Comments - etto

Dude...It's not double-barreled. The tube under the barrel is the magazine.

Interesting idea, and pretty good mapping too. But there's a flaw in the "return to Black Mesa" idea. Black Mesa was destroyed by a thermonuclear warhead after the events of Half-Life. I don't think anyone would return there after that. Plus, i wonder what would the soldiers do in Black Mesa anymore, since they pulled out during Half-Life.

If you think of it that way, yes. But i find it kind of misleading since i wasn't trying to kill the mod, just help him improve. Altough now when i think of it, i should've realized a long ago that giving helpful critic to him was pointless. He wouldn't listen anyway, just bash people for flaming and whine about how his mod was so good.

You know, you shouldn't have me on that list. I never encouraged you to quit, or flamed you, just tried to help you. And if "our complaigning destroyed your ambition, your goal and your dream", it's your problem. Of course some people flamed you, but some(Like DragonNOR, me, kaski, Urbanebula) gave constructive criticism about how you could improve your mod. A mod needs to be able to take criticism from the community.

Your age is really not an excuse. There's always room for improvement. If you expect to get good comments, you have to work harder on your mod. You've got motivation and the basic skill to use hammer, and i respect that, but you still need to listen to people who want to help you. As many people have said: improve your architecture and storytelling. That's the main thing that's wrong with your mod.
As for the Valve part, email them and ask.

The next area. There’s a corridor that goes into a rather decently done tram station(or service access) of sort, altough this area could also have more objects and stuff. Now i’m going to jump into the end, as i don’t have the time or motivation to analyze all rooms in the mod. But i’m still going to say one thing. The texture scaling is sloppy at some points, there are lots of skewed and deformed textures. You might want to look into fixing them. And remember the realistic object placement and scaling.
I’m out for now, and good luck for you in the future. Btw, some things DragonNOR posted were exactly the same as mine, didn’t see those posts before i wrote this. Well, i think you should get the idea, especially if it’s said twice.

Now for the outdoor area. It’s not that bad, but you might want to make the brick walls a little thicker than 2-4 units. And you might do some varation on the walls. But i’m not gonna speak any more of this area, since it was relatively well done compared to the next one. Down the stairs, there’s this “Processing area 3” as the painted text on the wall says. And it has some tables and health and shield packs. And a room to the left with some weapons. Now, let’s look back a little. you start in an office room, go into a huge lobby, get a keycard and open a huge door, go through a security scanner, go into an outdoor area, and then a room with some weapons and health. What. I thought Kleiner was supposed to be a scientist, with a scientist’s job, not a soldier or a guard. My point is, it makes no sense to get weapons this early, and from an unlocked random room with some tables. My suggestion for this is, that you get rid of the weapons room and make the player collect the weapons on their way, from dead bodies, etc. And maybe from armory rooms, but later in the mod. The idea that you get good weapons, such as the M4 and the shotgun right in the beginning takes all the challenge and suspense and the survival-feeling off. You should only get a crowbar at this point, and then maybe later get better weapons, as there aren’t even any challenging enemies in this part of the game.

Now the next area transition. There’s a “Proplab 03 wind tunnel” as the text in the door says, which makes no real sense, since it isn’t a wind tunnel, it’s some sort of a security checkpoint or a lab purification device or what ever you call it, i don’t really know. But the main thing is, it doesn’t make sense for it to be in there, as the next door just leads outside and there’s just no reason there would be a transition like that inbetween a lobby and an outdoor area. Why there are no other doors from the lobby leading anywhere else? It’s just a big room with doors into that outdoor area and the keycard room and the computer lab. There are no routes that are closed to the player, and that can make the game feel really unrealistic and boring. Look at areas in HL and other games as well, all games have them. I hope you consider things like these as you make the mod, since they matter a lot to make the game feel better.

Even though you changed some of the rooms, the architectural design and continuity is still nonexistent. It still has oversized and empty rooms, and most important of all, weird and nonsencial room transitions. First there's a cut Gman soundclip from HL2 and you start in a small office-style room for no real explanation. Then you go into a lobby area with doors into ammo and explosive caches. That makes no sense to me. Why would a lobby area have ammo rooms? And that's not the biggest problem. The lobby itself is just a huge-*** hall with some beams in the ceiling, and no real other detailing. Look at lobby halls in real life, or even in Half-Life. They have lots of more stuff than that, ie. computers, benches, announcement speakers, personnel, all that stuff and a lot more. Your lobby is really plain and boring. And too large. And the gigantic door on the left side isn't cool, realistic or well, anything that you should keep there. You should really seek other alternatives for it, such as a smaller double door of some sort. Like the ones in Lambda core area in Half-life, if you see what i mean. A huge door doesn't make ANY sense in there. The other side of the hall is rather plain, with just that one door, but it's somewhat the right size. Like i said, i'm not going to focus on small things such as that, i'm going to look at the whole thing. The area where you get the keycard is also somewhat nonsencial, as it's just on the table, and no one gives it to you or anything like that. I'm sure you can work out a better solution for it.

I see you're really proud of your work. But to be honest, it really isn't that different from what we've seen. Of course there's some improvement, but nothing that remarkable. And i know it's not finished, so i'm not going to focus on the details, but i expect the basics to be at least somewhat ready at this time. But still i downloaded the demo, and completed it 2 times, and now i'm going to TRY to help you, instead of flaming, as i see you have motivation and will to go on making this mod. You can have a read at it and take my advice, or you can just ingnore it all and say i flamed you if it’ll make yourself feel better. At first, i'm going to emphasize in larger problems, and then the smaller ones.

Ah, whatever. I should've already known arguing with you was pointless.

Model and texture changes aren't all that makes a mod good. Even if you had every texture and model replaced but your map design wasn't any good the mod would fail. Why? Because in the end it's the map design, architecture and the general atmospehere that makes the mod fun to play. Of course custom content makes the mod more enjoyable to play, but before that, you should have well designed story and levels. Even if that HL:Escape mod didn't have any custom content, at least it had decent map design, unlike your mod. I'm sorry to say it, but your maps look like you've just put huge rooms and corridors in it without actually thinking of their purpose, or architecture at all. If you play any decently designed videogame you'll see every room makes at least some sense, and they aren't just slapped in there to make the map bigger. But i hope you realize this, and don't just always ingnore advice. Like i always like to say, you can't get any better if everyone just praises you. Only constructive criticism helps.

Is that site a joke or something?

Haha well said!

Haha, you can't really take constructive criticism can't you? You want everyone to be a kiss-*** to you and tell you how much you rock. You know, that way you can never improve. Your ego just grows bigger. And that's a really big problem of many beginners. As you can see, i'm not being really hostile towards you, like you were towards me and the other guy. He and i were just stating the plain facts. And yes, i did read the text and watch the videos. I don't want to start a flame war, but it seems to be your primary intention. You are acting like a real *******, grow up. Also, who said this is Sega? No one i think.

Uh...that's just a re-skinned rebel model with a helmet, right? You can see it from the vest and the other clothes.

It's looking pretty nice. Though i hope you get a spellchecker for your team, your English is pretty weak. Anyways, otherwise it's a nice looking mod.

Kaski, agreed. Also, the hands look terrible. isn't the model from blue shift, just with a white texture? You really need to work on this mod if you want it to be succesful. And i mean it.

But isn't replacing crouch with sprint, even if only on some levels, a bit too much? Crouch is too useful to be replaced with sprint, OR prone for that matter. I'm sure there's a way to bind another key for prone/sprint, without taking crouch off.

Other than this little complaint, the mod looks pretty good. I'll be watching this for updates.

I think the Combine didn't have trans-human soldiers yet just after the seven hour war.

The first model looks almost better than the final one. Sure, it has more polys and it's shiny and all, but it just looks somewhat uncanny.

That suit looks like it's ripped straight from a HL1 HEV suit model pack.
This one: Fpsbanana.com

Are you sure you have to replace the crouch with sprint/prone? 'Cause it would change the gameplay a lot.

nice model.

Looks very good :)

Nice job!

very good :)

It's very nice. :)

it's from a multiplayer map undertow, not singleplayer.

lol, is the "NOTICE: drum storage area" sign really necessary? Anyways good job on the shadows.