Surface Tension Uncut - V1.11 Final
Jan 7, 2013 Full Version 12 commentsThis is the absolute, 100% final release for Surface Tension Uncut - quite a bit later than I thought it would be. It's as polished as it can be now...
Black Mesa: Surface Tension Uncut
Half-Life 2 mod | Released Dec 20, 2012
Hi there, and welcome to my project to "uncut" Black Mesa! Black Mesa was a crowning achievement for modding for sure, but it felt like it was lacking a little in some areas, particularly Surface Tension. For those of you that were not aware, Black Mesa's version of Surface Tension cut out a map from the original which was integral to the story's progression. Its replacement felt rushed and poorly implemented. My mod attempts to add that little something back into the game. I took the liberty of re-adding the cut chapters from Surface Tension as I feel their omission strongly harmed the story and really damaged the tone of Forget About Freeman. I've given them the same treatment Black Mesa gave everything else. This mod currently adds 40 - 50 minutes of gameplay and story to Surface Tension, improving the Black Mesa experience and it's overall narrative. It integrates seamlessly with the Black Mesa campaign too, just like it should. Why not give it a whirl?
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Latest News: Surface Tension Uncut - V2.0 in Development!
2 comments by TextFAMGUY1 on May 27th, 2013
So it begins again! A big, massive thank you to everyone who downloaded v1.11 of Surface Tension Uncut, and to the great community out there who've been playing and providing feedback on my work. It's been an amazing ride and I've enjoyed it tremendously.
It's been a long time since I released the "final" version of Surface Tension Uncut! Since then I've had a lot of time to take in the feedback from the community (particularly from watching lots of community videos on Youtube, and watching my friends play, both of which have been very useful tools for feedback!) I've also been improving my skills as a mapper mostly from working on On a Rail Uncut (which is still in development mind you, and set for the next release within a few weeks!)
So development is well underway on Surface Tension v2.0, incorporating a lot of the feedback from the community and redesigning some areas which needed some love. C2A5G will be the map seeing the most overhaul, particularly to the second half, where most of the outdoor areas have seen some form of redesign. A particular focus for this second version will be gameplay errors and flaws which I'm hoping to address.
The development timeline is that I predict I can release within 1 - 2 weeks (2 weeks at most). I've already done most of what I want to do on G, and the changes being made to H and I are much smaller in comparison.
Look below to see a changelog (which is a weird mix of current and predicted changes. I've pretty much finished G but H hasn't been started properly yet). Check back on the forum thread not he Black Mesa forums for more detailed, up-to-date information on the state of the project. I'm much more active there.
Current Changelog (with some predictions for future changes too)
Overall
- Improved optimization
- Improved sound coding (the volumes are better mixed, especially on the really loud sounds like Manta/Harrier flybys)
C2A5G
- Retouching of the car park exterior, making the decals less repetitive and adding more destruction.
- Added a third window to the top floor on the car park, allowing you to see out over the airstrip from the top floor of the car park.
- Slight reworking of the vent drop sequence, to make it look a bit less crap.
- Made the destruction around the explosive garage ambush look a bit cooler. The door now gets blown off and flies towards you, and the wall next to the explosion gets pretty destroyed now too.
- Made the jump from the car lift to the high window in the garage a bit easier. The model which Black Mesa has for car lifts has this weird lip which made jumping awkward. To offset this, I added a small clip brush to make jumping easier, put some shelves underneath the window (so if you miss you just drop onto the shelves and climb up from there), and made the lift itself more responsive to button presses.
- Some major aesthetic changes to the TOW Courtyard:
- Reworked the road layout to look less stupid.
- Completely redesigned the area to the side of the TOW Courtyard. The old area was a somewhat lackluster ugly looking mess of generators and composting towers. It's now been replaced by a small outdoor car park/loading dock which fits the theme of the area much better and looks really nice in comparison. It also doesn't obscure the view of the airstrip like the old one did.
- The building behind the TOW courtyard has been extended significantly and the weird extension which stuck out onto the road has been removed. The courtyard now feels a lot more spacious.
- Switched out the opaque fences in the TOW Courtyard by the garage for meshed ones. You can now see the garage properly!
- Overhaul of the 3D skybox. The vista is even better now, and the airstrip has been improved a fair bit.
- Changed the workings of the AGrunt ambush. They are now more spread out like they were in HL1, rather than all 4 rushing out at once.
- Recoded the sounds for the Harrier/Manta flybys (thanks Ulrik!) They were way too quiet before and due to the way I'd coded the subtitles, also sometimes broken.
- Large visual reworking of the area by the Helipad. One of the ugly silo buildings the road went into on the right has been switched out for a much more ST-like building which looks a lot better.
- Redesigned the helipad and the ramp leading up to it. Looks a tonne better now.
- Slight tinkering of the large battle by the helipad. LAV AI still needs some changing.
- Added a whole new section of explorable areas to the end of the map.
C2A5H
- More attempts to make the AGrunt who throws the Marine through the wall less stupid.
- Minor changes to the fight scene, but nothing serious. Attempts to make the AI slightly less dumb.
- Slight reworking of the bathroom scene. Someone pointed out on an LP that it makes no sense for the Snarks and the Zombies to get along perfectly fine UNTIL the player shows up. Will most likely just relocate the zombies to the bathroom and leave the Snarks in the hallway.
- Will rework the drop down pipe on the roof a little bit to make it less awkward for players to climb into.
- Will try and eradicate the "hop up" onto the pipe in the water tank but it's a weird bug and I don't know what causes it.
- Adding a metallic grate to the end of the satchel pipe, to explain why you can't shoot the Marine. It gets blown up when the satchel detonates.
- Tweak the exit to the pipe in the Gaswork's Janitor Closet. That was always really awkward and I should have changed it a long time ago.
- Make the janitor's closet slightly less crowded.
- Minor aesthetic and puzzle changes to the gasworks. Will include more visible destruction and more sensible pathing during the jumping puzzle.
- Tweak the second fight in the gasworks to account for the dumb AI.
Latest Downloads
Surface Tension Uncut - Release Candidate 2
Dec 23, 2012 Full Version 17 commentsThe final release candidate for Surface Tension Uncut. The release after this will be the final one, after which I will stop working on this mod. Please...
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Highest Rated (5 agree) 10/10
Takes one of the most exciting parts of Half Life and supercharges it. With the largest NPC battles I've seen in a Source game and a nice emphasis on the marines fighting a losing battle, these are some damn good extra maps for Black Mesa. Be prepared for some tough fights and relive some memorable moments staged with dramatic flair. Textfamguy's had a long dialogue with the community in developing the levels and it's really helped make them believeable, fun spaces that together tell a nice little…
Dec 22 2012, 10:45pm by dinosauriac
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But what if I have BM: Uplink installed ?
That doesn't matter.
It does, a little. You'll need a scenes.image file which is compatible with the two mods. You can find this either in Hezu's thread on the Black Mesa's "Leak-Free" forum (I think!) or you can make one yourself. The process isn't too complicated - you set up the Source SDK for Black Mesa, then you open Faceposer, and click build scenes.image, and that's it! Done. Working. Otherwise, the choreography (people's gestures and facial movements when they talk) will be broken on either my mod or Hezu's mod. Alternatively, you'd have to uninstall one, to run the other properly.
Thank you for your efforts, this was great fun!
good job guys now i see the future addons for bm by all of u :D
I'd just like to point out for the sake of accuracy that there isn't, strictly speaking, an "all of you". It's just me. I'm the only developer.
But that's not to say I'm not the only one who's done work on this project - the community has contributed a lot even though it hasn't been directly to development. Just look at the credits, you'll see. I've gotten tonnes of helpful and comprehensive feedback from the community at large as well as a few members helping me out with some specific problems, but for all intents and purposes, and I'm very grateful for it - but in literal terms, I am the only "developer".
Pardon me for nitpicking but why is it set up so that the map files in here override the default ones and the only way to preserve the default map files is to make a backup of BM? Why not just make a new folder within the 'maps' folder and put your map files in there and then set the trigger_changelevel to lead to the new folder?
tl;dr Why not "maps/st-uncut/<map files>",
instead of "maps/<map files>"?
I didn't even know that was possible, and I'm still not sure it even is. I have NEVER, EVER seen anything, Sourcemod or custom map, utilize a subfolder within the maps folder. In addition, it would also require me to alter C2A5F in order to preserve the map transition, so I would still need to alter C2A5F AND C3A1A regardless of how I named my maps. The trigger_changelevels must contain exact references to one another on both maps, otherwise the transition doesn't work - that's why I had to alter C3A1A. I figure if the player will STILL need to backup 2 maps regardless of whether I followed your convention or not, might as well have C2A5G replaced too, eh? Besides, no point downloading a replacement for stock Black Mesa content if you're afraid to actually replace stuff, neither is it terribly difficult to backup 3 map files.
Well tbh I don't know if it's possible myself but since there aren't any spaces in the path, why shouldn't it work? But yeah, I see where you are coming from since the player would still need to backup files so it wouldn't really solve much. Oh, if only the addons system in L4D/ Alien Swarm was developed sooner!
Thank you for all the hard work. As a mapper myself, I know what kind of time such campaigns take. I played through it and it was fun and fit in very well with the rest of the game. Good detail and I like your take on things. One complaint is that the two or three big fights between grunts and aliens usually lagged my computer. I haven't experienced such poor performance in any other games, including big titles.