I didn’t like having to use the shotgun to open the padlock, but I can understand the author wanting to limit access to that area until you had something besides the crowbar. And it’s not like I was ever in danger of running out of ammo, either (don’t know about for you Hard folks).

And, gee, at the end–all the zombies were dead (well, a few more did show up) but the guards wouldn’t open the gate. That was fine, I was just impatient and looking for other ways through/over the gate when they finally let me through (after ALL the zombies were dead and no more were going to spawn).

So it’s very much about ergonomics. Having a very uncomfortable situation played out smoothly, giving all the hints, power-ups and cover that the player needs.

I put my vote in as “yes, but there must be a good reason” but more than that there needs to be a clear indication that the endless spawn is occurring, and what tactics to use to deal with it. Some endless spawns require you to meet certain conditions to stop the spawn while others are there to force you to keep moving instead of sticking around.

In Timeline (either 1 or 2) I ended up getting stuck in an area because I didn’t realize that there was an endless spawn occurring, and when I did I didn’t know what to do about it. I thought I needed to meet certain conditions in order to stop the spawn from occurring, but it turned out I just needed to run from the area. Very frustrating.

When I heard the chopper I wanted an RPG, but I run just fine.

My squad member seemed to have trouble following me to the top floor, so I had to backtrack a couple of times to get him.

I don’t think you’re supposed to be able to turn off the first steam “trap”. At first I just ran through it, and then I found the alternate route.

Not a lot of excess ammo, health, or batteries, but I made it out alive.

My only complaint is that the sound for some of the doors made it seem like they should open. But I soon learned that doors either open or they don’t, they don’t open later (except near the end).

But a well protected area must be really deadly or have a viable reason for a horde of enemies.(if it’s humans, they need to be deadly, but it it’s something like bee’s… well endless bee horde attack makes sense for me)

I noticed when I was about to rename my DL–so you have a good naming convention (in case you ever wondered).

Puzzles with triggers that, depending on how things happen, don’t work or can’t be found is simply inexcusable. These are found and fixed in a testing phase before any map is released to the public.

As I didn’t complete the map, its not rated (as per the rules). I wonder how many others would have loved to slap a low rating on this but also gave up?

Long comment short; IMO, this is one of those short-but-sweet mods that I would strongly recommend playing it ASAP.

A mechanic is a semi-contained system of interaction — jumping is a special player verb and thus a mechanic because there is a special skill to jumping and jumping well. Shooting is a mechanic because there is a skill to shooting accurately. Pushing / pulling with the gravity gun is a mechanic because it’s a skill-set separate from shooting.

So, surviving a wave of endless spawning requires several mechanics: moving / finding cover, shooting, scouting, throwing a grenade, driving the buggy, etc.

But most especially it requires a special mechanic of “genre literacy,” that the player is aware that someone designed the level and that someone put an endless wave of NPCs because the player has to move past the distractions. The player has to recognize that there is intent to the design of the world.

It’s the designer’s job to telegraph this intent: ospreys / dropships that constantly land, a player-clipped shield wall, a teleporter prop, an obvious exit and path of progression, ammo and health near the exit, etc. So it IS a valid level element. Yes. The elevator-defense in Episode 1 wouldn’t be nearly as interesting without it.

Sorry, but I gotta ask–did you enable sv_cheats before you tried using noclip to move? (I had the same problem with another mod not too long ago and, after deleting the mod/map, finally realized I may not have turned cheats on.)

Zombine created. Crossbow ammo crates visible. Combine not in pretty colors… It was more boring this way, actually. LOL. (Maybe only because it was my second time within 2 hours.)

Phillip, why are Ep2 maps showing up in the HL2 list?

If you want an HL2-style mod, you probably don’t want to play this. If you want something to do for 5 minutes, or want to play everything out there it’s playable.

I’m not sure if I had a bug or not–I could not kill the chopper (I didn’t know the rebels had any air vehicles–at first I assumed it was my friend!). If you’re not supposed to be able to kill it, the only issue I really had was the airboat ramp/jump section. It was hard to do that with the chopper shooting at me.

I couldn’t use the scope for the sniper rifle, either. But I’m on DX8.

When I got the RPG, I was expecting something I needed to use it against. Don’t know if I had a glitch or if it was just, perhaps, misplaced?

It depends on the game & gameplay on the storyline and on the factor fairness.

In Starship troopers a 2nd class FPS shooter there were hordes of Arachnoids spawned until you arrived a common goal for example activating some laser defence fences. In a game like that it might be ok and you also had ai support on your side.

In Half-Life it was ok with the Osprey. There were 4 max 6 grunts spawned all the time. You could have run and escape or try to destroy the osprey nothing negativ here.

In many other games or custom mods this mechanic didn’t worked so well and it was indeed frustrating so that you had to use cheats or abandon the specific game\mod for good.