Playing Minerva with MMOD, as soon as I walk into this door the game CTDs
https://i.imgur.com/wpjjbXf.jpg
They didn't come in on ships. There was nothing to strike and no time to strike; they just appeared everywhere. The Combine were probably aware that humans possessed nuclear weapons and had contingencies for preventing launches, anyway.
Or perhaps they didn't bother, since nuclear weapons were ineffective against them anyway. The environmental damage in some areas of HL2 (especially if the Wasteland is canon) could easily fit a low-exchange scenario, especially with modern low-yield weapons.
Yeah while it's possible some nuclear weapons were deployed, their effectiveness is next to null. The portal storms forced humanity to congregate into cities, and when the Combine attacked, they attacked the cities. What are you going to do? Nuke your own capitols? Nuclear weapons were as useless as a hand grenade in a boxing match.
Noclipping around it looks like MMod is having trouble loading assets from MINERVA? on metastasis_3 and metastasis_4 there's a lot of missing models that are just like default HL2 stuff, and the console is throwing up constant errors about textures not being able to be loaded.
Gordon bunnyhops into the Combine Overworld and physics-kills the Combine Overlords but the explosion kills him in the process. Humans and alien species everywhere bond together over their lord and savior Gordon Freeman for leading them to salvation and everyone lives happily ever after. The end.
Until Half-Life 4 where the Church of the Free Man is now a corrupt children-diddling empire more powerful than the Combine that our new protagonist has to defeat.
Half-Life 4: Hero Beggining
This made me think, 7 Hour War game: A survival / puzzle / escape game where you play as Dr. Breen trying to get to the UN Headquarters to negotiate with the Aliens. Witness the stunning show of force without the frusteration of having to fight 20 Striders in a row.
I want a version of the story where Breen truly did what he felt he had to do for humanities survival and his vision for human uplifting via the combine was genuine.
I checked the SDK 1.0 source code and the spread is the same as it is now. Unless Valve used a different spread for the SDK from the beginning it should still be fine. However it does have twice the spread in multiplayer (6 degrees vs 3 in singleplayer).
It is related to the multiplayer detection. Originally, the low accuracy switch was meant for deathmatch, but it somehow reversed in 1.1.
Half-Life is inconsistent with its detection. It can check for either maxplayers > 1 or deathmatch = 1, if not a third method that I don't recall.
I see, i missed the inverted check. That change is from SDK 2.2, which predates Steam. It's an easy fix though.
Seems like 2.2 corresponds with Half-Life 1.1.0.8, which retroactively added lag compensation to Half-Life weapons.
Blue's News
Any idea what the other SDK versions correspond to?
This works both ways. Portal storms mean that danger can come from anywhere, anytime, in any form. This would increase military spending immensely, and force re-structuring, dotting cities with armored outposts outfitted with quick response teams, ready to take even Gargs on. World has all the chances to turn to completely militarized forms of governments, since the message of portal storms is rather clear for everyday Joe: "there IS alien life and it WANTS US DEAD; Grab a gun/enlist if you want to live/protect your close ones!"
I could say that anything DARPA-like is going to be SHOWERED in money to come up with new weapons, since traditional ones aren't cutting it for enemies that can spontaneously appear out of thin air anywhere.
You could bet that chemical and biological weapons would be unpacked and upgraded in a jiffy. After all, different form of life, different form of chemistry and large margin for stuff that could be virtually harmless for us but extremely deadly for Xen lifeforms. Besides there's always a use for nasty chemical stuff in the wild. Nothing wrong with dropping a bit of a chlorine on bunch of Xen goop trying to absorb local plant life (not that it'll succeed when left to it's own devices, mind you).
It is highly probable that creating equipment to detect any form of teleportation will become a very high priority research goal in order to detect aliens porting in before they start racking up a bodycount.
If we're going to go full plot-armor-penetration rounds here then Xen wildlife will have hard time coping with alien hellscape Earth is (for them). The lower gravity of Xen would render most of lifeforms that had lived there for generations completely helpless in high gravity of this here planet. It also would mean softer and less dense tissues, which means that BB gun could easily be deadly for them, let alone ol' good pummeling. Anything moist would inevitably become a host for variety of bacteria which are basically omnipresent here, which may or may not rapidly evolve to eat anything that didn't evolve a fitting counter to that. Anything viral though has extremely low chances to adapt fast enough to play any sufficient role, but this doesn't stop anyone with a gene gun (and multimillion laboratory) from engineering a Xen-compatible, Earth-incompatible strain of ebola married with flu.
Also no way in hell headcrabs can magically control human bodies, that goes straight out of the window. Alien biology, alien chemistry, who even says they can handle oxygen atmosphere and not catch fire? It's also easy to grow ignorant of the fact that water is a powerful solvent and just because WE as a carbon form of life happen to revolve around it doesn't mean it's healthy for everyone else. In case it isn't a single 10-minute shower can seriously ruin lives for tons and tons of invading aliens.
So if we get rid of all the plot armor, then at this point headcrabs are little else than softball-sized meat sacks with density of jellyfish practically glued to the floor by gravity and pose no threat whatsoever.
Let's move to the Combine. First of all, due to reasons outlined in previous posts in this thread they don't do any recon. Just jump in and wreck the place until it's subjugated. Now if we remind ourselves that majority of our planet is covered in water, we have at least several armies falling into the unrelenting ocean. Again, gravity can and WILL be an issue for just about everyone: flying units, ground units... And water pressure at the bottom of the ocean is no joke. Not taking in account that water and even water vapor itself could just melt incoming forces. Whoops!
On ground it again becomes a problem, since both the civilians AND the army will move to large cities, Combine forces have huge chances of standing in the open with no targets in sight, just wastelands. And with portal detection technology (or ol' good spy sat imagery) they just announced their entry with huge portal in a middle of nowhere and thus made themselves a target for anything WMD and especially anything area-denial. Thermobarics, tactical nukes, chemical weapons (FOOF doesn't really care about your chemistry), take your pick. By this time I'm sure guys at DARPA will have came up with even nastier stuff, since aliens didn't exactly sign Geneva or Hague conventions.
But let's say it's going to be ol' good nukes. I cannot stress this enough, nuclear weapons are most efficient in the atmosphere, as most of the energy is transmitted through blastwave which obviously needs matter (air) to travel. It doesn't matter how heavily armored these forces are, there's a certain radius in which EVERYTHING will get vaporized in picoseconds. What's not vaporized instantly is going to have to deal with blastwave (friendly reminder that good armor doesn't mean that soft insides will survive without proper damping, as the hydrostatic shock will have it's way with anything incompressible), and various nasty radiation. Anything flying will fly no more. Anything ground will fly for a bit and then will likely be in no shape to move long distances towards nearest city (which combine need to find first). And this is not even mentioning funky stuff like neutron bombs. Note that current ICBMs are hella fast (terminal phase speed up to 7 km/s, or about Mach 20) and can be outfitted with dozens upon dozens of fake targets, all of which move in pretty much same way and look the same.
At this point, either combine continue to just pour more meat through the portal/portals (and get continuosly nuked, pummeled by any nearby long-range artillery and probably doused in area-denial chemicals) until some side runs out of resources or they pull out and reassess. Taking in account that the whole thing is bureaucratic hell which likely already lacks conscious thought behind it (if breengrub is canon) due to everyone in charge just dying off after succumbing to brain trojan thing advisors have going on, it might mean that invasion machine just stalls and doesn't know what to do next, since it needs input from higher up and there's no one to give that input.
I hope I didn't stretch it too much, as I mostly was just focusing on eliminating plot armor stuff (like combines being magically immune to nukes) and various ass-pulls (like headcrabs being able to take over human hosts).
Ironically, if combine just teleported in a huge space fleet, humanity would be BONED, as at the moment we don't have good surface-to-space weapons.
Nope, i wasn't around back then and there's very little information on the old patches.
Another unintentional nerf to a weapon applied in the update is the removal of the crowbar's hidden "charge-up" damage in singleplayer.
UTIL_WeaponTimeBase returns 0 if a specific definition is set, which appears to be the case with the provided project file. The old code used gpGlobals->time instead, and so the player could wait one extra second before attacking to gain a damage boost.
if ( (m_flNextPrimaryAttack + 1 < UTIL_WeaponTimeBase() ) || g_pGameRules->IsMultiplayer() )
{
// first swing does full damage
pEntity->TraceAttack(m_pPlayer->pev, gSkillData.plrDmgCrowbar, gpGlobals->v_forward, &tr, DMG_CLUB );
}
else
{
// subsequent swings do half
pEntity->TraceAttack(m_pPlayer->pev, gSkillData.plrDmgCrowbar / 2, gpGlobals->v_forward, &tr, DMG_CLUB );
}
I was thinking the same, like the end cutscene we see Breen speaking from the radio console in the abandoned broadcast room. He introduces himself and pleas Humanity's case, at some point he mentions his work on teleportation, which finally receives a response. He eagerly explains the advantages of mankind's teleportation abilities before agreeing to step aboard a transport and be taken to the Citadel. Then during the credits there will be a speech from Breen along the lines of:
*I am Doctor Wallace Breen, the newly appointed ambassador of Earth. I am proud to inform you all that I have successfully negotiated the favorable terms of our peace treaty with the Combine, those terms of which will be of great benefit to mankind. They have agreed to end their attacks on us and our families, and even share with us their greatest technological achievements, and in return we will only have to abide by a few restrictions that may seem harsh at first, but it is a small price to pay for the knowledge we have gained. The Combine have already shared a great deal of information with me, eons worth of research in every field of science spanning multiple dimensions. With this research that we will begin our transitional period, from a doomed species on a dying rock to a thriving interdimentional civilization. But first thing's first, is the reorganization of society for the protection of our people, the hostile wastes are threatening to swallow our cities, and the Combine have agreed to provide us with the tools to protect them, in exchange for some of our resources.*
And I can't think of any more but you get the idea.
What indicates otherwise? after all, the office part where it feels he's on a power trip is actually because as he says "he will be able to impose any conditions onto the Advisors".
For him, this was the last step to make sure they stopped having any control upon the humanity unless called back in and becoming truly "the saviour of the human race", I'm sure of it. All the forces of at least C17 seems to obey him when not taking direct orders from the advisors.
Or just think about the monologue at the beginning: he genuinely thinks that right now we are "priviliged enough" with respect of other races, even with the water inducing amnesia and rendering infertile everybody with that Supression Device ( which probably to him he sees them as acceptable crowd control in comparison to the rude metrocops and the horrible stalkers ), as having enough chances to win the prize of autonomy through "obedience to the universal union".
On his path to save humanity at all cost, he went so far on grey territory that he didn't realize he's evil. Let alone just being an insignificant puppet.
That and the speech you overhear in Nova Prospekt, where he's basically laying out to the soldiers that they need to prove that the human race is in any way useful to avoid total extermination by the combine, and the fact they're failing to stop one dude is doing nothing to support his case.
This has made me think, we haven't had another half-life for over a decade now, and we probably never will. Now, i think "what has happened the last 10 years in the half-life universe?" accounting for epistle three, i think that the resistance and humanity, has been completely wiped out.
I guess, after all this time, it's probably for the best that we won't get another half-life game.
I mean if the combine are as powerful as they're made out to be, then maybe yeah. The destruction of the citadel by one man and the majority of people rising up in revolt its proof humanity cannot be trusted to remain loyal to the combine. Not only that but its finest soldiers were unable to maintain control even with combine technology and weaponry. And if earth only lasted for 7 hours at its peak what will the current survivors be able to do?
You die slowly and wither away, or you die fighting for what you believe is the right thing. That's really the gist of it, no moral or ethical quandaries or leaps of logic. If humanity would be doomed fighting the Combine, they would probably prefer going out with a bang than a whimper, the latter of which was the inevitable path for all but the highest of sympathizers to the Combine's cause.
2:22 - never heard that G-man stasis reference
In the Nova Prospekt speech, Breen implies he knows you probably had been in stasis. Think the advisors told him or he just deduced it when you teleported in the Citadel?
I think he figures it out pretty quick, in fact I think it was him the warned the Advisors of you. The second time you appear in his office he's talking to an Advisor and says "I'm almost certain it was- Gordon Freeman..." (side-note I love how the Advisor turns the monitor to look at you)
I think he was expecting your return for quite some time, he never knew when or where, but he knew that some day you would reappear on this Earth, and he warned the Advisors of this. I'm not sure he knew of your mission, but he knew the Gman and knew you had been 'employed' by him, which makes your contract open under the circumstances and the Resistance were likely bidders. Why he didn't bid on your contract or what payment even means to the Gman is still a mystery, maybe the Combine forbid him from doing so, or maybe the price is something that Wallace wasn't willing to risk. Maybe even some Monkey's paw thing, Eli got your contract and in return he lost his life and his daughter.
This is similar to how I interpreted it – I think Breen was pretty in the know, but I do think Eli was right, that his ego has gotten in the way of his judgement.
I still love how near the end of the game, when Breen escapes from his office after Mossman starts freeing people he first picks up the gravity gun upside down and then fires it by bracing it against his shoulder
honestly no one should have survived that. no matter who silly he held it.
damn plot armor
Huh, looks like MMod MINERVA pulls those assets from Ep1/Ep2 for some reason, reinstalling those on the same drive fixed the crash.
No offense but there are like 3 installation files practically screaming "install on the same drive".
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