Half-Life and Portal series, general discussion (v6)

[Hell-met]

[QUOTE=Butthurter;47456849]for its superior gameplay[/QUOTE]

wat.

pretty much every battle area seemed like a theatrical puzzle consisting of what ms. godmode alyx thinks and what to do next.

[sp]then again I'm the kind of player who kills all barneys in HL1 for that 17 glock ammo[/sp]

[MissingNoGuy55]

-snip-

[Mr. Someguy]

[QUOTE=Megadave;47455903]and let's not forget about that bridge that seems to turn into a highway while underneath it.[/QUOTE]

In the leak maps it's a highway bridge with the road running over it, and there are no tunnels. The train was a last minute addition by the mapper because trains are cool :v:

[t]http://combineoverwiki.net/images/6/6e/Beta_d2_coast_070002.jpg[/t][t]http://combineoverwiki.net/images/3/3b/D2_coast_070020.JPG[/t]

The coast map was never changed to reflect this either, it stills depicts the bridge as a road:

[img]http://combineoverwiki.net/images/8/8a/Coastmap_sheet.png[/img]

As you can see, the train coming from the bridge actually comes from nowhere, because the tunnel heads toward the sea. Maybe they have one of those big bridges like the wasteland bridge from beta that we can't see because of the fog, who knows.

Also, if you're under the bridge and go to the left side (facing the end with the combine outpost) and look toward where the bridge meets the cliff, you can see the base of the road coming off the bridge and going left.

[Hell-met]

tried installing blue shift from my old retail cd

[img]http://www.sourceop.com/hell-met/blueshift.jpg[/img]

well shit

[Kaleidescoop]

So I figured out how the cover system used to work in Half-Life 2 before Valve scrapped it, and then re-implemented it for Episode 2.

In the actbusy.txt files, I found that Alyx has entries like these:

"Alyx_CrouchHide_01"
{
"busy_sequence" "CrouchHide_01"
"entry_sequence" "CrouchHide_01_enter"
"exit_sequence" "CrouchHide_01_exit"
"min_time" "0.0"
"max_time" "0.0"
"interrupts" "BA_INT_NONE"
}

"Alyx_HideWall_AB"
{
"busy_sequence" "alyx_LeanWall"
"entry_sequence" "alyx_HideWall"
//"exit_sequence" "alyx_hackPowerBox"
"min_time" "0.0"
"max_time" "0.0"
"interrupts" "BA_INT_NONE"
}

"Alyx_Injured_WallLean"
{
"busy_sequence" "injured_rest1_idle"
"entry_sequence" "injured_rest1_in"
"exit_sequence" "injured_rest1_out"
"interrupts" "BA_INT_DANGER"
}
"Alyx_Blindfire_Left"
{
"busy_sequence" "blindfire_left_action"
"entry_sequence" "blindfire_left_entry"
"exit_sequence" "blindfire_left_exit"
"min_time" "12.0"
"max_time" "12.0"
"interrupts" "BA_INT_SIEGE_DEFENSE"
}
"Alyx_Blindfire_Left_High"
{
"busy_sequence" "blindfire_left_high_action"
"entry_sequence" "blindfire_left_entry"
"exit_sequence" "blindfire_left_exit"
"min_time" "12.0"
"max_time" "12.0"
"interrupts" "BA_INT_SIEGE_DEFENSE"
}
"Alyx_Blindfire_Left_Low"
{
"busy_sequence" "blindfire_left_low_action"
"entry_sequence" "blindfire_left_entry"
"exit_sequence" "blindfire_left_exit"
"min_time" "12.0"
"max_time" "12.0"
"interrupts" "BA_INT_SIEGE_DEFENSE"
}

"Alyx_Blindfire_Low"
{
"busy_sequence" "blindfire_low_action"
"entry_sequence" "blindfire_low_entry"
"exit_sequence" "blindfire_low_exit"
"min_time" "10.0"
"max_time" "10.0"
"interrupts" "BA_INT_SIEGE_DEFENSE"
}
"Alyx_Blindfire_Low_High"
{
"busy_sequence" "blindfire_low_high_action"
"entry_sequence" "blindfire_low_entry"
"exit_sequence" "blindfire_low_exit"
"min_time" "10.0"
"max_time" "10.0"
"interrupts" "BA_INT_SIEGE_DEFENSE"
}

"Alyx_WallCover_Right"
{
"busy_sequence" "cover_right_action"
"entry_sequence" "cover_right_entry"
"exit_sequence" "cover_right_exit"
"min_time" "0.0"
"max_time" "0.0"
"interrupts" "BA_INT_SIEGE_DEFENSE"
}
"Alyx_WallCover_Low"
{
"busy_sequence" "CrouchHide_01"
"entry_sequence" "CrouchHide_01_enter"
"exit_sequence" "CrouchHide_01_exit"
"min_time" "0.0"
"max_time" "0.0"
"interrupts" "BA_INT_SIEGE_DEFENSE"
}
"Alyx_WallCover_Low_Timed"
{
"busy_sequence" "CrouchHide_01"
"entry_sequence" "CrouchHide_01_enter"
"exit_sequence" "CrouchHide_01_exit"
"min_time" "0.0"
"max_time" "6.0"
"interrupts" "BA_INT_SIEGE_DEFENSE"
}
"Alyx_Guard_Low"
{
"busy_sequence" "crouch_aim_pistol"
"entry_sequence" "stand_to_crouchshoot"
"exit_sequence" "crouchshoot_to_stand"
"min_time" "0.0"
"max_time" "0.0"
"interrupts" "BA_INT_SIEGE_DEFENSE"
}
"Alyx_Guard_Low_Timed"
{
"busy_sequence" "crouch_aim_pistol"
"entry_sequence" "stand_to_crouchshoot"
"exit_sequence" "crouchshoot_to_stand"
"min_time" "6.0"
"max_time" "10.0"
"interrupts" "BA_INT_SIEGE_DEFENSE"
}
"Alyx_Guard"
{
"busy_sequence" "pistol_idle_aim"
"entry_sequence" "pistol_idle_aim"
"exit_sequence" "pistol_idle_aim"
"min_time" "0.0"
"max_time" "0.0"
"interrupts" "BA_INT_SIEGE_DEFENSE"
}

As you can see, each actbusy calls for three animations. The entry, the action, and the exit. Through Hammer, I found out that if you make Alyx do this actbusy, she ends up going into cover, looping the action a few times (blindfiring, for example) and then exiting cover.

So, from all the animation files from the Combine Soldiers and the Citizens, we have animations for entering and exiting cover that could be used for new actbusy entries. Now all we need to do is find (from the HL2 leak) or create a "blindfire" or "shooting from cover" animation, add it into the entry, and voila, we have an actbusy where citizens and combine can take cover and fire from cover.

[MissingNoGuy55]

does the blindfire actually have her shoot? or was gunfire scripted too with the e3 stuff? i'm not too knowledgeable on actbusies, so i don't really know.

that's pretty interesting

[Kaleidescoop]

[QUOTE=MissingNoGuy;47458561]does the blindfire actually have her shoot? or was gunfire scripted too with the e3 stuff? i'm not too knowledgeable on actbusies, so i don't really know.

that's pretty interesting[/QUOTE]

The blindfire has her randomly shoot in the general direction of the supposed enemies. It's all a scripted motion, but the gun during the animation actually fires bullets that can do damage to enemies. I'm not sure how it works, but if we study the Valve animations we might be able to reverse engineer it to make it work for new animations.

[MissingNoGuy55]

seems like a last-minute thing to remove

i know the rebels do go into cover but it's very minimalistic, they never blindfire, just hide which is not really the point of cover. alyx never goes into cover from my knowledge which makes her events seem really strange

if you could reimplement it for most of the maps it would make a pretty neat addon

[Kaleidescoop]

[QUOTE=MissingNoGuy;47458608]seems like a last-minute thing to remove

i know the rebels do go into cover but it's very minimalistic, they never blindfire, just hide which is not really the point of cover. alyx never goes into cover from my knowledge which makes her events seem really strange

if you could reimplement it for most of the maps it would make a pretty neat addon[/QUOTE]

There are actually two types of cover from what I can see. Dynamic cover (which is kinda finicky) and scripted cover.

In dynamic cover, you use info_node_hints with Crouch Cover Low and Crouch Cover Medium settings. Only Citizens and Metropolice have special animations for this, where they have a special animation for coming out of cover to fire at you. However, the NPCs don't always stay on the nodes, they will bump into each other trying to use the node, and as a result they never really do the "pop up and fire at you from time to time from cover" thing at all and end up in a large group moving at a center point and doing absolutely nothing except for trying to play the crouch animation and failing because of another NPC pushing it out of the way. With this dynamic cover, NPCs will actually aim at enemies.

With scripted cover, you're using info_node_hints with World: Actbusy set. In this, NPCs (Alyx) will go into cover and shoot. Its much more reliable as in they will actually be able to take cover more often and not bug out and it looks better, but the gun motion is preset and the NPC doesn't actually aim at any enemy, sending bullets spraying everywhere.

And both are sorta implemented already.

Citizens and Metropolice both use dynamic cover in the Streetwar maps, as well as some early Canal maps. The bugginess of dynamic cover is why you don't really notice it.

Alyx will use the scripted cover in Episode 2 during the introduction to the Hunters and again during the White Forest Inn siege, but never again anywhere else.

[MissingNoGuy55]

sounds like it would be a mapping hassle to add a lot of these nodes and tie specific NPCs to them if you went the dynamic route

even worse if you're using spawners, unless it's a template. it sounds like it was unfinished but left over.

[Kaleidescoop]

[QUOTE=MissingNoGuy;47458675]sounds like it would be a mapping hassle to add a lot of these nodes and tie specific NPCs to them if you went the dynamic route

even worse if you're using spawners, unless it's a template[/QUOTE]

You don't need to tie specific NPCs. If you have a ai_goal_standoff_thingy with the NPC name and all the NPCs have the same name, they will automatically seek out any cover nodes and use them (albeit rather poorly).

[MissingNoGuy55]

gonna make a quick dev texture map to test this out, i'll post what i figure out

[Kaleidescoop]

[QUOTE=MissingNoGuy;47458713]gonna make a quick dev texture map to test this out, i'll post what i figure out[/QUOTE]

fun fact: if you set crouch cover low, Combine will duckwalk to the nodes.

the valve developer wiki article on standoffs has a lot of information about dynamic cover, thats where i got most of the info

i can upload a few test maps of mine if you want

[MissingNoGuy55]

okay, so you were right, they do duckwalk with low cover, but the medium cover is what's interesting

the metrocops and citizens for medium do take cover but they don't seem to have animations defined for it. they also end up aiming into the wall for some reason. the low crouch cover also seems to be the most functional despite some of the weird bits (medium crouch is never used in any maps from my knowledge)

for medium, it seems to be unfinished as it does work only very minimally. i assume valve pulled the plug on it as they were rushing hl2 to the deadline. you can see in one of the images a rebel actually ran over to one of the squares for cover but nobody else did because they all gave up after realizing it picked [i]all of them[/i]

low seems to be the way to go, but the way it's queued to the NPC is weird, instead of one node being checked it defaults to one node for every NPC after successfully picking one. this might be related to squads but i have no idea, i'll probably check the code for ai_goal_standoff later

[t]http://i.imgur.com/t80uiXe.jpg[/t]
[t]http://i.imgur.com/aEy7Zxw.jpg[/t]
[t]http://i.imgur.com/Ko5rHWO.jpg[/t]

[Kaleidescoop]

Here's a test map I made. Might have to turn fullbright on, the light I put in is too dim.

Left side (Metropolice) are using dynamic cover.

Right side (Alyx) is using scripted cover.

[url]https://www.sendspace.com/file/yvptyc[/url]

[MissingNoGuy55]

i'll check this out, thanks

[Hell-met]

duckwalk nodes are used in the c17 standoff where you gotta punt a combine orb while covering alyx

that's the only place i've ever seen combines do that

[MissingNoGuy55]

yeah it seems there's no restriction in-place for it. have you tried assigning hint groups to see if that changes anything?

[Kaleidescoop]

I found this video on youtube, it's not mine. I might have been doing something wrong, because in this scene the cover nodes are working perfectly, no bugginess at all.

[video=youtube;xUqsC0YZF2Q]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUqsC0YZF2Q[/video]

[Kaleidescoop]

I've figured it out!

In the comments, the creator of the video said cover needs to be at least 42 units high. I edited the cover height for the dynamic cover Metropolice, and now they behave just fine!

New cover map with changed cover height.
[url]https://www.sendspace.com/file/88hbv4[/url]

Seriously someone needs to make a blindfire animation that fits with the existing cover animations for the NPCs. We could make an entire fucking mod based around this concept. :v:

[MissingNoGuy55]

oh man i've been trying to figure this out for a while. thanks man.

[editline]Edit[/editline]

holy shit it makes firefights a lot better. look at this

[vid]http://thedankestmemes.tk/resource/covernodes2.webm[/vid]

[Kaleidescoop]

[QUOTE=MissingNoGuy;47459317]oh man i've been trying to figure this out for a while. thanks man.

[editline]Edit[/editline]

holy shit it makes firefights a lot better. look at this

[vid]http://thedankestmemes.tk/resource/covernodes2.webm[/vid][/QUOTE]

Hey, could I have the vmf of your map? I wanna try something out.

[MissingNoGuy55]

sure, [url=https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/73775541/cover_test.7z]here you go[/url]

if anyone else wants to do something with it you're free to

[Steve Stump]

From some of the posts in this thread I assume it's A-OK to email Marc Laidlaw with questions about Half-life's universe?

[Cranial Toxicity]

[QUOTE=HGrunt;47455942]Did Alyx really stay near the citadel for that long, just looking for Gordon all that time? Likely without food? Even 3 days seems a little far-fetched for that, but a week is too much.[/QUOTE]

I have almost always just gone with the assumption that they were unconscious until the early morning when Alyx was found by D0G, after which she spent a few hours looking through the rubble for Gordon. This is supported by a few things, like the sun rising very low through the wreckage in the opening brief with Eli. As it only would in morning or sunset.

[IMG]http://orange.half-life2.com/images/screens/hl2ep1/HL2-Ep1_Screen01.jpg[/IMG]

I never really had to put much thought to this, it just seemed right. HL2 ended in a sunset vista over a battle-torn City 17, and after being knocked unconscious, the protagonists wake in the ash-clouded morning wreckage of the previous climax. This gives a few hours for the blazen destruction to yellow the sky, and for a night of implied fighting and reaction through the city and Citadel to unfold and develop without taking a huge chunk of time from the player's perspective. It just plays and feels right to assume that only a matter of hours pass between the two games.

And even so, I think HL2's chronology was always meant to be more relative than anything. Not 'What Year/Day/Time-of-day did this happen' but 'How much time passed between event A and event B'. All of the environmental vistas are indicative of a passage of time, but only to give the illusion of the world changing without your interference. The opening of Episode 1 was meant to re-establish a sense of urgency and development -- that in only a matter of hours, your destruction of the Citadel reactor had set a dire chain of events in motion.

[Sally]

[QUOTE=Steve Stump;47460028]From some of the posts in this thread I assume it's A-OK to email Marc Laidlaw with questions about Half-life's universe?[/QUOTE]

If you do it and don't get yelled at, could you get him to give a answer about that eli thing before?

[Steve Stump]

[QUOTE=Sally;47460304]If you do it and don't get yelled at, could you get him to give a answer about that eli thing before?[/QUOTE]

What eli thing?

[MissingNoGuy55]

[QUOTE=CAPT Opp4;47460142]I have almost always just gone with the assumption that they were unconscious until the early morning when Alyx was found by D0G, after which she spent a few hours looking through the rubble for Gordon. This is supported by a few things, like the sun rising very low through the wreckage in the opening brief with Eli. As it only would in morning or sunset.

I never really had to put much thought to this, it just seemed right. HL2 ended in a sunset vista over a battle-torn City 17, and after being knocked unconscious, the protagonists wake in the ash-clouded morning wreckage of the previous climax. This gives a few hours for the blazen destruction to yellow the sky, and for a night of implied fighting and reaction through the city and Citadel to unfold and develop without taking a huge chunk of time from the player's perspective. It just plays and feels right to assume that only a matter of hours pass between the two games.

And even so, I think HL2's chronology was always meant to be more relative than anything. Not 'What Year/Day/Time-of-day did this happen' but 'How much time passed between event A and event B'. All of the environmental vistas are indicative of a passage of time, but only to give the illusion of the world changing without your interference. The opening of Episode 1 was meant to re-establish a sense of urgency and development -- that in only a matter of hours, your destruction of the Citadel reactor had set a dire chain of events in motion.[/QUOTE]this is pretty accurate, it would remain consistent with every half-life game starting in the morning

[Mr. Someguy]

[QUOTE=Spor;47455005]Now, to other forum members - if you think that this guy is thinking way to much into it, I sometimes spend hours looking on papers stuck on a wall in the apartment building and wonder which of them are 20 years old and which of them are relocation notices posted by the combine policeman and how the infrastructure/bureaucratic world of combine earth looks and works in general. Mostly started after I read this sign for the first time:

[t]https://a.pomf.se/cibjlj.png[/t]

The combine have a pretty complex civil system that we're not aware of, and probably not fleshed out by Valve either. Really fun to think about.[/QUOTE]

Speaking of, there's something with this picture that nobody seems to touch on:

[t]http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/ugc/44249078175673669/D44044CF839805E0A1A03E5A43EEB74D7C2313C0/[/t]

The headlights are [I]on[/I], which means recent use. This implies that a certain class of civilian (probably workers) are authorised to use vehicles. I think you can also hear trucks (not APC's) driving in City 17 but my memory is foggy at best.

[artdeco]

so sick of hl2 pre-relese projects not going anywhere

[t]http://combineoverwiki.net/images/thumb/f/f7/Train_city_17.jpg/800px-Train_city_17.jpg[/t]
i just want to be gordon freeman in a city 17 looking like blade runner