Play test my third and last map for me!

[Flynn_]

Yes I know I should have put this in the "under construction" section, but there is hardly any traffic there anymore!


Reactor in the forest, my third and last map for HL2!

Well it's actually ep2, but you know what I mean.

I released my first map at the tender age of 16 back in 2006.

I made 3 maps over 12 years, that's an average of about 1 per 4 years!

But I am not an ICT nerd like a lot of you lot so that's my excuse

I want this one to be the best, to go out on a high.

I am not going to be making any major .bsp changes to it, but if you can recommend any good ideas for secret passages or short cuts that don't bypass major parts of the game play then I'd be more than interested to implement them!

Your goal in this map is to go into the old Soviet bunker where the combine have installed a generator, disable the stabilisation beams, leading to a core collapse and melt down.

You then have to fight your way back to where you started as there is only one way in and one way out.

If anything I want to make the zombies more active!

What else? The start game message won't display for some reason, it is just a game_text triggered by a trigger_once on the player start. The input is "display". No idea why it won't work.

Oh yeah and I want to make the elevator fall down but I don't know how!

Here's the link anyway

https://files.fm/u/ay74aqjq

[LordDz]

I'll check it out in a bit!
Nitpicks and review, will comment as I play:

Name your map with lowercase. Just do it.
You need to include the .ain file or players will see the "node graphs out of date, rebuilding" message.

Start
Blocky and has the same textures and the low walls and high walls and the texture under the elevator, going to assume it's going to be fixed.
Add a player_speedmod and check all the flags, then call it with modifyspeed 0.01 from the trigger_once
Then call modifyspeed 1.0 to reset it. This will make the intro much smoother and won't allow the player to fire their guns when the intro is playing.

Room #1
The white vent isn't connected to the wall.

Outside
First tree that you see is floating in the air.
I like the fast zombies and the trees, make for a scary combo.
Also good ambient sounds so far.
1 Error model in the middle of the forest (playing ep2)
1 Fast Zombie stuck in the ground.
The door to the red building doesn't have collision
Nice secret
Blowing stuff ups is fun, keep at it!
Streched texture on the mountain near the loads of gas canisters.

Cave
Generator is floating
Error model next to it
Ok, headed to the place where there are 3 Zombies on a white concrete.. Killed them, not sure what to do now
Guess I'm noclipping through the gate door

Spooky factory thingy
It's dark
Going downwards the gate is too close to the floor so can't go under it
Only way down was to jump down through the big hole.. what happens if the player doesn't have much health here, they wouldn't be able to continue
Puzzle was nice addition to the continueless zombie killing
Theres lots of crates heading towards a vent..
Vent with perfectly stacked crates leads.. Back to where I was.

Energy ball room
I just noclipped here, dunno how to get here
Ok, lots of manhacks and turrets
But.. What to do?
How to end map?

I'll give you a 2 for the size of the map and that the forest looked nice.
But, try to go for something smaller, add some scripting, sounds, surprise the player! Like the abandoned factory was a cool concept, but you could have done that so much better. There were way too many zombies.
Quality > Quantity.

Oh and don't use spaces in your entity names, it's a lot easier for you to test them with ent_fire if you don't have spaces, use underscores instead.

[LordDz]

Ok just read that I have to destroy the stabilizer cores.. But how. And the player shouldn't need to read the description to understand that.

[Flynn_]

I'll check it out in a bit!
Nitpicks and review, will comment as I play:

Name your map with lowercase. Just do it.
You need to include the .ain file or players will see the "node graphs out of date, rebuilding" message.

Yes I will do that when I release it.

Start
Blocky and has the same textures and the low walls and high walls and the texture under the elevator, going to assume it's going to be fixed.
Add a player_speedmod and check all the flags, then call it with modifyspeed 0.01 from the trigger_once
Then call modifyspeed 1.0 to reset it. This will make the intro much smoother and won't allow the player to fire their guns when the intro is playing.

I will fix the texture and add the speedmod.

Room #1
The white vent isn't connected to the wall.

Outside
First tree that you see is floating in the air.
I like the fast zombies and the trees, make for a scary combo.
Also good ambient sounds so far.
1 Error model in the middle of the forest (playing ep2)
1 Fast Zombie stuck in the ground.
The door to the red building doesn't have collision
Nice secret
Blowing stuff ups is fun, keep at it!
Streched texture on the mountain near the loads of gas canisters.

I thought I fixed all the floating trees and error models!

Cave
Generator is floating
Error model next to it
Ok, headed to the place where there are 3 Zombies on a white concrete.. Killed them, not sure what to do now
Guess I'm noclipping through the gate door

Both fixed after noticing myself

Light added above button to open door.

Spooky factory thingy
It's dark
Going downwards the gate is too close to the floor so can't go under it
Only way down was to jump down through the big hole.. what happens if the player doesn't have much health here, they wouldn't be able to continue
Puzzle was nice addition to the continueless zombie killing
Theres lots of crates heading towards a vent..
Vent with perfectly stacked crates leads.. Back to where I was.

There is another way to get into the Kitchen area.

There are two options to get into the utility area, the player can either jump down and take the damage or search around for the vent that leads down there.

You have to get some crates from the utility area after the vent breaks and jump back into the vent to continue.

Energy ball room
I just noclipped here, dunno how to get here
Ok, lots of manhacks and turrets
But.. What to do?
How to end map?

There is an elevator that leads down there, it will work once you have connected the power in the utility room.

You must go to the combine console and press the button to disable the forcefield.

Then you must manually disable the beams being the spheres stable and wait for the sphere to break.

I'll give you a 2 for the size of the map and that the forest looked nice.
But, try to go for something smaller, add some scripting, sounds, surprise the player! Like the abandoned factory was a cool concept, but you could have done that so much better. There were way too many zombies.
Quality > Quantity.

Oh and don't use spaces in your entity names, it's a lot easier for you to test them with ent_fire if you don't have spaces, use underscores instead.

As I said in my OP, the map is the map, I have finished the .bsp part now and will not be adding or removing any part of the .bsp geometry. I want to get this out the door.

As for surprising the player, once the player has cleared an area, I can't magically spawn zombies out of no where.

If I put any less zombies the player wouldn't have anything to do, zombies do not offer enough of a challenge.

And do you realise that once you have destroyed the generator you actually have to go all the way back to where you started?

I've played the map all the way through without having to cheat by myself.

Thanks for your help, if you have any more ideas on how to improve let me know!

Btw, I'm having problems getting the game_text entities to display at the start. Mostly, they aren't displaying at all.

The color is set to white, hold time 2, X and Y axis centred, separate channels.

Any ideas?

[Flynn_]

Right, here is the latest version

https://files.fm/u/x8vgfpgn

I just need the game_text to work as it is vital to the mission!

I've included the .vmf in case you want to see how I've got it setup, but I can't see why it isn't working.