Seattleite

Here we go... And I am expecting Freeman to have a MASSIVE freak out at the beginning of the next episode.

Not interested in that. I just want to give HL2 more updated features. Like enemy resistances, and unique shot placement values for different enemies, and shot placement multipliers for different weapons. Maybe give the guns without secondary fire modes iron sights, like the revolver from Black mesa... I'm going to keep thinking about this, this has potential. Also, regarding the current .cfg mods: The last difficulty spike was not sufficient. At least, not for Gordon. It was enough for Barney, it remains to be seen if it was enough for Adrian. I increased the damage Freeman takes on his body by 25%. That is now two and a half times what it used to be, and 50% of the damage Gordon's enemies take. For instance, a 9mm bullet now does 3 damage to Freeman on hard (to the chest, at least) where it does 5 to everyone else, and a zombie swing does 13/25 to him where it does 25/50 to everyone else. Of course, having 200 health, the special effect of the armour points in the GoldSrc version of the game (-40% damage), and taking 50% less damage than everyone else at all times does make Gordon quite durable anyway, but he now at least notices bullets. EDIT: A 25% increase for Adrian, just to see how it goes. He now takes full damage, although of course he doesn't have any weak spots like Barney does. If this is too much, I'll dial it back, but I think I can deal. I also increased the power of the thornets from 5 damage to 10. This is for balance, as it's hard to score headshots with it (and with headshots being so potent that's more important now) and other weapons aren't as prone to ammunition shortages anymore making its infinite ammo less useful. It also makes the grunts considerably more dangerous, so I ended up doubling the damage they take when hit on their plating (in Black mesa) to compensate, though no adjustment was needed for the GoldSrc games because they needed an upgrade anyway. Snarks now also do double damage for the same reason. Lastly, in all the GoldSrc games, I am increasing the power of the MP5 from 5 to 8. This is because of the headshot adjustment again, which made the very accurate pistol more powerful than the SMG at most ranges. This gives power back to the SMG, allowing it to be useful again, because when playing Blue Shift I found it was really only more effective than the pistol within a couple metres. No adjustment required for Black Mesa's MP5 or the MP7 from Half-Life 2, they're both actually pretty accurate in short bursts. Also, realistically an MP5's MUCH longer barrel would make the rounds it fires do a bit more damage and penetrate deeper than the same rounds fired from a pistol. Last patch note for the night: The houndeye is now slightly more fragile, but hits like it's in a Civil Protection episode. To be exact, its health is now 1/3 less, but it deals 2/3 more damage. That means it has 20 hit points in GoldSrc (low enough to be killed in a single shotgun blast) and 40 in Black Mesa (in Black Mesa it takes double damage from 9mm bullets and quadruple from buckshot), but it deals 100 damage in GoldSrc (100 to Adrian and Barney, 60 with armour, 50 to Freeman, 30 with armour) and 50 in Black Mesa (25 to Freeman, keep in mind this attack is much faster than the GoldSrc version). Their new status as the new glass cannon with the slow attack means you will almost certainly never be hit by them, but if you do you will be wrecked in a real hurry (except in Black Mesa, where the damage is less severe but harder to avoid).

Actually, BTG, it can't be 2012. It's 200X. That means 2000-2009. The two and both zeroes are absolutely confirmed.

So pest, what if it's in 2001? Or 2005?

I have now finished the updates. Well, I finished them hours ago, but I have now actually uploaded them. For Half-Life 2, here are the differences since you finished Ravenholm, in no particular order: 1. Freeman takes double body and non-locational damage. 2. Ammunition is provided in one half the previous amount. 3. The pulse rifle is 50% more powerful. 4. Overwatch elites now have 12.5% more health. 5. Alyx's gun does 50% less damage. 6. Poison zombies and headcrabs now have 150% more health, and do twice as much damage. 7. Missiles are now twice as powerful. Not that they needed any help, just making the strider's health match up to the number of missiles that kill it. 8. Crowbar does 25% less damage. 9. The shotgun now does 1/3 more damage. 10. The dropship and stationary guns now do five times as much damage. 11. The hunter-chopper has twice as much health and the APCs and dropship containers have 50% more health. 12. Hunter-chopper bombs do twice as much damage. 13. The APC's missiles now do 250 damage and will kill Gordon in 2 hits on hard, 3 on normal and 4 on easy.

Loony.

Playing (a modded version of) Blue Shift. Calming down, having fun, and getting my ass royally kicked all at the same time.

I know SMOD, but I looked into its features and found them lacking and just went with a .cfg mod because it was (I thought) almost as good for my purposes with a lot less effort and a much easier install. But if it allows me to mod HL2 with the features of the newer episodes and Black Mesa... Well, that certainly is an upgrade. I could do quite a bit with that. Like give particular enemies resistances to particular weapons, and possibly change how much damage they take from hits in different locations. I'll look into it when I have the time, but don't expect anything to come of it for a while. Hmmm... I suppose I should probably also mod the fan remakes of Opposing Force and Blue Shift once they come out, shouldn't I? I mean, both .cfg mods like I'm presently doing and later SMOD Standalone form.

Given that I don't know what SMOD Standalone is, I don't think I have.

NO, FOR THE EXACT REASONS I JUST SAID. I DID NOT SAY IT WAS WEAKER. I SAID IT FUCKING EXPLODES. THIS IS THE SECOND TIME I HAVE SAID THIS. THERE WILL NOT BE A THIRD. I really, REALLY hate repeating myself. I especially hate it repeating myself because somebody just COMPLETELY FUCKING IGNORED SOMETHING I HAVE SAID. I hate it even more when somebody completely fucking ignores something I have said in order to keep trying to pretend I hold a particular position that I DO NOT HOLD in order to keep arguing against that position THAT I DO NOT HOLD. You are doing that. STOP DOING THAT. Valve has never, EVER been concerned with realism, they are concerned with aesthetic design. Giving them the vest makes sense, it makes them look more like rebels since they're scavenging enemy equipment. Giving them the full CP jacket, however, is too much visually because it would have made them look too much like their enemies. There would have been very little difference in their silhouettes and so much of them also being the same colour and texture would have made them look like a CP on first glance. Even Barney, established to BE a CP, has a different colour armour to make him look different and was placed in an area with no other CPs in it to make sure you didn't get him confused with them. Remember, you could shoot your allies in early versions of Half-Life 2. They needed to make them visually distinct on first glance. The update is done, by the way. I'm going to go back to Blue Shift and get my ass kicked until I calm down.

And most cops don't have armour on their arms, legs or head at all. The CPs and overwatch are fully armoured. 1. IT EXPLODES ON IMPACT. It absolutely cannot penetrate objects if it explodes on impact. The pulse rifle IS powerful. In fact, it's one of the most powerful weapons in the game. (And more powerful post-update, so you know. That's not a good thing for you.) But that doesn't change the fact that it explodes on impact and thus putting an arm in front of it would make your arm take the explosion. The arm is not nearly as vital as the chest. 2. I was under the impression that they had the pulse rifle before they came to Earth, just like they did the synths. 1. And have issues with IFF? I don't think so. Besides, who's to say that they didn't and their baggy clothes aren't being worn over the CP jackets to make them easier to distinguish from their enemies? 2. Quoting the health values the developers gave them is pointless. These are the same developers that think an unarmoured woman is more durable than heavily armoured super soldiers. Seriously, Alyx has more health than combine elites. In case you forgot, they have the same health in the chapters when they're wearing unarmoured jumpsuits. The rebels have as much health as CPs because they're the player's allies and being fragile would make them die too fast.

See, here's the issue with this in real life: KEVLAR SLEEVES DON'T STOP RIFLE FIRE. In-game, what weapons do you have? Two pistols, a submachine gun and a shotgun, a crossbow of some sort in each game. An energy weapon that fires bolts that explode on impact in the second game. That's all your standard weapons that deal locational damage. Guess what ALL of these weapons have in common. That's right, they don't penetrate worth a shit. They'll be stopped by a layer of III-A body armour just fine, and assuming the armour of heavily armoured soldiers and scifi future-cops is at least III-A everywhere isn't a stretch at all. All these weapons will be stopped by the arms of a combatant. In real life, though, people have these things called "rifles". Funny thing about rifles, they don't care much about most forms of armour. They'll go right through an NIJ III-A sleeve just fine, out the other side just fine, and still hit the chest. Sure, the two layers of III-A armour will weaken them a lot, but they'll still go through. And so you know, the standard military tactic for dealing with armoured infantry is to have multiple soldiers concentrate fire on a single target in about the same place (not hard, all troops are trained to aim for centre mass, so they'll all be trying to hit the same place naturally) in hopes of breaching their plates through repitition. This works pretty well as long as the soldiers are wielding appropriate weapons. Okay, Cassius, if you say so.

In much the same way that covering your head is the best way to survive a mauling, yes. The only issue is you have to fight back at SOME point. But in their case, that's fine. They can fight back and protect their chest at the same time, so why not? Oh, don't worry, it'll totally run out. And as for Ravenholm, remember that poison zombies are now 100 (yes, that's the number I finally decided on) hit-point damage sponges that will deal 20-40 damage to you with each hit and take four crowbar hits to die, and even regular zombies may be killed in one hit (I rationalize that as Gordon now having enough experience with zombies to aim for the headcrab) but they still deal 10-20 damage per hit and come in swarms. Now go ahead and say you want to duck and weave in a melee fight with them, and risk losing a lot of health in a level with NO health chargers.

It's an extra layer, actually two layers, of armour between your vital organs and your enemy's bullets. The amount per box. Infinite ammo sources will still be overpowered as shit, feel free to abuse them. Expect Ravenholm to be more tense now, since you have to use the traps or you WILL run out of ammo.

Their arms are still armoured. The armour stops the bullets. Their armour stopping the bullets means only their arms take any damage. It takes quite a bit of effort to kill somebody with minor arm fractures. Freeman's armour will now only divide incoming damage by 2.5, instead of 5. That means Gordon will take twice as much body damage as he used to. Incoming non-locational damage, like all creature melees and explosions, will also be doubled by this change. I am also nerfing healing stations 20% for the first game (and Black Mesa), and reducing the amount of ammunition available in the second game and episodes. Melee weapons will also be nerfed by 10 points. I will have to test the new versions of the GoldSrc games before I know if the changes worked properly, since what damage is locational and what isn't is REALLY arbitrary. Annoying? No. Not really. I am a bit irritated about the shotgun thing, and the arm thing, but the rest outweighs it.

My modding is cyclic. My mod is too easy, better make it harder. Oh, this is just right, better play it a bunch. Now I'm really good at it. My mod is too easy, better make it harder.

You know what? I'm going to do a little something, if that's how you want it. Mind restarting? Because the difference will be rather... Stark. Don't worry, everything you wanted will be in there except for the arm multiplier. And if that's what you really, really want then let me know and I can do that too. But if you give me an hour I'll make some changes that will fix not only the issues you have with the mod but an issue I have as well. Namely, that I have gotten too good at it and need to increase the difficulty again.

Then the health of the zombie stays exactly where it is. Remembering that every change I make to the health of the poison zombie I also have to make to the poison headcrab, the most hated enemy in the game, exactly how high do you really think it should be? Look, the issue with nerfing the crowbar is mostly that the crowbar rides a very delicate line between "useless" and "overpowered". If I nerf it even a little bit, it has a big impact on how useful the weapon actually is. Just from 60 to 40, I doubled the number of hits it takes to kill a metrocop on easy and normal (it was already 2 on hard) and increased the number of hits it takes to kill an overwatch trooper by 1 on all difficulties. If I drop it just down to 30, its value from the very first version of this mod, it'll take 2-3 hits to kill a CP and 4-6 hits to kill an overwatch trooper. I know the way Gordon swings a crowbar is just about the worst way to swing it and it looks weird for it to work, but you're basically requesting I cripple a weapon that is realistically very powerful and make it an emergency weapon only. But fine, if it'll make you happy, I'll cripple the crowbar. Convar stands for console variable, you have to type in a convar to check anything in-game. I'll ask again, what convar did you type in? Actually, there is. And it's simple: Speed. The shotgun kills in one hit, so you can do it right away and not be exposed for more than a fraction of a second. The pistol and SMG are also both needed for fights where the shotgun isn't effective. Using up your pistol and SMG ammo then getting into a fight with the combine wouldn't end well. And really, what does it take? I mean, you do realise you are arguing that a one hit kill weapon is underpowered, right? What more can I really do to fix that? Do you want more damage? I guess I can make the pellets do 4, instead of 3, but it's ALREADY a one hit kill, what is more damage going to accomplish? And you haven't even gotten to the point later on where you start running out of ammo (the longer firefights with the overwatch later really hammer that point home). And it's really a strain on my suspension of disbelief for the shotgun to be as powerful as it is already, making it stronger will only make that worse. It's a fucking SHOTGUN. A shotgun doesn't penetrate worth a damn and would be realistically worthless against most of the stronger enemies in the game. The combine, the antlion guards and even the CPs should all be able to take buckshot all damned day and not even feel it through their armour. Am I supposed to rationalize it as using flechettes or something? Because that's all I have left at this point.

Alright. So, I just finished my rapid-fire editing for the night, and made a short list of changes to HL2's skill.cfg file. 1. The dropship gun (and, hopefully, the stationary gun) now do 50 damage. 2. The poison zombie now has double health and deals double damage. The poison headcrab is also up to double health, and its damage to NPCs in episode 2 is also doubled. 3. The hunter-chopper has double health, the APC and dropship container are up 50%. 4. I THINK I fixed the APC missile damage, but I WILL have to check in-game to be sure. See, the convar that was in the unmodified skill.cfg file doesn't work. But I noticed another convar listed in skill_episodic for Episodes 1 and 2. I copy+pasted that in and set it to 500. I don't know if it works, but it's worth trying. That's all I'm going to do tonight. I'm going back to Questionable Ethics, and I'll stop editing my posts now.

The arm's hitbox is, like, 5% wider than it looks and the extra space is on the top, and they're usually in front of the chest because that's how you hold a gun. That's not a big deal. Shoot from above or below. From below or above, hitting the chest is pretty easy, especially from below since their arms are held up high and the hitbox issues are the little space above the arms. When I fight CPs, I either go for their head or I crouch and shoot up into their chest or head if they have the high ground. This is a combination of the new headshot multiplier and the raw power of the airboat's main gun. I'll increase the heath of the APC and hunter-chopper to make them function better. Wait. Did they die in one 9mm bullet to the head, or two? Because if the former, I can totally increase their health by 25% because that means the headshot multiplier works in HL2 (didn't in Black Mesa). If the latter... Well, there's not much I can really do. They already have enough health the headcrab on their cranium inexplicably takes two shots to kill instead of one. Also, yeah, I need to power up the poison zombies a lot, I know that. I'm thinking double health (80) and damage (50/100), and also doubling the health of the poison headcrab (20, from 10) to make that not insane. (If the multiplier worked, this will leave them with 100 hit points instead of 80 as they'll also increase 25%.) As for nerfing the crowbar, I can lower its damage back to 40, but no lower. If I remember, in Half-Life 2 your attack rate is MUCH slower than in Half-Life or Black Mesa, which was why I gave it more power, but I haven't gotten to Half-Life 2 in my current playthrough and I haven't played in long enough I could be mistaken. The hunter-chopper autocannon does the same 25/pellet as the airboat and APC cannons. Freeman's armour is highly resistant to pulse weaponry, as evidenced by him surviving combine energy balls that disintegrate everyone else. Also, the emplacement guns are tied to another convar. Can't remember if it's the hunter-chopper, airboat or pulse rifle. EDIT: The APC's cannon is tied to the hunter-chopper, so no matter which the stationary gun is tied to it's stuck where it is. Also, what convar are you checking? The one that was in the .cfg file for the APC's rockets doesn't work, I didn't know there was a second one. Actually, no, it isn't. The shotgun is actaully REALLY strong if you use it right. The shotgun fires 7 pellets, each does 3 damage. That's a total 21, or 4.2x the damage of the pistol and 5.25x the damage of the SMG. That's enough to kill a zombie in one hit to the chest, or the poison zombie (present version) in one double-blast, without getting close. On normal, it doesn't even need all of its pellets to hit. Further, the shotgun does 15 damage per pellet with a headshot, enough to instantly kill a CP with only 5 hitting, which means you can do it from a short distance. The double-blast isn't accurate, but since it fires 14 and you only need 10 to instantly kill a combine overwatch trooper it makes the shotgun an instant-death ambush weapon against them if you can take them down in one. It can even instantly kill an overwatch elite with a single headshot if you are at absolute point blank and all the pellets hit their head. EDIT: That's on hard. On normal, this is all easier to pull off and more likely to work, making the shotgun even MORE powerful. The shotgun is used in two ways. One way is as an ambush weapon, for killing enemies instantly with a single point-blank headshot. Otherwise, it's a way to save on more valuable ammunition because you can carry an almost absurd amount of shotgun ammunition and it does a lot of damage per shot. The shotgun carries enough ammunition to do more damage than any other gun. It carries enough ammunition to do more damage than all the ammo of the pistol, magnum and submachine gun COMBINED. There's no risk of running out of shotgun shells, and since it makes a good ambush weapon it's also good for taking enemies out safely without losing health or armour. The only thing the shotgun isn't good at is fighting at range. That's it. I can't fix that. EDIT 2: WOW. It has been a long time since I played Half-Life 2. (Nothing against Half-Life 2, but I usually play Black Mesa, Episode 2 and Opposing Force instead.) I found the convar for the stationary gun, I THINK, and increased its damage to 50. It's the convar for the main gun of the dropship, and I THINK they are linked. With Valve it's kindof a crapshoot which convar is tied to which weapon, but I THINK I got it. I personally won't know for sure until I get there in my present playthrough, and I do sequential playthroughs so it might be a while. (I'm in "Questionable Ethics" in Black Mesa. I have the rest of Black Mesa, then Opposing Force, and THEN I get to Half-Life 2. And I'm also playing Dark Souls, Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim right now.) EDIT 3: I also just nerfed the crowbar back down to 40, and doubled the health of the poison zombie. Waiting for a word from you on whether it took one 9mm or two to kill the regular zombies before I change their health.

One thing at a time: 1. I might make the multipliers less extreme for gameplay reasons, (say, making abdomen/leg/arm into 0.75/0.625/0.5) but I am NOT making them all the same and even so this is a direct departure from reality for the purpose of gameplay. 2. You can totally get around the arms to shoot them in the chest, at least at close range, it isn't that hard. 3. There are plenty of reasons the chest is still more valuable. Let's just go through a few. A. The chest is, quite simply, a much more vital area than the abdomen. Like, so much more there is no comparison at all. The difference between being shot in the abdomen and being shot in the chest in reality is greater than the difference between being shot in the chest and being shot in the head. By, like, a lot. B. The kinds of damage that conduct through armour the best are blunt force and concussion. The abdomen is especially resistant to both, and would take a fraction of the damage, especially from concussion. C. There is still armour on the abdomen of all the armoured troopers in the game, except for the rebels. The CPs have an armoured jacket, that thing you keep referring to is a supplementary vest. It is to the CP armour what the ISAPO is to the PASGT. D. Many of the enemies in the game (remember the multipliers are for everyone) don't have body armour at all, and realistically them taking ONLY twice as much damage to the chest as the abdomen is pretty absurdly low and it really should be much higher. I have to balance it against them, too.

Well, it's a big difference. You deal 25% more damage and take 25% less. Most things take at least one more hit on hard than they do on normal or easy. And, as I believe I explained, hard is the "true" version of this mod. The zombies I can agree on. I want to make them more resistant to the crowbar, specifically. I think they work best in Black Mesa, where the crowbar takes two hits to kill them. The game is REALLY finicky about its hitboxes. The chest is only the upper third of the torso, and their arms (which have a wider hitbox than they should) are almost always blocking the majority of the chest hitbox from straight on. Only from above (like the point-blank ones you are spawning) and below can you reliably hit the chest. And at a distance, hitting their chest instead of their arms is almost impossible and it's better to go for the head or even the abdomen. Especially since the guns in HL2 really aren't accurate at all, which complicates this. Each INDIVIDUAL energy pellet from your gun does 25 damage. Fire that turret, even briefly, and you'll see the significance of this. The Hunter-Chopper also has shot placement areas mapped onto it. If you aim at the cockpit, each hit does 125 due to the headshot multiplier. Yeah, for some reason the convar assigned to the APC rockets doesn't work. It is totally set to 500, it should be taking off 75 health from you on easy, but nothing happens. I know. But that's because a lot of your shots are being counted as hitting the arms or abdomen instead of the chest, and you can't always tell at a distance. I have actually used notarget to test this, and I'm telling you that is, 100%, what is going on.

You're on either normal or easy. It takes two on hard. Also, let's see you take a crowbar to the head and keep going. Don't think it'll happen. Two contributing factors: 1. Did you download before or after I changed their health to 75? If before, that's part of your problem. You can check by typing sk_metropolice_health and sk_metropolice_simple_health. If both return"75", all is well. If either returns "100", there's a problem. 2. The real problem, though, is shot placement. Did I not explain the concept of shot placement to you? You deal 1x damage to the chest, and only the chest. It's 0.5x damage if you hit the abdomen, which is both more than half of the torso and the part not partially covered by the arms. And if you hit the arms, which are frequently in front of and on either side of the chest, especially because of how metrocops hold their guns, you only deal 0.25x damage. You have to actually hit the chest for it to count as a chest shot. Also if you have a recent enough version, headshots will make these fights much easier and the pistol is good at them. Confirm by typing sk_npc_head into the console, if it reads "5" it's correct, if it reads "2" it's outdated. If it's current, you should deal 5x damage to the head and defeat metrocops in three headshots. If it's outdated, you'll only deal 2x damage to the head and defeat metrocops in eight headshots. (10 if their health is also 100.)

If you get stuck at any point, don't use the console, just let me know and I'll help you out.

Just to weigh in on the Opposing Force hate, I'd like to say three things: 1. The Black Ops are planting a nuke in the area the troops are in and setting it off. The troops don't know this, and it's best if it stays that way. So the Black Ops trying to kill marines who find out they're not the real clean-up crew, they're just keeping people and aliens from escaping until the bomb goes off, DOES make sense. But telling the troops that's what they're doing and providing them a solid extraction plan so they'll be out of harm's way before the bomb goes off would have been a better idea for a couple reasons. Mainly, less waste of good (and EXPENSIVE) troops, more moral (that is a benefit, believe it or not, as there will be some people who know about it and if they don't feel guilty they won't tell anyone) and the troops and black ops will perform MUCH better working together. 2. If they wanted human-like opponents, they should have just made some even more more humanoid Race X members to complement the shock troopers. Something smaller, less powerful, with a variety of weapons and the ability to throw spore grenades. Maybe also made the xenian enemies more common, especially the vorts and grunts, maybe included controllers in a few spots. Bam, large enemy variety and enemies that can use the regular and assassin human AI and abilities and had all the multi-faction fights they wanted, problem solved WITHOUT making the military look both evil for evil's sake AND incredibly stupid. Probably could have even added a couple new weapons for those enemies, emplacements and vehicles for race X (with some alien cannon and gargantua fights for Xen), and gotten even more enemy variety and higher quality human-like enemies out of it than they currently did. All-around superior option. 3. I'd do it myself if I had the ability. Make the Black Ops into allies and reduce their numbers to fit, insert new Race X enemies based on the various human models (scientist, security, assassin and marine models and behaviours, altered for Race X and given Race X weapons) into the fights they used to be in, use the Xenian cannon to fill in the turret sections and have Race X hijack the mortar as you approach instead of Black Ops shooting at you. I can even think of the kinds of new Race X guns to add for them. I actually LIKE Opposing Force, as weird as that may sound to some people, and I would gladly improve it if I could.