I've never played any Half Life games

[tuluse]

The entire premise of the game is that everything that happens in the game is supposed to happen to the player, not the character, something modern fag developers don't seem to comprehend for some reason. There is no Gordon Freeman. You are Gordon Freeman.

And the reason it didn't work in the sequel is simply due the fact Half Life 2 was poorly done by comparison, no more, no less. Valve bought too much into their own hype and started pandering to the player from the get go. The game was so self conscious it bordered on parody at times.

That's what's clever about it though. The player is unable to speak, so Gordon is unable to speak.

 

[nil]

I think the 'player=character' thing would have worked better if they didn't give you an identity. If you just walked out of a room at the beginning and nobody would know who you are, or what you are doing there. And it would never need to get answered.
The only effect of being Gordon Freeman was that they had an excuse to have you in test chamber. Even in HL2 it is irrelevant. You are known for what happened after the accident, not for who you are.

 

[tuluse]

It was fun having all the scientists annoyed at you at the beginning of HL1 because you didn't know what to do.

 

[octavius]

Speaking of Marathon, anyone tried the Marathon:Resurrection TC for Unreal Tournament?
I was trying out the Aleph One version of Marathon, trying to find out how to save the bloody game, when a Google search alerted me to the existence of the UT mod. Since I found the controls of the Aleph One Version a bit weird and jerky (maybe because it has, if I'm not mistaken, a Mac emulator inbuilt), I thought maybe the UT version might be a better choice, although I'm sure it's not as faithful to the original.

 

[iqzulk]

I was trying out the Aleph One version of Marathon, trying to find out how to save the bloody game

By using a save terminal. The trick is to get to one in the first place. Reeeeeeeally tricky to get to the first one in one piece on the higher difficulties, actually.

Mac emulator inbuilt

Nah, it's just an enhanced fan port of Marathon2's (or MarathonInfinity's, not sure about that) engine (Bungie shared the source code something like in 1999 or so) with Marathon1's campaign recreated in it (M1's and M2's engines are different enough so that M2's engine simply doesn't understand M1's files outright) using textures and whatnot from the first Marathon - and with a custom physics model, resembling the one from the original game (grenade jumping/hopping is different for example, AFAIK - some secrets even ended up being unreachable due to this change). It more or less faithful to the original, apart from a different interface, and some really botched (or just not very carefully implemented) scripting here and there (well, they could've fixed the scripting issues by now, don't know about that). Also, keep in mind that texture filtering really, really looks like ass in this particular game - and I would really advise you to use Software Renderer with the original textures (as in turning all the texture mods off in AlephOne options), if you decide to proceed with AlephOne's version.

I thought maybe the UT version might be a better choice, although I'm sure it's not as faithful to the original.

Or you could just set up the Basilisk and play the original. (shudders) Or, then again, maybe better not.
If you decide to follow that particular rabbit hole (as in playing Marathon on System7 via Basilisk) to the very end though, be sure to install QuickTime2.5 ONLY - if you use QT3 or higher, you probably won't be able to uninstall/downgrade it, and all the Marathon's music will sound absolutely wrong with it.

Anyways, no, I haven't played this mod (although I knew about its existence) - but, oddly enough, I'm kinda interested right now in what Marathon would look like on UT's engine (LOLWUTWTF?! Shotguns in mah Marathon 1?)... Hope there is a playthrough of this thing on youtube or something (EDIT: nope. sonuvabitch), because I'm not going back to that thing even for some flashy UT graphics (as if still having Marathon Infinity to finish wasn't bad enough).

 

[octavius]

Anyways, no, I haven't played this mod (although I knew about its existence) - but, oddly enough, I'm kinda interested right now in what Marathon would look like on UT's engine (LOLWUTWTF?! Shotguns in mah Marathon 1?)... Hope there is a playthrough of this thing on youtube or something (EDIT: nope. sonuvabitch), because I'm not going back to that thing even for some flashy UT graphics (as if still having Marathon Infinity to finish wasn't bad enough).

You should try it. Damned smooth after having tried Aleph One, which means me not getting seasick, which is a huge bonus.
In addition to the better audiovisuals the enemies are smarter too - instead of rushing you they try to ambush you.
I had some problems getting the uMod file to work and had to use a third party program to install it. Now the only problem is to get those crosshairs to show up...never played UT before, so I'm not sure if it's an UT thing or something the mod does.
EDIT: turns out the crosshairs have been modded out, which would have been fine if the weapon was in the middle of the screen.

Oh, and there is a playthrough on YouTube.

 

[DraQ]

The fuck is that?

Ok, it does look as if it was made by time-travelers trying to warn players of popamole to come, and the title is a dead give-away, but what the fuck does it have in common with Half-Life when it's pretty much its polar antithesis?

Half-Life's main gimmick (still relevant, but not necessarily connected to stuff that actually made it good) was that of an immersive shooter taken to logical conclusion.

It's main tenets were:

1. Removal of game-y stuff. No floating, rotating weapons, no powerups, no nonsensical item placements, no marked end level elevators, no undivided ammo pools, no 100 rockets in backpack, convincing environments.
   
2. Everything exclusively in first person. No cutscenes, even for intro or outro. No meanwhiles. No awesomecam. You see only what your character does (if only more devs subscribed to this paradigm).
   
3. No autonomous player character's actions that could conflict with the player's - no awesome button, and no cutscene paralysis unless the PC is immobilized in-universe.

Meanwhile you present a game that pretty much consists of jarring awesomecam cutscenes (usually for no reason) and awesome button (grenade the columns!) as its chief elements as in some way similar to HL.

True, HL was pretty linear, but it wasn't really its defining element and it wasn't really above par in terms of linearity.
OTOH it went great lengths to not make player feel artificially constrained, and allowed for good deal of interactivity and use of environment. For example, you could find a maintenance shaft leading to a turret that would shoot you up later on and disable it with a switch, you could use autoturrets to deal with enemies, you could use light switch in a wrecked room to electrify water to set up trap for headcrabs, or to cut off electricity allowing you to wade in it safely, you could trigger fire doors, or use barnacles ot reach normally unreachable places, sometimes with stuff hidden there.

It's also true that HL had a large amount of set pieces, but they always sort of worked in the background and generally served to reinforce the image of Black Mesa as real place, beyond what was possible with standard environment reactivity or NPC code and anims. So you had background NPCs in all sorts of jeopardies, NPCs dying in unique ways, a lot of talking, walking and sometimes acting NPCs, and some environment getting fucked up by nearby mayhem. You never had to suffer through a cutscene of the PC doing something awesome with player only spectating, quite the contrary, some set pieces would reward player capable of thinking quickly and doing awesome stuff employing purely mechanical means.
Sequences forcing player to watch and wait were also relatively rare and limited to narratively relevant events (intro, outro and an NPC speaking before performing permissive action, the only lengthy instance of it was pre-jump preparation which served both as a breather and to prepare player for something completely different).
Finally, very few set pieces that weren't completely in the background had metagame effects - that was pretty much limited to about 1-2 turret waves in the entire game.

Lastly, ;et's not forget that HL was also a very strong game mechanically, as I detailed in this thread before.

I thought it was strongly implied that Freeman is mute. He is unable to talk.

Lolwut.

It was a running 4-th wall joke in HL2, but it was nowhere implied seriously.
Freeman, as a character doesn't talk, because other than his fictional thesis and his fairly stereotypically nerdy guy image, Freeman doesn't exist as a character.

There is no Freeman, because Freeman is merely player receptacle, that never does anything, not even saying anything or grunting in pain, on his own.
All his actions are player's.

 

[iqzulk]

The fuck is that?

It's a game that had: shieldregen, ammo recharge / weapon overheat mechanics instead of ammo pickups, excessive auto-aim, operator giving you instructions (failing to follow instructions and opening the wrong doors could lead you to tougher-than-usual gunfights or to just being instadeathed by a giant robot), cutscenes on killing the last enemy in squad (just like in Max Paynes', but prerendered), explicit "hold on until I hack this door" and "flee from this giant unkillable robot" situations, and enemies who were at least pretending to be using cover. It was a strictly linear rollercoaster romp through a variety of excessively scripted gameplay situations - and I really think that it's highly impressive, how they managed to land almost at the exact same spot, all of those cinematic FPS AAA games later moved towards.

but what the fuck does it have in common with Half-Life when it's pretty much its polar antithesis?

Nothing except both having a common platforming progenitor (despite having inherited completely different subsets of its qualities) both being linear rollercoaser romps through linear sequences of heavily directed gameplay situations, and both being set in the pseudo-realistic set-pieces with an explicit attempt to contextualize as much of their stuff as possible (only two weapons, you are in the enemy's skyscraper = no health pickups, no ammo pickups or new guns of any kind, the only directions are those of the operator in the chopper circling nearby and with a fancy scanning tech, autoaim because, well, your character, as a former merc, had access to that kind of tech, etc.; the only truly "gamey" stuff there is that there are "slow bullets").

Half-Life's main gimmick (still relevant, but not necessarily connected to stuff that actually made it good) was that of an immersive shooter taken to logical conclusion.

True. And this gimmick is actually what differentiates this game from A2015 (since the latter obviously didn't give a fuck about taking immersiveness to its logical conclusion - nor did Another World or Heart of Darkness, both of which had plenty of cutscenes). What makes those games quite similar, however, is the fact that both are linear romps through the sequences of explicitly directed (through the heavy use of scripting) gameplay situations.

Removal of game-y stuff. No floating, rotating weapons, no powerups, no nonsensical item placements, no marked end level elevators, no undivided ammo pools, no 100 rockets in backpack, convincing environments.

As I've already shown above, the same more than applies to A2015. Not to mention Pathways into Darkness (already mentioned by me earlier in this thread) that was all about IMMERSHUN and CONTEXTUALIZATION and was released 5 (five) years before HL.

Everything exclusively in first person. No cutscenes, even for intro or outro. No meanwhiles. No awesomecam. You see only what your character does (if only more devs subscribed to this paradigm).
No autonomous player character's actions that could conflict with the player's - no awesome button, and no cutscene paralysis unless the PC is immobilized in-universe.

You do understand that all of that largely affects only game's "flavor" without affecting the way its gameplay challenges are structured, right?

and it wasn't really above par in terms of linearity

It totally was. Not compared to A2015 though - this one takes the cake.

OTOH it went great lengths to not make player feel artificially constrained, and allowed for good deal of interactivity and use of environment.

And it failed miserably. It was visually dull, "cubic" and sterile, with too little amount of extra passages with any sort of non-trivial extra stuff in unexpected places and with too much useless empty spaces in completely wrong places, where there should have been none at all. Compare it to, say, 3rd and 4th levels of Shadow Warrior (1997), which are, as well, more or less linear romps through sequences of rigidly designed scenarios. They have this dense variety of stuff both visual and gameplay-related, they have secrets and puzzles, active rotation of enemy types, colors and geometries of the locales, they have speed and absolute minimum of useless space (except from maybe a bit of it in the forest part of the 4th level). Moreover, they are these HUGE levels without a single loading screen in between (Half-Life, in contrast to that, had quite frequent loading screens - so in order to cover them up, it attempted to kind of blend the adjacent maps one into another, so that the player doesn't feel any "level boundaries" thematic-wise or gameplay-wise, except for the places where it it explicitly needed - however, they overdid it, and this "guideline" of theirs was the direct cause of all the monotony and the general lack of distinctive landmarks signifying your progress; again, in order to cover up frequent loading screens, developers attempted to kind of muddy/conceal those boundaries by making levels flow one into another seamlessly and without any sudden skips and hitches, so the maps were not perceived as different "levels to beat" - they severely overdid it, however, and, thus, largely hindered the sense of actual progress of the player through the ingame levels precisely due to the severe lack of anything really-explicitly-no-joke sticking out and due to everything just flowing into everything). Yes, they are not contextualized nearly as well as Half-Life levels are (although, ironically, one of the main gripes I had with Half-Life was about me not understanding just how the fuck this monotonous empty metaphorical tunnel with almost no side paths and almost no stuff to interact with, was supposed to represent this apparently GIANT MASSIVE SPRAWLING COMPLEX; just how the fuck are we supposed to understand that it's GIANT and SPRAWLING if the only thing we ever do there is intuitively [and aimlessly] moving forward pressing metaphorical X, without almost any visual landmarks truly sticking out, while the game kinda solves itself, and we kinda end up where we needed to get to regardless?), but they simply constitute a MUCH better game (and in case of those two particular levels - a very similar kind of game as well). Specifically due to their developers knowing how to level-design. Actually, I wouldn't say Half-Life had much better level-design than, say, Breakdown (it was actually a direct HL clone in an FPS+beatemup/brawler format, made by Japanese of all people

Spoiler

so you can kind of guess the quality of its levels based on whether or not Japanese developers are known for designing decent levels for first-person games

Spoiler

they are not

- it also took IMMURSHUN to the whole new level - first person vomiting and first person soda drinking included).
And, about interactivity - no, backtracking to chargers and destroying endless crates and rotating endless valves the only possible way does NOT constitute any kind of interesting interactivity in my personal opinion. Although, after watching the footage from 1997 alpha-version of the game, I kinda understand (on some formal level) that they kinda made quite a big of a deal about being able to interact with the stuff in a variety of ways. Again, in terms of interaction with environment, Shadow Warrior was a much more interesting game - mostly due to puzzles and all the secrets.

For example, you could find a maintenance shaft leading to a turret that would shoot you up later on and disable it with a switch, you could use autoturrets to deal with enemies, you could use light switch in a wrecked room to electrify water to set up trap for headcrabs, or to cut off electricity allowing you to wade in it safely, you could trigger fire doors, or use barnacles ot reach normally unreachable places, sometimes with stuff hidden there.

OK, I admit, these are much more interesting examples - but that kind of stuff only happened like a couple of times throughout the entire game - and was greatly undermined by all the monotony that was in between. And the turret wielding sections were very lazily done. "Oh, so here is a turrett? We'll just spawn some enemies from thin air for half a minute, have fun!"

So you had background NPCs in all sorts of jeopardies, NPCs dying in unique ways, a lot of talking, walking and sometimes acting NPCs, and some environment getting fucked up by nearby mayhem.

And somehow all of those fancy sequences (including mandatory ones, such as tentacle grabbing the scientist or the rocket start) took qqqqqqqquite a bit longer than any of those 2seconds "door open"/"enemy blown to bits" prerendered cutscenes from A2015, you seemed to complain about.

Lastly, ;et's not forget that HL was also a very strong game mechanically

Riiiiight. Because

wide variety of hitscanners, oneshotting-grenade-throwing-assholes, annoying invisible "backstabbing" assholes, bullet sponges, blood cousins of Daikatana's jumping frogs and mosquitoes, and the "enemies" that could hurt you only if you played with your eyes closed - all of them slow and static (could even one of HL's enemies fire on the run (except for all the choppers and the melee dudes)? I honestly don't remember)... are "oh so a fucking blast" to fight with ("b-b-b-b-but different AIs!")

And no, I absolutely don't care how exciting it was flying over crossfire using a tau gun, I am strictly a single-player guy - and HL didn't utilize its "very strong mechanics" in the actual "game" very well at all. Although, yes, I definitely admit, that it's still a much stronger mechanics than that of A2015.

 

[DalekFlay]

 

[iqzulk]

Oh, and there is a playthrough on YouTube.

Well it's kinda in 240p and it covers less than a third of a game, so...

Anyways,

You should try it.

Actually, I just did. Because I am a masochist like that. This is what I have to say after (almost) completing two levels on TC keyboard-only.

Spoiler

Damned smooth after having tried Aleph One, which means me not getting seasick, which is a huge bonus.

Yeah, well, the difference between this mode's 60 fps and capped AlephOne's 30fps (not to mention original Marathon1's jerkiness on Basilisk) is just stunning. Movement, gun animations, melee (a bit more on that below) - all of that feels smooth, responsive and awesome (the low-grav and the inertia got ditched). I mean, this is what Bungie should have ideally done, and this is what Marathon reimagining they MIGHT be developing now alongside Destiny (although I'm not sure why would Jason Jones actually want to do that), should probably flow and fell like. This is certainly pleasant and playable on a most basic level.

The two levels I've seen are basically carbon copies of the original Marathon levels with UT-grade graphics and some extremely minor tinkers here and there in order to accommodate the switch in jumping mechanics (the old Marathon used inertia-based horizontal pseudojumps, this one ditches them along with the low gravity thing - and makes you use proper vertical jumps as well as the dodging mechanics). HOWEVER, I should note, that there are numerous differences in enemy placements between the original Marathon (either that or the game failed to spawn all of the enemies correctly while on Basilisk) and the AlephOne's M1A1 - and this mod definitely seems to follow M1A1's suit. Also, while I kinda appreciate them going "this looks EXACTLY like an 'HD version' of Marathon", it seems like a kind of waste to me that they didn't go with a more stylized look. Kinda like this one:

Spoiler

The tracker recreations of Marathon's music though are quite badly done - and I am pretty sure tracker music can do quite a bit better. The new tune playing in the main menu was alright though.

In addition to the better audiovisuals the enemies are smarter too - instead of rushing you they try to ambush you.

Actually, no. They just have a piss-poor pathfinding code (and this is one of the few occasions where the stuff was done MUCH better in the original Marathon than in this remake). Because running left and right just behind the corner and receiving 4 consecutive bullet hits while attempting to get past said corner is not called "laying a good ambush". Moreover, the enemies in this mod don't seem to have any sort of squad awareness, so you can aggro them one by one (or by two). The good example is the very beginning of the game. In the original, as soon as ANY of the initial enemies saw you, the whole squad (3 fighters in the rooms overseeing the starting corridor, two more fighters in the big room to the right) immediately started closing in on you. Moreover, if you got to that big room to the right, with a window overseeing a hangar, another group of enemies, a floor below, COULD SEE YOU through THEIR window - and then the entire squad (4 more fighters) went to your position to participate in the party. The whole thing basically turned into this insane gangrape mere seconds after the start of the game. In contrast to that, in this mod you can take out first three enemies overlooking the corridor one by one, without ANY of them suspecting anything before you hit them. Then you leisurely deal with two enemies in that big room to the right. Then you get to the staircase to the room leading in the room on the lower level, the one with 4 fighters - and you aggro TWO of them, which are further away from the entrance, hitting one with a fucking pistol (two others still don't react), then you deal with the remaining two, then - well, you get the idea. And while I appreciate the ability to clear my path to the very first checkpoint in the game after less than 30-50 tries, I don't think ditching squad related awareness is an improvement.

Another issue is the melee combat with those fighter dudes. The original game almost REQUIRED you to evade enemy's blow using sidestepping (strafing) after a hit. Trying to do it backwards, not sideways, almost always resulted in you getting hit back (in case you haven't mastered the extremely tight timings). The second game made backpedaling quite a bit easier due to less inertia and more responsive controls, but it still was quite a bit more preferable to evade melee attacks by strafing. In the mod, you can, like, absolutely whip their ass in mere seconds by alternating between moving forwards (and hitting while moving forward scores much more damage, as it was in the original game) and backwards due to much slower attacks on their part and due to them getting kicked back after your successful hit.

Yet another issue is their movement patterns. In the original game - I don't know if that was by design or by some pathfinding quirks - the fighter dudes (yes, Pfhors, I know) ALWAYS spread out through the room while also closing on you. It was like they were consciously - and effectively! - trying to take you in a pincer movement. And if you ever got stuck on one of them, the others close on you in mere seconds - and then it was almost immediate game over (the only chance in case they surrounded you was to kill one of those guys [if you just happened to have an actually decent and not_reloading gun in your hands at that moment] and to break through the resulting opening). They were, like, a real threat on the early stages of the game specifically because of their tendency to effectively surround you, your tendency to getting stuck on them and some environmental elements (such as barrels), and your tendency to die almost instantly regardless of how much HP you had before your fatal mistake, if they managed to cut off all the space for you to maneuver in. Instead, in mod they are just running towards you (and dodging the slow projectiles - but I'll talk about that a bit further ahead) and, when close enough, they engage you in melee and get their asses kicked almost immediately. Rest assured, I DID manage to get my ass kicked by getting surrounded by them, but it was one time only, and because I made an extremely dumb mistake.

So, in mod, all those fighter dudes are, like, these dumb worthless enemies you dispatch left and right without even thinking and without their posing any kind of considerable threat.

And what my surprise was when I discovered that the ranged dudes are FUCKING SKAARJS! I mean, that damn thing's constantly running after you, spewing plasma shots left and right (each hit does away a quarter of you HP scale) and trying to score a melee hit whenever possible. And I am not really sure, but I kinda suspect it can fire prediction shots too. And it's definitely able to effectively dodge your slow assault rifle grenades (melee dudes can dodge it too, but why the fuck would you want to waste precious grenade shots on those no-goodniks?). And I can't even begin to state just how overpowered this ranged enemy ends up compared to melee one - up to the point of me considering it more dangerous enemy than a fucking Compiler/S'pht (by the way, those seem to take twice as much fist punches now in order to get dispatched - moreover, they seem to be indestructible when close to consoles, so you need to slowly kick them back from it - probably a bug). And since the enemy placements seem to be unaltered... let's just say that there is a place in this game where you need to fight 10 or 15 of them at the same time - and they have this annoying ability to dodge rockets now.

Now, I am all for challenge - and I fucking LOVE Unreal. However 1) I am not really sure Skaarj-Pfhors fit the game at all, especially with that kind of radical rebalance compared to the original Marathon (especially in contrast to just how carefully the levels and the enemy placements themselves got recreated). 2) It really feels like playing some UT mod rather than a definitive version of Marathon at those moments.

Also that trap in the end of the second level, which gave me a LOT of pain in the original Marathon, got totally botched in this mod, due to the pathfinding idiocy - this time on part of S'phts/Compilers.

EDIT: turns out the crosshairs have been modded out, which would have been fine if the weapon was in the middle of the screen.

The sad thing is that the assault rifle is placed asymmetrically when in the "centered" position - and it's REALLY fucking distracting when trying to score a grenade hit.

 

[octavius]

Well, I only brifely played the Aleph One version, but it seemed to me like they just suicided against my magnum.
And yes, those aliens sure remind me of the Skaarj.
The melee ones are weak, though. I once managed to kill three of them with one fist attack!
Did the original Marathon have in-fighting? It can be used quite successfully in the UT version.

 

[iqzulk]

Well, I only brifely played the Aleph One version, but it seemed to me like they just suicided against my magnum.

Well, I was talking about maximum difficulties for both games.

The melee ones are weak, though. I once managed to kill three of them with one fist attack!

The thing is, that there are two versions of each enemy (like, there are green fighter dudes and there are purple fighter dudes; there are red ranged dudes and there are blue ranged dudes, etc.). One of the things the difficulty modes differ is in which enemies placed on the level are of which of two ranks (corresponding to the given enemy type). On the highest difficulty, there are NO enemies of the lower ranks in the game AT ALL (like, ALL of the fighters are purple, there are simply no green ones; etc.). And, well, the purple fighters on my difficulty need at least 4 running punches.

Did the original Marathon have in-fighting? It can be used quite successfully in the UT version.

Yes, but it was quite tricky, so, I think, it's worth explaining in detail. The following relates mainly to the Pfhors ("fighter dudes", "ranged dudes", etc.). In order to cause infighting, you need two conditions. First: the enemy gets hit by another enemy. Second: that hit places it into near-death condition. Then the enemy who got hit goes absolutely berserk and starts attacking everyone left and right (it could be you or it could be one of his fellow comrades). When he attacks another enemy, that enemy does not respond until it goes berserk as well - and it does since he is attacked by his "comrade" - thus the berserk state spreads like a disease, decimating the entire enemy squad, currently engaged at you (moreover, the last standing berserked enemy could just ignore you, if you were far enough, and go to wreck havok in some entirely different part of the level at all). The only ways the infighting could stop, while multiple enemies were sill alive, were: 1) the only berserked enemy got accidentally hit by another stray shot/hit, that was actually meant for you; 2) two remaining berserked enemies managed to dispatch each other at exactly the same time (it actually happened quite frequently); 3) the berserked enemy just happened to lock onto you and not his comrades.
You could actually consciously "plant" half-dead enemies in the midst of enemy squad (if you managed to remember, who is who) in order to hopefully provoke some infighting and save some ammo. However, I wouldn't say it was such a good implementation of the mechanics due to 1) it being entirely dependent on luck, with enemy squad decimating itself entirely without your help in case you lucked out, and with you dispatching everyone one by one, all by yourself, in case you didn't luck out; 2) inability to effectively track the "planted" enemies due to the need to watch where you are going from time to time, and the enemies of the same class looking exactly the same, and those enemies moving constantly and unpredictably (different skins, depending on the damage suffered, could actually help this issue, but neither original Marathon, nor this mode have those).

Oh, and it also seemed that there were some enemy types that NEVER engaged into infighting, as well as some instances when a certain class of enemy went infighting after a single hit from an enemy of some other class, but I didn't delve into researching the particulars of all of that. Nor did I try to study just how exactly infighting happens in this mod.

 

[DraQ]

It's a game that had: shieldregen, ammo recharge / weapon overheat mechanics instead of ammo pickups, excessive auto-aim, operator giving you instructions (failing to follow instructions and opening the wrong doors could lead you to tougher-than-usual gunfights or to just being instadeathed by a giant robot), cutscenes on killing the last enemy in squad (just like in Max Paynes', but prerendered), explicit "hold on until I hack this door" and "flee from this giant unkillable robot" situations, and enemies who were at least pretending to be using cover. It was a strictly linear rollercoaster romp through a variety of excessively scripted gameplay situations - and I really think that it's highly impressive, how they managed to land almost at the exact same spot, all of those cinematic FPS AAA games later moved towards.

So what?
Is it a race to the bottom?
Am I supposed to clap because some shitty game managed to reach it in 1996?

True. And this gimmick is actually what differentiates this game from A2015 (since the latter obviously didn't give a fuck about taking immersiveness to its logical conclusion - nor did Another World or Heart of Darkness, both of which had plenty of cutscenes).

Could you please stop referring to Ass-Ass-in 2015 and Another World in one sentence?

My desire to punch you in the face detracts from civilized discussion.

What makes those games quite similar, however, is the fact that both are linear romps through the sequences of explicitly directed (through the heavy use of scripting) gameplay situations.

The thing you miss is that few of scripted situations in HL1 have much to do with gameplay. They are usually background or interludes.
Sure, there are some that do - vent shooting scene, satchel charge in the pipe or one or two mounted gun waves, but mostly they are disjoint. Gameplay is enlivened by scripted scenes, but hardly driven by them.

That's unless you refer to stuff like AI pathing as scripting, but then pretty much any shooter with any sort of advanced AI is scripted, Unreal and UT included.

As I've already shown above, the same more than applies to A2015. Not to mention Pathways into Darkness (already mentioned by me earlier in this thread) that was all about IMMERSHUN and CONTEXTUALIZATION and was released 5 (five) years before HL.

Projectiles you could circlestrafe around are hardly not gamey, plus any case for immersion in Ass-Ass 2015 is demolished by awesomecam engaging roughly every 10s to break you out of the game.

The other title is some mac exclusive antediluvian game I can't nor want to comment about.

You do understand that all of that largely affects only game's "flavor" without affecting the way its gameplay challenges are structured, right?

No, not right. Cutscenes and intrusive scripting compartmentalize game into neatly delimited chunks of gameplay and non-gameplay. Resulting gameplay chunks need to be self contained and transitions non-disorienting, which impoverishes the game.

HL1 never leaves first person perspective and its scripting doesn't intrude on mechanics' turf, meaning it retains rich and non-forced gameplay.

And it failed miserably. It was visually dull, "cubic" and sterile, with too little amount of extra passages with any sort of non-trivial extra stuff in unexpected places and with too much useless empty spaces in completely wrong places, where there should have been none at all. Compare it to, say, 3rd and 4th levels of Shadow Warrior (1997), which are, as well, more or less linear romps through sequences of rigidly designed scenarios.

"useless spaces" are entirely subjective.
Enemy variety is good in HL1 (not so much in 2) and it's overall a far more consistent game (as is to be expected - SW is a cheerful pastiche romp you shouldn't even try to analyze too much).

It is a bit corridory, but it does mask it using usual tricks old FPSes used to mask their typically linear nature - looping back onto themselves, backtracking, opening shortcuts to previously visited areas and environmentally cut-off routes.

Finally, HL1 doesn't feel constrained in that it generally doesn't employ invisible walls, illogical layouts or scripted events discouraging you from exploring. Compare it with your Ass-Ass (s)hit where trying to turn left instead of right gets you cutscene murdered by ED-209.

Moreover, they are these HUGE levels without a single loading screen in between (Half-Life, in contrast to that, had quite frequent loading screens - so in order to cover them up, it attempted to kind of blend the adjacent maps one into another, so that the player doesn't feel any "level boundaries" thematic-wise or gameplay-wise, except for the places where it it explicitly needed - however, they overdid it, and this "guideline" of theirs was the direct cause of all the monotony and the general lack of distinctive landmarks signifying your progress; again, in order to cover up frequent loading screens, developers attempted to kind of muddy/conceal those boundaries by making levels flow one into another seamlessly and without any sudden skips and hitches, so the maps were not perceived as different "levels to beat" - they severely overdid it, however, and, thus, largely hindered the sense of actual progress of the player through the ingame levels precisely due to the severe lack of anything really-explicitly-no-joke sticking out and due to everything just flowing into everything).

What a load of utter garbage.
There is nothing arcane about this sort of blending and it is in no way related with monotony and lack of thereof.
You simply take part of one level and copypaste it into another so the loading zone is between two environments that map 1-to-1 onto each other.
HL was set in secret facility in New Mexico so it didn't feature chinatowns, buddhist temples or battling demonic farting sumo fighters on slopes of great volcanoes. It's as simple as that.

And, about interactivity - no, backtracking to chargers and destroying endless crates and rotating endless valves the only possible way does NOT constitute any kind of interesting interactivity in my personal opinion.

Environment operated in logical manner (for example light switch could switch on or off the light, but if the lights were broken, with exposed cables hanging down and making contact with the water flooding the room, it electrified/de-electrified the water), turret breaker boxes could be used to activate/deactivate autoturrets (if you haven't destroyed them) and so on.

And somehow all of those fancy sequences (including mandatory ones, such as tentacle grabbing the scientist or the rocket start) took qqqqqqqquite a bit longer than any of those 2seconds "door open"/"enemy blown to bits" prerendered cutscenes from A2015, you seemed to complain about.

You completely miss the point. Again.

- those moments didn't appear every 10s.
- those sequences didn't take you out of character for no fucking reason
- there was definite narrative point to them, unlike completely pointelss cutscenes of shit blowing up or guards getting shot to pieces

Riiiiight. Because *DEEERRRRP*

Invisible backstabbing assholes were awesome, if only because they were actual, well implemented invisible backstabbing assholes using actual harassment tactics.
Marines were pretty effective with their 'nades and hitscans.
Aliens were diverse in not just looks and attack types, but also senses and behavior - some were quite effective as well.

I don't really care if enemies fire while running unless it contributes to turning the game into parody of itself as was the case with Q2.

And no, I absolutely don't care how exciting it was flying over crossfire using a tau gun, I am strictly a single-player guy - and HL didn't utilize its "very strong mechanics" in the actual "game" very well at all. Although, yes, I definitely admit, that it's still a much stronger mechanics than that of A2015.

In SP tau cannon could still fire through walls, various weapons were varyingly effective against various targets, and the enemy armour mechanics (DR, DT, partial armour) did affect the outcome of combat and so on.

 

[iqzulk]

Let me illustrate my point on a problem with level-design. By the way, I think the game looks absolutely stunning on software, min. gamma, and it's really a shame I didn't play it that way the first time. But that's besides the point.

I'll start here, with an empty green corridor

Spoiler

leading to this room

Spoiler

So here is this room with the coolant spilled everywhere. We need to get to the door. There is a single headcrab in the room. There is nothing else of interest in this room.

When we crawl through the door, we get into this hall (screenshot was taken after having traversed said hall).

Spoiler

Some heavily scripted stuff with lasers, a bit of waiting and a tiny bit of evading. There is nothing else in the entire hallway. There is a crowbar by the door. We break the glass - and we get into

Spoiler

this hallway. Nothing here except for this awesome device

Spoiler

and for a mandatory scripted scene with the falling elevator

Spoiler

So through the door we get into the elevator shaft

Spoiler

So in the bottom of the shaft there are remains of that fallen elevator

Spoiler

We can pick up an armor cell for 10 points or so if we actually get down there. If we get up via the ladder from the "Maintenance Access" plaque, we end up near this door with some strange noises coming from it

Spoiler

Here is how the shaft looks from up top

Spoiler

There is nothing in it except for the aforementioned armor cell.
We get into the looped hallway with these two zombies

Spoiler

a pistol next to a barney who died because I was too busy scoring screenshots and could not be arsed to help him

Spoiler

and here is another barney near the exit

Spoiler

There is nothing else in the looped hallway except for some awesome advertisement which doesn't work.
So, through the exit

Spoiler

we get into this hallway with two zombies

Spoiler

and one headcrab on head of a dead scientist not shown on the previous screen. The hallway in something like twice as long as the part shown above. There is nothing in it.
From the hallway we get into this already well-known part

Spoiler

there are some soda machines in the dining room (1 can = 1 hp) and we can find a couple of pistol clips in some dude's locker in the locker room. There is nothing else in this entire location, so we exit the map.

Spoiler

The door obviously doesn't open (although we can see some glimpses foreshadowing what lies ahead), if we go to the right, there is a fancy explosion. Nothing else to do here, so we head left

Spoiler

There is nothing to either collect, combat or interact with in either left hallway or the entrance hall, except for the alarm button in order to turn the alarm off (which serves no practical ingame purpose whatsoever).

Note, that this was the last of the locations, reused from the first chapter of the game.

Following the ventilation(?) opening from the last screenshot, we get into this awesome and complex-like looking room, we've caught glimpses of a bit before. Here, take a look, this room is worth it:

Spoiler

What is this room used for? Well, there is one headcrab, and there is one mainframe that explodes and topples. And the player is required to just go to these mainframes

Spoiler

and to just exit to the next room. What a waste. Anyways, from there we get into this hallway

Spoiler

There is a single headcrab attacking from a broken ventilation shaft - and there are two side rooms. The left one is there specifically to showcase an awesome script fight between a scientist and some headcrabs (spoiler: scientist loses), the door there is closed, and the glass is armed, so it impossible to either influence that scene or to eventually get into this room. The right room greets us with this iconic scene

Spoiler

There is absolutely nothing in this whole room except for a single zombie - and there is also nothing else in the hallway as well.
The exit

Spoiler

leads us in to this hallway with now truly dead zombie and dying barney.

Spoiler

Nothing except a single clip, and a health recharger - and we proceed further, to...

Actually, fuck it. Find all the instances of the words "nothing" and "empty" - and correspond them with the sizes of the rooms shown on the screenshots corresponding to each use of those words. The point is, that while all the space there is used by the game for showcasing the script sequences or for building believable environments or for whatever else artistic purposes for a quite great an effect, it's simply not adequately filled with any kind of gameplay-related stuff. As a result, Half-Life constitutes a rather... not very interesting (to put it lightly) exploratory game mechanics-wise. What saves the game (for it to capture the attention and curiosity of the player and to make him proceed further and further) is all the things artistic, and visual, and directional, and whatever. And if they (even if partially) fail for a particular player, the game has nothing to fall back to, illusion breaks and the boredom ensues.

 

[sea]

What are you trying to demonstrate? That the beginning of the game is highly linear? Funny how you didn't pick one of the mid- or late-game levels instead for your argument.

Perhaps you are also missing the point of that entire sequence - namely, to show the destroyed facility in detail and reinforce the danger of the accident in locations the player previously saw intact?

 

[iqzulk]

What are you trying to demonstrate? That the beginning of the game is highly linear?

That there is a marked dissonance between the scale of the place - and the fact that half of this scale is not used for anything else than as serving a screen for demonstrating a couple of awesome background script sequences. That there is a marked dissonance between all the lovely painted textures, flashy lighting, and all the scripted flashing mumbo-jumbos - and the fact that there are two enemies and one clip in the entire room - and nothing to interact with. That the entire detailed and lovely lighted rooms and corridors are there for the player literally to walk 10 meters through them, to break a glass and to never to return. That the level of visual fillup of the ingame world does not correspond to the level of fillup of those very locations with any significant amount of stuff interactable, collectable, and even combatable. That the visual sophistication contrasts with the insulting simplicity of what is required of player in the very same ingame place. That the level of danger the scripting seems to imply simply does not correspond in any way to the level of danger the main character is at the moment gameplay-wise. That Half-Life as an (apparently!) beautiful and lovingly modelleled game with beautiful environmental design - and at the same time it's also an empty game with level-design that is simply way_too_loose (in order to serve as a scene to all the scripting, all the explosions, sparks, rotating fans, etc.), which is one of the specific aspects I don't like about this game. That is is way more visual than it is interactive. That, if some hyperbolizing is acceptable, it's basically a cross between a proper FPS and a 2deep4u walking simulator (with the latter part never really fading away even in the late parts of the game). That the "2deep4u walking simulation" part is something one could specifically dislike about an FPS game.

Funny how you didn't pick one of the mid- or late-game levels instead for your argument.

I'll pick them when I get there. And hell knows WHEN I'll get there. I replay games extremely rarely (in this case there was an extremely compelling reason for me to do so - the software renderer), and when I do, I do it in a very disorderly and haphazard way. Besides, all the screenshottaking jazz is quite tiring (and I take a lot more of them than I showed here - primarily for myself). Although I can safely say, that On A Rail and Residue Processing are at least as much guilty of being "2deep4u walking simulations" as these beginning parts.

Perhaps you are also missing the point of that entire sequence - namely, to show the destroyed facility in detail and reinforce the danger of the accident in locations the player previously saw intact?

Perhaps the danger should be reinforced primarily via gameplay means in the first place? As in, making "staying alive" part actually challenging?
Also, the part with "already visited" locations already came to an end. And no, spoiler: the next set of locations is just as much of "walking simulator", as the one I've already shown.

OK, now I can go back to uploading more screenshots. Fucking finally.

 

[DalekFlay]

Even if parts of it are linear linear does not always mean bad. Call of Duty is bad because of poor level design, uninteresting combat, restricted player agency and a bunch of other things, not necessarily because it's linear.

 

[DraQ]

What are you trying to demonstrate? That the beginning of the game retracing linear intro is highly linear?

Improv'd.

 

[Nekrosis]

I have to admit, that I never finished Half Life 2. I played on my old Laptop when it came out and after a few hours I suffered from motion sickness so badly that I never touched it again. But that was years ago and I think I should give it another try with new hardware. Thanks for reminding me!!!

 

[iqzulk]

What are you trying to demonstrate? That the beginning of the game retracing linear intro is highly linear?

Improv'd.

That the "retracing linear intro" is highly empty, even if beautifully looking and effectively scripted. That it's much more of a canvas for the environmental designers and scripters to get wild, than it is a viable mechanically engaging gameplay space. As are the new locations that immediately follow (I should've totally uploaded the screens from a couple more rooms that follow yesteraday). Like this one:

Spoiler

(shown ~1/2 of total space). What's out there? A single headcrab, and a simpistic puzzle when you turn this valve, flood the tunnel system and swim up to one of the gratings located a in a couple of steps from the valve. Nothing else.

The problem is that there is just too damn much of travesable space in this game, the only purpose of which is to look liek totally kewl, while not being used for anything else (even for being a combat arena). My personal opinion is that if you need to use a lot of extra space in order to show mechanically empty, but OMG totally beautiful vistas, or some of the kewlest script sequences ever, that, however, have zero (or close to zero) mechanical effect on the character or the environenment, use unreachable spaces or verticality for that, but, pretty please, keep your gameplay spaces tight and up to a fucking point.

 

[octavius]

The "empty" areas in Half-Life never bothered me. Stupid jumping puzzles that break the flow of the game did.

 

[Carrion]

One of the key factors for Half-Life's atmosphere is that the facility just seems to go on forever, very rarely making you feel like you're actually close to getting out of that claustrophobic hellhole. The entire intro sequence with the train ride tries to show you the immense scale of the place, and the slow pacing of the first few chapters just reinforces this. Making the early levels "tighter" by adding more combat or cutting off locations would pretty much screw this up completely. Later in the game you do get stuff like Surface Tension which is intense as hell, which again shows how well-paced the game actually is.

 

[DraQ]

What are you trying to demonstrate? That the beginning of the game is highly linear?

That there is a marked dissonance between the scale of the place - and the fact that half of this scale is not used for anything else than as serving a screen for demonstrating a couple of awesome background script sequences. That there is a marked dissonance between all the lovely painted textures, flashy lighting, and all the scripted flashing mumbo-jumbos - and the fact that there are two enemies and one clip in the entire room - and nothing to interact with. That the entire detailed and lovely lighted rooms and corridors are there for the player literally to walk 10 meters through them, to break a glass and to never to return. That the level of visual fillup of the ingame world does not correspond to the level of fillup of those very locations with any significant amount of stuff interactable, collectable, and even combatable. That the visual sophistication contrasts with the insulting simplicity of what is required of player in the very same ingame place.

Really now.
It would be all well and good, after all not everyone needs to like the same kind of game, if it wasn't for the fact you like Unreal.
I actually prefer it to HL, but I consider superiority of one over another a matter of preference, and one of the notable features or failings of Unreal is relative scarcity of enemies contrasting with huge and awesome maps.

That the level of danger the scripting seems to imply simply does not correspond in any way to the level of danger the main character is at the moment gameplay-wise.

Did level of danger scripting implied correspond to gameplay level of danger in Doom 1&2? No.
In Quake? No.
In Quake 2?

Then why the fuck did it become an expectation in HL?

That Half-Life as an (apparently!) beautiful and lovingly modelleled game with beautiful environmental design - and at the same time it's also an empty game with level-design that is simply way_too_loose (in order to serve as a scene to all the scripting, all the explosions, sparks, rotating fans, etc.), which is one of the specific aspects I don't like about this game.

Again, those were part of both detailing the environment and making game "cinematic" without actually making it cinematic - there is all sorts of scripted movie shit going on in HL, but without it hijacking the actual gameplay.

Perhaps the danger should be reinforced primarily via gameplay means in the first place? As in, making "staying alive" part actually challenging?

Ever heard of difficulty curve?

It's the beginning of the game, it has to be easy-ish for a seasoned player, because it's meant to be doable by a noob before said noob GITZ GUD.
In pretty much all the other FPS games you can run around shooting stuff like a boss in the beginning even if you're running around military base turned hell's outpost - occupied by fucking forces of hell that have just slaughtered and zombified an entire army of highly trained space marines with no effort - armed with only a beretta and humongous pair of balls.

At least in HL you have an excuse of being busy dimension hopping while the worst shit was going down.
HL also actually gets threatening later on, as opposed to, say, Q2, where you're far more likely to get crushed by wonky elevator collision than in a firefight for the duration of the entire fucking game.

I remember that when I first fired HL when it was a relatively recent game, I was blown away (har har) by how powerful stuff like explosives was, relative to earlier FPS games.

tl;dr:

"I am terribly butthurt that HL is not Serious Sam"

 

[iqzulk]

It would be all well and good, after all not everyone needs to like the same kind of game, if it wasn't for the fact you like Unreal.

Unreal was basically an arena-based FPS, build upon the combat situations with a single type of enemy - the Scaarj (of a variety of different flavors). There were others, but they were somewhat (or even much) less interesting gameplay-wise. That enemy was mobile as fuck and required you to run around the entire arena in order to evade (and yes, apart from some ASMD-wielding Skaarj later on, Unreal was all about evading in contrast to HL with its hitscanning human opponents, hitscanning vortigaunt and the big alien dudes with the loads of auto-aiming alien flies, all of them forcing you to use the geometry as a cover, instead of running wildly) his attacks while scoring yours, and evading getting stuck on environmental geometry, thus fully utilizing the scale and the geometry of the place. As I've already noted, HL is much more static - and the fights don't make you utilize the physical dimensions of combat arenas all that much. There are some full-blown arena-like fights with HECU later on, that do somewhat require you to constantly move (as well as there are those two arenas with the backstabbing assholes), but, if I remember correctly, they are not all that frequent

Did level of danger scripting implied correspond to gameplay level of danger in Doom 1&2? No.

Why, yes. The only level of danger there seems to be implied by the game itself is through the corpses of all the marines on the levels - and since you can die there as well quite a few times (DooM - not so much, except for the 4th episode in Ultimate DooM, in DooM 2 with its number of new enemies with highly impressive damage numbers and harder-than-usual to evade ranged attacks - quite a bit more), I'd say it's perfectly adequate to the game.

In Quake? No.

WTF are you talking about? Have you ever played Quake on Nightmare?

Then why the fuck did it become an expectation in HL?

The expectation of the game not being a "walking simulator" because if I wanted one, I'd rather play one instead of an FPS game? Gee, I wonder. Besides, the "OMG EVERYTHING IS EXPLODING EVERYONE IS DYING MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEET!!!! What? No, you can't die, it's a tutorial, stupid." episodes, that seem to happen quite a bit in contemporary games, are stupid to no end.

Again, those were part of both detailing the environment and making game "cinematic" without actually making it cinematic - there is all sorts of scripted movie shit going on in HL, but without it hijacking the actual gameplay.

The environment got BLOATED specifically to FIT all that "cinematic environment" without adding anything to actually non-trivially combinatorically interact with in any way on all of that extra space. How is that not hijacking? Yes, it's cool to look at. I also need to walk through the whole damn thing without doing anything non-trivial. And that, in itself, is boring regardless of how cool it's to look at and how beautiful the colored lighting apparently is.

Ever heard of difficulty curve?

Perhaps you want to explain just how exactly lazily ducking under a slow scripted laser is supposed to totally make the player better in an FPS game?

It's the beginning of the game, it has to be easy-ish for a seasoned player, because it's meant to be doable by a noob before said noob GITZ GUD.
In pretty much all the other FPS games you can run around shooting stuff like a boss in the beginning even if you're running around military base turned hell's outpost - occupied by fucking forces of hell that have just slaughtered and zombified an entire army of highly trained space marines with no effort - armed with only a beretta and humongous pair of balls.

How about "armed with a majestic shotgun" instead? And about "said marines have killed quite a bit themselves, and then proceeded to the next levels before dying heroically"? Besides, HL has the very same exact conceptual problem (although somewhat circumvented with the use of uber-suit). And taking freaking forever to get to actually interesting gameplay challenges is not a very well done difficulty curve as well.

At least in HL you have an excuse of being busy dimension hopping while the worst shit was going down.

And in DooM you have an excuse of being busy sitting there twiddling your thumbs while being grounded for insubordination. Somebody clearly needs to read his "README.TXT", it seems.

HL also actually gets threatening later on, as opposed to, say, Q2, where you're far more likely to get crushed by wonky elevator collision than in a firefight for the duration of the entire fucking game.

Which, once again, brings us to the problem of most frequent and threatening enemies being hitscanners, granade-oneshotters and aito-aim spacefly spewers. Some mechanics just don't scale well to high difficulty level, becoming more frustrating than challenging / requiring non-trivial multistep solutions / some real finger dexterity. But, I think, it would be better to discuss that angle when I actually get to the corresponding episodes of the game (once again).

I was blown away (har har) by how powerful stuff like explosives was, relative to earlier FPS games.

Except that in Blood and Shadow Warrior explosives are just as deadly.

tl;dr:

"I am terribly butthurt that HL is not Serious Sam"

tl;dr:

"I am so totally in love with Dear Ether and stuff! Walking simulations and cinematographic environments FTW!"

 

[iqzulk]

One of the key factors for Half-Life's atmosphere is that the facility just seems to go on forever, very rarely making you feel like you're actually close to getting out of that claustrophobic hellhole.

So being a MEGASTRUCTURE-type of the game magically absolves the developers of the need to think about just how much space is there really needed for a given gameplay sequence, and from the necessity to adequately fill up their locations with at least something gameplay-related (and preferably having as much variety as possible; although, yes, in case of megastructure, the monotony could be used in order to get across the idea that it's, indeed, a megastructure - that doesn't mean, of course, that the "monotony" here need to be the "monotony of walking and watching scripted sequences") in case making a walking simulator is totally not a part of the plan? Also, Messiah, being a game about megastructure as well, used its space really damn well (gameplay-wise), for the most part.

and the slow pacing of the first few chapters just reinforces this.

And it would work even better by making the player to actually earn the right to progress through that environment, instead of just walking, watching scripted flavoury stuff and lazily dispatching a pair of houndeyes once in 5 minutes.

Making the early levels "tighter" by adding more combat or cutting off locations would pretty much screw this up completely.

Let me guess, adding something to jump on, duck under, evade, adding secret hard-to-reach stashes that just happened to have been buried under the rubble, using the environment to actively obsruct the visibility, thus keeping the player guessing what's behind that corner or a toppled giant piece of some broken machinery, instead of just traversing the straight 15m-hallway from the beginning to end without doing anything else, would screw this up completely as well?

Later in the game you do get stuff like Surface Tension which is intense as hell

I know.

Spoiler

And I fucking hate that chapter.