Comments - Loulimi

Interesting. I guess this should work with standard GoldSource VHLT?

Can you remove Mapping-Fusion from being linked as a related group?

Looks great!

Soliders are known for their solidarity.

Hello, I like the atmosphere of the screenshots you posted! The lighting is pretty good.

However, I have the feeling the way you go about mapping is creating a fairly basic architecture then filling it with details to make it more visually interesting.

My personal opinion is that you should prioritise the architecture over details, especially with Goldsource. By architecture I mean the shapes and textures of any structural element, like walls, ceilings, or floors (i.e. what forms the layout of the map) as well as the map lighting. This could be having different room heights, non-perpendicular shapes like rounded corners or inclined walls, beams supporting the roof, a network of pipes running through the map, etc. Those are just ideas. Texture and lighting diversity are also important.

Not only will this generally result in less polygons that just filling cubic rooms with as many details as possible, it’s also a more pleasant process (at least to me) to think of an overall interesting architecture than to fill rooms with details. I think it also results in maps that are more interesting to look at, and it can also help the gameplay. (Props don’t add anything to the gameplay, the architecture does.)

Only once you are satisfied with the general aspect of your architecture should you start adding details.

I know those are early screenshots though.

As for the details already present in your screenshots, don’t forget to put trims around glass, it really looks bad without. You should also use at least the VHLT v34 and its FGD, it can make your glass look better in dark areas with the "ZHLT Embed Light Map" keyvalues.

It was a nice demo. There are a few problems with it though, some of them quite annoying. They’re very much alike what made me dislike Parasomnia, so I’m surprised to still find them here. Regardless of that, here is what I was able to find:

Problems (ordered by severity):
1) I also started in hard, but the animations are so twitchy / stuttering / jerky (not sure what the correct word is) and it’s almost impossible to aim correctly. I quickly reverted back to medium. I don’t recall having this problem in HL, so it sounds like it’s something introduced by the mod’s code or models.
2) Please, stop making readable material forcefully and unexpectedly appear on the player’s screen. The player should press the Use key for that. They should also be able to recognise readable material from either a specific model, or a sprite on top of a sheet of paper. It would also be best, but less important, to allow the player to stop reading when they want to, instead of having to wait for the time limit to be over. This might need custom code.
3) Still do not enjoy the "munching" sound. It is passable by itself, but when it plays several times in a row it is not enjoyable, and this happened a few times throughout the short demo. As mentioned elsewhere, I suggest making the sound shorter, and maybe more abstract.
4) Keys should use custom models. They’re hard to find as they are, and by making them brushes their design tells the player they’re just part of the setting, much like brush bottles are.
5) When a wood panel is used to lock a door, it should either break or not be wood. The players must get what they expect in that regard.
6) "Trees" look horrible. I know this is Goldsource, and I found the demo’s overall mapping looked great and did well at creating an atmosphere, but something can be done about those trees. You could maybe put them on a slope to make them further away, and add several layers of "solid" transparent textures of trees.
7) It seemed like the cop’s dialog was unskippable at the very beginning. Might have been a bug that wasn’t the mod’s fault though. But if it wasn’t a bug, I’d strongly advocate against such practices. There is a variety of good reasons for that, the main one being replayability.
8) At the very beginning, I think there is an autosave on the small "bridge" or near it, which tends to save the game in the middle of a fight, which is a bad thing.
9) Might not be permanent, but I think the monster sounds taken from HL are too recognisable.
10) Locked doors should open by pressing the "Use" key on the lock too!
11) Somewhere near the car station, the cop will enter a cycle where he repeatedly attempts to run and then stops, without leaving his spot. When I enter the "Shell" building and kill the zombie inside, he stops. After that, he refused to move anywhere, so I had to leave without him. He finally came back to me, which I think was when I encountered another enemy. Worth noting that the first part of this problem also happened with the small "wild boar", or whatever it is, in the demo. Can send you a screenshot if needed.
12) I sometimes hear exhaling sounds. I don’t know why he does that, and what it means.
13) Cars bleed.
14) I think the gunshot sounds are new. They’re really nice, but too loud.
15) The electrified bridge looks like it’s made of wood. It shouldn’t.
16) It’s possible to jump over a fence using the broken sandbags, which traps the player inside.
17) Already mentioned, but there is a door that opens sideways with a part of the wall.
18) The vent duct that breaks should maybe be opaque, as it lets light through which allows the player to predict it will break.
19) Make extinguishers breakable?
20) Corpses inside the room with the breaking vent duct can prevent moving the boxes.
20) I think there is no point and that it isn’t fun to make that long thin piece of wood that breaks under the player’s feet. Realistic physics is not what you usually expect from a Goldsource game where you’re used to run on one-unit thick walls.
21) Why do I need the cop to open the gate?
22) One of the white car models is passable.

Good things:
1) Most models look very nice, except for the female body who just looks okay.
2) I really like open combats in the city.
3) The city looks really nice, apart from the trees.
4) It’s nice to have the ability to restore power. Although I think the cop should be clever enough to avoid taking it when the power is on.

Question: Is there a key binding to use a health kit? At some point I was getting the "munching" sound several times in a row, and it seemed like it was caused by me pressing "R". However, I didn’t see any such binding in the settings.

Great work, it was an amazing mod when I played it back then and I can’t wait to do it again with your improvements!
Let us hope you find a mapper!

The story looks promising and the small excerpt we have is already better than the story of the whole HL2 franchise! The maps as shown in the screenshots need more work though but you probably know it already.
Make sure textures are properly aligned. Hammer’s (or JACK’s) texture tool is a very important thing to master, and is quite easy to learn.
Some screenshots seem too bright to me. Don’t forget to always add physical light sources to your map, like bulbs or other kinds of lights, so that the player is not left wondering where does the light emanate from.

Always great to see some mods dare to venture out of BMRF/HL setting! The screenshots look nice, there’s a real improvement over the Half-Rats series.
I hope it will play better than Parasomnia though, for me it ruined what would have been otherwise a great mod.
Best wishes to the team!

How is your comment so offensive that it deverses getting 5 downvotes and being censored?

Definitely unexpected! Invasion is one of the best candidates for a remaster, it’s a great mod but it really suffers from its sometimes poor visuals or map mechanics. (Like that door with a texture of a door going upwards that opens sideways for instance.)
I wish you good luck and can’t wait for the completion of your project!
Also, I know this is a very special anouncment but I think it’s still spelled "announcement" ;)

Thanks for polluting ModDB and wasting our time... but not as much as yours!

Maybe in the future. I have other priorities for now, but I will keep you posted.

Sorry about that! But you can still download and play it in single player in Sven Co-op! :) But yeah it's best played with a few other players.
Sven Co-op offers very nice features I wouldn't have gotten otherwise: large areas with less wpolies, larger maps, larger limits in general, scripting... It would have been much harder to make these maps in a mod.

Thank you!

Thanks!

Glad to hear that! Regardless of what happens I will keep you posted.

Hopefully you will like it. Either way, we’re always curious about your feedback!

What about indicating that you spoil the ending before spoiling it?

Looks great! :)

What a shame. It was a good mod.

Like most people here I’m a bit sad to hear that. It’s always risky to embark on a big scale project without experience, but that’s part of the game. I’m sure you acquired a lot of experience along the way, and for a while you gave us something to dream about.

It’d be really interesting to write a bit more extensively about the development process of your mod. Sharing the experience you acquired with others so they don’t make the same mistake. What is Goldsource good and bad at? What about Unity?

Looks great, very professional!

I.pinimg.com

Thank you, added the extra detail!

Steam or WON? Where did you download the mod?
If Steam, check HK files' integrity.

monster_dead_mod

Thanks! :)

Thank you! Unfortunately, as PsyWarVeteran put it, I do not plan to resume working on my mod in the near future I'm sorry to admit.
The only Goldsource project I am working on at the moment is a Sven Co-op map series, I hope it will make up for the defunct Shift-Two 2.0.

Not sure the drill instructor would tolerate vests hanging on the pillar...

Looking great! Looks like a vision of a more modern approach of the classical Half-life 1 mapping style.