I know we are all bored with practically nothing to talk about. Episode One has come and gone, many mods have come and gone. The only thing to talk about in the HL Forums is either "who is the G-Man" or problems people have with Steam and stuff.
But alas, a small shimmer of possibly interesting news has come from the team of Black Mesa: Source. No, no, it has not yet been released, what are you thinking? But an interesting article has been posted at both HL2 Files, which can be found here. And an extended version of the article can be found here.
The news contains new media for the mod, upcoming plans, AND the chance to beta test the game. All you need to beta test the game is to win the auction they are hosting. Read on to find out what they are auctioning.
OK, what I want to know is how did you link me to the Episode 1 FakeFactory mod, which is HL2 Downloads\Episode 1\Modifications etc, when all you get is a list with no Episode 1 showing when you go the the HL2 Downloads page?
Anyways, I'll be downloading it tonight and playing it tomorrow. I like Redux for HL2 but the gore is too much blood and it drains the FPS sometimes. I set it back to more of a default HL2 level with "exec gore_hl2" in the autoexec.cfg file though.
BTW, that second link to the FF mod for HL2 is the version Redux has in it, so I won't need that one. I can't imagine using the 4GB one, the levels load slow enough as is with the 1.4GB one.
BTW, the question in the first paragraph was asked because I want to find the HL2 Downloads\Episode 1\Modifications page so I can see what others are there. If there's one similar to Redux for EP 1 I might prefer that.
Yeah, HL2 Files has been sticking to a new file manager that passes over the Episode One file. You have to go to Domain Maintenance, then click downloads in the Half-Life 2 section on the left side of the screen and you will see a new page with some other categories. Its this page.
And in the paragraph above the categories you can click "Click Here" and then you choose Half-Life 2, and on the next page you can find an Episode One category. There are only two mods, the 4.0 GB one, and the older, which is about 700MB.
Sorry for being off topic but I was at the Far Cry forums and some guy mentioned videos made by a guy name <Omen> who shows a way to get through one of the last levels in Far Cry (the volcano level one, where you start out with a M4 assault rifle). I was wondering if he was talking about you.
How much RAM do you have? And what video card do you have? A lot of Fakefactory's levels from his older mods that don't use Source SDK Base take more time to load the first time you play through that level or chapter. It has to do with new textures being applied. If you play through the game again using the same mod it should load faster.
Sorry for being off topic but I was at the Far Cry forums and some guy mentioned videos made by a guy name <Omen> who shows a way to get through one of the last levels in Far Cry (the volcano level one, where you start out with a M4 assault rifle). I was wondering if he was talking about you.
How much RAM do you have? And what video card do you have? A lot of Fakefactory's levels from his older mods that don't use Source SDK Base take more time to load the first time you play through that level or chapter. It has to do with new textures being applied. If you play through the game again using the same mod it should load faster.
OK, thanks about the navigation on the HL2 FF site. I did however just end up clicking on the EP1 part of the file path header after following your link and found the same thing. I just wasn't aware how to navigate to it from scratch for future reference when there's more EP1 files added.
No problem on the OT, in fact I was the one that hijacked this thread selfishly, LOL. I do have many videos I posted under the name >Omen<, and do have a Volcano video that's no scratch on Realistic, though not with an M4. I have many full level Far Cry AND FEAR videos, most all of which are on the highest difficulty level and no scratch in a fairly fast time frame (usually 5-15 minutes per level). I generally try to show ways that are practical, quick, and no scratch with some nice visuals and sometimes stunts and humor thrown in so they can be used for tutorials and entertainment.
I also have some NFS Most Wanted videos and a few of The Godfather and STALKER. My original videos were made of Painkiller, and that's where I started the no scratch thing. The Painkiller ones are low res though, back when I was learning how to capture and edit.
My latest videos of Far Cry and FEAR are the best and done in 640x400 widescreen using VirtualDub, Xvid and LAME. You can zoom them to 1280x800 in WMP 11 (if you have the Xvid codec installed) and they are almost identical image quality to the original gameplay. Xvid and VDub excel at offering high image quality with low file size (about 110 MB for a 7 vid), but it takes a while to do the compression.
Sadly Filefront has gone crazy since the Flash streaming video craze has gotten so popular and is now constantly changing their file hosting policy, which used to have no viewing restrictions or deletion. They started out putting files unviewed for a specific amount of time in a deletion queue for 1 week, lately it seems it's more like a couple days.
They also change their file hosting policy without warning. They were sending me numerous repeat emails each time they warned me of files in the deletion queue and when I asked them to send just one email per warning they stopped sending them altogether.
Thus they ended up deleting virtually ALL my files, about 8.5 GB worth! It's bad enough that they are pushing the Flash streaming option real hard, but now all the links I made on forums are dead. I don't have much incentive to re-upload them. The only secure way of doing it is to put them on your filepage, then submit them straight to their database, where you have no control over them and can't even categorize them. It's the only way to keep them from being deleted anymore unless you daily babysit the damned deletion queue and even then they will sometimes delete them when they do maintenance, and claim it's a mistake.
I can't see doing all the work it would take to upload them again when the only option in linking to the file takes you to a page with a big Flash viewer on it. The Flash format seriously degrades the image quality yet so many people use it. It's really an insult to those of us whom put a lot of extra time into making them look high quality at a reasonable file size. Anyways, sorry for rambling on but videos were my main hobby and now I don't even feel like making them anymore unless I can find a better hosting solution.
I have an X800XT, 1GB RAM, and a P4 3.0 CPU. I never understood why a second play through goes smoother with some games and mods, it's really weird. Anyway the worst spot so far has been the end of Ravenholm using the Redux mod in HL2. He's got Gregori using a laser rifle and between that, the high res textures, and all the zombies on fire, it was slowing down pretty bad in spots.
I want to build a new PC by the end of the year, maybe based on a Core 2 Duo E6700, 8800GTX and 2-4 GB RAM. I also want to integrate my TV and PC into one display. Lately I'm looking at the Acer 25.5" widescreen LCD (AL2616Wd). My goal is high end but bang for the buck. The main problem of integrating is having to deal with using a TV tuner card, most of which cannot equal a TV and have finicky software issues. ATI is now making ones that rival TV quality with comb filtering though.
I figure by the end of the year the 8800GTXs will be down around $400 now that the 8800 Ultra has hit the shelves, though many are saying an overclocked GTX is a better way to go so hard to say if it will sell well.
I haven't had a chance to look at your site you mentioned via PM yet but I think it would be great if you had a forum with game hardware tech talk. Lately I know more about hardware than games themselves, especially since only certain types of games appeal to me. That and the video hosting becoming problematic are the two main reasons I am trying to go bang for the buck on my next build. I can't see spending megabucks on something that in certain ways is becoming less of an interest to me.
Last edited by >Omen<; June 12th, 2007 at 09:53 PM.
Thanks for your reply, though it was long (I tend to post extremely long posts myself). I was just interested in seeing that Volcano level thing. How do you get a knife in that level? Because you cannot drop the M4 if it is your only weapon? But that stinks about the videos.
That portion of HL2 normally slows down a little for me too, but that is on un-modded Half-Life 2. Seeing that you know so much about making videos, maybe you can help me out a little. At Game Globe, I am planning to make a video revew, and FRAPS runs pretty well with my games. It stutters in-game, but the videos always turn out clear. I am wondering if there is a way to extract the music files from Far Cry so I can get the main menu music (theme song). It'll be my background music for the video.
Speaking of hardware...if you want to upgrade your PC ATI has the X2900 series. I think it tops nVidia's 8800s. (I like that).
My site does have a forum, but I haven't created a tech forum yet, mainly I just tell people to start a thread in the contact area. I know a decent amount about hardware (thanks to my dad and Tweakguides). And yet I have an AMD XP 2400 Processor, ATI Radeon 9600 128MB Video Card, and 1.25 GB of RAM. I run stuff pretty well on that hardware.
Oh, how are games that easy for you?! Far Cry on realistic! Is there a higher difficulty? I bet Rainbow Six 3 games are a cinch for you. Or Ghost Recon. Or Call of Duty on Veteran or whatever.
Edit: Okay I added a tech forum on my site. Anyone can post anywhere on the forums.
1) I was just interested in seeing that Volcano level thing. How do you get a knife in that level? Because you cannot drop the M4 if it is your only weapon?
2) I am wondering if there is a way to extract the music files from Far Cry so I can get the main menu music.
3) Speaking of hardware...if you want to upgrade your PC ATI has the X2900 series. I think it tops nVidia's 8800s.
4) Oh, how are games that easy for you?! Far Cry on realistic! Is there a higher difficulty? I bet Rainbow Six 3 games are a cinch for you. Or Ghost Recon. Or Call of Duty on Veteran or whatever.
5) Edit: Okay I added a tech forum on my site. Anyone can post anywhere on the forums.
1) Sounds like you're actually talking about the Dam level. Dam is the one where you start out by a stream that leads to a waterfall with only an M4 and 10 rounds of ammo after Krieger kicks you out of the helicopter following your destruction of his factory.
Dam is one of the most unique levels due to the stranded start, the lava and Trigen infested environment, and interesting bonuses you can unlock. If you manage to either sneak to the Buggy without picking up any weapons or drive the Buggy to the ledge above the shack by the satellite dish, you are awarded with bonuses.
The bonuses include being able to carry the machine gun or rocket launcher from the Buggy or Hummer. If you accidentally pick up a weapon though, the bonus ends. It's kinda weird though because sometimes you don't get the bonus even if you pull off the tricks and the machine gun and rocket launcher don't show in Jack's hands, just the big red X crosshairs.
I have videos of Dam ranging from 4 minutes to 8 minutes in length. The 4 minute one is only a Dam level speedrun and not practical for continuing on to the Volcano level as I sneak to the Buggy with no weapons, then drive it to the ledge, then down onto the level end door. I did it on Realistic no scratch too.
Then there is one that shows alternate and more practical endings to the speedrun and outtakes using the bonus machine gun and rocket launcher. The original one I made shows a more typical run through Dam running to the wrecked chopper, taking out the mutants with it's mini gun, then getting to the Buggy and jumping it over the lava, off the cliff by the chopper, then stealing the Hummer via an ambush and using it's rockets. It's not quite no scratch but the others are.
2) Just use Fraps to record the Demo Loop on the main menu and download VirtualDub (Here) to extract the audio in Wav using File\Save Wav. You can also add the TITLETRACK to it which is the drums and gongs piece about 2:00 in length (Wav version titled demo.wav) for a whopping 7:27 length audio track vs the 5:27 the menu song gives you, only 5:00 of which is audibly loud enough to use.
The titleterack is located at Ubi\Crytek\FC\FCData in the Music.pak file. Most any extractor will open it, I use IZArc. It's shorter version is labeled as demoend but I like it as an intro instead. Once you have the wav copies you can easily import them into just about any video editor and compress as you choose, I like 192kbps.
3) Not according to the latest info, in fact I don't think ATI even had any intentions or claims that it would outdo the 8800GTX.(Some Google links) Everything I've read indicates it not only doesn't beat it, t doesn't even come close. Nvidia's antialiasing is now more advanced as well.
This does not fare well for those of us looking to upgrade to an 8800GTX 768MB though, as there is still not enough competition even in the 8800 Ultra for the prices on the 8800GTX 768MB to drop very fast.
4) It's not that hard once you fall in love with a game and play it a lot, especially sp because scenarios and AI activity stay the same for the most part. It's when I try to add visual effects, stunts and humor that it gets frustrating, but mostly due to the game's physics being inconsistent at times.
The only way to go above the highest difficulty level is via mods. I have played some games for instance with reality mods that use enhanced AI, higher damage parameters on the weapons, and sometimes no crosshairs or HUD (iron sights only).
I'd have to say my best achievement was making it through the Silo level of COD2 with the Reality 2.6 mod using a Kar98 rifle and pistol. I was able to snipe the mortar teams from atop the silo with no zoom on the iron sights on Veteran. I have not been able to duplicate that feat since.
I have a mod that I add to the Reality mod that uses a single bolt action rifle and pistol of the country you're fighting for as the loadout at the start of each level along with no zoom on iron sights and grenade cookoff.
5) Ok, I'll check out the forum, thanks. I stopped by the site for a bit today and it looks cool. I first heard about Freeweb when I went to DangerousBob's site for the HL2 Redux mod. He uses Freeweb too, looks like a pretty good service.
Last edited by >Omen<; June 14th, 2007 at 08:58 PM.
1. What buggy? What shack? What satellite dish? You're talking about the right level, its called dam, but I have no clue where those are. And really all I'm concerned about is finding a pistol or machete so I can mad dash to the helicopter, which is pretty crazy.
2. Thanks for the tip on the music files, but your method for FRAPS may not work. FRAPS has a 30 second recording time limit. I might be able to get the music if I turn the benchmarking overlay on so I know when the recording has finished so I can start another one, but there will always be gaps there. Of course it is just background music, people will be listening to me more, hopefully.
3. Drat. I like ATI. Did you hear about DX 10 AGP cards?
4. Add humor? A good amount of what you said makes sense, but add humor?
You're a WCP fan, you have to be friend of mine! I'm a fanatic, he has newer versions such as 2.8, which he said would be his last one for COD2, but then updated again (I just found out) about a month ago. This one has a ton of new blood features and the ability to have a rocket launcher as your secondary weapon. One of the blood features is decapitation with blood squirting. Decapitation has already been shown off, but blood squirting is new. You can find it here.
There is also a new weapon.
5. Yeah, I've been to DangerousBob's site once or twice, pretty cool place. But honestly, Freewebs is crap, someone once mentioned a domain site provider to me, and when I checked it out, it looked really nice. But I stuck with Freewebs, and now I don't remember where it is. And the reason I'm saying Freewebs is crap because I hate their paragraph editor (its a pain to work with at times), you have limited space for your site (like 100MB I think), and a 20 page limit. The 20 page limit isn't that bad because you can extend your site by making more accounts.
1) Dam is really quite easy, like I said it can be done no scratch on Realistic and the first half of it you can actually sneak all the way to the Buggy with no weapon. I will tell you the more traditional way though, as you said you want to use weapons.
I find it easier to skip picking up the M4 as it slows you down. The measly 10 rounds it has aren't enough to kill what you're faced with and just attracts attention. Cross the stream and head to the left along the far valley wall taking cover behind trees. Time your sprint to the waterfall so you start when the ape starts coming closer and growls at you. Try to have some stamina left when you fall in the water so you don't take damage when you submerge and have full stamina by the time you exit the water.
On Medium difficulty or below you can follow the river then take a right to the chopper at it's mouth. On Realstic I go immediately to the left bank of the river when I surface and head to the hills on the left not sprinting until the mutants see me and taking a route through the thick brush for cover from sight.
Go high on the hill, if you need to, hide behind a big tree there to recover stamina (not necessary if you time your sprint well and take a good route through the bushes), then head down the hill running through the bushes between the river and the hill on the left.
You will hit a checkpoint as you come to the mouth of the river, then head right across it straight to the chopper. The chopper has armor, a mini gun on each side, a bit of ammo for the assault rifles, and a checkpoint.
Immediately grab the mini gun on the far side of the chopper and shoot the jumping trigen on the left (headshots are best), then the one that stands in place on the hill on the far right. Then get the Fatboys as they approach you. Try to shoot the fattys in the head or their green chest medalion.
If you start hearing apes behind you, jump to the other mini gun and take them out. A 3rd jumper trigen will walk slowly by the left side of the chopper toward those you were shooting on the far side, though he doesn't jump. Kill him with the mini then head to all the jumper trigen corpses to pick up their rifles and ammo.
The next part you can do one of two ways. You can wait out the battle between the mercs and mutants at the barrier wall, or engage one or the other from afar hiding behind the big rocks in front of the fence using the scope on the rifle. You can even try sneaking on the far left side if you feel you have the chance, there's lots of cover there.
If the mercs are dead and a fatboy with rockets comes at you, save your ammo and head all the way back to the chopper, even if you can't see him from there. Use your AG36 scope at double power to find the rocket fatboys, then exit the scope. Note where the crosshairs are on the landscape then get on the mini and blast away looking closely for it's crosshairs to go red.
If you kill all the rocket fatties this way, fine. If they keep coming at you, you might have to deftly time dodging their rockets by running away from the mini then back to it. The more you use the mini the more you may attract other mutants from the direction of the waterfall though, so listen closely for them. You can also make a mad dash for the barrier wall where there's an armory just beyond it to the left, but there's another jumper trigen on top or near the wall.
Truth be told it can be loads easier just using stealth to sneak to the armory, it depends on how much chaos is going on between the mercs and mutants and if any mutants see you by the time you get on the other side of the mouth of the river.
This is why I highly recommend staying on the left side of the river before getting to the mouth of it where the checkpoint is there. That gives you the option of what route to take to the chopper or staying far to the left as you cross the river mouth, which is stealthier but leaves you with no armor.
My sneak run involved a quick pickup of the chopper armor hiding behind bushes along the way, then heading to the left and backward a bit to stay out of view of the mutants on the other side of the chopper. There is a big hill you can hide behind to the left of the river mouth on it's other side. That is the best place to line up a sneak dash from because there are lots of bushes and a nice low valley you can run to on the left when you get past where the mutants are. They WILL see you though, it's just a matter of when and how well you time your sprint. Speed is of essence when you sneak, you want to do it WHILE the mercs and mutants are still fighting. After a short while the mutants usually kill them all.
The Buggy is on the other side of a fence gate across from the armory. The satellite dish and ledge are up high to the left after driving the Buggy across the bridge and jumping it over the first lava flow (by a rock where you see the first fatty). Skip the Buggy driving to the ledge trick unless you are really good and quick at handling one. Instead go to the right after jumping the first lava flow and there will be a rock ledge near where you hear the chopper which you can jump down to a dirt road via which leads to the level end and more chaos, this time with mercs. You get a checkpoint when you enter the Buggy, and will probably need to use it more than once. You also get a checkpoint on the dirt road right after jumping down to it. There's a jumper trigen standing ahead to the left of the dirt road and one behind and to the right once you get on it. You may need to be at full speed and/or swerve a bit to avoid being shot by them, but that's mostly on higher difficulty levels. There's also a Hummer parked with mercs in it that will head toward you once you get past the bend in the road on top of a hill, so look out for that.
If you're good at driving the Buggy you can actually go into the jungle with it to the right, get past the Hummer, then drive it along the ridge to the right and down into a valley between Doyle's boat and the mercs stationed at the Volcano door entrance. The guys in the Hummer are scripted to take off down that road and do a patrol when you get to a certain point right near the bend. If they don't see you, they will exit the Hummer between where the two trigens are and engage them. Many use the valley on the right side for a stealth approach, however there is a big armory at the end of the road and to the left where you can re-equip with heatlh, armor and weapons if you make it there. Keep in mind there's a pretty good armory at the start of Volcano too, once you get inside. Just try to have a rocket launcher and OICW for Volcano and you'll be OK.
Ican re-upload my Dam videos if you need more help, they make it easy to see what I'm talking about.
2) LOL, all this talk of video reviews and making videos so I assumed you actually owned Fraps. In that case either buy it if you plan on making lots of vids or use a tool that converts Ogg sound files to another format, such as wav or wma. If you want to do all this free AND be easy to do without taking lots of time, use Windows Movie Maker 2 to edit and compress, which will accept avi video files and wav or wma sound files.
Trust me, I have made lots of videos when starting out using the Fraps demo piecing together 30 second clips and it is not only very annoying and time consuming, it usually isn't very well recieved by those whom watch videos as you will have the Fraps logo on all the clips. I had legit excuses though, I was not only learning and not knowing if it would work out for me, my sound card would not record audio in sync with Fraps until much later when the audio drivers and Fraps build versions changed.
Some freeware Ogg converters, none of which I've used so I can't recommend which is best:
3) Yeah, heard about DX10 for AGP but haven't read reviews yet. I don't like how they charge a premium for even the latest non DX10 AGP cards though, like the 7800GS. It may end up being a hold me over I'll suffice with though along with an extra gig of RAM if the next gen quad cores don't come down in price by mid '08. Intel is planning QCs that will share 8MB cache and not require use of the FSB to communicate. From what I've read merely putting two Core 2 Duos on one chip has not resulted in good enough performance to warrant the price. They're hardly better than a single dual core.
4) By humor I mean using gameplay that teases, spoofs and catches the AI off guard, often shooting them from unusual vantage points, like on top of their head. I've also done a bit of personal ad-libbing, and even dubbed in dialouge in some places. It's quite amusing and has received good reviews from those whom watched them. It just takes a bit more time to do that and the visual effects due to the AI and physics being hard to predict sometimes.
5) Well, not surprised, most free web hosting services I've read reviews about have too many short comings to bother with unless you absolutely have no alternative and need to use one.
Last edited by >Omen<; June 15th, 2007 at 05:56 PM.
If you want the audio out of a recording. Get growler guncam. It extracts audio from the video capture into a wav file for free - mp3 if you pay for it, but that isn't really necessary if you're going to use the sound in another editing program. Also, there is no time limit on video capture, so you won't be limited to 30 second clips.
For my video review, which will be Far Cry, I will either record with FRAPS (trial) or Game Cam. Game Cam I really like because you get unlimited record time, but the bad part is no sound can be recorded. I figured just putting the Far Cry music in there would solve my no sound problems. But I can also use FRAPS if I need sound. Game Cam runs really nice too. The video files are also a lot smaller compared to FRAPS, which can take up gigabytes worth.
And for video editing, we have NERO 6 Ultra Edition or something like that, all I know is that it works really well for videos.
I'm not sure if I will be making a ton of video reviews, because they take a lot of time and extra work, but are a nice luxury for anyone coming to my site so I'm planning to make at least a few. I've already reviewed all of the Half-Life saga on my site, until Episode Two comes out (evil and excited laugh), and I'm currently working on Sam and Max Season 1 reviews. When I finish that I will start the Far Cry review and from there I will start the Halo reviews. But I have no clue what I will be doing for Halo because of a water graphical glitch that I cannot solve. But that is off-topic. heheheh.
Thanks for the tips on "dam". If I really do need the videos for that level I'll just PM you to let you know if that is a good way to contact you.
This site is part of the Defy Media Gaming network
The best serving of video game culture, since 2001. Whether you're looking for news, reviews, walkthroughs, or the biggest collection of PC gaming files on the planet, Game Front has you covered. We also make no illusions about gaming: it's supposed to be fun. Browse gaming galleries, humor lists, and honest, short-form reporting. Game on!
Half-Life 2 General Yib-Yab (Off Topic) 
The Boredom Lull...(No boring stuff here) 
Linear Mode
