Comments - deadcrab

The detail these guys get eventually will be dependent on performance. My plan is to match the detail of Half-Life as i'd like it to be playable on lower end machines.

Agreed, it looks a bit bare, maybe some bins and benches could go here. Thanks for noting the misaligned texture, will be fixed on release.

It's not totally obvious by the screenshot but these guys are actually much larger than the little grubs from SS2, significantly larger than Freeman. It's not a model but in fact a func_train entity, you'll have to hop on these guys backs to navigate through Xen, they are stylised moving platforms. Cool idea, no?

And thanks, this is intended to be a companion piece to Half-Life and OpFor, so I want to keep that flavour very much intact.

Looks fantastic, brushwork and texturing look great. Tracking.

I suppose it's not a 'true' messup mod but there's still a lack of convincing gameplay goals, something Valve was very big on. Like I say though, that takes a backseat to the fact they are using assets of another modder without permission.

The prefab on the left is a bit stretched, which is fine but it makes the cardboard boxes look a little flat, i'd maybe slim it down. You've used a texture with grating on the walls which is fine but you should offset it a little with the texture shift function of the texture application tool, so the grating is flush with the floor. Those light entities look a little odd too with no brushwork, just search 'light' in the textures and you'll find some suitable ones. Loving the new textures on the models though!

Unless you're doing a rats-style thing here where everything is abnormally big, the scale of everything here looks a little funky. You might want to consider shrinking down those prefabs. A handy way to make sure everything is normal is to just compare with the info_player_start which is human size.

Those vending machines textures are back to front. You can put in a minus value in the texture application tool, or click align to face rather than world. Either way should fix them.

Azure Sheep and POV are among my favourite GoldSrc mods, I should really give them another full play through some time.

l like the idea, they'd be a lot more threatening with a revolver.

Yeah, it's tough to say as it's early days, the mod could branch out in any number of directions at this point.

They're actually meant to be metal supports but on reflection it's not that obvious when it's on the back wall too. Regardless of what I do with that, the ceiling texture is going in favour of something darker. I was using a ton of really clean, really white textures, this being one of them and i'm now going through and switching them out. 'Realistic' modern colour pallettes just do not fit the grimy Black Mesa aesthetic well enough for me.

I could see that definitely looking neat, a hairy looking spidercrab. Or maybe some gross blotchy venom-y frog skin. Will definitely revisit it and play around a bit.

Yeah, there is a definite silliness to these guys, they're a fun design in my opinion. I think they still match the tone of Half-Life though. (Did somebody say massive armoured testicle spider?!)

I'd love to say 'yes' but I don't want to promise anything. Porting weapons from OpFor is not a simple drag and drop, as far as I am aware, due to the changes Gearbox made. New weapons would unquestionably make the mod better, but Half-Life has such an expansive arsenal that if I chose to release with new entities, new textures, new maps but with purely vanilla weapons, I think i'd still be very happy with the mod. Hate to leave people in the lurch but in this case all I can say is 'wait and see'.

Definitely crossed my mind, energy weapons would be really cool but it would take some time to implement. Changing damage done to specific entities is entirely possible (the python on the hunters in ep 2 does extra damage for example) i'm just not entirely sure how Valve does it. As for ammo, I suppose it could use the depleted uranium the tau cannon uses, or something entirely new. Perhaps a charging mechanism where ammo slowly regenerates like the Hivehand? It's definitively doable but i'm going to have to look into it. Watch this space!

Cheers, means a lot. All the best for the Core too! (Not that you need it, i've seen that crazy wizardry SnC is doing with a 17+ year old engine.)

Thanks, and I see what you mean, a few quick edits should fix that though. I'll have a go when I try making the HEV variant (these guys are meant to be popping up around Xen so zombie scientist doesn't make a whole lot of sense.)

Yes, but there are none so far.

Yeah, the cans technically exist in Half-Life but not in enough detail to be able to make out the branding, so I opted for the Dreamcast ones. This map as a whole has a few references to existing brands within Half-Life, like the 'Grape Ape' cans and the Captain Koso's bars from OpFor just in this screengrab. Little touches like these should hopefully be a really fun tip of the hat for those who've played a lot of the GoldSrc entries and help ingrain it within the HL universe.

Yup, they're placeholders. I think i'm going to go with something grimier and less polished for the final version, more akin to the small glimpse we see in the Blue Shift tram ride.

Played around with this by altering the transparency but it only made it look like decals or stickers rather than painted on, so this was the compromise. May experiment a bit more on this one.

Clocked this when I was working on the map earlier, don't know how I left it like that so long. It's fixed now.

Thanks for the tip-off but personally I don't see myself using env_rope in this mod, I thought it was kinda clunky in OpFor (not that other stuff from Blue Shift and Opfor wouldn't be really neat here). I guess you could say I just love Half Life's tricky ladders (won't forgive Valve for making them fun-proof in HL2!).

I don't blame you, they've got a bit of a threatening look to them. These guys are meant to pop up in the later chapters of the mod so the difficulty should already be sufficiently high, but I could go the 'bodyguard' route if I feel the player is not being challenged enough.

Agreed, looking kinda chunky aren't they? I'll slim the dividers down a bit for next version.

At the moment I have them serving the same functional role as the Barney guards, so no threat to the player at all, in fact, a small help in some areas. I have no plans to make them hostile to the player.

Perhaps it's 'hooves' could be brown too if the colour is to jarring. It may not end up being a problem since i'm planning to alter the model here somewhat to give it a more unique flavour.

Yeah, i'm going to see what I can do with this one, I want these cleansuits to look more like washable boiler suits rather than disposable cleansuits.

The clothes and vest are likely to stay as I want them to be recognizable to the player as BM guards. The shoulderpads and kneepads thing is a cool idea though.