1187 Halfe-Life 2 - Episode Two mod released

[Jike]

interlopers has a "tough love" policy, it may seem like a douche policy but it works.

made me a better mapper.

Very well put. I actually just learned a lot by reading your post!

Now I feel motivated to post some stuff for some tough love.

I have yet to play the mod, but I am curious!!

[Kremator]

Ok I just want to make a note here.

After 3 days of struggle and bloodshed, endless search for solutions to vague puzzles, increasingly unfair combat sequences, and death by barnacles I have done it.

I have finished 1187.

No, it does not get better later on, but no it did not get much worse either. The scenery took a transition into night time forest which was pretty pleasant - the ending was a cliffhanger and I expect a more polished episode 2 to follow. All in all I have not changed much opinion about this mod but I will give kudos to the team for actually releasing it. It is not the best mod but definitely not the worst but there is a lot of room for improvement.

Thank you asian jesus for guiding me through these few days of trials and tribulations.

PS. Stoop, I got into the mustang successfully.

[fitzroy_doll]

His review of "1187: Episode 1"

THIS

And to this, I'd like to add the following:

-A >1gig installer is quite a demand to put on people, and raised expectations beyond what this mod could support.
-All mod releases more than a couple hundred mb should have a torrent option. Gameupdates provide a great service for this.
-Use the lzma solid switch in NSIS to substantially reduce the file size of the installer.
-It is trivial to set up NSIS so that it finds the SourceMods folder automatically, there is no excuse for not doing this.
-Basing your mod on the 420 appid guarantees problems in the future. The events of the past summer showed clearly that 215 and 218 (the Source SDK bases) are the only safe option - especially with custom libraries. When Valve move Episode 2 to the Episode 3 engine your mod will likely break.
-You'll get a pass for using one or two props or textures from Lost Coast or CS:S, but not whole folders.
-Starting a map in a boy's bedroom apartment is a sure sign of amateurism.
-When the decision was made to re-record the combine dialogue, why did you not change it? Everyone knows the lines by heart from years of fighting combine soldiers, but hearing them spoken in a bland flat voice was ridiculous. It would have been far more effective to have simply removed it.
-The weapons inventory system was terrible - especially when combined with having to heal John all the time, as this meant having to stop fighting, scroll through the weapon bank to find the medkit, give him the medkit, then scroll to something useful. Like a lot of people, I rely on number keys to go straight to weapons - this was a needless hassle.
-The weapons system would have been less bad if you'd limited to player inventory to a few weapons, say 3 or 4, but this would have meant you would have had to be much more careful about ammo placement. It's strange you would insist on so many "realistic" touches but then still give the player a backpack full of guns.
-John would have been less annoying if he could have done something useful for the player, like give medkits or ammo.
-"Personal spayce" There was no need for this.
-In several places you can transition between levels and leave John behind. In the railway tunnel map I made it to the computer without John and then was stuck because he was still standing around in the previous map.
-Placement of clip brushes around the house where the player meets the sergeant was very poor. Clip brushes are an emergency backup device, not a primary means for guiding the player.
-The helicopters would often not attack and simply hang in the air. This is due to poor use of entities to control them (they need a lot of help to look natural).
-The music levels in places was very loud and annoying. There was no need for this.

All of this could have been forgiven if the mapping had been good and the gameplay enjoyable, but it simply wasn't. In a game, you have to use the game to tell the player what to do next. This means constructing levels in such a way that there is a flow that the player can follow. It requires differentiation and detail, which the maps in this mod simply didn't have. Games are not radio plays - you can't put directions in long chunks of NPC dialogue and leave it at that. Games are an immersive medium by nature - show me, don't tell me. Maps come first - before dialogue, weapon models and animation, and custom code.

I hope you, the 1187 team, can learn from what's been said in this thread by others - listen to them, they know what they are talking about. The team should be pleased to have gotten something to release, and now go on to better things.

[Dwin]

Not at all. I'm saying if I'm in a life and death situation where I need to see, I'm going to use my flashlight. Why our character is too dim-witted to use his flashlight at all times is beyond me, but if I can put the same flashlight on more than one gun, we've obviously thrown reasoning to the side and I should have that one flashlight on ALL my guns.

The character has two flashlights. One flashlight is attached to the pistol. The other flashlight is attached the shotgun. How does it make sense for the character to use more flashlights than he has available?

Of course, this would've been clearer if we could see a physical flashlight attached to the weapon model, like in Left 4 Dead.

About the sidekick: I agree, he's really annoying, mostly for the fact that he's a wimp and leaves all the difficult fights for you to handle alone. It's not like you're Gordon Freeman and you're expected to be a superhero. You're just an ordinary guy like John is. Why is he making you do all the hard work? Like FIGHTING AN ENTIRE ARMY SINGLE HANDEDLY while he cowers in a garage (and is stuck in a scripted sequence making him unable to defend himself when the soldiers attack him).

Also, the view bobbing. The only view bobbing that made sense was when attacking with melee weapons and movement. Having the view bob for EVERY SINGLE ACTION is not only annoying, it's not realistic. I can pump the shotgun without jerking my head everywhere.