[HL2:EP2] FusionVille release

Thank you for the post klems ! It's been a really nice contest.

Just to explain a little bit more about it for anyone. As Klems said, RTSL organize contests ("Ville") throughout the year, each Ville has a theme and last few weeks (usually a bit more than 2 weeks, this time with "FusionVille" it was a month). For example, Klems won the previous Ville with his map Crab :

And in the end of the year, a total of the best 3 maps from each entrants to contests during the year is made for the "Hammer Cup". And for the hammer cup 2017, Klems will most likely win the first place.

FusionVille was the last challenge and even if it's just 1 month long, some people have done some crazy good maps.

Personally, I wanted to try making a singleplayer experience based on the escape in the beginning of HL2. It's been a lot of work (detailing but most importantly scripting and making it as fun to play as possible) and i'd like to thank @General Vivi, @Klems, @crowbAr, @Niker107 and few others for helping me with playtests and feedbacks. Even if it was exhausting, i loved it !

Damn this is so exciting. Going to play these for sure.

would love to hear your thoughts FMPone aftewards!

Be honest

Congrats to all participants

I’m terrible, I follow RTSL and the cup, still haven’t managed to participate (finish a map) and also haven’t played any full pack ?

Was enjoying the level analysis playthroughs by Daz

One thing for sure, the quality has gotten even better, it’s impressive what many mappers are pumping out in such short time.

Need to catch up.

I recorded a gameplay video if anyone wants to see it but doesn't want to download the mod

(This is more a "how it's intended to be played" than a gameplay video Turns out it's hard to guide a player to play exactly the way you want him to play )

The quality of this release is over the roof, the trailer already can show that, but really deserves to be played.

I haven't gone through every entry, but I played the one from @Klems, @leplubodeslapin and @marnamai and huge congrats guys, I'm not sure I would be able to name a favorite cos they are all great! I really liked the originality of Shadow of Ravensmouth, the mini sandbox feeling is great and the citizens made me crack a laugh (although I had to cheat when I got to the barricade cos I was at 30hp and I couldn't get through). Wake up and run has great visuals and I like the call back to the first chapter of HL2. A Hero Once More is the most classic but is really over the top in terms of quality, could easily sit in an official expansion pack from Valve and I have no idea you could do something like the mortar with just the vanilla scripting. Also liked the fact that if you kill the first combine stealthy, you don't get rushed right away.

Huge congrats boys!

I just played Questionable Sewers, another stunning entry, pity wasn't finished and I think there are a couple glitches cos I think I might have gotten through in an unintended way but not sure.

Yeah, I got a chance to play A Hero Once More and Shadow of Ravensmouth, surprised by both frankly! and the quality they offer. Great stuff.

A ton of originality in having the mortar system in AHOM. That one felt very well paced and the progressions and variety it offered were extremely satisfying. I really like the occult elements of Shadow of Ravensmouth, the ammo scarcity made the village part really fun. Curious to try the rest of the offerings.

So I got a chance to play Wake Up and Run, and I had some thoughts:

Overall, really cool idea to focus the player on escape. Considering Half-Life games have always been about forward momentum, you aren't making a huge sacrifice by stripping away some of the other parts of the game to draw emphasis here.

1. Needs better lighting along objectives. If we're trying to direct the player somewhere, we want to show them the path with lighting. You can talk about how lighting was needed in virtually every segment of the experience - when you're leaving the apartments, when you're trying to find the exits of the apartments, when you're on the rooftop and looking for the gear (which isn't highlighted with lighting), etc etc etc. There is a big need for emphasis lighting.

2. The door puzzle at the end, this isn't much of a puzzle because it's not utilizing any directional turning and the altered states aren't very clear. By positioning the turrets at one end of the room, you're communicating to players that in order to solve the puzzle, they have to get to the other side of the room beyond the turrets somehow. This is standard puzzle design, which is basically: "lead players into a corridor with an objective in the center, and a puzzle element at the far end of the corridor that they have to figure out relates to the puzzle element in the center."

It's kind of an M shape where the middle portion is the end, and the far part of the M is an area where players are lead -- to grab a gear for instance -- but doesn't ultimately signal the exit of the puzzle. So, your first "puzzle" meets that format, but the second puts the exit and the solution in the same general area, and thus is quite confusing, because the assumption is that beyond the turrets is where players really need to go. So, I would say make that format change, put the button console where the turrets are and ask players to go over there somehow in order to open the door.

As it is, I didn't realize that turning off the lights closed the door, and it's not clear why those two things would be connected and what matters there. This part of the experience felt pretty strange.

3. The actual ending is interesting, but you miss a few ways to signal that the cinematic climax is to jump through the glass: no highlighting on the window, no obvious "carrot" outside the window, most players will figure they're committing suicide by jumping out of the window, but with nowhere else to go, they may do as I did and jump anyway. That's kind of anti-climactic. Better to make the glass a really obvious, well-highlighted "carrot" that is locked by the glass, then when the enemy shatters the glass have an obvious sound-queue that leads players back to the glass. Have some health packs near the glass at the start, etc etc.

Overall the premise of your level was cool, but it needed a fair bit of polish to push it over the finish line for me. Hope this is helpful @leplubodeslapin!

edit: actually, showing players the "end" at the "start" of your mod would be a good way to reinforce that the other side of the glass is your objective for the mission.

Nice input @FMPONE, I liked @leplubodeslapin map as well; regarding the conclusion of the map I can say I thought I was going to lead the hunter into a fall and proceed… i found it anti climatic as well but also poetic and original. I didn’t have problem with the turret-door puzzle, I mean it felt a bit of a gamble and “experimentatious”, was a bit of a “a-ha!” and liked it for that matter.

Everything you pointed out is true, I just think that imo HL doesn’t signpost as much as other games and lets players explore and discover (remember finding the batteries in the coast chapter tonopem the gates?), so in that regard I felt the map was executed in the same style/spirit.

Thank you for your detailed thought @FMPONE !

I'm quite surprised with your first point, because i actually tried to guide the player through its escape with lighting. Here are a few example :

[Blocked Image: https://i.imgur.com/iC6cWt2.jpg] [Blocked Image: https://i.imgur.com/MX5butl.jpg] [Blocked Image: https://i.imgur.com/SVsT9PA.jpg]

Same thing for the cog/gear :

[Blocked Image: https://i.imgur.com/jMyQWIR.jpg]

But yea, looking at the screenshots now it doesn't seem as obvious as i wanted it to be.

2. That's interesting i didn't even think that a player would think the objective is to reach the turrets but yes indeed that's something you do usually in HL2, you can always take down ennemies somehow and kind of expect to come back here later if you can't immediately. It is indeed an issue that i must take into consideration for my next projects. And yes the idea was that the player has control over electricity state for the whole room with 1 switch, it was more obvious when I was using the HL2 lever model but encountered another issue : the players only tried to pull down the lever because you never use it in both directions in HL2

So that's why I used a combine console with 2 buttons but it doesn't work as much as a big lever to tell the player how important it is. Louder sounds for the door and electricity changing state would have helped a lot i believe.

3. Completely agree about you with that too, this is something i regret i didn't have enough time to work on. GeneralVivi explained that to me, that it's just unnatural for a player to suicide, that there should be a carrot just as you said. And the idea i wanted to include was hanging platforms for maintenance/cleaning service, and the player would think he can escape by jumping on it but it would break and all of this would just be a sad accident. I fully agree with you and that's a regret I didn't have enough time to make it better.

Your edit message is also very true, showing some sort of target the player has to reach is always nice (such as what marnamai did with the mortar). It was maybe doable, but i wanted the escape to be chaotic, unexpected from the player character (who is waking up by the sounds of metrocops trying to smash his door).

Thank you very much for your message and analysis.

Thank you very much @blackdog also !

Quote from leplubodeslapin

5 hours ago, leplubodeslapin said: 2. That's interesting i didn't even think that a player would think the objective is to reach the turrets but yes indeed that's something you do usually in HL2, you can always take down ennemies somehow and kind of expect to come back here later if you can't immediately. It is indeed an issue that i must take into consideration for my next projects. And yes the idea was that the player has control over electricity state for the whole room with 1 switch, it was more obvious when I was using the HL2 lever model but encountered another issue : the players only tried to pull down the lever because you never use it in both directions in HL2

So that's why I used a combine console with 2 buttons but it doesn't work as much as a big lever to tell the player how important it is. Louder sounds for the door and electricity changing state would have helped a lot i believe.

Eventually there would be the option of using the big cable plugs like in Red Letter Day and onwards, player is used to disconnect them to proceed. Maybe slightly harder to make them understand they have to reconnect... I felt the console worked well, best with what you had available

Edit: @leplubodeslapin or, continuing the thought of the plug/cable, a two stage thing as if disabling--proceeding--enabling--proceeding (but in the end i really like what you did)