave was after the cameras went off, so I was stuck in an infinite death loop
• Speaking of autosaves, there should be more autosaves. At least one for each floor, imo.

Overall, very good. Nice work everyone!

If you move as far away from the doors as possible and shift left and right, you can see the doors spawning in and out.

I thought I made sure that didn't happen Well, except in one of the later rooms, where I did notice that you could see it and... I guess I never got around to fixing it.
EDIT: Yeah, I meant to plonk some sort of blocker there so you couldn't move out far enough to see it. Don't recall why I never did.

I wouldn't have figured out the gauss jump if I didn't read other people talking about it.

I didn't want it to be a typical pick-key-up or press-a-button solution, but it looks like this trouble is a common theme. Maybe I should rework that last bit somehow...

@Jessie I'm pretty sure using teleporters counts as cheating. We were limited to a 1024x1024 area.

Being able to enter the (unfortunately unfinished) wind tunnel is unintentional. I suppose I just forgot to clip it.
And PB, they're not midgets, they're in wheelchairs. Didn't you notice the lack of office chairs? Lightswitches are placed lower now for wheelchair accessibility, so I will go ahead and assume that doorknobs are also without ever checking to make sure.

Anyway, as for my views on the tower, unfortunately I don't have any as Half-Life has decided to not work anymore.
Has anyone ever had the 'Could not load hw.dll' error? There doesn't seem to be much info on it except for a few people recommending a fix that apparently doesn't work anymore.

You're absolutely right, Dr. Orange. I imagine it would be.

@TJB Have you tried validating the game cache files?

@Jessie I'm pretty sure using teleporters counts as cheating. We were limited to a 1024x1024 area.

Not sure why you even brought that up...

@Jessie I'm pretty sure using teleporters counts as cheating. We were limited to a 1024x1024 area.

Not sure why you even brought that up... tongue -

Becuase obvious trigger_teleport usage?

Becuase obvious trigger_teleport usage?

Incorrect.

I walked into a camera and got killed by turrets, but the autosave was after the cameras went off, so I was stuck in an infinite death loop

Strange. I'm sure I placed just the one autosave when you first enter the room, before you can possibly reach a camera.

Ha, I had quicksave and load game on my mouse, so that saved me from that, but yeah, infinite deathloop was a real bummer

As for the map, it was AWESOME. Getting back to Malle, hey, he DID submit something at least and did pretty well, sure it was a pisser that getting smashed at ever step you take (loved it, hated it, not sure about it) but yeah, it was still aright of a map after all.

Loved all the maps, great job by peeps and I wonder how much cooler and kick ass it can be if there's ever such a thing for the Source Engine (which I'd gladly take part in if ever).

Becuase obvious trigger_teleport usage?

Having seen the VMF I can confirm that there isn't a single teleport in Jessie's map. It all takes place within the restrictions detailed at the start of the challenge. She would have been disqualified otherwise.

I wonder how much cooler and kick ass it can be if there's ever such a thing for the Source Engine (which I'd gladly take part in if ever).

Would definitely be awesome to see that happen. Wouldn't be anything to do with me though. I'm not a Source mapper.

While I didn't really notice it myself, I too would like to know why my room is laggy on other machines. There are a few things I think I forgot to func_detail, but short of doing it to all the walls, there's not much I haven't tied to it.
Maybe I did need hint brushes after all...

Eh, to me, floor 06 (malle's) seems kinda broken. Or at least the sollution to room 01 is not very clear. I activated the computer, then what? None of the 2 doors opened or unlocked. And the tip button doesn't really help.

Malle's floor is pretty hard. I made it past the conveyor belt and I'm stuck at the button part. I've no clue whether or not the game expects me to dash through the door in the 2 seconds I have.

My favorite by far was the administrator floor.

so was the valve/models folder copy pasted into the twhltower folder, and replaced the v_models with the Blue Shift ones? Waste of space in the rar.

I think putting the name of the floor and the maker on the outside of the floor would help identify the maps greatly.

huge lag on 3rd floor Q_Q

huge lag on 3rd floor Q_Q

this might be caused by the movable chairs

so was the valve/models folder copy pasted into the twhltower folder, and replaced the v_models with the Blue Shift ones? Waste of space in the rar.

Done to ensure that HD model settings don't override the LD ones. Potentially breaking animation sequences.

I think putting the name of the floor and the maker on the outside of the floor would help identify the maps greatly

Ok. Wanna play the mod again? You'll see I've put them in now? No need to download again. It's magic.

Done to ensure that HD model settings don't override the LD ones.

Doh! I personally like the HD models more then the LD. Can't you just make HD models of everything, and put it in twhltower_hd?

Done to ensure that HD model settings don't override the LD ones. Potentially breaking animation sequences.

Ah, makes sense, but there's a lot of models still in there unchanged from LD to HD, maybe delete these for next revision.

Ok. Wanna play the mod again? You'll see I've put them in now? No need to download again. It's magic.

Whoops, you're right, I didn't even see them. Maybe put a light in them for the player? The lighting in general in the bases is quite dark.

Ground Floor: Lobby/Logistics - Urby
I'm so used to Urby's maps in The Core that I forget how well he can do classic HL mapping as well. Every so often he pulls a dm_rust or a Then and Now out of his ass and I'm reminded just how good he is with mostly vanilla resources. This feels unfinished, but it's quite lovely.

Floor 1: Recreational - 2muchvideogames
I love the audio room, the sentences and the great humourous touches, but I spent the longest time in the first room completely clueless about what the hell I was doing. I eventually pressed the button through the wall and after it produced no tangible effect I was close to giving up. Eventually found the key and the map was able to progress, but it was an unfortunately sour experience for my first challenge of the mod. I hate key puzzles, but at least signpost that that's what you're doing!

Floor 2: Lab Complex - Dr. Orange
Felt very Half-Lifey, which I enjoyed. Voice acting was bad, but in a brilliant sort of way and it's a shame more people didn't use their vocal charms. Very well constructed level overall.

Floor 3: Rebellatrix Media Group - JeffMOD
Loved this one. Lots of cool things to look at, and very unique when compared to the other maps. Never noticed any framerate drops, but then I've got the hardware to back it up.

Floor 4: Crystalline Energy Dept. - Urby
Almost died here several times playing on hard. Lots of baddies well positioned to provide a hell of a challenge. Nice mapping, nice effects and a good change of pace.

Floor 5: Status Reporting / Admin - NineTnine
Brilliant idea. Mapping was blocky as hell and the lighting was atrocious, but I don't even care. It was fantastic. Reminded me of Vault 108.

Floor 6: Riddler's Complex - Malle
This was an abomination in terms of gameplay. Sorry, there's really no way to be nice about it. Invisible walls, inconsistent rules, blink-and-you'll miss it buttons and unimaginably frustrating 'puzzles'. It took every ounce of patience I have not to noclip this. The end 'puzzle' would maybe work if you'd at least followed the tiles on the floor, but adding the diagonal route was just sadistic.

Floor 7: Bernier & Co - Tetsu0
I like the look of this, and plugging in the wall things was a nice take on a traditional key puzzle. Oh, and a very nice faucet effect! I dunno what on Earth happened with prop scaling, though! Also, this was literally impossible on hard mode afaik. Even on medium I barely scraped by.

Floor 8: Time Labs - Jessie
Give this woman a medal. Seriously, this is fantastic. It was creative, loads of fun to solve and is something I've genuinely never seen pulled off in Goldsource before. I think I know how you did it, but I don't know for sure; considering I've been mapping for over ten years now, that's one hell of an achievement.

Floor 9: Aerodynamics - TJB
Lots of cool stuff to look at, but a slightly disappointingly brief visit as the puzzle is over before it's even started. I feel like you could add more gameplay into this nifty environment!

Floor 10: Upper Management - The Mighty Atom
You made a key puzzle that I loved. I didn't think that was possible! Great map, great treasure hunt and a sweet attention to detail. Muzzeh really is the king of Goldsource mapping. Have you gotten Alizée's phone number yet?

Floor 11: Chairman - Strider
Damn. I mean come on. Payday 2 meets Japan done flawlessly in Goldsource? Fuck off, you demon wizard. Holy shit, this place is beautiful.

Awards time!
Eye Candy Award - Strider
Fun Award - The Mighty Atom
Humourous Award - NineTnine
Entity Award - Jessie's own dang self ^^

Validating the game cache files worked.

Anyway, as for the tower:
Overall I enjoyed all of the floors, but my favourites were NineTnine's, Jessie's and Strider's.

NineTnine's floor was blocky and ugly, but it was pretty damn funny. Especially with that broken looking animation one of the scientists had.

Jessie's was my favourite in terms of how impressive it was technically. I think I've got it figured out how it was made (mainly thanks to the telltale shadows in some of the places where things change), but I never would have thought to do anything like that before seeing this floor. It was inspired and technically impressive.

Strider's floor was probably my favourite overall. It was my favourite aesthetically (with JeffMOD's coming in second), and as well as this I also thought the gameplay was good. Perhaps it's just because I like stealth games, but I thought it was a refreshing change from the vast majority of HL maps, and I would very much like to see the ideas expanded upon. The aesthetic and gameplay together somewhat reminded me of the Japan levels in Hitman 2.

As for my own level, I 100% had forgotten about gameplay when I submitted it. So the puzzle wasn't even that. I'm sure Urby just placed the keycard in whatever seemed like the most sensible location.

Allow me to amend my incomplete review:

Liked:

• Urby complimenting my fancy HEV suit.
• 2mvg's big ass amp.
• Tetsu0's tap water. I'll have to steal that.
• Atom's keycard slots.
• Strider's key hunt. Lots of attention to fine detail. Superbly crafted.

Personal favourite: Jessie's level. Boy was that good. Even if the architecture itself was just standard for GS. 11/10.

Disliked:

• 2mvg's almost-invisible key. Also I didn't quite understand the progression of the level or how to press the button (or if that is even needed)
• Atom's keycard hunt. Not heavily disliked but some were a bit too well hidden
• Not auto-saving on each level.

Strongly disliked:

• Malle's level. It's illogical enough that he had the need to add a hint system, but that is useless anyway. Malle, you're fired. 0/0. Yes, you. Box. Your stuff. Out the front door. Parking lot. Car. Goodbye.

Malle, you're fired. 0/0. Yes, you. Box. Your stuff. Out the front door. Parking lot. Car. Goodbye.

Too soon for a replacement?
Walks in with stuffs.

Also, umm... Is this too soon?Not PERFECT but, yeah... More at: http://imgur.com/a/p3YYY#1

Thanks for the feedback guys. There's a few things here for me to work through with regards to fixes. I'm aware some of you may have made your maps using the standard entities, which I then compiled using Spirit of Half-Life. I went through Dr.Orange's map with a fine tooth comb and worked out the bugs that came about from this, but I will admit that not everybody's got the same degree of testing.

Some of the points like the beams not damaging the player appears to be a coding issue in the latest version of spirit. After testing my own map again yesterday it seems that you can just run through that corridor and most of the time will take no damage...

I know my lobby and roof maps need finishing, mostly sorting out scripting and so on.

Though most maps have been received rather well, one of the major complaints is the gameplay in Malle's floor. Not sure how to tackle this one as it seems unfair to deem it unwelcome and strip it out. I will think of something, though if you have any ideas Malle then feel free to post here or PM me.

Definitely leave Malle's floor as it is. I think everyone intended it as constructive criticism, and it's absolutely unfair to change or remove someone's hard work. I don't think anyone's entries reflect poorly on the mod.

I think everyone intended it as constructive criticism, and it's absolutely unfair to change or remove someone's hard work.

Absolutely constructive criticism and with all due respect to his hard work, it would be not in the spirit of the project to just remove it. However, if it is so obscure that most (if not all) had to noclip to get past it, it definitely needs some sort of tuning so as to make it less unfair.

Or leave the door to the next level unlocked

My suggestions for that map would be:

1. Jump puzzle: Change the "you touched the floor and now you need to reset" sound to a negative-sounding "bzzt" type noise, instead of the positive-sounding "ding" it is now. Initially I thought that sound was required to complete the puzzle since it sounded "good", if that makes sense.

2. Jump puzzle: Put the floor triggers further away from the edges of the tiles, so you can get more of a run up when going for the jump.

3. Ceiling crusher: Add a subtle change to the colour of the "safe" tiles, or some other way to work out which is safe without needing to use trial and error.

Oh, and I forgot, what's up with those buckets on Atom's floor?

You're supposed to mop up the floor. (to do: implement mop)

EDIT:

Oh yeah, I noticed those buckets too. Had to duck behind them when a slave spawned.

I suppose I should explain a bit about floor 1 since the puzzle is a bit involved, but pretty straightforward. Basically, theres two keys and a crowbar. The first key is for the audio room and the second key is for the door under the turret. the crowbar is the the little closet facing the turret, and I think Jessie's right in that it should be easier to see. Think a light in the closet should be good enough. The second key is in a room accessible from a window in the turret hallway that has to be broken thru using the crowbar. The keycard to get to the next level is in another room behind the turret door.

Of course the focus of this puzzle is based on the security override button. Some people have found (and this is true), that pressing the button is not required to progress. All it does is shut off the turret. (Perhaps a turret sign next to the button would have been better, now that I think about it)

So really there are multiple ways to solve this, by choosing whether to kill the guard and press the button to shut off the turret, or dont kill the guard and try to dodge the turret shots looking for the key. A 'safe' choice or a 'risky' choice. Killing the guard makes the ending harder, so there is a consequence to the 'safe' choice as well. It's really all up to your playstyle how you want to get thru the puzzle. I hope the map managed to convey that, lol.

really really well done, I liked mostly all of the floors
Strider, your floor was my favorite

Oh, and I forgot, what's up with those buckets on Atom's floor?


EDIT:

Urbles! What have you done with my buckets! Not sure what caused this, but here's a screenshot of my map in my twhltower_dev folder that I used during the development of my floor, and it looks perfectly fine in-game:Best to have Urby remake them I guess.

I've not actually made any changes to your map other than the keycard triggers so I dunno why the compile broke them so bad...

Muzz most likely used HLfix since it's built into the compilator.

Well sometimes, even with Goldsource, vertices shift over to their nearest grid points after loading a file.

Well, the point of my map is that you really need to think and stop being the lazy t-rex you are. thats it. it works perfectly so far.

Being irritated by a puzzle makes it a nice puzzle.. at least you solved it.. i get phonecalls of monkeys still being stuck in it.

If you don't like my map ure just a narrow minded person that doesn't want to do things. and indeed my map doesn't fit the rest. i saw couple of useless maps you could just walk through and didn't find that a puzzle more a dinner at the mc donalds, it was nice but i felt empty afterwards

If you don't like my map ure just a narrow minded person that doesn't want to do things.

That's quite rude

I completed whole Tower and all things worked fine for me except one - if I start a new game using Xash3D or old version of Half-Life, the engine gives me 4 (same) error messages about problems with Visual C++ code. And I need to skip them to play. In Steam HL there are no errors.

Suggestions:
1. Add an autosave point in the beginning of every floor.
2. Add something like The End (I shot down the Apache and killed all the enemies on the roof, but nothing happened).
3. Console reports about missed sequences for act 1 for monster_generic & monster_furniture in map base-2much. Looks like it's not important for the gameplay though.

That's quite rude

I mean it in a game wise way. I played the whole building and i saw two maps being as easy like going to the bathroom in the dark at your own home.. I'm not going to call names on them, but i thought it was a puzzle building as far as i saw mine was the best puzzle because it took you busy for a while.. if you can solve a puzzle within 5 minutes does the puzzle can u get a clue of its difficulty? I think my philosophy psychology about puzzles are way to far ahead. indeed my game was clueless, but isn't that the part?

i really liked the asian style map. good job polishing it. didn't know we were making a beauty salon in the first place.

If u want to delete my part its okay. but it wouldn't be fair compared to the people on the communnity doing nothing

Nobody is suggesting your map be removed, Malle, but your 'puzzle' being infuriatingly difficult and hard to understand does not make it good and you should modify it to be more of a puzzle and less of a test of patience.

"the point of my map is that you really need to think"

This bit is flagrantly untrue. There is no part of your map that requires thinking to solve it. The first stage is about noticing a button which appears after a vent opening into an invisible wall makes the player think the map is broken. The second stage is about insanely strict control of the player's movement over an arbitrary platforming problem which requires more brute force and ignorance than skill. The third stage is literally trial and error.

Making it impossible to succeed without dying numerous times is not a good strategy for fun game design.