Return to City 17

[DaMaN]

Hey, i know how to fix this scene problems. sorry i didn't think about it earlier

sent you a pm

for all the others: having to have the scenes added to the scenes.image is a shitty thing the ep2 engine requires to play scenes. otherwise they're shown as missing in the console.
well, daman extracted my scenes.image where my scene was registered and this overwrote his own scenes.image with his own scene.
As the scenes.image only gets loaded while the mod is starting it won't be reloaded on mapload so my scene can't be played when it's only in the bsp.

so now, what we'll have to do is putting both scenes in the obsidian\scenes folder and then rebuild the scenes.image in faceposer so it would add both VCDs. There you go with easter egg and story scene.

Sent you a pm back

I guess the scene will have to stay out for now. Soon, though, we'll put it back in.

Anyways, the moment you've all been waiting for:

Release!!

Check out the first page of this thread, I've updated ALL the information, including screenshots, credits, info, and a way to see Blues' lost easter egg scene, so be sure to re-read it all.

Oh what the heck, I'll re-post some of the more important bits here:

Things to know:
+ Blues fixed 01
+ Blues made a nice crystal
+ 04 and 05 are mostly Valve's creations - I just tweaked the living hell out of them in order to turn them into completely different maps.
+ Pakratting is done better than last time, so all those pesky lostcoast models and textures are in the maps too
+ The maps are big, ranging from 102mb to 20mb. Total size of the maps: 323mb unzipped/unrarred. They will take time to load.
+ Don't speedrun!! These maps will not be enjoyable with a speedrunner!

Finally, have fun damnit!

DaMaN
Da_HL_MaN@yahoo.ca

P.S. It's 3:30AM. I'm going to ****ing sleep now.

[fug4life]

Downloading now, great job and sleep.

[Blues]

Hey, i know how to fix this scene problems. sorry i didn't think about it earlier

sent you a pm

for all the others: having to have the scenes added to the scenes.image is a shitty thing the ep2 engine requires to play scenes. otherwise they're shown as missing in the console.
well, daman extracted my scenes.image where my scene was registered and this overwrote his own scenes.image with his own scene.
As the scenes.image only gets loaded while the mod is starting it won't be reloaded on mapload so my scene can't be played when it's only in the bsp.

so now, what we'll have to do is putting both scenes in the obsidian\scenes folder and then rebuild the scenes.image in faceposer so it would add both VCDs. There you go with easter egg and story scene.

Edit: Ok, guys! DaMaN told me the scenes he used were some hl2 standard ones, so i made a scenes.image in which all the hl2, ep1, ep2 and my custom scene are registered.
If you want to use this to play with properly working scenes, just extract the following zip file to your sourcemods\obsidian folder (having winzip/winrar use paths). The file scenes.image should then be in your
sourcemods\obsidian\scenes folder.

http://files.filefront.com/scenes+image ... einfo.html

I think server owners must also put it on their server, but i'm not really sure, because i never owned a server

For everyone who didn't see it, because it's on the last page.
Would appreciate it if you add this to the first post of this thread.

Hope this works...

[DaMaN]

For everyone who didn't see it, because it's on the last page.
Would appreciate it if you add this to the first post of this thread.

Hope this works...

Added to the front page

[larz]

cool, ill check this out.

[Neico]

1. DON'T USE A game_end UNLESS IT'S REALLY THE END OF THE MAP!!! (for example 6a create a mapadd that you provide in the archive file until the rest is done then you simply can delete that mapadd and it continues with the other maps, but no game_end in the map itself PLEASE!)

2. use a trigger_changelevel for Transistation instead of an point_servercommand...

[Shana]

barney: "oh shit its a dropship, i just keep standing in front of it so it kills me instead of taking cover" + what neico said are my only concerns.

And grr at 06a, im doing something similar in warehouse onslaught

[Vaun]

Didnt have that problem when I played through, but i kept distracting the ship. Barney is supposed to duck behind the steps or something right? Anyway i loved part 6, but is there a way to keep the traincars from breaking off, i was gunning on the last part, thinking that if i stayed back it wouldnt fall apart, but then after a second i realised the scenery stopped moving and took off after the rest of the train.

Also, is it possible to have rebels target combine air units? It would be useful for parts later on...

Also, just remembered that the guy in the airlock has the wrong script and wont more vor anything, i had to go out through the observation area and jump down. Any idea whats wrong?

[DaMaN]

1. DON'T USE A game_end UNLESS IT'S REALLY THE END OF THE MAP!!! (for example 6a create a mapadd that you provide in the archive file until the rest is done then you simply can delete that mapadd and it continues with the other maps, but no game_end in the map itself PLEASE!)

2. use a trigger_changelevel for Transistation instead of an point_servercommand...

My bad - i thought that if the game ended I'd have enough time to change the level via the servercommand. Also, I was told by W0rf0x a loong time ago not to use the trigger_changelevel because it caused problems on dedicated servers, but I guess that's been fixed since then.

I'll change them all to changelevels and take out the game_ends.

barney: "oh shit its a dropship, i just keep standing in front of it so it kills me instead of taking cover" + what neico said are my only concerns.

And grr at 06a, im doing something similar in warehouse onslaught

Barney's supposed to duck behind the stairs so he doesn't get raped by the dropship, but I guess it doesn't work sometimes.

Hehe yea, I got the idea for 06a from another couple of maps and also the trainride out from episode 1. It's a pretty neat effect. (Oh, and also from op4's intro/extro sequences )

Didnt have that problem when I played through, but i kept distracting the ship. Barney is supposed to duck behind the steps or something right? Anyway i loved part 6, but is there a way to keep the traincars from breaking off, i was gunning on the last part, thinking that if i stayed back it wouldnt fall apart, but then after a second i realised the scenery stopped moving and took off after the rest of the train.

Also, is it possible to have rebels target combine air units? It would be useful for parts later on...

Also, just remembered that the guy in the airlock has the wrong script and wont more vor anything, i had to go out through the observation area and jump down. Any idea whats wrong?

Nope, the train disengages in sections - nothing you can do about it.

I've always wondered if it's possible to have rebels targetting combine air units - I need them to do so for a future map, but they just kind of stand there slackjawed.

Oh, yea, I don't know why the guy in the airlock does that - it's really annoying because it's not in the map at all - he's supposed to do a sequence, then stand there. Not run up to you then run back. But if he does end up blocking you you can at least go out via the observation route.

---

Well, I played through a bit with W0rf0x and Neico, but had to ditch out half-way through. (Sorry guys). I'd like to play more/again with people - it's interesting the different things people do in the maps.

[fug4life]

Played through a couple of times now.

I think you should be happy with what you've done.
I think its shaping up to be a nice series, the alyx bit was alittle unexpected but I think you pulled it off as well as could be with out the beauty of faceposer etc. I mentioned most of the bugs (which were really in 01). 02 & 03 I see no troubles.

04, Cool start having metros open door, my only gripes is the lighting difference from out side to inside out side is too dark right up to the force field. And once you go inside you'll notice the pipe is a bit wierdly shaded.
Alyx is tough on your own or with two if you mess it up but with 4 players its no real trouble.

05, Controversial but I like it that way. The whole escort thing is done well and as long as it goes back to map start if you fail i'm happy. I'm glad this mission critical stuff can be replayed easily. Because on a 10 map mission you dont want to start again to far back. This sort of style is always difficult but fun when achieved and done right.
But it needs a bit of refining to make it a less noob as possible, now hostages dieing I can take! Barney I can take (although does he actually teleport from place to place at times as it seems like he does which makes keeping up with him or keeping an eye on him difficult I'd prefer he ran the full distance & make players wait for him, not him waiting for players).

Firts time at drop ship yes went horribly wrong, but he dosent get in the way too much as long as players are on top of things and make sure nothing makes it out of the dropship.

So the only real gripe and something you have to fix is:

The players ability to hurt friendly npcs especially the metro cop. there must be a way of filtering no damage for him surely?

thats about it.

train ride loved and I hope W0rf0x still decides to work on something similar. No harm in more train stuff, even gand made a decent once that needs finishing. Yours reminds me half of his and half of broken escape/ep1.

Gripe with 06 is that the turret guns look abit over the top with the binoculars, would be cool if we could use, if not I think they aren't so pretty. and this map feels too bright, I know there are shadows but it feels almost full bright dark lighting for those gritty textures!

Just my first impressions.

All is well, I was a bit Woah? were's he going with alyx and oh no kleiners lab, but like I said I think you got away with it and did rather well to pull it off smoothly sequence wise & bug hitch free. But now I've played a bit and know a little about the future direction of a couple of the later maps feel quite comfortable with the whole thing now if I wasn't at first.

So,

gj


P.s I hope 01-06a you want to polish up (fingers crossed quickly) before moving on. But I know how it is and how the heart jumps from one task to another in hammer.

[DaMaN]

Played through a couple of times now.

I think you should be happy with what you've done.
I think its shaping up to be a nice series, the alyx bit was alittle unexpected but I think you pulled it off as well as could be with out the beauty of faceposer etc. I mentioned most of the bugs (which were really in 01). 02 & 03 I see no troubles.

I gotta say I'm pretty happy with what's been done. Though I'll be truly very happy once I get the rest of the series released

04, Cool start having metros open door, my only gripes is the lighting difference from out side to inside out side is too dark right up to the force field. And once you go inside you'll notice the pipe is a bit wierdly shaded.
Alyx is tough on your own or with two if you mess it up but with 4 players its no real trouble.

Yea, I saw the pipe you mentioned when we were playing. Should just be an info_lighting_origin fix. Also, I'll see about brightening it up a bit, though I've got my brightness set pretty high so i didn't notice it was that dark

05, Controversial but I like it that way. The whole escort thing is done well and as long as it goes back to map start if you fail i'm happy. I'm glad this mission critical stuff can be replayed easily. Because on a 10 map mission you dont want to start again to far back. This sort of style is always difficult but fun when achieved and done right.
But it needs a bit of refining to make it a less noob as possible, now hostages dieing I can take! Barney I can take (although does he actually teleport from place to place at times as it seems like he does which makes keeping up with him or keeping an eye on him difficult I'd prefer he ran the full distance & make players wait for him, not him waiting for players).

Controversial eh?

Playing with you, W0rf0x, and others, the most annoying thing I found was the citizens would only follow one person! Which was annoying when that one person went afk. Any chance of getting them to follow the !activators?

The resetting of the map I think worked decently - I played for a bit on other servers and people generally got the message after the second reset.

And I suppose if Barney ran from place to place it'd be better. I'll try playing around with it a bit. =)

First time at drop ship yes went horribly wrong, but he dosent get in the way too much as long as players are on top of things and make sure nothing makes it out of the dropship.

So the only real gripe and something you have to fix is:

The players ability to hurt friendly npcs especially the metro cop. there must be a way of filtering no damage for him surely?

That's certainly gotta be changed. My bad. W0rf0x made a mapadd which works great, so play it on his server

thats about it.

train ride loved and I hope W0rf0x still decides to work on something similar. No harm in more train stuff, even gand made a decent once that needs finishing. Yours reminds me half of his and half of broken escape/ep1.

Gripe with 06 is that the turret guns look abit over the top with the binoculars, would be cool if we could use, if not I think they aren't so pretty. and this map feels too bright, I know there are shadows but it feels almost full bright dark lighting for those gritty textures!

I wanted a decent combine-ish mount, and the binos were the best i could come up with. And the light thing is because there's almost no solid brushes, it's all entities, which don't block light. I'll try messing around with some block_light brushes, maybe that'll work...

Just my first impressions.

All is well, I was a bit Woah? were's he going with alyx and oh no kleiners lab, but like I said I think you got away with it and did rather well to pull it off smoothly sequence wise & bug hitch free. But now I've played a bit and know a little about the future direction of a couple of the later maps feel quite comfortable with the whole thing now if I wasn't at first.

So,

gj

Glad to hear I got away with it I really wanted to hook this series in closely with Half life 2 and give a (possible) explanation for some of what goes on (but I'll talk about that in another post), and I think I did a decent job. (But that's really for you guys to decide. )

P.s I hope 01-06a you want to polish up (fingers crossed quickly) before moving on. But I know how it is and how the heart jumps from one task to another in hammer.

Well, I'm really eager to finish up 06b and start working on finishing 07 and 08, but I suppose I can take some time to fix up some bugs in 01-06a first

Besides, I've got all the pakratting stuff all ready for it anyways...

[Hell-met]

So much text and no pictures

[DaMaN]

So much text and no pictures

BTW, I've made a few more posts in my blag, in particular, part 5 of the Return to City 17 posts can be found here: http://daman-amappersworld.blogspot.com ... art-v.html

[Hell-met]

That apc is clipping inside the ground real bad

looking fine so far, I mean the parts you actually mapped !

[DrewR]

hey daman great job, i absolutely love these maps. im not huge on the train map but i love all the tunnel maps and how you incorporated a lot of the story. i love the feeling you get as a rebel when you enter city 17 at the same time as Gordon has, its just too bad we don't get to see Gordon at all. or at least i never saw him. thanks for all the effort and time buddy, you are skilled.