In Rebellion, you play as Mandella, colonel in the Confederation, a powerful military force. At the beginning, you explore the mothership as you’re asked by admiral Spade to attend your briefing. You’ll discover that you’re part of the first attack wave sent to storm Tor29, a little colony lost in the Nephele system.
Accompanied by your best friend, major Threepwood, you’ll face an oddly weak resistance. Why does the Confederation unleash its wrath on a colony that is clearly of no match ? What hides behind this conflict driven by doubtful justifications ? These obscure reasons are not to please you and Threepwood.
Will you carry on following blindly an authority fouled by power and arrogance ? Or will you break your former links and embrace a cause that seems fairer to you, however desperate it may be?
Maybe these are favourable times for… Rebellion.
- Title: Rebellion
- File Name: hl2-sp-rebellion-1.3.7z
- Size : 88.13MB
- Author: Raphaël Gilot
- Date Released: 17 January 2009
- Source: Interlopers.net
- Copy the Rebellion folder into your SourceMods folder.
- Restart or start Steam.
- Rebellion should now be listed in your Library tab.
Click on the thumbnails below to open a 1024 pixel wide image.
WARNING: The screenshots may contain spoilers.
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Now I am going to confuse a lot of readers with my review. The reason is that this is definitely a PIN! mod but I didn’t like it!
The reason I did not like it focus on the squad system. Put simply I *hate* them. Not just in this mod but in all mods and games. This mod unfortunately makes it harder than most.
SPOILERS BELOW
The player is given a choice at certain points during the early part of the mod. If you companions die then the mod ends immediately. Unfortunately it seems that autosaves have been placed in the middle of battle when it is too late to change the outcome.
This mod would have definitely benefitted from more play testing, preferably from outside the team testers (Other mods heed this warning!).
I also think it was a mistake to use Barney, Breen and Alyx as new characters. Seasoned HL players will find this very strange.
The voice acting was ok, but the script wa a little cliched. There were a few minor grammatical errors that could have so easily been corrected before release. It’s also a little strange that everybody is speaking English with a European accent. That might seems like nitpicking but you have to remember that even the smallest things can ruin the immersion for some players.
There are other technical issues that have been raised on the Interlopers thread but that’s not so important for me.
Unfortunately I stopped playing where the screenshots finsih. I just couldn’t go on, iwith the squad system.
However, you may love it and it may still make my Hall Of Fame 2009 but I’ll have to give it one more try later this week.
Go play it now and tell me what you think.
The file has been removed at the author’s request until some technical issues with the mod are corrected.
Bah I got all excited in the morning and now the file is missing 😛 I will be patient 😛
I think Phillip’s review may be a bit misleading; this is not your normal HL2 squad set-up, what we have is the gang of three Freeman, Barney and Alyx with name changes. Barney and Alyx are scripted to take the lead leaving you to follow, wander or as I did find Combine to take out on your own, and in one sequence they hold off the Combine indefinitely while you find the way forward. Subsequently you don’t get that situation with repeated “sorry Mr Freeman” lead the way ” Mr Freeman” ” Reload Mr Freeman” and for me this Part 1 did not feel like a squad orientated affair.
I think what may put people off more is the dialog, Rebellion is very much a story driven mod with moral dilemma thrown in, such that between the action we get extended dialog that is repeated word for word with screen captions, do we need both? Or is the author saying the voice acting was not good enough on its own. Either way, the voice acting is a bit hit and miss such that it would be best shortened with maybe an option to turn on/off screen captions.
There are some great sets in this mod, and I will be aware not to give spoils, one great and memorable scene shows a vast array of Combine and Combine hardware, I needed to stop for a few seconds to take in both the immense and detail within.
it’s a pity the author has withdrawn the release which is surprising as it was downloadable from his own site, sure improvements can be made and being part 1 the mod is still in develop, however for me this was a playable part 1 without major bugs or crashes.
Mel,
My hatred of the squad system has nothing to do with the repeated “sorry Mr Freeman” lead the way ” Mr Freeman” “Reload Mr Freeman” speeches. It’s mainly to do with the fact that if one dies then the game is over.
I think this may be a similar situation to Pyramid, where some people experience no issues and others can’t continue because of them. Some players reported that after Barney enters the base the soldiers don’t follow him and therefore the mod grinds to a halt.
I agree with the voice acting part and I forgot to mention that the player actually speaks which I feel was a design error because that takes away any feeling I have of being in control.
NEW FILE NOW AVAILABLE
Like Mel, I played the version originally linked from the forum post, so will pass on the updated one, unless the framerate jitters have been addressed?
I loved the idea, and the extremely well executed & thought out story line, even if it is isn’t exactly original, to be done to this level is a credit to the author. The accents aren’t a problem, nor the captioning, though having the option to drop it would have been nice, I suspect that English isn’t their first language, so forgive any mistakes, but I really don’t like the “F” word cropping up in a mod. I’m no prude & can & do swear with the best of them, but try my hardest not to in front of the younger end….Here it added nothing whatsoever….
The loading times seemed to take forever, though, as with the framerate issue, it could just be that my PC isn’t bang up to date…here’s hoping the next one will handle these things a bit smoother..
Without giving any spoilers to those who haven’t played it, don’t jump the gun, when you have a decision to make it sometimes (well in this mod almost always) pays to go with the flow a bit…When you die from being too hasty for the sixth time, and nearly give up on the mod because for the sixth extremely long loading time you can’t figure it out…just hang back and let the pre-determined thing do what the author wanted.
I’m not the biggest fan of squad based HL2 things, but to have no control over them at all, or even the pretence of it, makes you a passenger the whole time. As a means of telling a story this kind of worked, but to my mind it took away some of my input, and hence immersion in the game. The last scene before the end did just go on about three minutes at least too long….But when Part 2 comes out, if it does, then I for one will happily give it a play.
Without the long loading times, and not realising that I was supposed to “go with the flow” a bit more, I’d give this a Play it Now, as it stands I’m on a “….Later”
Still, glad I had a go. You might be too…..
Now the file has been replaced I will rate the mod which is worth the Play it Later score. Gypsy Jim brings up a good point about holding off letting scripted parts trigger the gameplay, one when first meeting up with Alyx the other when exiting through glass doors and walking into the Combin ambush, in both sequenced let the script dictate. Also you don’t have to strictly follow Alyx and Barney you can branch off for a bit of solo action.
You can disable the captioning inside your audio options menu. This mod has dialogue subtitles activated by default, which given the nature of the sounds and the quality of some of the recordings is a very good idea. It just crashed for me but I’m going to give it another try. So far it’s a “Play it Now”.
Edit: It always crashes for me in the same spot, when Threepwood and Zero jump into the narrow canal with water, right in the beginning of a map. I even tried running it under DirectX 7 but no luck.
Hi there everyone ! 🙂
I’m Raphaël, the guy who made this mod 🙂
And I’m really glad you guys played the game and posted your comments, it’s really helpfull ! Thanks for that !
I’d like to add a few words on some of the points that have been said here 🙂
** This might contain spoilers 🙂 Take care ! **
Oh, Phil’, I’m sad you didn’t like the squad system. But let me explain why I did this choice :
I don’t like it either, when you just can’t continue the story when an ally dies. Really. I love a system such as the one in STALKER, wich is way more realistic, enjoyable, and takes a little from Role Playing Games. If the quest giver dies, you loose the quest. Whatever, that’s life. But notice, you’ll never be able to kill an important NPC.
The problem here, is that this is Half-Life2. And Half-Life2 isn’t about a lot of freedom, Half-Life2 is about scripts and unique storyline.
So, if you kill a NPC that is supposed to say or do something to make the story move forward, well… ideally, the story should change, be as you “make” it 🙂 But since this is about scripts, and because there’s a unique storyline, you can’t afford to let an important NPC die.
I said “important NPC”. When I could, I didn’t penalize the player for killing an ally. Sadly, that’s in the mission Invasion has Begun only (the attack of the communication center)… after the explosives at the beginning have been set. Indeed, if you kill the soldier that sets the explosives, you might be.. annoyed 🙂 Unless… unless you could actually pick up explosives like in a RPG and place them by yourself. But again, that’s Half-Life2, and I took the game as it is, without modifying its source 🙂 That’s a decision I took at the beginning, and I sticked to it : take what Half-Life2 offers and deal with it 🙂
Same goes with the models and textures I used 🙂 Time, my friends, time is an important point that has to be taken into account 😉
Concerning the Captions 🙂 The default behaviour is to set them on, but it’s easely possible to remove them in the Option panel 🙂 Options > Sound > Captions > No Captions (they just come back if you play the 1rst map)
Indeed, I wasn’t sure it would always be clear enough for you guys to understand everything. Actually, knowing it seemed pretty clear for you makes me happy 🙂
And also because here, in Belgium (and non english speaking countries) most of the people need captions to understand english dialogs, should it be from Rebellion… or television, movies, and so 🙂 I’m sure you guys understand that.
If I decided to remove the file for 2 days, it’s because sometimes, people where experiencing a bug (I hate so much !) that I believe was hurting the experience (Threepwood sometimes decided not to move anymore at a specific point). I also took advantage of this “break” to improve some points after the feedback I recieved at Interlopers 🙂
As for Mandella speaking… is it so hard to identify to my male and suave voice ? 😉
Concerning the long loading time. That’s wierd. I know the mod could have used some more optimization at some moments, but I never experienced annoying loading time on the 4 computers I tested the performances (it took never more than a few seconds). There’s just the first loading screen that takes time when you launch the game for the very first time, since it needs to initialize some files and precache the sounds. Do you remember when you’ve experienced these long loading screens ? That would help me 🙂
Actually, I wanted to make a nice little story to play, not a Shooter above all. That’s why I took the decision to give importance to the allies, letting them lead the way a few times (especially in the City map Point of No Return).
But they’ll never go through the whole map without you 🙂 Scripts are useless if the player is not there to watch them 🙂
Also, I believe there are many places where you can stroll around (the best example is in The Vault). Even during the chase, you don’t need to follow your friends, there are different ways that will bring you to the place I want you to be at last 🙂
I think it’s really important NOT to give the player the feeling he’s in a corridor 🙂
Hey Kasperg, your problem bothers me and I take it seriously. Do you crash during the level transition ? Before ? After ?
So, guys, again, thanks for playing the game, your feedback is important to me 🙂
I wish you well, and I’m sure Phil” will let you know once new updates are available !
Take care,
Raph’
It crashed right after loading map 03_2. Sometimes during the actual transition and sometimes having already played 3 seconds of it. It’s a generic HL2 runtime error which gives no explanation. I loaded the map manually and it worked, but you had to play without Threepwood or Zero, which had me resort to noclipping to move forward at times. I noticed one area of the map was exactly the same as the courtyard with the playground at the beginning of HL2.There’s a wonderful use of scripted sequences and hl2 cast and hardware that reminded me of why HL2 was good in the first place. The use of music was also spot on, and all the sequences, of which there are quite a few, directed the action well enough with no need to back track or guess what your next course of action could be.
Although the author himself might have voiced perhaps too many characters, it was enough to move the story along. The story itself was quite interesting, and I found it worked even though the usual HL2 characters played other roles (the fact that I had skins for The Citizen Part 2 installed in my HL2 folders helped there I think).
As for overall visual design, its very solid. I’d say the set pieces all work in terms of layout, but could do with slightly better lighting and more proportioned texturing (quite a few doors for example)
I’ll be playing the continuation to this story when it comes out, and recommend playing it now it just for the scripting and sequences alone. I suppose not everyone will experience crashes as the other people commenting have finished it.
A really good beginning to what could be one of the best add-ons available, and everything ran smoothly on my machine. But I thought the scripted dialogue was unnecessary–after all, the voices are easy enough to understand. Other than that, my only complaint is that I’ll have to wait for the continuation.
Well done RaphaelG!
Waw 🙂 Thanks for the nice comments Kasperg and Len, it feels good !
Kasperg, I made a save at the beginning of the 03_2 map.
You can download it here :
http://webhost.sipr.ucl.ac.be/sites/cercle-mds/raph_rebellion/save/save03_2.rar
Tell me how it does. If it still crashes, tell me, I can compile that map with Zero and Threepwood in it and send it over 🙂
A great mod. I reckon that english could be better in terms of syntax and accent and that talks could be shortened. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the story and graphisms and it’s one of not so many mods where I really want to know what’s happening next.
Great start, Raph.
It’s not everyday that a Belgian mapper shines in the HL2 community I will certainly play it soon and add it to my review blog 😉
While I appreciate the storytelling aspect of this mod, I too felt penalized for taking the initiative at several key junctures. Without spoiling too much, I managed to defeat an entire squad of combine, then got stuck. It took quite a while for me to remember the “go with the flow” advice from above and discover that I should have let one of my victims talk for awhile.
As the author stated, he was going for more of an “interactive movie” feel, and he did a great job. As long as you don’t just run around and shoot people (like I did) you’ll have a good time.
So far so good. The load times are short, but what I noticed is there are alot of load screens. More than usual. But so far nice work to the author. Atleast the environment is different from anything I have seen, almost like a half life 3. I haven’t finished it yet so who knows. The accents on the English are easy to overlook. Its all about game play anyway! The squad thing ca be a bit annoying, but again, its not all about that! I can’t rate it until I finished it, but so far GOOD WORK! You give me new hope that more new mods. for Half Life 2 can actually be sweet. Again, I haven’t finished it, but so far so good. Next time just make it solo on the combat squad. Me, myself, and I. And I do appreciate the fact that using a squad is much more difficult than not, when making a mod. So far thumbs UPPPP^^^
although I am in the habit of shooting enemies as soon as I see them, which was not the right move in one part of this scenario, I enjoyed playing it!
This is a great little mod and the author deserves praise for it. It has some problems, but overall I was impressed and enjoyed playing it.
All the bigger areas look between “fairly nice” and “very nice” and the only places where I saw a lack of detail were in some small corridors that connected these bigger areas together.
I had the problem with the mod crashing in the same place as Kasperg, but the saved game provided above got me past it and I managed to complete it without any more crashes after that.
The story is good and, although the standard of English is not great, it’s told pretty well anyway. The sequences mostly work very well and are enjoyable to watch. The quality of the voice acting is not the best, I was glad I had the subtitles at points, but it was acceptable enough. I liked Zero’s voice acting the best.
I really liked the vault reference to Fallout 3. Nice. The inside of the vault didn’t look as pretty as the entrance … but there were a lot of NPC’s in there and the atmosphere of the place was actually great – so I didn’t mind so much.
There were a couple of times where the squad system got frustrating … a few times I lost track of them, and at one point it seemed like you have some choices but you really have none, and deviating from what the author wanted results in a black mission failure screen. I thought that was a little frustrating, after I saw it for the fifth time. I realise it’s part of the story …. but it was the only part during the mod where I was thinking “Grrrrr!!!”
The biggest problem I had with this mod was the framerates. The fps counter was in the red nearly all the time — in some places I was dragged down to under 10fps (!!!) which made things a bit too jerky for my taste. I can only imagine that people with lesser PC’s who try to run this mod will have a very jerky experience indeed. My PC runs Fallout 3 maxed-out better than it runs this mod. The author needs to do a lot of optimizing.
But on the whole, this mod is fun to play and (apart from the optimization) well put together.
Play it now ….. if you have a really good PC !
I look forward to the continuation of the story.
To those of you who complained that this add-on crashed, or had frame-rate problems, or had long loading times: please don’t blame the author because your computer isn’t up to speed. My Dual Core 2.6G / 2GB ram / GeForce 8600GT ran it very smoothly with no problems at all, and my box is nearly 2 years old!
Also, please keep in mind that the setting is somewhere in Europe, so the voice actors” less-than-perfect English actually fits right in with the story.
And finally, the squad-based system is an important part of the story. This issue is a matter of personal opinion, and imo I don’t think this add-on would be as good without Barney and Alex.
RaphaelG, please don’t make any changes that might spoil your excellent work.
It’s not always about the players” computers. It can be to do with optimization of the map.
You make it sound as though 2 years is very old for a PC. I think you will find a lot of players with older PCs. Mine is over 5 years old, although I have upgraded the RAM and added a new video card a while ago.
Len, my PC is higher spec than yours.
And, as a PC technician by trade, I know how to make it work properly too.
I think your definition of “smooth” must be very different to mine.
The autosave provided by the author seemed to fix the crash, but the following minutes of gameplay in that map were followed by serious stuttering, framerate drops which made it seem it was going to crash again. Fortunately, it didn’t :).
I don’t know if there was some program running in the background in my PC causing these problems, but I certainly won’t blame my computer which can run Crysis Warhead on highest settings at around 20 fps. I’m going to check again with the +showbudget console command and inform the author if I see any indication as to what could be causing the problem for me.
I took a screenshot as promised.
http://i40.tinypic.com/jrpst2.jpg
As you can see, my DualCore and 9800GTX+ are not to blame for the framerate drops. Some optimizing is actually needed in map 03_2 because at the moment it seems the engine can see the whole map at once (props, enemies, architecture etc). Regardless of how well it might have run for some people, I hope Raph will fix this eventually.
The mappers among us will understand the significance of Kasperg’s screenshot.
The problems here are not about PC spec – in this case the engine is obviously overloaded because of a lack of optimization. It doesn’t matter how powerful your PC is. The Source engine itself has limits – and if you push them it will slow down no matter how much horsepower you have
But regardless of how slow it runs in places, this is still a good, fun mod.
Ok, Chris, since your a mapper and I’m just a dumb old railroad machinist, why is the pic above in wireframe, I don’t know that’s why I ask?? BTW whats the specs on your rig?? I’m not trying to be a smarta** 🙂 If I can improve mine all the better! This mod played very well for me.
Kasperg’s screenshot above was taken using one of various modes which are available within the Source Engine.
These modes exist for mappers and their purpose is to help in assessing the optimization of maps.
They allow you to see what the game engine itself is actually seeing – rather than just what the player is seeing.
They also allow you to see what the engine is spending its resources on. That’s what all the bar graph stuff is at the top left of the screenshot. As a general rule, bars which extend all the way to the right of the graph are not good.
They are very useful for making large and complex maps run better.
And, since you asked, my rig is as follows:
Athlon64 X2 4200+ (the X2 means Dual Core, in case you were not aware of that)
2GB RAM
512mb Geforce 9800GT
I can go into much, much more detail about both the engine and my rig, if you really want me to.
I took the picture in wireframe mode because I wanted to see how much the engine was actually rendering. If you’ve played through that map, you’ll find that even the very last area of the map with the ambush (with its props like the big trash container, the water deposit, the antennas on the far away rooftop) can be seen from the very beginning of the map. While I won’t say that everyone has had framerate drops there, I can say that in my case they are caused by that. Some simple hint brushes and areaportals could probably solve this issue. But as Chris said, the map is still fun to play.
This is why I ask questions, if I don’t understand I ask, and thanks to both of you guys for the explanation! I just upgraded my rig with an AMD 64 x2 6000+ DC and upped the ram to 4GB, got to do something with my retirement bread, my kids will get the rest!! haha! Guess I’ll have to up the vid it’s only a 9600gt, maybe after tax time! 🙂
Hey people 🙂
Again, thanks for the nice comments, I really do appreciate it (waw Count_de_Monet, I feel very proud right now 🙂 ) !
Guys, it’s good you point this framerate problem out. I knew some scenes were pretty heavy and might give a hard time to your framerate, even after I used myself to optimize my maps as good as I could. Definitely, areaportals and hints were VERY important.
As I saw Kasperg’s screen, I actually noticed that some of the leafs might just have become useless 🙂 Looks like some of the modifications I did afterward created a leak between two areas.
I’m currently working on some improvements. I’ve recorded a voice today (with a nice european accent ! Mmmh 😉 ), to kind of explain the player that shooting the Confederation Soldiers at the very end of the chase might not be your best choice, and so avoid to create a frustrating feeling 🙂 So I’ll take advantage of this to take time to improve the optimization. This might also get rid of this annoing crash some of you have experienced after the loading.
I stay in touch ! 🙂
I’ll do my best trying to make Rebellion a smoother experience for people who play it after you. And that’s possible only thanks to your feedback ! So, thank YOU guys 🙂
PS : Hey Chris Fox, the vault is actually a reference to Fallout 1 and 2 which are some of the games who inspired me the most ! If you’re curious, there’s another reference to it, will you find it ? 😉 As for Fallout 3, I’m waiting for some nice mods to come out before getting onto it 🙂
Raph’
This is a mod that was rather well done, but for some reason I find it disagreeable. It’s disgreeable because of the story, and the story’s disagreeable because of a minor bug.
First off, it’s important to say that the story doesn’t follow the Half-life storyline, despite that there’s Breen, Barney, Alyx, Kleiner, Eli, and Odessa in this mod. If you didn’t know this initially, you probably wouldn’t know until halfway through the game and might be confused at the beginning when Barney suddenly shows up in the middle of a combine gunship and starts palling around with you.
While this is not the major inconvenience, it becomes an inconvenience because of the sequences to tell it. The story is told through complex scripted sequences. These sequences tend to require that certain key characters are both alive and in the correct area. Sometimes, the key players are the bad guys, which becomes a problem because killing these baddies results in a game failure only at specific times.
As an example, **SPOILER** there’s a part where you’re running from the heavily-padded, easy-to-kill soldiers (combine), when you suddenly come in on an empty outdoor area. Then more combine jump out and I begin firing. The moment I do that, Barney suddenly has a heart attack and dies. This takes a moment, but eventually I corelate Barney’s death to shooting at the baddies, so I stop and wait. As the story sequence goes, suddenly a rocket flies into a soldier and the rest of them start firing. Then and ONLY then could I shoot back at them.
**END SPOILER**
This happens at multiple points in the game and either lead to mission failure or awkward “almost” dead-ends. I find this mod to be disagreeable because there was a script failure which implied that by **SPOILER** not shooting these unarmed civilians in a scene **END SPOILER** I could get an alternate storyline going. Unfortunately, this did not. So, after I waited for a bit, I executed them and continued on, only to find that I was now supposed to save these people. This is a super-hypocritical moment that makes the game confusing, especially since I was massacre-ing before.
Needless to say, any dialogue after that point was hard to agree with.
The mod is not bad: it’s fun, it looks good in most places, and it’s very nice with the scripted sequences when they work. However, because we’re dealing with those same scripted sequences here, the story and personal opinion of players will change wildly depending on what works and what doesn’t.
I never actually played those two games (unfortunately) and so when I saw the vault door I just thought of Fallout 3. 😀
Alas, If the other reference is more specific to F1 or F2 then I probably wouldn’t get it.
If you post an updated version I will play it again and have a look anyway though.
One other thing – are there any other references to The Secret of Monkey Island, other than the name of the mighty pirate? 😀 I love that game.
I had really a personal feeling about this one that defenetly worth is so feel free to check my review at
http://spmapcorner.blogspot.com/2009/01/rebellion-for-hl2.html
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Hi there everyone !
Just a word about the post above to avoid any misunderstanding :
This mod is called “Rebellion” and has been developed by me, Raphaël Gilot. It’s NOT “City Rebellion” which has been developed by Eric Flynn aka Goat.
Here’s his PP page : /posts/city-rebellion-chapter-1-half-life-2/
Now, back to the main reason of this post : The update notes 🙂
Good news everyone !
Your feedback has been very valuable, and I’ve taken advantage of it to improve a few things.
Version 1.2 ::: 12/10/2009
General
* Default difficulty is now set to “Medium” instead of “Easy”.
Aboard the Mothership
* Some environment details have been added (sparkles & flicking lights).
Invasion has Begun
* Killing a Confederation soldier before the bomb is planted won’t result in a Mission Failure, except for the soldier who actually plants the bomb.
Point of No Return
* I’ve worked on overall optimization (hints & func_occluder).
* Inside the Confederation Outpost, during Spade’s communication, once Threepwood and Zero start moving, shooting at a Confederation Soldier will start the chase, instead of resulting in a Mission Failure.
* I’ve made the choper chase scene a little more exciting. The chopper will do much more damage and be more aggressive toward the player, so you better hide in the holes before he shoots.
* During the last scene, when the player is surrounded by Confederation Soldiers, the officer will say something to help the player understand that shooting isn’t the best thing to do.
I’d like to insist on that last point. It’s true it wasn’t intuitive for the player to understand that he shouldn’t open fire. And that misunderstanding might lead to a frustration feeling. Feeling I don’t want to create 🙂
Now, things should be smoother and more “intuitive”, as I like to say.
As the Confederation Soldiers appear, a voice (coming from the officer) will command the player not to do anything stupid. If the player does anyway shoot a Confederation Soldier, the officer’s voice will raise again, which should very probably make the player understand this is not how things should happen.
The hardest job with all this is probably to make the whole experience go smooth and intuitively without restricting the player’s control. And I think it’s getting better and better after each feedback you guys give. And I’ll probably never thank you enough for that.
Now, Rebellion is a story. A story I created with the half-Life2 engine. That means it uses scripts, not AI. I gave some explanations about this in my first post a little above (post 10), I invite you to check it out if you didn’t already.
So, during important scenes (understand There’s a dialogue going on), I could have decided to launch a camera and restrain the player from doing anything bad. Or make important characters invulnerable. But I didn’t because I don’t like that, it’s boring. I wanted to give the player the freedom to move around, and also the freedom of choice, with the consequences that are coming with. The ideal would have been for the characters to have an intelligent behaviour that would adapt to your actions.
For example, at the beginning of the Point of No Return mission, the city, if you chose to kill the 2 Confederation soldiers that are following you, Threepwood could have asked you why you did this and you might have ended up with an agreement to leave the Confederation and join the Rebels. Then, you would have saved Zero by killing the 3 other Confederation soldiers, and you would have reached the same point as if you went through the “normal” flow.
Now what if you decide to open fire after Zero points her gun toward you and before she actually chooses to defend you ? Would you have killed her ? And then what ?
Well, I’m not saying it’s impossible to settle this… but… this would have been the best way to pull your hairs off your head (is it correct to say that in english ? It comes from a french expression 🙂 ).
Half-Life2 is just not the good engine to manage different kinds of behaviour.
So, I created one story (I insist on the “one” 🙂 ), and gave the player the freedom to do anything he wants… and get the consequences for his acts.
So, if he does something that compromises the story, then he would have to try again.
Now I tried to make it credible. You shoot a soldier that is supposed to say or do something important for the story ? He shoots back and eventually kills one of your friend, and it’s the death of your important friend that leads the game to a premature end. Well, it’s true I lower your friend’s health to 5 health points 😉 … But, I think you understand where I’m going, right ?
In order to reduce as much as I could these constraints, I made in this last update a few modifications going in that direction.
So, in mission 2 Invasion has Begun, you can kill all your allies (it was already allowed before), except for the one who plants the bomb until he plants the bomb, the dropship until he drops the important NPC that opens the door for you.
In mission 3 Point of No Return, when you’re in the very middle of the Confederation outpost, you don’t need to listen until the end of the dialogue. Once Zero and Threepwood start moving, while Spade is asking the soldiers to arrest us, shooting a soldier will make Threepwood and Zero run for their life which starts the chase scene.
But I probably won’t do more than that. I don’t want you to run in the maps shooting at everything that can be killed. That’s just not the point. (Hey, this is not Serious Sam 😉 )
So, guys, I’d really love to read your feeback about the changes I did. Do they improve the game experience ?
Do you have suggestions ? I’m all ears !
Thank you guys for your interest, it really helps !
Take care 😉
Raph’
PS : Oh yeah, Phillip won’t have the last version updated as I write these lines (and I’m sure it won’t be long before it is), so before he manages to bring it online on his server, you can grab the file on mine :
http://www.rebellion-source.net/index.php?page=download#download
Overall thought it was a good mod. I think I would have liked more action though and less story/drama. Also, it seemed pretty short to me. But overall worth playing..
Exellent!!-It did drag in spots and it seems to be a pretty big resource hog or I need a new card. ,but that was fine and well worth the download. This had a great little storyline and I was surprised it ended when it did.I normally don’t like playing on the side of the “bad guys” but as it gets turned around I started getting into it. The part where Barney goes underground into the complex had problems for me. The Combine would constantly block the walkway down so I finally had to just shoot them! haha-I was then able to move into the building. Don’t think it’s supposed to work this way but it did for me. Overall a really good job and I can’t wait for the rest of it to be finished-
Hi everyone !
Here I come with the latest version of Rebellion. And that’s probably going to be the last one. I now want to move forward and work on new projects (and especially find a Level Designer job !) 🙂
Version 1.3 :: 17/01/2009
Invasion has Begun
* Diversion assault is more realistic, soldiers will take cover.
* No delay when the office downstairs is cleared, Threepwood will directly recieve the order to open the gate once the last opponent is killed.
* Citizens at the end won’t run too much anymore.
Point of No Return
* During the first conflict, when meeting Zero, the player can shoot the soldiers a little before the end of Zero’s final talk, right before she says “… then fight !” without the mission to be a failure.
* Correctly aligned some textures.
* Fixed the falling shelf timing so that it always kills at least one soldier.
* Fixed the helicopter damage that was reset after reloading a game.
* Fixed the color of the dynamic light in the sewers wich was becoming purple after reloading a game.
* The door Threepwood blasts should correctly fall on the ground.
* If Zero or Threepwood dies, the reload will come in faster.
The Vault
* The top of the AR2 weapon won’t appear anymore.
* The doors of the lift will make a sound when closing or opening.
* The lift’s shadows have been disabled.
I also want to thank you all again for the feedback !
Really.
Take care everyone, and enjoy !
@Chris Fox : Actually, the name “Threepwood” is the only Monkey Island easter egg. But there’s one for another old Lucas Arts adventure game 🙂
@Robspace1 : I’m happy you liked it 🙂 As for the combine blocking the way, well, the Confederation Soldiers are some very sensible persons (even if shooting unarmed citizens isn’t much of a problem for them), you better don’t disturb them too much as they walk down the stairs or they might forget what they were supposed to do… poor little ones. If that happens, you better shoot them. Anyway, another soldier will come and replace the fallen one in just a few seconds. More seriously, pushing them as they walk down sometimes creates AI parasites that will stop them from reaching their assault_rallyPoint. If you walk after them, they won’t complain 🙂
I’ll get a closer look at this problem and see what I can do to avoid that. Thanks for noticing !
I have uploaded the latest version to my servers and edited the post to reflect the changes. I will play the latest version and write a new review, along with some more screenshots and maybe a panoramic view too.
RaphaelG-I tried to push the Combine out of the way and even tried going over the top of them but three of them would not let me pass to follow Barney down the stairs. I did reinstall that part a few times and it just did the same thing.Now, this could be a problem on my end but I also had a jittery screen, unstable for much of the game. I turned all setting to the lowest point and it was still jumpy in alot of the game. I have an AMD Athlon 64 3500 /w 1 gig ram-my video card is Radeon 9600 and I do need to upgrade but it works fine for most other games.I’m half way through Leons CTA right now for the 2nd time and having no problems at all so, just thought I’d let you know.It was the newest version of your mod that I played and it worked fine as far as not stopping every time a fellow soldier was killed. That happened just a few times-no big deal. It’s nice to see some mods with good stories in them coming through now and when can I finish this? Thanks again-Rob
I didn’t get the feeling that I was playing the mod.
It felt more like the mod was playing me, with a couple or 3 places
to have combat and have limited control over my own play.
It felt like the story had been written for the author himself as the lead character
in a continual barrage that seemed to suggest “hey, look at this, I can make the
characters do scripted sequences while taking away your free choice to do
anything about it, once again.
I dunno… I love a good mod, and I was intrigued by the deceptively large size;
thinking; oh good, a nice long mod to play, finally.
But it never happened. I got to fight and be “free” so rarely, I almost shut it
off halfway through.
Pingback: Podcast 17 · Providing truth to Citizens!
due to my own mapping I hadn’t time to play this one earlier, but last night I took the small hour free that it took to play Rebellion.
the info and comments above made me hassetate, because I HATE sp-maps/mod or games for that matter that try to give a mp experience in there sp-mission through the systhem of making the player game in some kind of group of npc’s. when I want to have a mp expereince I will play mp on line, what I never do with fpshooters, with race games its something different, although you then always have those sick children that online play on line so they can make the playfun of other players impossible.
that said, I still started Rebellion and what I always do in these cases did work in rebellion, I killed emidiatly the other group members, (haha), so I was after all alone and could play it as a real sp game, (a real shame this was only possible with the first half of the mod, as soon as barney started to walk along it wasn’t possible anymore, he couldn’t be killed, and from then on the game ended when you killed another combine.
i have to say that I did find the brushwork and the way some texture were added looking a bit amateuristic, don’t know how much experience this mapper/modder has. but the overall look was just ok. the scenes were a npc started to talk against me to explain something were in the beginning quit fun. but quit soon they started to anoy me, there were most of the times much to long for my taste, with info that didn’t really interest me. it looked more and more like the modder wanted to tell us a story and not so much give us a fpSHOOTER experience.
and personaly it can’t get hard enough for me, in a normal way that is, (no rooms full of tousands of combines and those things.)
so, it was ok, but I didn’t had a great experience. like I said before, as some kind of story telling mod it was ok, but as shooter it was not.
still, I am greatfull the maker did take so much effort to give us this, I know it takes a huge amount of time and effort to get something like this made. the intro was SUPER, really enjoyed that!!! (mean the part from right from the start, the title and cutscene and that came along with it).
looked like that was made as last part, it looked so much better as the rest.
seems it will be followed up by another part/episode. at least, that was what a message said at the end. and i’m interest how that will look, hopefully a bit more action.
although I am afraid it will not have a new episode, because many maps/mods end with this message, and only a very few really do make one.
we’ll see
leon
(SPY-maps)
(stridermountain.com)
Leon: In this case, I don’t see how that might help Raphael, as he (and more players by the looks of the overall comments) don’t really have a problem with being part of a group while playing games. Multiplayer and multicharacter are different things. In multiplayer games the actions of other players (not characters) constantly change and are impossible to predict, while adapting to squad mechanics is usually simple.
I have my HL2 box in front of me, and nowhere in it do I read the word “SHOOTER”. It actually says “3D Action” which does describe what HL2 was about. Exploration, combat, puzzles and character interaction (mostly unilateral though 😀 ). To think that HL2 is just a fps shooter (in the lines of Doom, Serious Sam) is a big mistake since the tools provided by Valve and Valve’s own games hint at a much more complete gameplay experience than just shooting down bad guys.
In this case, I don’t think the choice of gameplay done by this modder (because we are talking about a modification, let’s not forget) can be questionned or criticized based on our personal tastes. We can though, give our point of view about how it’s actually implemented and how it can be bettered.
Kasperg-Leon is the man who gave us Coastline To Atmosphere. That mod and Adam Fosters mod Minerva are two of the highest rated most played mods out there. I do think Leo has alot of experience and credibilty when it comes to how to improve a mod. I think the author of this mod would do well to listen to such a person. Call it constructive critisism but who better then a very talented author to learn from. His opinions are completely valid imo and have already been expressed by others on here. Some people would rather have more control over the way the game is played and actually the author himself has said he has made changes already to allow for that, so this is all a great learning experience for him and hopefully the next chapter will be even better.
Robspace: I don’t think much of what Leon posted was constructive criticism. He rather expressed his personal views on what “shooters” should be like which is fine, but I think given the nature of this mod it’s not the most relevant thing the author needs to hear to improve it.
According to you, I could use my mod “The Citizen” as a way to give myself “credibility” on how to improve a mod and compare its rating, downloads, amount of visits, watchers etc in MODDB with those of Coastline2Atm, and once again according to you I’d have more credibility in my words since according that webpage (and this one too) it seems to be more popular and more liked than Leon’s mod. But tha’ts using your logic, I insist. I would not make such claims.
On the matter of who is valid or not give advice, I don’t think anyone is valid. Leon’s maps are indeed ones of fast paced action and very little character interaction (from what I’ve played). In this case, I don’t think his advice is the holy grail of opinions since he has admitted this mod relies on a type of gameplay he dislikes.
I could comment on his maps and say everything I find wrong in them, but a lot of it would mostly be my personal opinion and hence, useless to him.
I guess I just have a problem with any poster taking another poster to task for their opinion on how to improve on an authors work. It all comes down to personal opinion anyway and in the end he will do whatever he wants with it. He has made changes based on the feedback so far and they have been good ones. It dosen’t matter what mod you make your never going to please everyone. Like I said, Leons comments were already expressed by others as to the way the game played out and the players overall lack of control. If I made this mod, I would really appreciate and listen and learn from people that have made good mods, yourself included. I really liked this mod but it did have a few drawbacks like the control and lack of more action. I’ll bet part 2 will be fantastic!
I personally disagree with this statement.
i have to be honest and didn’t think twice but just wrote my comment above in one go after I played Rebellion, and, that is not the way to do things. best is to let things sinck in and then comment. also could I have said things better, its indeed no constructuve comment Kasperg. and Robspace 1, my face went red when I read your comment, i’m very pleased someone thinks so highly of my own mapping work. thanks for that!
still, I just have read my own comment again, to see what I wrote exactly, and I have to say that I have to stand behind my earlier words. but, lets be clear on this, what I said is JUST and PERSONAL opinion!!!! I never had the intention to say something from a constructive point of view. and, like also mentioned above; its simply impossible to make something that is liked by everyone. when I started mapping I tried to please everyone, when someone wrote he didn’t liked this or that, I changed it. but, time has learned me, that what is liked by one person is disliked for exactly the same reason by someone else. and my comment should be seen in this light, I just gave my personal opinion, that’s all. so I do agree with most of your comments Kasperg, only one is not true, that I am the first person that says these things here, because I read all comemnt before I started playing, like I also said earlier, and more comments say simular things to mine. one comment in particular did strike me, that it looked a bit like he wanted to show us scripted sceuqences.
but, enough about my comments. I still thank the maker for his work and effort and overall it was a joyeble experience, and, I don’t know if this is his first work, or that he made more. should this be his first project then its simply amazing!
and I am really surpriced to hear that the HL2 box doesn’t name the game a shooter, I always thought it was.
maybe its best to close my comment now with some constructive comments, (seen from my perseption and personal taste);
– the lightning was a much places much to bright, it looked like many light_entities had values of over 100 where a value of 30 or so would have been more then enough.
-lot of displacements were quit blocky, I know it takes quit some practice to get this tool well used. so thisis no critisism but only a something I noticed.
-specialy in the beginning (in the spaceship), the brushwork was quit blocky. I know its fun to make structures from brushwork, I love to do so myself. but these days games have moved on and brushwork is most of the times only used for walls, ceiling etc, otherwise it starts to get to quick an overall HL1 look.
-what me did strike really was when I walked the streets in the map, I noticed that all outside walls of the houses looked rather falt, this because there was no depth in them. he made entire house walls from one texture, without using the brushwork option here. best is to place doors and windows a bit inside, so they are deeper into the structure, this gives an overall depth and realism to the street. (should the reason to do this be that otherwise the fps could go down to much, then a simple solution for that is to change all small brushes into func_detail ones, what will make that the engine renders them differently. just remember to place an strcutual (normal) brush behind it should it otherwise contact the void, so it doesn’t cause a leak. and the end data will not rise much by using detail brushes, so don’t be afraid of that, one of my maps has a load of such detail brushes and still it made the end data go up with 1,3%)
-personaly I would like some more action and shooting scenes,
-and, (and I think most people will agree with me here I think) is that you simply can’t use inviseble walls anymore these days. for instance map2 or 3 (am not sure anymore) were a road is blocked over the full lenght by an inviseble wall, that really amazed me. so, or try to block the players way with something viseble, or give the player eccess. but never make a path that looks accesseble, but isn’t because of a inviseble wall.
well, that’s it for now.
again, I ONLY give my personal impression and idea’s, the maker should ALWAYS make what he likes himself, I do to, although it is helpfull to get your work played to read as many comments about your work as possible, see what it thought most about as many people as possible and try to implement these things.
and, I want to finish with that I made most if not all ‘mistakes” myself, and probebly I still do with some. but, mapping is a learning experience, and each new project is (or should be) better then the last one.
so I say it again, I am looking forward to play his next project!!
therefore;
leon
(SPY-maps)
Leon, I do think your first comment was actually useful if we look at it from a certain point of view. Other players like Phillip or you, who are not fans of the squad gameplay mechanics, can decide not to download the map if they see it will involve such gameplay. Preferably, they will at least be warned of what they might find.
While our personal opinions might not always be useful to the mapper, they might very well be for other players. I apologize for being critical.
Great exchange of ideas you guys-but then great minds think alike right? lol-seriously, this is what makes PP such a great place. Leon, I’m sorry about the red face but when someone creates something so good they deserve praise in my book. I’m also playing CTA for the 2nd time right now and near the end. You made it tougher then the first time!-If I ever learn how to make these things I;ll be driving people like you and Kasperg nuts with questions and need of advice-Alot of rookie modders can learn alot from you guys and Chris-Maybe you guys should ban together to teach it online!
Hi there guys 🙂
Hey, there are some interesting comments beeing posted lately !
Hi Leon ! Don’t take offense, but I didn’t bother to take the time to write a reply to your first post, since you looked more like an angry kid who was frustrated because he couldn’t kill enough people in the game 🙂
But now that your second post is way more constructive than the first one, here are a few things I’d like to say :
To start with your comments, I’d like to raise one point that you mentionned : You can’t please to everyone.
And that’s indeed a very wise lesson you bring us here.
So that’s exactly why one should keep doing what he actually likes, what is actually passionating him.
I haven’t got the chance to play your mod yet, but I promise I will !
Now, to the look of it (please, correct me if I’m wrong), if you had to point out the main points of your game, explain the things you kept in mind while building your levels, I believe you’d say : the architecture and the action.
Probably because this is what is important to you. Have a very good looking mod with lots of combat moments.
Now, here’s what I kept in mind when building my levels, what I tried to achieve and what is important to me : A nice story transposed into a game, with a good atmosphere.
So, saying that I looked like I wanted to show I can make scripted sequences would be silly. Please don’t fall into that. I wanted to show I could create a living story in a game. A game where many things happen around the player. A story that will evolve progressively with the player as he goes through the game.
I did not want to create distinct “levels” with some sort of briefing and clear mission objective for each of them. I’ve said it many times, I want a smooth and progressive game experience. Because that’s what is talking to me in a game.
I really see Video Game as an evolved support to tell stories.
Remember these magic times when a parent, or a teacher or anyone else read you a story, remember how you were imaginating you were actually living these stories as the hero, or along with him. Remember how absorbed and dreaming you were by a simple story being told.
Now we have the opportunity to go to the next level. Before, you would let your imagination bring you to some fantasy world. Now, we can actually Live these imaginary moments. And that very thing is what makes Video Games so great and important to me.
That’s why the secondary title of Rebellion is “a Half-Life2 single player story”. Story.
And to tell a story in Half-Life2, you use scripts.
Now I’ve taken the time to write at two occasions a little above why I use these scripts to tell my story. So I won’t do it again and will ask you to take it a look if you didn’t already.
Now I’ve said I wanted to make a story that evolves progressively as the players goes through the game.
That also requires NPC’s to have a coherent behaviour. Not stupid robots waiting for the player to make the first move. I wanted my NPC’s to have their own personnality, so they say things that come to their mind and take action according to the situation. That helps for the immersion. And I truly believe that will never ever be comparable to the online experience. These are just two different things. One is about story telling and immersion, as the other one is about gameplay and competition.
I don’t like NPC behaviour like you can find in Call of Duty for example, where you, as the player, are required to do absolutely everything. And your allies are more there for the show and the epic battle feeling. I just don’t find it coherent.
Again, I did what I like 🙂
And I understand it will never fit to everyone. That’s why I made some improvements in order to open the game to a broader range of player while always making sure to stick to my initial objective. That’s why feedbacks have been so valuable so far. But don’t expect me to make a shooter of my game, that’s just never going to happen 🙂
Waw, now that the big thought has been layed down, lets lean over the more detailed points :
About the lightings, they could definitely use some more work, although I believe they are really far from looking bad. Now I wonder, might there be an important luminosity or contrast difference between screens ? I’ve noticed that on my screen, when playing the first mission, and start in Mandella’s room, I don’t see anything but the table, the chair and the shelf. The light on the table has a low intensity of 20. All things on the opposite wall are just too dark to be noticed. But on a LCD screen I tried this, you can actually see all details in the room (and luminosty is really low).
Also, in the second mission (Invasion has Begun), when you walk downstairs with the soldiers, the light is pretty weak, and it has got an intensity of 100.
So, for supposedly well lit areas (for example the control room of the communication center), I used an intensity of 200 which actually looks right. Less than that would look to dark to me.
So, could you please tell me which areas look overbright to you ? Or could it be due to screens settings ? That would really help me.
Oh, you really found the Spaceship architecture too blocky ? I really did my best to try to make the walls look detailed and not flat. Could you please expand a little more on this ?
Come on… I can take take critics since it helps me, but they should be based on something true. I never did that. There’s always at the very least a ground floor texture for the first 128 pixels, then two or three floors of one texture and finally, a roof texture. That’s the least detailed I did… except for that stone wall on the right of the strider that lacks details and brushwork.
As for the volume in the streets, I think you’re right for the little narrow streets. Some of them definitely deserve more depth. Good point. And for the main streets, well, I payed a lot of attention to bring variety. So you have multiple buildings of different size, architecture and texture. I added some parking lots, garden, porches for depth… So, what more would you advise me to do in these areas ? That would help !
Hehe yeah ! I got the message 😉
As for invisible walls, you’re 100% right ! At that point, I just didn’t want to go with more details. Actually, simply creating more displacements with some kind of tunnel blocked by a jeep where the soldiers start would have made it. That something I should definitely correct !
Now that we are talking about displacements… 🙂
You’re right, they look blocky. That was my first attempt with displacements, and I’m not happy with it. Ideal would have been to delete them all and get started anew. But since they were done and that they weren’t looking too crap, I prefered to concentrate my work on more important issues. And eventually, if I had time later on, I would do them again.
Actually, Rebellion is my first project, and I learned to use Hammer and Faceposer thanks to it. Anyway, I really worked hard so that it would look as complete and thorough as possible and feel as professional as possible.
And your feedback, everyone, really helps me get always closer to this objective.
So, thank you. Sincerely.
Take care guys !
Raph’
i don’t want to take over this thread, its the Rebellion place, but, I didn’t see an option to sent you a pm Robspace 1, therefore I have to say it here. a friend of mine, Baltic, has sp-mods.com with forums were we help other mappers/modders, we alway help with whatever problem a mapper has, so should you have questions, please go there. and when you like CtoA you will for sure like the new hl2 sp-mod that we are making, (strider mountain(.com)).
now I stop, like I said, this isn’t the place for me to say there things.
leon
Thanks Leon-and yes, wer’e all waiting!
omg holy half life pirates, guybrush threepwood has been sucked into the future and taken the job of a soldier, wait till le’chuck gets a taste of his smg
when I placed my last comment your latest comment was not visable yet RapahelG, therefore I didn’t reply on anything that you said. but I will do so now. I know what you mean with that you like to tell a story through your mod, and that is great and you succeed very well in that. and, I repeat my earlier words again that when this is your first project it really is simply amazing!! really, most first projects look, well, lets be honest, or, well, lets not, but lets say, they don’t look that good lol. yours in from a quit high scale.
but let me start with explaining what I ment with that you made to less depth in some housewalls, its clear that you misunderstound me, or better said, that I told it wrong, (i’m dutch and English is a strange lengues for me).
best is probebly that I show what I mean with a screen, hopefully it can be showen here:
i didn’t mean the choise of the wall/house texture, but only the brushwork in it. when you watch there screen you will see what I mean for instance with a window that has real depth in the wall, its placed a bit inside the wall what makes it much more realistic.
sorry Phillip, I had to make a new post, I stopped my last comment to check if the link to the screen would be showed, what s been done, but I missed the option of going on with my comment (edit button). so I go on here;
glad to see the screen is showed, I guess you now know what I mean, and you will I think agree that the second window looks more realistic because of how it is placed (bit inside the wall), you could make it even better by doing the same with the actual window, by placing the glass a bit back again, so the wood around it is more up front.
then about the light, I know that it really depens on what kind of rig (pc) a map/mod is played. but I didn’t realise that it even could ment that some maps look brighter in a lpc screen. I myself have a lpc screen and it was quit bright. in a lot of places, outside and inside. outside for instance did I notice that you probebly used no color at all in the light_envirement. best is that you open an original HL2 map (vmf) in hammer and take a look at the normal and ambient values of the light envirements that they have used, and you will see there are many different colors used, to even dark blue and nearly black purple ones. in my last mod CtoA I used simular values to what you used for ambient light outside. its a bit to bright what makes that the overall look of the map looks a little bland. and I seem to remember, but forgive me when I am wrong, its now allready days ago that I played it, that the sunlight (light_envirement’s pich value) comes from straight ahead (value -90). when you give it a value of -50 to -70 you get shadows, what gives more depth to your map. but again, maybe I remember it wrong.
i suggest you just copy the light anvirement values of an existing daylight HL2 sp-map and paste them in your map and compile the map then. you will be surpriced how much of a difference this makes, really!
then about lights inside, before I also used values of around 100 and above. but, now I have learned hardly ever use a value of above 90, believe it or not, but most of my lights have a value of around 5 to 35.
but I am not sure anymore after you said that lpc screens do show it all less dark, good thing I will test our pre release next week with my borther on his “old” pc monitor, hopefully it will not look that much different.
we all know now that I like more action, lol. but, like I said before, please just make what you think is best, or, what you prefer most!!!! I can’t say this strongly enough! because the main thing is that you enjoy making it. we both know that it takes so (soooooooo) unbelieveble much time to create these kind of detailed maps, that its very importent that you feel good when you create them, when there liked to its great, but not the main thing.
knowing this is your first big project I am even more interested in your next work.
personaly I wouldn’t go on with this one, fixing and changing stuff, but I just would go on with a total new project, (what could be the next chaper to this one). ofcourse could you now start working for months on this again, but, its allready played by many people, and probebly will not many people play the newer version of it, (have to agree that I personaly hardly ever play a newer version of the same mod).
its probebly also more fun, now you have learn so much more, to use all that info and skill on a new project.
but, its all personal, so, just do what you think is best, and what you like best. then it will be automaticly become each time better and better.
and I say it again, for a first project this is really amazing, its simply VERY promising!!
well done!
leon
Hi there Leon !
Thanks for the congratulations, it feels good 🙂
As for the depth, it’s a good idea to do that with windows ! I thought about depth in doorways for instance.
Actually, I took inspiration from the buildings in the first chapter of Half-Life2. They aren’t making any depth with windows, except for more detailed places. But you’re right, and I won’t forget the tip !
Concerning the lights… strange thing 🙂 I’ve just checked the brightness of the lights in the very first corridor, inside the Mothership. It’s 45 and on my screen, it’s pretty dark. Check it :
http://www.rebellion-source.net/images/screens/1.jpg
Could it be due to the fact that I’m not using HDR ? (this is the simple Half-Life2 engine, not Episode One or Two)
And concerning light_environment, I certainly use them (with a shadow_control which has the same orientation as the light_environment), with the properties from this page :
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Sky_List
I’ve also noticed that some times (on some textures ?), shadows just don’t show up or are almost not visible. I don’t really know why.
Very important thing 🙂
Sure thing ! I’ve made a fesw improvements thank to the great feedback of the community. Most of the modifications were little things. Little things that could help the player having a smoother and better experience.
But I probably won’t be working on this anymore, since I want to move on and create other stuffs.
And, that’s fore sure, creating a brand new map from nothing will always be better than improving one that has been build earlier when I had less experience. Now, I have much more things in mind when I start a new map than I had before. And that helps making the good Level Design decisions.
Very important ! 🙂
So, thanks for the advices ! It’s all really helpfull !
So you’re dutch (I’m belgian) … goie avond allemaal !
Cheers 😉
Raph’
aha, ge seit een Belg!! lol
(english; aha, your a Belgium guy).
still, we will keep it on English here ofcourse.
am glad you go on with a new project, most modders keep fixing there old work and keep releasing the newer versions. so, good you go on.
its true that HL2 itself also has no depth in the making of there windows and doors as I and you described above., what really amazes me, because hl2 is much about realistic lloking worlds, and windows and doors that have no depth don’t really add realism, still, they only do it with a few walls, have seen much streets in hl2 itself, were you could walk really close up to these houses, that still didn’t have depth in it. guess some mappers didn’t and others did, because I believe that each map is made by one mapper, so some maps are made by person A and others by person B,C and so on. and some of them didn’t think it was nessesary to build those windows and doors, because it also is ment for doors ofcourse.
am glad I could be of some assistance, and about that one link that you gave, to that image from the inside of the ship, and the lightning. you say you think its to dark, but, I think its just right like this. but, ofcourse is this also a case of personal taste. it could be a bit brighter, that’s true. but, a bit of darkness add more realism to it I think, and more shadows and darker places. but I do have to add that it can’t be much darker, much mappers make the mistake of thinking that very dark maps (maps were you need your flashlight about 80% of the time, you know what kind of maps I mean) are more crazy and so. but this is not true, many people anoy them about such dark maps, some dark places are great, but only when there few, when there to many its starts to anoy.
but, this I never had in your maps, and i’m glad about it, for my taste there were sometimes a bit to bright, lol.
still, always make what you like to play yourself.
leon
Awesome first map! I liked the interplay and the side switching twist. The approach is an HL2 first, and I look forward to the sequel.
not much to say. couldve have been really good. the modder knows what hes doing just not putting it to use. too much blabla not enough action. still enjoyed it but we need more.
very professionnal woprk tough.
keep it up.
This mod is very well made, a lot of details and that sort, great voice acting, environments and plot, great job.
This mod is awesome, best voice acting i’ve heard so far!
There’s a unplayable flaw that occurs almost immediately. After getting the mission, the dropship lands, everyone heads out the door, there’s gunfire, and… I can’t move. I can fire my weapon, and load up the suit’s power from the resupply unit mounted on the ship’s wall, but I can’t move an inch. I’ve played a lot of mods and have been through all the obvious possibilities, but nothing’s working.
Can anyone help?
thanks,
Sean
I just played this a couple months ago, but don’t remember details about this mod.
Sorry, but I gotta ask–did you enable sv_cheats before you tried using noclip to move? (I had the same problem with another mod not too long ago and, after deleting the mod/map, finally realized I may not have turned cheats on.)
Have you checked to see if they changed all the movement keys on you? (Keyboard options.)
I seem to have this weird bug where when I run into the barnie charecter, he just stands there and does nothing. I walk around him and when I am where I need to go the game just freezes. I can move and everything but no one says anything and it is just stuck there.Can anyone help?
I have the same problem as Anon_229047. The Barney character doesn’t move or do anything, and I keep moving and make it to what I think is the briefing room, but there the combine soldiers go about their business hitting the keyboards and stuff and the Dr. Breen character doesn’t do anything but look at me.
So I skipped that level and went to the drop ship, and there the troops ran out, there was gunfire, and the ship that was flying simply flew back and forth as I was getting shot at and a pile of rocks blocked my path so I was stuck not knowing what to do.
Finally I skipped to the next level, and where the troops are walking through the door, well, they literally walked through the door, it didn’t open and I was blocked outside. I didn’t look very well to see if I could progress another way though, but figured something was wrong, perhaps the update messed up this mod? Or something is wrong on my end? Any help?
Only gave this the Avoid It because I notice the last 2 comments are after the steam update. I just dloaded it and it is now unplayable. from what I gather there are alot of missing triggers and other messed up files. I tried to noclip my way around but that just silly.
Since the SDK update, this mod” is completly messed up, yeah 🙁
Here is the report on forum steampowered:
Rebellion
Bugs: Got Engine error AD_Alloc: no free edicts during “Breen” character script. Added num_edicts 2047 as launch option and still got error.
Comment: In gameinfo.txt, needed to change SteamAppID to 215 and add Game sourcetest at end of SearchPaths. This allowed the mod to start, but did nothing for the Engine error
Even there, there is no fixes/patches nor updates to re-start this mod’. So this mod” is COMPLETLY dead until some new info’s.
(Damn Valve!).
I just downloaded. Changed SteamAppID to 215 and added Game sourcetest at end of SearchPaths. But I also added bin from hl2-content-bin. It played fine. Give it a try. Nice Mod.
my issues with this mod are mostly NPC relationship problems, voices being too quiet, and missing scenes, (npcs will just stand around, because they don’t know what to do, and console says “missing[insert scene name here].vcd”
Seems to be broken the familiar “startup_… missing.
Manually
Easy
1 Minute