Combine

[Deleter]

Hey, I heard that some mod no one has heard of in detail needs some in depth information on the combine forces. Would anyone be kind enough to point them in the right direction? Or if you know, are the combine forces programmed, brainwashed, etc. when inducted into service? Thanx for the help.

BTW I was never here

 

[NiteStalker]

The combine are soldiers created as a mix of alien and human technology and anatomy. The combine doesn't look like the soldiers (they probably look like the thing Breen talked to in the last level).

The Civil Protection (the City 17 police) are human though, bribed to work for Breen.

I read all this at a very interesting homepage with the Half-life history and stuff, I bet someone here knows the adress.

 

[ghost_asassasian]

combine are the more advance version of stalkers. they were possibly created by scientist to fight the xeon but they rebelled or something. or the combine assimilate each race they meet into their army.

 

[Deleter]

ok, thanks for your responses. nice to know i can depend on you.

 

[sfc_hoot]

From what I can gather, the Overwatch (Soldiers, Elite, Nova Prospekt Guards) are modified humans, enhanced with Combine technology, while the Civil Protection are simply humans that have been brainwashed and have "started again" as C17 police, now working for the Combine. There's also the Stalkers who are withered slaves made from humans that are weak or old. Stalkers are run on saline solutions. The human-to-Combine transformation takes place at Nova Prospekt (by Combine scientists). The new Combine soldiers/slaves are then loaded onto Razortrains and are sent to the Citadel.

Hope that helps you.

 

[Deleter]

wow, that actually answers the most vital question. thanks for taking the time! :thumbs:

 

[Angry Lawyer]

Notice on the stripped Soldier model, and the Stalker model, that they have little plug sockets on their ribcages. I assume this is where they pump saline into and out of their bodies. Like some form of dialysis machine.

The Combine weren't created by Humans, either. They're a 'species', in a loose sense of the word, comprised of a number of slave races, and of course, what we consider 'true Combine' (the slug things known as 'Advisors'. The Synth, people assume, are some other form of life, forced through evolution into living tank things. The soldiers aare people of our own species, augmented by the Combine to make them more efficient.

-Angry Lawyer

 

[sfc_hoot]

And some more information on the true (original) Combine race:

The original Combine race, as Angry Lawyer said, would include creatures such as the Combine Advisor. The original Combine has become eternally dependant on their own technology, and have thus become fat, grub-like masses, because they no longer use their body for anything, the technology does everything for them. Despite the devolution of the physical body, the mind of the Combine has greatly evolved, and they now possess powers to easily manipulate, control and persuade races and hosts (eg, Breen).

PS, do you have Raising the Bar? That is the best book.

 

[Angry Lawyer]

It's my favourite Christmas present, and has certainly given ideas for new units types in my RTS mod.

-Angry Lawyer

 

[sfc_hoot]

Oh yeah, the RTS mod. How are things going? The last I heard, you had some kind of computer error with the source code.

 

[Angry Lawyer]

It's going pretty well at the moment; movement commands work, and the team menu is starting to work, although I need to make a team-menu that can dynamically change based on the number of teams in the map. And close-combat creature AI is working really well - I set up a test map with a small maze, full of path-corners, and created a number of Antlions at one end. Then I selected them, and ordered them to move through it.

They jumped over it instead. Fantastic.

-Angry Lawyer

 

[sfc_hoot]

How will you manage the lag? As in, if you have something like 8 players, and they each make a huge army of fully-rendered units (plus this is all online), won't things get laggy?

How's development on the HL1 section of the mod? Do you have Gargs, Grunts, Bullsquids etc coded in yet?

 

[Angry Lawyer]

Well, I don't aim to have games that big. It's more focused on 2-4 teams, with production limits to stop overloads.
The netcode is pretty good at limiting what needs to be sent, and what doesn't, and at the moment, my Netgraph thing states that, even with a large cluster of Antlions, not much data is being sent.
The only two problematic creatures I've found so far are the Fast Zombie, which transmits its breathing sound data every tenth of a second and lags like hell (easily fixed by having the clients guess when to have the breathing sounds), and the Rollermines, which transmit every slight motion they do.

I've not got far in implementing the older creatures, but they will be included, alongside adaptations that got left out (Grunts will have optional spore-launchers, like in Raising the Bar).

The biggest problem I have is updating the models. HL1's models are rather low-poly as opposed to everything else, and I'm not exactly an artist when modelling...

I just hijacked another thread with my RTS-ness.

-Angry Lawyer

 

[sfc_hoot]

You could use the Blue Shift HD pack models (although they're made by Gearbox). The models will look good enough from a distant view. And lol, this won't be the last thread "hijacked".

 

[Angry Lawyer]

The problem with that is I don't know the legal stance on using any of Gearbox's content. I tried contacting Valve, they said they'd get back to me, and never did.

Time for another e-mail, I think.

-Angry Lawyer

 

[DookieBooty]

so is this mod like being a sqaud of combine like raibow 6 3 that would be cool and all online and giving ur teammates order and stuff if u do that put me in credits lol