[HL2:EP2] The Masked Prisoner

[m.anderson]

Hey Interlopers! I've been working on this single player mod for the past year and would love some feedback. I haven't gone through an art pass yet but the gameplay is all but complete. If you're interested in playing please let me know your thoughts!

"The Masked Prisoner" explores the untold stories of several Half Life characters - taking place in a prison on the outskirts of City 17.

Update: New version 2.8 has been uploaded after feedback from this thread.
Download location: http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-masked-prisoner

NOTE: Some members have been kind enough to provide me with in-game recordings/demos of their playthroughs. If you guys have the time it'd be great if I can get more of these. Here's a description of how to do this: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Demo_Recording_Tools#Basic_recording_and_playback

[ErikKiller]

Looks nice, getting it now, will upload .dem.

Edit:
PM'd the URL.

Edit2:
I did some thinking, trying to think what were the annoying things.
A lot has been said already so I'll just point out a few of the other oddities.
The shelling part was super annoying and the only spot where I died )played on normal).
The logging camp has poor AI work, the battle ends in 1/3 of the area, leaving most of it unused.
It's odd to see so many snowmen, I'd replace most of them with combine soldiers since they don't do anything different.
The light, after getting to the rooftop? area, burnt my eyes.
The ending has a decent twist but I found it very, very odd.
Oh yeah and when Cubbage did the explanation part, the audio was constantly getting bugged and cut off too early.

[LordDz]

Will test when coming home.



EDIT: I think I broke your mod https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/731 ... rs/dz2.dem
Okay, played it some. It has very much potentional, once you get the art going.

I had problems throwing grenades down these two, if I standed on top of them and throwed nades directly down, they wouldn't go down.


I had to stand away from it and drop them down. (When the shield was up).

At this place, there were some crates. If you're quick you can pick up one and well.. There was a player clip preventing me from jumping over, but still, I prefer when the environment is blocking me, not invisible walls.


After the "Gassing and red lights show", could you place the level change a bit further away? The doors opened, I thought everything was good then the turrets started shooting at me and then there was a level change and the door was closed.

The wooden ladders make metallic sounds, can it be changed somehow?

I did record a few demos too, if they help you somewhat:
Demos

I did try this on my laptop, it's close to it's ending age but I had some major FPS-spikes outdoors, might wanna check if you can do some optimizations on the outside? Oh and there was no crosshair.

I'll play some more later on.

[m.anderson]

Holy crap, thanks for such a thorough response LordDz! I'll check out your demos later, I never thought of asking for them! Great idea. Nothing beats being able to watch an actual playthrough.

I'll investigate the grenade dropping for sure, and it should be pretty easy advancing the level change like you said. I agree, it's kinda jarring right now after such an intense pacing spike.

As far as the invisible walls, don't worry, I plan to address all of them in the art pass. I keep the clipping there to remind myself to come back to those areas and add an art justification for them.

I tried my best to change the ladder sounds to wood, which work correctly once you're attached to them. The problem is the moment you attach it makes the metal sound. However, now that you mention it, I could probably force the sound to be some kinda wood thingy by overriding the HL sound entries. Good catch.

I've only done a simple optimization pass. I'll do a final pass once the final art is in. You are correct about the FPS spikes. I'm going to work hard to make sure there's a solid FPS in the final thing

[Armageddon]

You made some changes I didn't enjoy from the previous versions.

You removed small secrets like in the log water area you can't go to the tunnel thing and get a secret item crate and health anymore, it's blocked by the wooden wall. The world feels a lot less open now, there's only one path through the zombie area where before you could go around the left or right side, now it's just an L you walk around. Also the first time I played that train vista right near the start was pretty incredible to look at. But this time no APC drove around and the girl that was standing holding the fence took about two minutes to get there after me so nothing draws the eye anymore.

You need some sort of health drop after the rooftop fight before the logging area because I had nearly zero health both times I played and it made the rest of the mod up until you regroup with the rebels very difficult on normal mode.

The zombie section is now twice as long, and since I ran through it dodging all the zombies with little effort I had to wait twice as long for the rebel squad to catch up with me. And after all that wait for them to open the last door it just ends, very unsatisfying.

Why, when you're a metrocop did they detect me after going through the scanner? The music started and they began shooting and it was just jarring. And then it immediately stopped when thee level changed happened, no one ran after me, no alarms were set. I was just running through their headquarters and blew up the antenna, and you removed the stalkers so it feels doubly empty now.

You fenced up the combine rooftop area very well. Made combat much more enjoyable and made the explosive barrel fence pallet thing useful. That whole section was really improved, everything else feels like you removed stuff that didn't need to be and the world was a lot more closed. The internment camp you blocked off that area with a weird wood fence maze to get to an item crate. Just feels dense now.

[m.anderson]

Again, I'm thrilled you guys are taking the time to write such great feedback, no BS.

Re: Armageddon

The world feels a lot less open now, there's only one path through the zombie area where before you could go around the left or right side, now it's just an L you walk around.

I changed this because I noticed in playtests that some people would toss grenades into the tower, back up, see the explosion, and charge in not realizing they released the zombies. With the zombies directly facing the player, this is much less of a problem. I'll still try and see if there's a way of reintroducing an alternate path...

Also the first time I played that train vista right near the start was pretty incredible to look at. But this time no APC drove around and the girl that was standing holding the fence took about two minutes to get there after me so nothing draws the eye anymore.

Good note. I won't bring back the APC but I will make sure this moment plays out better. Good catch

You need some sort of health drop after the rooftop fight before the logging area because I had nearly zero health both times I played and it made the rest of the mod up until you regroup with the rebels very difficult on normal mode.

Balancing this is tough with such a small pool of playtesters. More feedback like this helps a lot. Done!

Why, when you're a metrocop did they detect me after going through the scanner?

I wanted there to be an "oh, shit!" moment of suspense when inside the scanroom, where the player thinks the jig is up. I see that its just confusing people. I'll rework this entirely to be much clearer.

[greenman]

Played it for the first time, enjoyed it. Will definitely replay when the art pass is done.

-I agree about the scanner thing. It's not that I'm surprised about them detecting me, but it is definitely jarring. The music suddenly kicking in only to stop moments later for the level change is a bit odd.

-The combat is fun but I feel like there needs to be a better finale, something a bit more spectacular or challenging. Maybe it's just me.

-I also found health to be a problem, even playing on Normal.

-Love the opening, being able to look around this location when it's had it's art pass is very appealing. Hoping for a little more openness and exploration.

Me likey.

[m.anderson]

The logging camp has poor AI work, the battle ends in 1/3 of the area, leaving most of it unused.

Are you talking about the area with the small pond, or the area above that where the sniper was?

Oh yeah and when Cubbage did the explanation part, the audio was constantly getting bugged and cut off too early.

Can you be more specific? Do you mean he'd be halfway through a line, and then it would cut out? Would the animation stay in sync? I've never seen anything like that. Did you have other programs running while playing the game?

[ErikKiller]

Are you talking about the area with the small pond, or the area above that where the sniper was?

The sniper part. I hid from the sniper, hugging the sniper-sided cliff, everybody ran towards me in that area, I entered one building, exited it and the fight was over.

Can you be more specific? Do you mean he'd be halfway through a line, and then it would cut out? Would the animation stay in sync? I've never seen anything like that. Did you have other programs running while playing the game?

Well, half the time the audio just stopped, the other half it sounded like a girder in a blender before cutting off. And yes, I had other programs running but it didn't screw up the game ending lines.

Also, I don't know how much you've watched my .dem files but it felt like combat after combat, needs a bit more puzzle and breather areas.

[joe_rogers_11155]

It is very refreshing to see blocked out levels before art passes. Here is my take on the map's potential problems. I played the map on Hard mode.

1. The problems started as soon as I reached the sniper area. The metrocops ran up to the tracks to find me but I crouched behind the metal cart on the left. Apparently this obscured their vision of me so they just stood around, and I was able to shoot them from under the cart. Maybe force them to run forward to pressure me out of hiding, or just hang back under the sniper's pit to block my access to the grenade chute.

2. The first Combine Elite fight was very tough, which is a good thing. But I think a health drop would have helped things. I survived by dying on purpose a few times, such that I could "scout the area" and count the number of enemies (surprised there were only two of them after the metrocops were wiped out). They had very good AI, running away when they needed to and only peeking out of corners and doorways to take pop shots at me. Very nice. I found a supply of items inside the shack on the right and that's how I survived in the end, but I had very low health and it took me a few tries to reach the supply room.

3. The second Combine Elite fight (when you go up the steps and can see one of them standing on top of a tower) is bugged somewhat. The soldiers would not follow me past the stairs, but they instead bunched up on the other side of the steps (which were built in a strange "up-then-down" hill thing) and once I saw that, I just lobbed a few grenades at the adjacent wall until they were all dead or dying. I passed this area in one try. My concern is that if I had to fight them naturally, I would have been in severe trouble because I had such few supplies. You might want to look at adjusting this.

4. The zombie battles were very easy, I walked past the regulars and easily gunned down the fast guys. I think this would be a good time to implement some kind of puzzle, maybe with disabling or utilizing turrets along the way against a much larger group of zeds. I would need time to think before I knew just what to do here, but I think the key is to slow down the escape a little bit. Overall though, I liked this part.

Could you tell me how you achieved the Combine voice modulation? Here's my attempt, I think yours sounds better in a way. https://soundcloud.com/zonbie11155/comb ... p-that-can What program do you use? I use Audacity. If you can tell us what the recipe is, I would be very happy

[ErikKiller]

Could you tell me how you achieved the Combine voice modulation? Here's my attempt, I think yours sounds better in a way. https://soundcloud.com/zonbie11155/comb ... p-that-can What program do you use? I use Audacity. If you can tell us what the recipe is, I would be very happy

Here's one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3pTf5leVrk

[m.anderson]

Could you tell me how you achieved the Combine voice modulation? Here's my attempt, I think yours sounds better in a way. https://soundcloud.com/zonbie11155/comb ... p-that-can What program do you use? I use Audacity. If you can tell us what the recipe is, I would be very happy

Here's one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3pTf5leVrk

Yup, what he said. There's a lot of youtube tutorials on that actually. I like to add a bit of echo to mine as well in Audacity. Be careful with your pitch though. The combine have a natural design flaw where you can't understand them for crucial voice-over lines, so you need to ease up on the effects when you have important audio that needs to be understood.

I've run through all the demos that were submitted to me. I've got a ton of tweaks I'm gonna make now Thanks guys.

I'll update y'all when all my changes are in. Shouldn't be more than a few days, hopefully.

[DerpyBlade]

Hey there, just played your map.

I enjoyed the mod overall and thought it was really neat.

The strider sections (other than the mining one on the roof) were really awesome, the bridge collapsing and the ending as well as near the start in the vents were really cool. In the section with the vent were you look down at the strider, I really thought it would be nice if the Metrocops moved around instead of standing idle/statue like with their weapons.

Most of the issues that I'd found have already been said in the thread, The only thing that I would like to add is that the second headcrab canister is evil, it scared the life out of me when it hit me and killed me the first time. (As well as stop the demo recordings so I had to replay the level). I really liked the combine voices too, that was a really nice addition.

When Cubbage's audio messed up blender style it scared the living crap out of me.
I kinda wish there was more hidden items/stuff in certain areas of the map, not the prison/holding area as there was a decent amount but near the combine or through a puzzle like a crate balanced on something or so on. I struggled through the elites making it just barely with 9 HP, They are really brutal with that AI. The stairs saved me from certain death from four of them.

I can't wait to see the finished piece, I think it'll be great.
I've uploaded the demos anyway if you are interested in looking at them. (Also, me jumping out of my seat a few times )

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/zzqchf42r4iis1u/AADsG36uiRXRcD2HkQOUJwYba

[m.anderson]

When Cubbage's audio messed up blender style it scared the living crap out of me.

I haven't been able to reproduce this. Do you guys think it's happening because you're recording demos? I've witnessed two friends play this on different computers and it never happened with them. Does it happen with any other lines? Can you give me more specifics?

DerpyBlade: thanks so much for making the demos, but unfortunately they all crashed my game when I tried to play them. Maybe this also has something to do with the audio screwing up? All the other demos that were submitted to me work fine.

Well guys, I'm baking a new release of the mod as I write this. I hope to have it uploaded tomorrow after work, if all goes well.

[Ade]

Sometimes demos crash because of:
recording with "closedcaption 1" and trying to play them with "closedcaption 0"