SP Balcony – Half-Life 2

Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3

This is a rescue mission. You need to rescue Uriah, a Vortigaunt.

Be careful though because if he dies the mission ends. In fact you have to protect him from himself because he is very brave.

Can you get him out of his cell and lead him to a Portal? Good Luck

Basic Details

Title: SP Balcony
File Name: hl2-sp-dm2sp-balcony.rar
Size : 5.28Mb
Author: Martin Seyfert AKA reaper47
Date Released: 05 August 2009
Original DM Release: DM_Balony on Snarkpit

Author’s Notes

I didn’t get around to test this map as much I usually tend to do before release. I hope that there are no show-stopping issues (or more realistically, that there are few enough to ignore). The sheer amount of entities necessary to script even the simplest singleplayer scene is intimidating, but I feel like I learned a lot from converting the DM version of this map to SP.

Dm_balcony is originally a medium-sized map with lots of height variation and rooftop access. I closed off some passages to guide the player through the map on what I consider to be an interesting route. But nearly all doors and forcefields open up for a big finale that uses the entire map. My lack of scripting knowledge, voice actors and time only allowed a minimum of story; hopefully enough to motivate players to sit through the entire thing. There’s also what I find to be an interesting ally following you through portions of the map ( the “use” key toggles following ). I always loved the levels in “Entanglement” where you could set up an bunch of friendly turrets. I don’t have friendly turrets, but added some friendly roller mines instead, which are a fun tool as well. Remember, the only way to destroy a roller mine is with explosives, so think twice before using grenades near them.

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Installation Instructions

Copy sp_balcony.bsp into your Half-Life 2 Maps folder.
Launch Half-Life 2
Open the console and type map sp_balcony.
Press enter/return or click the Submit button.
Play and Enjoy.

Screenshots

Click on the thumbnails below to open a 800 pixel wide image.
WARNING: The screenshots may contain spoilers.

Reader Recommendations

9 recommendations, average score: 4.89 (out of 5), standard deviation: 0.1

Post Details

Posted: 5th August 2009

Category: Half-Life 2, Single Player Mods and Maps

Tags: Combine Sniper, Outdoors, Poison Headcrabs, Short

There are 29 Comments.

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planetphillip Says:
05 August 2009 at 5:14 pm

I really enjoyed this. The visuals were great and there was actually a story. This is a PERFECT example of what could have been done by many other DM maps. Imagine that, 20 or more new maps like this. How cool would that have been?

Anyway, the only issue I had was leading Uriah around; he occasionally got stuck.

All in all a great entry and worth your time playing.

Well done Martin.

5 Words Or Less Review
See, it’s possible to convert!

- Leck Says:
  08 August 2009 at 4:47 pm
  
  so the vortigaunt get stuck?. so that map could be nice edited but i think it need more clips (for player and npcs) and some npc points like paths or something pore easy. ground nodes. im mapper with your authorization i can fix some bugs. ^^
  
Da Fat Cat Says:
05 August 2009 at 6:53 pm

God I feel like such an idiot

- planetphillip Says:
  05 August 2009 at 7:14 pm
  
  No need. Your circumstances were very different.
  
reaper47 Says:
05 August 2009 at 7:21 pm

No way! We were the only people entering? How sad.

Now I feel even bad for teasing you till basically the last day to submit this one. Thanks for coming up with the contest idea, Phillip. Don’t let it discourage you from trying other contests in the future.

It was a lot of fun doing this and I hope it motivated some more multiplayer-only people to at least give singleplayer a try. I could also imagine many people underestimating the time it takes to debug SP entity work (I sure as hell did), so there are possibly a whole bunch of unfinished entries flying around.

aaron_da_killa Says:
06 August 2009 at 12:23 am

Enjoyed the original multiplayer version of this, can’t wait to play the singleplayer version.

Going to play this when I get home!

Senator33 Says:
06 August 2009 at 1:37 am

Well Done! Too short to be a personal favorite, but with sequels would have a lot of potential.

Robspace1 Says:
06 August 2009 at 2:51 am

Really good but way too short. I like the transporter idea. Like waiting for a bus. The anticipation is overwhelming but great when it finally arrives! Please make it longer.

aaron_da_killa Says:
06 August 2009 at 8:24 am

Alright, I played it. Here are my main thoughts:

- I loved how you utilized the existing layout. You really didn’t change a lot so you managed to create a nice singleplayer experience with essentially the same layout.

- I felt crammed! Can’t complain much though because you’ve used the existing layout but both the interiors and exteriors felt crammed, I didn’t really have much space to stretch my legs. Even the physics props bothered me a little because I bumped into them occasionally.

- Uriah didn’t feel implemented well. I think path finding was a bit difficult for him, or he just didn’t want to follow me, plus I was playing on hard and he didn’t die at all. Maybe I just got lucky?

and here are some minor thoughts I had that don’t really matter:

- Too many weapons in my opinion, not sure what the negative of that is but myself I would have probably given the player the crowbar/ggun, pistol, shotgun and either of the assault rifles plus grenades.. if that.

- I think you could have probably extended the length of the gameplay. Perhaps the whole level could have been infested with zen monsters and you had to clear out the whole area, than waves of reinforcements of combine get dropped off, getting progressively harder and in between waves, bits of story is told.. or something

Again, I must reiterate, you did a great job utilizing the existing space.

I think I’d give this a 4/5 but I don’t agree with the “Play it later” comment attached with that rating so I’m not going to rate the map.

(Phillip – you should revise the comments for each rating – think twice, maybe and play it later all sound the same to me, plus I think also you are suggesting that 3/5 and 4/5 are perhaps sub par ratings, I think anything 3/5 or above is positive.)

A nice little experience and you’ve given the player direction from the start as opposed to just shoving them in an environment and throwing AI at them, feels a little crammed (small hallways etc) personally but you utilized the space well. Should be played on hard.

Great job!

reaper47 Says:
06 August 2009 at 2:57 pm

Thanks, aaron. Those are good, points. Hard to disagree.

The MP version has already been one of my smaller maps and I guess closing off pathways to guide the player on a manageable route furthered that feel.

Getting a Vortigaunt to follow the player in vanilla HL2 turned out to be a little more difficult than I expected. I always liked the idea of an alley but was kinda bored with the Gordon Frohman/”Reload, Dr Freeman!” types, so I chose a vort (you meet Uriah in Episode 2, btw). I think I should have made it more obvious that pressing the use key on him toggles following. It’s hard to judge whether he is in “follow mode”.

As for the difficulty level… I never enjoy getting owned in singleplayer missions. All my favorite SP mods hardly ever make me die. I have zero experience with this but kinda figured, that many mappers might mis-judge their own maps as “too easy” since they know all the tricks, so I simplified the battles considerably for the final version. Originally, the amount of combines were almost doubled, most of them had shotguns (3 hits in close combat and you’re dead), a gunship was circling you (always killing Uriah, which turned out to be pretty annoying), etc… I ultimately decided to focus on pacing instead of “a challenge”, and to be honest, I am still happy with this decision.

Jasper Says:
06 August 2009 at 3:01 pm

Very, Very, Enjoyable reaper47. Thanks.
Given that DM maps are arenas with limited space I thought you did very well for combat gameplay and length of map.
I’m off to play again. This time, once a rather hardened Uriah(!) has transported, I will explore some more and also see if there is anymore combat. Don’t know if this will work but I’ll find out.

- Jasper Says:
  07 August 2009 at 2:28 pm
  
  Yup. That works. I left Uriah in his cell and cleared the area before hitting the magic button. Had him transported then had a great time warring with the ever spawning combine from the roof tops. More to this than a quick play through reveals. Thoroughly enjoyable reaper47.
  
aaron_da_killa Says:
07 August 2009 at 9:43 am

Ah, didn’t realize I could “use” Uriah. I think I pressed [E] on him once but didn’t get the impression it did anything.

Armageddon Says:
07 August 2009 at 9:48 pm

Does anyone else see that he stole this map and add a few things?

- planetphillip Says:
  07 August 2009 at 10:58 pm
  
  Armageddon,
  
  I have removed you recommendation image because I believe it was added under a misunderstanding. The author of this map is the author of the original DM. That’s was the objective of DM2SP; to convert DM maps into SP maps. Yes, he did add things, again that’s the point.
  
Armageddon Says:
08 August 2009 at 2:16 am

Now I feel dumb. I’m sorry. I didn’t read the description. I played the map and it was really good. Sorry.

Kasperg Says:
08 August 2009 at 12:25 pm

Solid visuals and solid gameplay. I like the fact that the intertwined nature and the original connectivity of the DM map has been respected in visual terms, giving us the little yet very important previews of areas you’re about to go. It encourages exploration and motivates players more than the typical collection of hallways. I didn’t really find anything wrong about this map. Lighting could’ve used more contrast in some places, but since this is HL2 (and not the HDR-filled Orange Box mods we are getting lately) I’d say it still looks pretty good.
Combat was fun, and in some ways it did resemble a DM fragfest in which you’re never sure where your enemies will come from.
Any chance we’ll see sp_3006?

- reaper47 Says:
  08 August 2009 at 6:41 pm
  
  Well, I would have done an sp_3006, but lost the original VMF in a cascade of hardware failures. It’s the first time I am truly pissed about that, since I heard a lot of people (maybe even you?) talk about how dm_3006 never worked for MP and should have better been an SP map from the beginning! Oh, my…
  
  - planetphillip Says:
    08 August 2009 at 6:56 pm
    
    That’s a shame. Is there any possiblity somebody has a back up copy for you?
    
SolidFake Says:
08 August 2009 at 6:06 pm

very very nice map
Haven’t played the mp version yet, but the map looks very good.
I especially like that you can walk at the roof and that the map plays pretty linear at the beginning, that’s quite awesome for beeing a converted mp map.
There was just too many ammo, I never had a hard time and never went under 80 hp (medium difficulty)

Soniq24 Says:
08 August 2009 at 6:15 pm

I’m getting the A.I. Disabled message.

How do I enable A.I. ?

Thanks,

- planetphillip Says:
  08 August 2009 at 6:28 pm
  
  Open the console and type “ai_disable”.
  
Gypsy Jim Says:
10 August 2009 at 10:01 pm

I’m loving this so far, but haven’t got forward enough to give it a recommendation image….

The reason for the premature post though is that after Uriah died the first time, and I remembered someone’s advice above to leave him in his cell for a while, I did. When I went back for him, he’d gone….The text messages got out of order and I had no Vort to protect…? Weird, until the hundred plus combines turned up….

I must have done something wrong, so am definitely going to go back and have another go….!

Like I said though, looks good so far.

Jeff Says:
11 August 2009 at 2:05 am

This was a great little adventure! I’ll most likely never play any deathmatch games, so I really appreciate the single-player conversion. Lots of surprises and lots of enemies…. perfect!

Mel Says:
14 August 2009 at 3:11 am

Mixed views about this one, it did feel and play like a set not designed for the amount of combat crammed-in; as such I don’t think the action fitted the surroundings that well.

While this is a worthy conversion from DM to SP it does illustrate the limitation of such an approach, and I feel that most such conversion will be little more then short sharp combat encounters squeezed into sets not suitable for the varied gameplay that is the hallmark of Half-Life.

On the plus side it does open-up a potential endless source for FSP settings, but I hope this approach does not deter the mappers from designing mods with unique story line and new environments to stage planned combat mixed with other gameplay elements.

Hypnotek Says:
24 August 2009 at 5:22 am

I haven’t played this one yet, but i have to ask after seeing the screenshots in this and the ones from every other release : How is it that you always end up with so little ammo phillip? Do you just empty whole clips into pidgins or something?

- planetphillip Says:
  24 August 2009 at 11:36 am
  
  How is it that you always end up with so little ammo phillip?
  I’m just a really bad player, I guess!
  
eeVee Says:
04 March 2010 at 11:33 pm

This was very short, but very enjoyable.

I let Uriah out as soon as I got to him but then reloaded my last save, figuring I’d at least do some exploring and get rid of the sniper first. I was still wandering around when he got out of the room himself (I’m sure it was because I pushed the button on the console, not a glitch). He did have some problems with a box in his way, but I just smashed it and then he was fine.

Never thought of hanging around after the teleporter was ready. Hmm, maybe next time.