Half-Life 2: Riot Act Released

[vecima]

skipped

what? you don't just skip a question!

- A complete sound track

i don't think that's a first.

- First SP mod featuring HDR

i'm not sure about that either... though i can't think of another.

- First SP mod featuring custom hands model (not only skin)

again, that doesn't sound right to me, though i can't think of another.

- First SP mod featuring Phong shading (even if only on the model above)

ok, he may have this one.

- First SP mod featuring bugbait again

that seems unlikely.

[rb_lestr]

Surprisingly enough, he may be correct on all those points.

[bl4ckd0g]

Presentations:
i'm blackdog, i assisted Uoz in the making of the mod.
I found the topic and couldn't resist to answer/clarify, were possible, some points.

1- the so-called purposeless of antlions: HL2 featured Antlions, i hated that because in Nova prospekt you never fire anything until the washing machine fight, practically.
I really liked Uoz's idea to control them for a confined time-space and find that lot more balanced than original HL2.

2- the so-called purposeless of zombies: not considering we have just a scene with zombies, i would like to remember that HL2-NovaProspekt features zombies after Alyx reprogram the sentry guns, before arriving to the big sentry-defence, you descend in a water level and then there are zombies. So i don't see an incongruence in RA about that. Maybe it sounds odd because we should put a few more.

3-the trip-mined door:

yeah that took me a few tries to get the throw right. could have been made a bit easier Im sure.

i played RA from the first orange maps and never had problems in passing the tripmined-door. You got an ammo crate there, why do you bother not throwing a nade in the hole?

Other design errors:

leaving the only weapon that can defeat the gunships behind a wall that you need to get over, with the only possible way to get over it being via breakable crates was bad design.

agreed.
Also if i would like to pinpoint that the crates aren't the way to get over. You climb the trashbin.
Btw i discouraged Uoz to solve that "puzzle" that way, because, like you (i think), i never climbed a trashbin in HL2.

as for the voice acting, i'm not sure why everyone thinks this was so great.[...] i wouldn't call it 'great'.

agreed, and i would add up also the music; with all the respect for our voice actor and composer.

I do have to admit, that one guy was like my ammo slave.

we weren't able to fix that, from what i know, Uoz set the radius of the flock as large as possible.

The puzzles were nice but I would have liked to see a bigger affect for solving them. They were also not very big or challenging.

agreed, but i dunno how much you can do without the GGun not being in a rebel scrapyard

Played it in Hard Mode; found myself without enough ammo to take on the Combine at the very beginning

I do a strict economy in every fps and always plays hl2+mods in hard mode, but i don't see why you should bother to do economy when you have 3 rebels that fill you up.
Let me tell ya i didn't liked that much HL2, combat-wise. Weapons are unbalanched and AI sucks. You can have some enjoyment only playing Rambo-style.

The APC with the rocket launcher

one of our design mistakes. is one of those things that on paper "sounds cool" and when are in place are too much work to redo from scratch.
i guess we learnt something

The "finale" if we can call it that was literally impossible. The Strider was firing through walls for Christ's sake, what am I supposed to do about that?

we struggled with that all the developing. i let you know that in Valve Wiki they say to put invisible walls to block that shot, Uoz did it, i let you pull the conclusions

I had to noclip about 4 times throught the mod

O_O

right at the very end where you get on the boat...... I missed and ended up in the water and got killed

you mean the boat left without you?

[ForceFist]

I didn't find anything wrong about this mod. It was medium challenging and i played it 2 times.

[rb_lestr]

Stuck with 6HP vs. squad of combine.

Some definite tweaks needed with item and enemy placement, but nothing too drastic.

Very enjoyable mod overall.

[MrTwoVideoCards]

Stuck with 6HP vs. squad of combine.

Some definite tweaks needed with item and enemy placement, but nothing too drastic.

Very enjoyable mod overall.

True that was the main flaw of this mod is the dynamic difficulty. I was perhaps not tested on Hard. I sure couldn't beat it on normal though. When testing a mod make you play it at Hard difficulty to balance everything. No one likes running into a mass war with 10 hp.

[bl4ckd0g]

I was perhaps not tested on Hard. I sure couldn't beat it on normal though. When testing a mod make you play it at Hard difficulty to balance everything.

Probably you have ignored my post above.
I'm the lead tester, i play only on hard the HL2-mod stuff and i played RA since the first orange-test maps. and never had helath problems. Yes, i can fall down at 6 or less hp, but i eventually manage to get out a fight.
I'm honest, but i never got stucked, nor were other 6-8 testers.
At least if you not intend "being stucked" to press "quickload" 4-5 times

[MrTwoVideoCards]

I was perhaps not tested on Hard. I sure couldn't beat it on normal though. When testing a mod make you play it at Hard difficulty to balance everything.

Probably you have ignored my post above.
I'm the lead tester, i play only on hard the HL2-mod stuff and i played RA since the first orange-test maps. and never had helath problems. Yes, i can fall down at 6 or less hp, but i eventually manage to get out a fight.
I'm honest, but i never got stucked, nor were other 6-8 testers.
At least if you not intend "being stucked" to press "quickload" 4-5 times

That my friend should not be the case. In fact the game was made still without player level in mind which made alot of things unbalanced. To you guys sure it was normal why? Well you made the maps and have play tested them over 100 times but in fact players get on and don't know whats next nor where the health is. Do not get me wrong the health placement was nice at times even indicated by light but no thats not the case. RA is good but feels like valve edits of the simple nova prospeckt design flow with integrated puzzles, combat and never ending antlion said these antlions have uncanny abilities to fly. Including the fact that the node graph was terrible resulting in almost dumb confounded antlion ai when needing to get atop higher levels.

[ForceFist]

I was perhaps not tested on Hard. I sure couldn't beat it on normal though. When testing a mod make you play it at Hard difficulty to balance everything.

Probably you have ignored my post above.
I'm the lead tester, i play only on hard the HL2-mod stuff and i played RA since the first orange-test maps. and never had helath problems. Yes, i can fall down at 6 or less hp, but i eventually manage to get out a fight.
I'm honest, but i never got stucked, nor were other 6-8 testers.
At least if you not intend "being stucked" to press "quickload" 4-5 times

All people play different. You can never make a mod perfect for EVERYONE. Just because the testers made it through different doesn't mean that it will go the same for the other players.

[rb_lestr]

All people play different. You can never make a mod perfect for EVERYONE. Just because the testers made it through different doesn't mean that it will go the same for the other players.

Qft, not forgetting this is a mod guys. For proper games internal and external tests go on for months sometimes making tweaks everywhere until the team decide its good enough for retail. For mods you don't have these long playtests, instead you have a couple of run throughs for each tester, some quick tweaks and then release.

So take it easy on the guys, they did a great job regardless.

[MrTwoVideoCards]

All people play different. You can never make a mod perfect for EVERYONE. Just because the testers made it through different doesn't mean that it will go the same for the other players.

Qft, not forgetting this is a mod guys. For proper games internal and external tests go on for months sometimes making tweaks everywhere until the team decide its good enough for retail. For mods you don't have these long playtests, instead you have a couple of run throughs for each tester, some quick tweaks and then release.

So take it easy on the guys, they did a great job regardless.

Yeah did a good job don't get me wrong BUT thats not true. In fact mods have alot of time. All the time in the world really so the testing could have been alot more perfect.

[bl4ckd0g]

sorry, i've been probably a bit too acid the post before

To you guys sure it was normal why? Well you made the maps and have play tested them over 100 times but in fact players get on and don't know whats next nor where the health is.

all i can say that we had the "perfect lamer" tester, a guy that wasn't playing hl2 from 2004 and didn't played ep1, a guy that started shooting antlions in the 2nd map just to discover they didn't attacked him when he finished the ammos

by the way yes, i agree with your thoughts, i mean, testing is important as much as the other departments of the game. We just can say we did all we could because having 8 testers for a small sp is probably above every mod expectations.

RA is good but feels like valve edits of the simple nova prospeckt design flow with integrated puzzles

and honestly i don't get why this is wrong. I see this as a "pro", not a "con".
I mean, it's not easy at all to get the right feeling of an original game you don't know what the developers were thinking back 4 years ago.
Is lot much easier to throw in some locations a-la Coastline to Atmosphere, with no linking at all with the HL world.

Probably you can think of RA as a "style exercise", but talking about art and design, i think that as sp addon, Minerva and RA are on the same level, so above everyone.
I'm probably too partial and on a subjective perspective but i really don't see anything nailing the HL2 concept as RA.
I would put like this: Minerva loose something in the HL concept where RA is the top on the "market"; but has a better graphic and a totally new location.

to conclude my thoughts on this point, i just can say that we planned 3 chapters, so the first was like Ep1 for HL2, we needed a linking to the world, we didn't wanted to throw the player in a totally new situations leaving the backstory to a poor "about" page in the website.
That sucks. To me.

never ending antlion said these antlions have uncanny abilities to fly.

are there any places where in HL2 antlions stop re-spawning? because i can't recall that.

Including the fact that the node graph was terrible resulting in almost dumb confounded antlion ai when needing to get atop higher levels.

i just can say i never had that problem, and i can add i was very very surprised when you first climb the stairs at the 2nd level beginning, when i saw the antlions get on the higher level of the sentry gun (second encounter) and get it down coming out the door beside the sentry.
Personally i found the antlion presence really balanced, more than hl2 where you can never fire a shot to move on.

Btw with all of this i don't intend to say that RA is perfect, as i agreed with various notifications in my first post here.

We surely will be looking forward for other feedback, especially if they are contstructive criticism

[Generalvivi]

In my opinion I think it was a great mod. Regardless of the lil hickups

[MrTwoVideoCards]

sorry, i've been probably a bit too acid the post before

To you guys sure it was normal why? Well you made the maps and have play tested them over 100 times but in fact players get on and don't know whats next nor where the health is.

all i can say that we had the "perfect lamer" tester, a guy that wasn't playing hl2 from 2004 and didn't played ep1, a guy that started shooting antlions in the 2nd map just to discover they didn't attacked him when he finished the ammos

by the way yes, i agree with your thoughts, i mean, testing is important as much as the other departments of the game. We just can say we did all we could because having 8 testers for a small sp is probably above every mod expectations.

RA is good but feels like valve edits of the simple nova prospeckt design flow with integrated puzzles

and honestly i don't get why this is wrong. I see this as a "pro", not a "con".
I mean, it's not easy at all to get the right feeling of an original game you don't know what the developers were thinking back 4 years ago.
Is lot much easier to throw in some locations a-la Coastline to Atmosphere, with no linking at all with the HL world.

Probably you can think of RA as a "style exercise", but talking about art and design, i think that as sp addon, Minerva and RA are on the same level, so above everyone.
I'm probably too partial and on a subjective perspective but i really don't see anything nailing the HL2 concept as RA.
I would put like this: Minerva loose something in the HL concept where RA is the top on the "market"; but has a better graphic and a totally new location.

to conclude my thoughts on this point, i just can say that we planned 3 chapters, so the first was like Ep1 for HL2, we needed a linking to the world, we didn't wanted to throw the player in a totally new situations leaving the backstory to a poor "about" page in the website.
That sucks. To me.

never ending antlion said these antlions have uncanny abilities to fly.

are there any places where in HL2 antlions stop re-spawning? because i can't recall that.

Including the fact that the node graph was terrible resulting in almost dumb confounded antlion ai when needing to get atop higher levels.

i just can say i never had that problem, and i can add i was very very surprised when you first climb the stairs at the 2nd level beginning, when i saw the antlions get on the higher level of the sentry gun (second encounter) and get it down coming out the door beside the sentry.
Personally i found the antlion presence really balanced, more than hl2 where you can never fire a shot to move on.

Btw with all of this i don't intend to say that RA is perfect, as i agreed with various notifications in my first post here.

We surely will be looking forward for other feedback, especially if they are contstructive criticism

Yeah valve edits but i liked the maps but it really didn't deliver originality to th e game much.

[bl4ckd0g]

Yeah valve edits but i liked the maps but it really didn't deliver originality to th e game much.

yep. if we'll be ever expand on it, we'll have "new" locations.

i put the "" because how much can be a location be new? i mean, we can expand moving along the coast, it will be different but it will recall the coastline levels; or a combine fortification, it will always recall the citadel.

here i'm asking for feedback: what do you guys expect from an addon like this?
i mean, if we look at Minerva yeah it's an original location, btw the mapping principles are something that btw deal with the coastline theme and "nova prospekt meets the citadel" theme.
What people expect from these addons? totally new theme (snow) like Awakening? or you would be happy to see different locations of themes already seen in hl2 (for eg a dam, the wasteland as was first intended in the Valve "rising the bar"...)