HL : Source (Full Overhaul Modification)

I'd imagine you have to download it through Steam, although you never know, might be an extra in the install package.
 
Hrm, that tram is still too far away from the original for my liking. The original design is awsome, I would stick as closely as possible to it personally.
 
Carbon - It's still in development, lots can change before its finished. Any anyway you barely see the outside of the tram :)
 
Hrm, I'll see if I can put something together myself, and I will stick to the original design as closely as possible.
 
BMRF_Tram.jpg


W.I.P

Thats kinda a high poly replica of the original HL tram, possibly the sort of thing you would use for a normal map. Not sure I will finish it, just more of an idea of how the original tram design could look if dont well.
 
Carbon said:
BMRF_Tram.jpg


W.I.P

Thats kinda a high poly replica of the original HL tram, possibly the sort of thing you would use for a normal map. Not sure I will finish it, just more of an idea of how the original tram design could look if dont well.
Click to expand...
now thats what i was talking about, very nice.
 
holy.....*insert explicit*

thats pretty f'ing impressive, please finish it :eek:

although maybe round off the front and rear edges a little, damn the 10 sided ness :p
 
Carbon, dude, that's awesome. :)

jheaddon, you wanted feed back on your logo:
bms.png
before seeing yours, I whipped this one up last night:
blackmesasource.png
 
*looks at Butcher's avatar* <-- can't he make the logo, like that? :):):)

-

I like those v.dog, especially the black one
 
I must admit, I preferred the black one.
 
hang on a sec, my version was the HL2 logo upside down, you edit that?

Your version is pretty cool, but the text is a little weird :s
 
Haha ok man :)

Dunno, last night the Source text looked a little out of place there, but this morning it's looking good. lol
 
We're working on it WhiteZero, need to have a fully functional web site first, which is on the horizon :)
 
Awesome, glad to hear it.
I wish there was something I could do for this MOD myself, but I dont really have any moding skills.
 
I am interested in helping in this mod. I am very interested in learning about game design/mods and will be taking some beginner's programming classes starting next semester. My only concerns pertain to the depth of the mod and the length of time to get it up and running.

Being a newb to mods I want to start small, so a complete redesign of HL seems a bit much. I'm not sure if you have any mod experience jheaddon, but if it were my first mod I'd start small.

HL is/was awesome and I believe that a only few tweaks and new models would work wonders for the game and introduce a new generation to the wonderful world of Black Mesa.
 
I have a couple years mod work don't fear :)

Yeh is always good to start, i personally want to improve at modelling, so will be learning throughout the mod development :)
 
Carbon said:
BMRF_Tram.jpg
Click to expand...

Now that's what I'm talkin' about! :O

The point of a graphics overhaul isn't to replace the old design. It's to make it the old design look more plausible and compelling.

What Carbon's done here is take valve's design, and polish it. Not replace it or improve it. This is what Valve would have made the train look like in 1997 if they could have. They were forced to represent all this detail through the textures though, which is why the tram looked 'bad'. By converting the texture detail into polygon detail, it doesn't look better. It looks real.

For example, take this new HLS screenshot.
How can this scene be made more real?
914642_20041116_screen003.jpg


1: Each crate there is literally the size of a Hummer SUV. And what is inside? A pair of boots, a shovel, and some canteens? Also, the room there is huge, and designed exclusively for box storage. Why only six crates and a barrel?

Also, what do they add to gameplay, besides hiding behind them and eventually breaking them?

The solution: replace the huge crates with more, smaller crates, and stack 'em in reasonable piles where the huge crates used to be.
Enable physics on them, and knock the piles onto enemies. Since each box is smaller, containing only a few boots and things makes sense. All the while, the game makes more sense, while the level design is basically unchanged.

2: The barrels don't look or act like real barrels. Fix that!

3: The brick pattern is okay, but shifted slightly to one side. Also, add some specularity and mapping.

4: The highest-quality official models that currently exist for HL1 come from the PS2 version. Some people have managed to get the PS2 files into the PC version. Modify them a bit, add more polies and more detailed textures, and you're set.

Also, with all the crates and barrels tumbling around, they should know how to avoid (or even interact with) physics objects.

5: Sand particle effects would improve this sandbag barrier a great deal. Maybe even make it slightly destructible.

6: The floor is one of the many textures in this scene that needs improvement.

7: The PS2 med terminal is really high-quality. A polished version of it would be great.

8: The crane here is a pulley winch attached to a series of guiderails on the ceiling. It lifts crates and carries them up to the level above.
Where are the controls though? And how is it attached to the crate?

Add some breakable support ropes to the crate, add a control panel to the catwalk above. (It doesn't even need to be functioning.)

9: The architechture of the catwalk makes no sense, as there are no supports. Add some anchored support cables.

So, you can have the exact same screenshot looking far more real, without having to create any new designs.
 
Lovely feedback, will be doing this kind of thing for a large part of the maps :)

Cheers guys
 
sorry that i didn't bother to read 19 pages of info, about the name thing, how about "Half-Life: Alpha", you know, beginning, first Half-Life, meh, don't flame me ;(
 
Since Sourceworld is on vacation I got bored yesterday, so I sketched up a revamp of Xen.

Xen2K5.jpg


This is the xen level that needs re-doing the least, I think. Add more detail to the general surface and modify the spread of the sponge-grass, and it's an entirely plausible level.

Xen started off as one huge rock floating in a oxygen-rich nebula. Some strange force gave it not only gravity, but the buoyancy to stay aloft. Over time, plant life developped on the rock until most of it was covered. Erosion and other forces eventually took hold, and city-sized boulders started to separate from the edges, forming their own islands.

This island started off as a single asteroid, until the xen plants started to grow on it. The three largest spires caught chunks of the asteroid and split it in half through the center, lifting the ceiling up higher and higher and creating a gap. Other debris began to float in the space above.

Spongegrass and debris filled the center gap, creating a natural cave, into which the xen folk eventually installed an old teleportation system, which was subsequently abandonned.

With more debris filling the area above the island, and more surface are on each rock, it's less of a jumping puzzle to get down.
Inside the center gap, more horizontal space and a clearer delineation of the structure, it's less of a confusing area.

And, in the center cave, better lighting and a smoother structure, combined with more horizontal space agin, make it less claustrophobic and easier to navigate.

With the outdoor Xen levels, there are really only minor fixes that need to be made to turn a nonsensical jumping-puzzle world into a plausible alien planet.

-Change the lighting.
Although th low-polyness of Xen is a huge problem, the bigger problem comes from the fact that it is horribly lit. The little lightworms are pretty much randomly placed, and there is no consistent lighting source. Simply re-arranging these lights and makeing some of them stronger would seriously improve a level, even without any other changes.

-Higher polycount.
Literally everything in Xen needs more polies. The rocks need to look like rocks, not cones. Every plant, from the spongegrass to the spires, needs to look natural, instead of a creatively painted rock. 80% of Xen is coated in a thick layer of plant life, but you'd never guess from the poor geometry and overreliance on textures to show model detail.

-Bumpmapping and other texture improvements.
This ties in to the point about increased geometery. Xen is so complex that it would be impossible to portray everything through polygons.
Nearly every texture requires extensive mapping. Especially on the spongegrass, which is loaded with multi-layered intricate details.
More variation on textures is also necessary. Instead of covering everything with one tiling spongegrass texture, have bits where the porous limestone-type rock shows through. The spongegrass would look more like a natural spread that way.

-Minor layout changes.
Some levels, like interloper, make no sense at all. The trick then is to make them make sense without dramatically changing the "feel" and overall structure of the level. Where did the tunnels in Gonarch's Lair come from? Etc. You'd be surprised how much can be given a rational explanation.

-Better skyboxes.
Xen is portrayed almost 60% with skyboxes, so skyboxes are hyper-important.

The final two indoor missions, on the other hand, really do need a complete overhaul though. because they need all the above changes, and more. :p
 
wow, thanks for the input mecha, great to have your feedback :D

will definitely consider use!
 
GonarchsLair2K5Part1.jpg


This is actually pretty fun to do. I suggest everyone re-build Xen. :p
Gonarch's Lair part 2, on the other hand, appears almost designed to anger me. It's an okay design, but almost impossible to both draw and render naturalistic.

The biggest thing Gonarch's Lair needs is a better skybox and a bigger sense of scale. In HL1, it's just a strange rock with a monster on it. Since Gonarch is rather large, and creates six babies a minute, I figure her island must be pretty huge. So, using the skybox, making Gonarch's lair appear to be only the tip of an island the size of a large city would really add to it.

Also, notice the ledge beside all the spore plants? In the original, you can't climb up there, thanks to one of those ever-popular invisible walls. I say that's stupid.
Gonarch can easily shoot that high, and she's basically invincible against attacks from above. There's really no reason not to let someone up there.

Also, the large cave entrance that is blocked by the spongegrass really ought to blend in better with the spongegrass on the walls surrounding it. After all, it is the same material.

All the other stuff I mentioned for the last picture should apply here too.

Now for that damn Part 2.
 
Nice, dude. It's the little things (like the fact that those spires are no longer perfectly straight) that go a long way in making it more organic, more real.

And anything that alleviates those blasted jumping puzzles *has* to be good.:)
 
Very nice suggestions Mechagodzilla.
The point of a graphics overhaul isn't to replace the old design. It's to make it the old design look more plausible and compelling.
Click to expand...
I absolutely, totally agree with this. I think Xen's original design should be maintained, rather than turning it into a biomechanical place, which would look entirely different. I was just playing though Half-Life: Source then, and I'm a fair way into Xen, and I've been noticing that many of the textures seem designed to create the effect that there are veins in\on the walls, as if the whole location is almost a plant-like lifeform, or more likely, a sort of life form that grows and spreads over large rocks. With source's technology, I think it's a good opportunity to take this idea even further, and have actual pumping veins on walls, or wrapped around certain parts of level geometry, to truly make the place feel alive. Perhaps the tentacle things (the brown ones that hit you) could be physically simulated to jiggle and sway, and smaller, similar things could hang from ceilings etc. There's really a lot that can be done to make Xen jaw dropping, without deviating from the intended look and feel of the location.

I also think that the location would have been made much more vast if Source level technology existed when HL was made. Perhaps the environments could be enlarged, or at the very least, as Mechagodzilla suggested, made to seem larger through the use of 3D skyboxes.
 
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