The Combine have been draining the Earth’s oceans.
Control, storage and filtration of water have become increasing valuable commodities.
If the Combine are not defeated soon, there won’t be anything left saving!
- Title: WaterVille
- File Name: hl2-ep2-sp-mc-waterville.7z
- Size : 20.30MB
- Author: Jared Goodroad AKA Gordon Hammer and OJJ
- Date Released: 02 September 2015
Download directly into MapTap [20.30MB]
You MUST have MapTap installed before using this link.
Download to your HDD [20.30MB]
You can still use it with MapTap once you have downloaded it.
- Copy the WaterVille folder into your …\Steam\SteamApps\common\sourcemods\ folder.
- Restart or start Steam.
- WaterVille should now be listed in your Library tab.
If you require more help, please visit the Technical Help page.
I want mappers to create a map that uses water as its focus.
That DOES NOT mean I expect huge coastal areas that the player simply drives past – I fully understand the amount of work that goes into creating those things and how quickly the player speeds past them.
I don’t want to limit your ideas but think about dams, underground storage facilities, Resistance-run filtration plants. Perhaps the player has to drain an area for the Resistance or the opposite, flood somewhere.
A very simply canal could be used for the player to reach an area or how about an almost completely underwater map where the player has to find air pockets to reach the surface?
The player doesn’t necessarily have to DO anything with the water, although that would be preferable to not.
The original release of this mod had a broken Breen’s Private Reservoir map. I have updated the file to version 1.1 and this includes a working map. IF you played the original map, please try the proper one, it’s much, much better.
If you decide to use the Per-Map Opinions, please use a HEADING tag for the map title BEFORE you add the image. If you need guidance, please see the video below:
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Swamped By Jared Goodroad AKA Gordon Hammer
Breen’s Private Reservoir by OJJ
I will be giving away various Steam and ORIGIN games. A final decision will be made after the deadline, although there will be at least 3 $5/10 games available.
Swamped is the winner. Originally, this was supposed to be decided by public vote, but the other entry was broken on receipt, so the winner was obvious.
Brane Scan by Kelly Bailey from Half-Life 2
The RunThinkShootLive.Com intro video was made by ĜL1TCĦ³
Two gridview icons are included in this file. To use the included grid view icon, select “Gridview” in Steam (top right corner). Right click on “WaterVille” and select “Set Custom Image”. Then browse to the SourceMods folder and then to waterVille/steam-gridview-icons folder and select the image. Then click “Set Image” and that’s it.
Of course, you can create your own custom image if you prefer.
The challenge started 11am GMT 12 August 2015 and finished Monday 31st August at 12pm GMT.
Maximum two maps per mapper per competition.
The map must be original and not have been released publicly before.
The map must run in system with only Ep2 installed
By entering the competition you grant PlanetPhillip.Com and RunThinkShootLive.Com the right to release the map as part of the WaterVille Mod.
Maps must not appear before the release and for one month after the release of the mod.
No assets from retail games other than HL2, HL2: Ep1 or HL2: Ep2 are allowed.
Other assets are allowed with written permission from their original authors, which MUST be included in the entry.
Phillip’s decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into about it.
The map MUST have a proper name.
The map MUST have a proper filename: MapName_wv.bsp
All entries must be sent no later than the deadline.
WARNING: The screenshots contain spoilers.
Each map has 5 screenshots. Thanks to ArctixSnowPup for providing the screenshots!
1600 x 900
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2,854Overall
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128365 days
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 9 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 0 Hours, 37 Mins
Shortest: 0 Hours, 20 Mins by DaZ
Longest: 0 Hours, 50 Mins by dino_yoshi13
Total Time Played: 7 Hours, 23 Mins
This release is currently not in a collection
If you believe this release is missing important tags, please suggest them in a comment?
Overall, I’m slightly disappointed with the number of the entries. Sometimes that happens, even with good themes. Anyway…
This is exactly what I was hoping for when I chose the theme. You need to manipulate water levels which requires you to reach certain places. Part puzzle, part action, the map is fun to play and challenging too.
I broke the sequence once but getting to an area before I should have and suddenly a swarm of manhacks nearly killed me! but all was well in the end.
My only criticism is the map is not pretty. I’d love to see the author make it day time and make it look really good – that would be the icing on the cake.
It’s broken, but even if it wasn’t, I’m not sure how much fun this would be to play. I had to noclip to get past the first 30 seconds. Maybe you will have more luck.
Is the black highlight to block spoilers?
Yeah. You just highlight it with your mouse to reveal its text.
Yeah, I figured that out a while ago. I was just wondering if that’s what it was for. 😛
The second map isn’t broken for me. Nonetheless, I’d say its level design is not intuitive, tons of unusable doors, the map actually made my whole game into fullbright for some reason, and yes: it’s not very fun. If there were an image under “It’s dire” I’d use it.
I am 99% sure it’s a satire map. I mean, nobody would make this.
I don’t think ‘satire’ is the right word. The author may of not been able to meet the deadline, and released what was completed on the cognizance the map, although incomplete, would meet expectations. To follow up on your comment, I counted a total of 4 unusable doors, it’s really up to personal preference, but having a few unusable doors IMO is a good thing, both as an indication where spawned enemies came from, or making a map seem bigger than it really is.
Although I agree with you that fullbright is quite an inconvenience, especially when forced on maps.
Would definitely like to see a finished product one day, if the author ever gets around to that.
True, unusable doors give the illusion of a bigger map or making it more lively. The issue here is the fact that these are in locations I’d expect usable doors in. I mean, for me it felt like a maze.
In this case it didn’t give me the illusion of size, it gave me the feeling of disorientation. Can’t speak for others though.
Ideally, you’d put Combine locks on the doors, or leave them as door textures without handles, to communicate that they aren’t operable.
I didn’t think the number of locked doors was excessive, though.
I also don’t think it was satire. The author just wasn’t experienced enough to do a proper build or lighting. It still functions otherwise, though, which makes that oversight a shame.
I didn’t join because I had no idea what I wanted to do with the theme, and I think quite a few other people felt that way too.
I didn’t have any idea what to make either until talking it over with Ihonnyboy in the last few days. And even then, it wasn’t “OMG, drop everything, this idea HAS to be done!” 🙂
I tried again to make an entry for this competition, but I was too slow in making it (spent days just blocking) and was on holiday for the last 4 days. I’m hoping to be ready for the next competition, but we’ll see.
Now, the maps:
I couldn’t play this without my head screaming “Super Mario 64”. This map reminds me of one of the levels. This may of not have been the case if it was more pretty. But at least their was enjoyable gameplay, even if I couldn’t get a little red plumber out of my head.
The constant revisiting of the open section with continuous changes creates a good feel of progression for the player, but there was no real clear objective. There was also slightly unrealistic events, like doors opening when you raised the water, but it’s no biggie. It was annoying at times as well when electric water wasn’t obvious. And there’s the lack of brightness and music as well.
Combat felt quite overwhelming, and his use of man-hacks makes the skybox light up with red light. It’s only the areas at the end that I disliked. They felt tacked on to the map, and in the first fight in the combine like section I just sat near the ammo crate and putt shoted the enemies before dealing with the hunters.
The map has problems but the over all gameplay was entertaining.
The idea of the map was great, but the map it self has “first map” written all over it. No lighting (which I think is the reason the water is broken), weapons next to infinite ammo crates, wrong sounds est. The concept of undercover was not well implemented, only being important for the first minute.
But aside from that, this map should be played because whilst the presentation is poor, the idea of the map and its flow shows that the mapper has the dream, just not the skill.
Using Gauge
Medium
40 Minutes
Not the shortest number of entries in a mapping challenge, but I still had fun playing both maps, even though one was clearly unfinished…
This map is definitely the cream of the crop, everything flowed together nicely, plenty of interesting scenes/puzzles/combat scenarios, some rooms around the map were empty, but I figured the area was under construction, or a water treatment facility, so you get a free pass on that one.
My only complaints would be regarding the very empty, dark sky and later, overusing the Elites in the later parts of the map, 2-3 in a squad of soldiers is just fine, but when you see these jerks around the corner with 33 HP, there’s not much you can do but reload an earlier save, is there?
Despite being incomplete, “Breen’s Private Reservoir” isn’t unplayable, it’s much shorter than ‘Swamped’, but I can name only three maps off the top of my head that attempt to worm stealth into Half-Life 2, most of the time, it doesn’t really work well, regardless, the way this map does it: presenting more weaponry/armor the more the player goes undetected feels just right. If you can stomach the obnoxious fullbright and fear of falling through the map when you reach the water segments, don’t skimp over this map.
Manually
Hard
30 Minutes
Speaking of “those jerks,” yeah, there’s a bug of sorts in Half-Life 2 where enemies can shoot through cover (as they do here) but you can’t. That section was rather frustrating because of this.
I had not much fun to play both maps…
At first I played the second one named Breen’s Private…it wasn’t ready and not interesting to play.
Then I played Swamped, but it was boring too.
I think this wasn’t a good challenge this time.
That’s only my opinion and i don’t wanna hurt anybody.
But respect for the mappers, I can’t handle the Hammer Editor!
Greets
Too bad there were only 2 entries. Here were my thoughts:
Quite a well polished entry with a good path for exploring. I liked most of the combat and the navigation. The beginning was a little tough, and there was a door behind you as you start that should not open. I did think the author went a little crazy with the manhacks though – that was too many! Still quite enjoyable.
This map had a very unfinished feel to it. The water sections aren’t right visually so you don’t realize the solution is to jump in. Also, the ladder at the first swimming part is really hard to see. I was a little disappointed that there was no more substantial task to destroy the reservoir besides shooting down the gunship. I was hoping to blow something up. If the author fixed up the water issues and gave it a better ending the recommendation would have been much higher.
Manually
Easy
30 Minutes
So I tried to see if I could fix the issue with the second map by decompiling it, and it appears that there is a serious issue with the area portals in the map, as vvis crashes during the compile of the map every time. I don’t know enough about aera portals to solve things, but the map in its current state can be played from beginning to end without issue. Just things like lights and water aren’t rendering because vvis never finished as it crashed.
I know that the author said that he left it “overnight” to compile. Realistically, a well optimized map should never take that long. If your vvis times are more than a few seconds, you’ve done something wrong.
Well, to be fair, an “optimized” map might have a longer vis-comp if it has a lot of vis-based entities ( such as occluders and areaportals and the like). But with proper management even the beefiest map shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. Slower computers might also take longer, at no fault of the mapper. (Well, other than them owning a terrible computer)
Sorry, but I didn’t find either entry in this comp to be that enjoyable.
The sheer length of this map is impressive for such a short comp, but it wears out its welcome fast. Not much going on here in terms of clever gameplay. You find Combine consoles and push the button to open a door which leads to a valve that raises the water. Rinse, repeat about five times at different heights. While the description might trigger flashbacks to the infamous Water Temple in Zelda, there’s no puzzle here. You don’t raise or lower the water strategically – it just moves the level to the next plane of gameplay.
After you reach the top, you are greeted with a series of sloggy battles against tons of Combine and Hunters. Hope you’ve saved up your AR2 alt-fire.
All throughout, the level has an unhealthy obsession with Manhacks. Massive swarms of the things will bombard you and you don’t even have a Gravity Gun for dealing with them. The pacing bogged down toward the end as I kept going back-and-forth to the AR2 ammo crate.
But all-in-all, it’s boring and too long without enough interesting ideas to sustain it. Because it repeats the same mechanics over and over, you’re just going through the motions. And it doesn’t look that great either because the author chose to make the sky pitch black instead of using the Ravenholm skydome for some reason.
Which makes it ironic that this map, despite having a broken VVIS and VRAD build which causes the water and lighting to not render, is actually more fun than Swamped. At the very least, it knows what it’s trying to achieve and then goes about doing exactly that. Short and to-the-point, you are meant to blow up a dam and you circle your way up to the top to do it. Combat is never overbearing. If only the author took the time to really finish this, there’d be a nice little map in here.
Manually
Medium
46 Minutes
After playing the updated map with the fixed lighting and water, I’d revise Breen’s Private Reservoir to “It’s Good” status.
I like the idea of the rising water level opening up new areas, and previously unavailable old parts. It is set at night so battery levels are just as important as bullets left in the clip.
Great map, Thanks for making it.
PS, Think about why its called a Skylight.
What happened to my level? It had lighting, the trees did not look like that, the water was see-through, you could see reflections and the skybox wasn’t rendering the actual level?
I emailed you twice but got no reply. Do you want to send me it again?
Swamped
i did not enjoy the beginning at all (dark rooms with floors that kill you not showing what which buttons do etc.) but i graduatly got better (maybe i just enjoy manhack battles too much) and the ending was tough but i like myself a good challenge (but maybe going into the final area with almost no health and ammo wasnt the brigtest of ideas).
Breen’s Private Reservoir
Its broken. Enough said. Even if it wasnt im not sure i would have liked it. (Atleast i could kill a citizen with a can w/0 getting any reaction.)
I didnt submit my map because I wasnt happy with the result. (in hindsight i wish i would have)
Using Gauge
Hard
45 Minutes
I’d just about started a review when I saw the last comments. 🙂 I’ll hold off until the file is updated and play it again.
No need if the second map worked perfectly for you.
It very much did not work perfectly – all the visual issues and weird bits (though no game breaking halts I guess) that have been described were in the version I played.
Okay, in that case, look out for the updated version later today.
EDIT: Make that tomorrow – sorry.
That’s cool I’ll keep checking 🙂 I do hope that others will also give it a chance.
It wouldn’t work perfectly for anyone I assume as something in the map file was most likely corrupted when I uploaded it and therefore you got the broken version and as a result so did everyone else who got it through you.
The file has now been updated to version 1.1 which includes a working Breen’s Private Reservoir by OJJ. Sorry for the delay.
The 2nd map is definitely better, but the ending still leaves something to be desired. I would like to see the reservoir be totally destroyed by my actions. What you see instead is that the reservoir starts leaking water the moment you hit the gunship with the 3rd RPG round. In fact, it starts leaking well before the gunship actually crashes it which is kind of strange. It would have been nice to be able to go explore the area that you opened up as well.
Here is my updated review of the second map.
It’s clearly still a beginner’s map but it wasn’t horrible to play. Many areas are just too bland with strange doorways and even stranger joins between areas.
The only issue I had was after I destroy the Combine Gunship, I wasn’t clear where I needed to go. I tried jumping over the side (the destroyed section gives the impression that’s where I should go) but I kept dying.
All in all, not a dire map as I first said.
Overall this wasn’t a bad pair of maps once the updated Breen’s Private Reserve was available. Sad to see that only two maps got included – on that note I would love to see a “FinishedVille” where those folks who ‘had some amount done’ but didn’t make a competition in time, finish their ville and all get put into a release 🙂
The approaches to the theme were not radically different in the ‘raise the level’ aspect, but that said everything about them otherwise was uniquely done.
This was a great, long map. I think it felt much bigger than it actually was in terms of physical map size? I’ll have to go noclipping around to see it from above.
It did a lot of things very well. The one downside I think is that it was night time, and that means ‘everything is dark’. There were good light cues but needing the flashlight almost constantly is, as it always is, a pain in the butt. But only a minor annoyance, as the rest of its features were more than good enough to make me quite happy to play it.
Though I suppose ‘it’s been done’ by other games? Not everyone has played console/platform games so this was mostly new to me. Only in one section of the HL2 series do we have to raise water levels to get places, so comparing this feature to some other non-HL game seems a little pointless. It worked well *except* in one spot, where apparently the boundaries of a room, or the door closing triggers, were broken. I could walk into a block filled with water and then out the door, where there was no more water… all in the same horizontal space.
The sound cues were very good – the sound of a shot followed by a zombie told me where I could get a gun, Combine chatter hinted at directions in the dark, and … scariest of all, that damn Hunter… oh my. I’ve always loved how ominous their clomping feet sound, so hearing it ‘somewhere up above’ was great!
The fights with the zombies and even most of the Combine were good, not terrific. But the fights against the Hunters as well as the Manhacks – those were both challenging and very rewarding. The choice to hold on to the AR in order to hit the Hunters, at the same time knowing that the crowbar is the best to use against the Manhacks, made for a great tenseness during those sequences.
The ending was quite fun.
The entire map was also very interesting to look at! I loved the long sloping sluice way, and the close quarters fights up the entire length.
So overall this one only gets points away from perfection because it was dark and hard to see some of the time.
Having tried both the original broken one, and the improved fix, like Phillip my only issue came at the end where I didn’t see any particular ‘ending’, and merely kept dying with the fall outside the dam.
A small map with a pretty reasonable flow to the action, I didn’t avoid the fighting in the original version but realized where I’d made my mistake early on in the fixed, so I did mange to hold on to most of my health.
I never used the crossbow in the fixed version, and am not entirely sure why it would be there. Though that said I also hadn’t found the gravity gun in the original, and didn’t use IT in the fix except to boot some supply crates open. If there was another use to it, I’m not certain what that would be.
Since we can’t traverse back into the beginning part of the location, due to a now-locked door, exploring other means of ending the map seemed to be cut. I had noticed that there was a cave below the spill area in the original, but nothing in it – was that our destination? If so, the kill area at the spill prevents us from ending the map properly in there.
Overall, not bad, and definitely looks much better when everything is compiled properly and fixed up. The textures on the sky box trees are funky around the transparent edges, but I think that’s a failing of the textures in the game itself, rather than any specific problem with how they were used (and I’m seeing that in other mods and official games, so maybe it’s just me).
Play em both, enjoy!
Manually
Medium
45 Minutes
And now it’s not allowing me to post again. :/ With my completed review.
It’s up now. For some reason it go caught in the moderation queue.
Huh, weird. It had said “this is a duplicate post” but only after the 3rd time I tried – and that was with several refreshes on the page. Glad that’s up 😀
Hm – for what it’s worth I think there was supposed to be a spoiler tag in the post which got lost again. That might be something to look into, I’ve had issues with the spoiler tag not functioning properly before. :/
Overall I’ll give Waterville a Maybe? Why? Well is just because from my perception we’re just having blander and blander competitions every time a new one comes out…
You know, I really don’t know if it’s about motivate the mappers enough to enter the comps. or what is, but the real problem in here is that these recent competition only have had just one decent entry to play and the rest are quite ugly or just unfinished like in this case…
Now, I really don’t know what could improve the quality and increase the number of the entrants in the comp. maybe more time? more cash money? I don’t know but I just feel, competitions like this one just make me think the next one will be most possibly quite low in overall terms.
So let’s review the next just 2 entries.
This was a decent map, increasing difficulty and challenge as you keep forward into the map. I also liked the whole “old-school” aura on it, I mean decent puzzles and overall a great usage of the water element in HL2.
But I have to say I just hated the map was so dark in some parts, i mean, pretty badly lit that it was just to tired for the sight to keep on playing it from the beginning till the end. I also hated that full dark sky, You know maybe with a better lighting this map could be just great!
It was a shame this entry was just all broken and freaked up…
Because the topic into the HL2 universe was just great to explore, nevertheless in this case the technical issues just ruined the whole concept, and although the combat was OK… The whole bugs were just too much to rescue the entry in any way.
Manually
Medium
40 Minutes
The current file has the updated version. You should really play that.
Oh it’s updated?? OK then I’ll try it
I’ve only played the first level, “Swamped”. My first play through demos https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/33279452/daz_swamped.zip
I found this map inconsistent and confusing but it also had some cool ideas and nice touches.
Thought I had somehow missed a crowbar at the start
What did the second power box do?
Raising the water level for the first time also drained the water in the shotgun room? Why?
Some windows you can hop through, some seem to be clipped off. Don’t do this! Board them up or something!
I also didn’t like the deadliness of the electrified water. It felt way too punishing and especially so in the area where you had to jump across the water rafts! You have absolutely no chance to get back onto a safe place if you fall in. Also, stepping in a puddle kills you!? meh.
The man-hack zerg was very silly 😛
Not enough health in the map, as you can see from teh demos I struggled quite a lot 🙂 and I feel I am quite a good player!
The main area was nice and I liked coming back through it each time the water level rises. It felt different each time and new areas became accessible which was great!
Some nice signposting with strong lights in windows etc.
It was nice to see a lightmap used on the water surface. The effect is quite good but starts to look a bit strange once the water level rises somewhat.
Unfortunately, the level crashed while I was entering the combine base structure near the end of the map (I assume) 🙁 Not sure what caused it!
Manually
Medium
20 Minutes
The idea is pretty interesting having the water levels raise or lower when you click on certain buttons in order to be able to progress through the map. The different encounters with most of the enemies are also done very well, and there is enough variation to the types of enemies you see in the map that it doesn’t really get boring to the player and makes you want to keep playing. I did have some issues with this map though, mainly the immense amount of manhacks that attack you at one time (I hate those things), and there were a few places too dark to actually see the enemies that are attacking you, but other than that, it’s a pretty well done map.
Video of my playthrough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5p7PQsGjg8
I’ve been waiting for the updated version of this map to post this review, as it was rather unfortunate that the map broke for some reason. The idea of the map was a very interesting one. You have a disguise and you are trying to infiltrate this reservoir so that you can destroy it. You really don’t get the chance to destroy it though. This map also did have some really interesting encounters with the different enemies though.
Video of my playthough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xM0WOo4xho
Overall, both entries were very good for a competition entry and have some interesting ideas. I think they are both worth playing for some interesting gameplay ideas.
Using Gauge
Medium
50 Minutes
.. yeah this showed a lot of potential I thought and was pretty enjoyable. Parts I just did get and thought the puzzle elements were good ideas but badly implemented. And it was overall too dark imho. Needed more light and I’d have increased it’s rating. Sick of being caught out lol
But I did enjoy this!
Need I even mention the other map. What a shame it’s broken 🙁
Manually
Medium
30 Minutes
If your Breen’s Reservoir is broken, you need to actually download the current version and play it, because it isn’t broken. If you’re just going by what other people said at the very start, you really should give it the chance it deserves.
No screenshots for this ville?
Unfortunately this challenge only resulted in two entries, but I have to say neither one was really up to standards.
Swamped was promising, and I like the overall premise – the periodically rising water that essentially flood the entire map and keeps you moving upward while covering areas you’ve already traversed. But the map has a slew of issues that really kept me from enjoying it. Right off the bat, the deadly water at the start is just unfair – it’s very dark and hard to see and almost instantly kills you. The map is generally dark and a bit aimless, and there are fiddly things like some windows seemingly clipped off so you can’t get through them. The combat is generally decent, with the important exception of the damn manhacks. They are just abused here – I felt like I was just being trolled. Overall there is some fun to be had here but also a lot of frustration.
Breen’s Private Reservoir has an interesting if not slightly comical premise, but the map doesn’t quite live up to its quirky idea. The disguise bit was not really useful at all, I’m not sure if this was originally intended to be a more important part of the map but it ultimately fell flat. After that it’s pretty standard couple of puzzles and combat, and overall it’s the basic design of the map that disappoints the most.
In general this is probably worth a pass – there are much better Ville challenges out there.
Manually
Medium
37 Minutes
Breen’s Private Reservoir: forgettable. I didn’t even realize I had done what was needed to finish the map. There is a long jump that was so long I figured it was not the way to go. It was.
Swamped: Good puzzle angle. Looks ok. Plays good. I enjoyed it.
Manually
Easy
30 Minutes