The battle with the M1 Abram tank was infuriating in Hard difficulty. Aside from getting swarmed with HECU units with a SPAS-12 and an elite soldier who snipes you all the way from the other side of the map makes it impossible to hide and do a reset. I also tend to get stuck up on small gaps which makes you an easy target for everyone. There is also not much health items or healing station scattered around so you're just running around in the open trying to find one

I'll open by saying I loved this mod. I was very impressed with the level design, new puzzles and hazards, voice acting, and animations. The depiction of the resonance cascade from the elevator was incredible. I got chills when the PA system said WARNING: EXTREME ENERGY FIELD HAZARD IN: SECTOR C and the other guards started running. You know that's when Gordon pushed the crystal into the beam, and the atmosphere is just so excellently done.

Onto the more constructive feedback.

I agree with what Olde said in his thread about the visual noise in the trainyard, it's pretty bad with all the fences, poles, wires, etc. I think a big part of it is the overhead lines everywhere.
It's an odd choice considering none of the locomotives we use or see in-game are electric, and in real-life America doesn't use electric freight locomotives.
Personally I would remove the overhead wires and the poles that hold it, this would remove a lot of clutter from the yard. Since the wires do seem to be part of a minor puzzle, I would say keep them for just that one stretch of track, it's not unusual in America for the few bits of electrified rail to run along a single piece of track while all the adjacent tracks are not electrified.

The solution to puzzle with the (explosive) plunger and generators is dead simple, yet so counter-intuitive it took me a few minutes to figure out. Placing the plunger directly next to the explosives was far from my first guess, no sane person would ever press the detonator to a bomb that's 4 feet away. I saved before installing it there because I wasn't sure if it was a red herring that would just instantly kill me.

The Sniper in the vent seems unfairly difficult to kill if you don't have any MP5 Grenades because Frag Grenades just bounce off the black wall and fall back out. I did have an MP5 grenade, so this wasn't a problem, but I can see how it easily could be if you used your MP5 grenades in the previous fight with Marines.

Contrary to what some say, the M1 Abrams was well designed, however the LAV-25 battle was not. That IFV takes off like 1/3 of your health per-shot, and yet it's fully automatic and with much more health than Black Mesa. At the same time, while the Abrams has mechanized infantry to support, the LAV-25 is alone, so while it's extremely difficult to fight 'fairly', it's also extremely easy to cheese but just sitting behind cover so it can't see you but you can still shoot missiles at it.

I think the LAV-25 fight needs redesigned, if it's going to remain alone, I'd like to see it make use of it's mobility to try and seek out the player to prevent him from cheesing, even if that means just driving forward and backward down the same stretch of track. At the same time it's DPS needs nerfed big time as being infront of it for 5 seconds is a death sentence. One option for this is to lower the rate of fire, the gun shoots in 2 round bursts by default, so a low rate of fire would mean it only attacks in 2 round bursts.

My only complaint for the Abrams fight is how it appears, I was kind of disappointed that we never got the Blue-Shift style surprise tank reveal, I fully expected to be in the bed of an M35 when it suddenly becomes a the crispy model. More realistically, it's not possible for a CH-53 to haul an M1 Abrams, at ~60 tons there is not a helicopter in the world that can lift it, although 3 of them can.

As for why I think the Abrams fight is good: It's reminiscent of the one from Half-Life, where the tank serves as a mechanism to put pressure on the player while he fights the HECU supporting it. This is actually an area Black Mesa failed to recreate when they gave the tank 2 machine guns and threw it into the center of the arena instead of at a choke-point.

Also on the LAV-25, The default rate of fire is not set properly, this is actually an issue that was never fixed in Black Mesa. Because the rate of fire is .25 and the burst interval is .20, it has an inconsistent fire rate which is what causes the BA-BAM BA-BAM BA-BAM sound rather than a consistent BAM BAM BAM BAM. I highly recommend fixing this if you choose to keep it automatic.

Design wise, I'd really like the game to stop slamming doors behind me. It feels too forced and too linear to have routes constantly closed off this way. It kinda ruins my immersion. At least wait for me to get out of sight and earshot before closing it off.

Finally, redesign the shunter slightly so it's easier to get into. Having to jump twice or thrice to get up the stairs is way too awkward, especially when other obstacles or enemies are nearby. The most polished option would be to make the steps go toward the cabin, although this would require a redesign of the wheels as well. To fix it without touching the physical model just make the collision box for the stairs into a very narrow staircase with a number of small steps so the player ascends automatically by just walking into it. That's a bit expensive for performance though, so if it's possible to do this with a parented player_clip brush instead, that'd be perfect! Lastly, remove the front doors on the outside, they're inconsistent with the interior design.

I'll cap this off by saying I love the custom animations and I love the train puzzles, please do not cut or minimize these. The animations are incredibly well done, better than Black Mesa's custom animations, and the shunter puzzles are just really cool, I'm only disappointed I couldn't drive the train further!
And the fact that the entire trainyard is actually this huge outdoor space in which you get to visit most of, that alone is a masterpiece. I also loved seeing stuff being airlifted in, I thought that was really cool!

If you actually read this, I hope this wasn't to wordy. And thanks for an excellent mod rivaling (and sometimes exceeding) Black Mesa in quality.

Originally posted by Vaintelog:

The battle with the M1 Abram tank was infuriating in Hard difficulty. Aside from getting swarmed with HECU units with a SPAS-12 and an elite soldier who snipes you all the way from the other side of the map makes it impossible to hide and do a reset. I also tend to get stuck up on small gaps which makes you an easy target for everyone. There is also not much health items or healing station scattered around so you're just running around in the open trying to find one

It could use some refinement as far as the ability to move smoothly goes, but overall the Abrams fight is done better than any of the Abrams fights in Black Mesa. It's more reminiscent of Half-Life's tank fights, where the tank serves as a mechanism to put pressure on the player while he fights the HECU.

I would just like to throw my hat in the ring and say I do like the train puzzle in chapter 4 and didn't take very long for me to figure out. It's one of the reasons I like Half-Life is not everything is streamlined. I would keep this as much as possible in future updates.

my only criticism is the "surprises" kind of got a little too tiring at times as there are too many of them. other than that it was very enjoyable besides the crashing sometimes.

Very nice job here guys, i just found out about this chapter little bit later - so here are the late first impressions (on hard)
Arenas in this chapter are well scaled with finale of the tank battle - it took some time to find proper strategy. Also it will not instakill player while running around, so there are possibilities how to fight it. Compared to old ones, this was a real challenge. Chapter was much longer than i was expecting with various ideas, well marked with visual clues, a pleasure to play. Also a much important change, finally i can jump and kill myself in the labs before the cascade, i was missing that dearly. And the details, easter eggs... its crying for at least 20 achievements of various stupidity to be added, yet Im not sure that can be done when its a mod.

Now for some negativity, the trains... I would probably liked much more to simply copy the system from the original carts and add extra button to join the wagon. Locking player inside without possibility of jumping out and let the train run by itself is somehow not half-life like. Obviously it should instantly kill the player with the slightest touch of the train front :D (im not sure, whether its design choice, engine limitation or wheels are simply not animated yet).
I also didnt manage to free the train before the tank battle - i probably couldnt see whether i ride 2 or 3 kmh at those 10 meters and the concrete blocks didnt brake - which i would expect to happen at any speed if it was possible, which was automatic and wrong conclusion... Result was running around trying to find any trigger so something will happen.

In the end, it was a great experience and i cannot wait to see the next chapter - rebuilding Xen from a scratch is never an easy task

Instead of the crowbar PLEASE use a baton or a police night stick

The Friendly AI is Broken
When you tell em to stay put they follow you without telling them when you get a certain distance away from them
PLEASE Fix this by making it like in the Original Game aka Half life 98

Buff the MP5 submachine gun it will make more damage and it will make sense using it because right now its mostly useless

Make the Pistol Glock more accurate like in the Original game

Sound design is simply bad and it seems that no one cares to improve it , small example weapons sound like popcorn

When i gather supplies like ammo and health and when i transfer them on the other side of the loading zone they vanish
Please Fix this

The Anti-aliasing looks bad , it looks like AA is not even turned on

Performance Optimization is all over the place , for example in Black Mesa the main game i get constant 160+ fps and in this Blue Shift Expansion the game struggles to keep solid 60fps

Is it Possible to "cook" the Grenades like in the Original Game

Make it possible for the Friendly AI to use different weapons (mp5 shotguns) like in Entropy Zero

Too many invisible walls , for example i can clearly see the enemy , i shoot at it and nothing happens

Friendly "reprogrammed" turrets still shoot at the Friendly AI companion

Sometimes enemy Grenades dont kill their teammates or themselves

BullSquids they dont attack eachother but they Should like in the Original Games

Add more G-Man sights

This game is missing the legendary moment when you blast open the train doors with CO2 gas tanks to get to dr Rosentoad or whatever his name is

When you shoot the Houndeyes it doesnt cancel their attack , this used to be a real thing in the Original Games

Vortigaunts in the Original Games you could hit them with the crowbar/knife to cancel their electric attack but you were in danger of their mele attack , this is missing from the new games Please bring it back

This is played on 2 PCs one with Ryzen 5800X3D and the other on i7 4790k oc to 4.8
The systems are using 32GB ram 2400 mhz DDR3 and 64GB ram 4000mhz DDR4
GPUs used are GTX1080 Ti and RTX 3090
Installed on Sata SSD and M.2 SSD
OS Windows 7 and Windows 10
Both PCs have fresh clean os install and no additional mods

if you need any additional info please feel free to contact me ,
btw so far you guys are doing a good job and HUGE Thanks for your effort but there is still a lot to be improved

I'm not certain if this a problem only I'm having, or if it's an intentional feature, but the zombies seems very bullet-spongey compared to all the other enemies, like taking 4 headshots from a revolver to kill one. I've attempted removing any modifications to the zombies to see if that was the problem, and no change.

I found a bug (I think) in the captive freight episode.

I'm at the last 'arena' before reaching the turntable. The one where you need to defeat the tank.

I defeated the tank, and got to the locomotive. However, when I move the locomotive towards the train car with the RPG on it, I can't seem to hook on to train car. The light on the dashboard of the locomotive turns yellow, but I can't get it to go green. (I believe I'm supposed to press enter to latch on to the train car, right?).

Anyone got tips how to get past this? Because if I can't move the train, I can't shoot the big door and advance to the turntable section...

I'm sorry have to say, azure sheep is more fun to me :(. The level design in this although good is clostrophobic in the first 3 chapters and a bit boring in comparison to both azure sheep and chapter 4, the set pieces are mostly boring in comparison to azure sheep also you haven't put anything like the gargantua fight in this and I have to say that fight is official game worthy, the normal fights are cheap where all you have done is basically spawn them in AGAIN AND AGAIN behind the player causing cheap deaths / reloads < people got bored of this back in the day and it makes them stop playing unless balanced out...1, 2 is fine, every other fight and its aggrivatingly tedious

The tank battle on hard is IMPOSSIBLE, though the tank itself is fine, its the 1, 2, 3, 8, 10 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ marines that spawn while you fight, that are all SUPER accurate from allll the way over the other side of the damn map and continually killl you with a few shots while you are trying to take cover or even in cover because they also seem to be able to shoot through A HELL of a lot of sceneary in this ((the shotgunner outside the marine box when you get put on that tower? is able to shoot right through the walls and he loves his job, this and many more places are like it, APC loves shooting through almost every prop too))

The train puzzle to get rosenberg is neeeeeeedlessly BORINGLY long and you artifically extended it again by making marines keep spawning in behind the player kill you, reload, and the scripted grenade in to the train? you do know you can't really pick things up while the train is moving right? forcing you to run out the cabin and then get shot to bits by super accurate marines because you can't pick it up? or just take the hit and end up with no hp whatever ♥♥♥♥ it. Also forcing the player to only have a pistol and shotgun for the first 3 chapters although challenging...got very, very old very fast. There is no fun factor to those chapters because of it, all your time gets spent being frustrated at the shotgun where the damn thing fires in a U shape AROUND the enemy, CONSTANTLY. Same thing happens in black mesa though so I forgive that, not your guys fault that's on crowbar and it has made me NEVER use the shotgun in it or any of the mods, there is 0 point when it always fires AROUND their head or AROUND their body, sometimes point black shots at their head and you can see every bullet, minus 1 hit the damn wall behind them in a wonderful upside down U shape :/

Marine bit when they are telling you to walk this way is ok, Otis and Murdock's stuff is quite good, voice acting VERY good, maps again though tight in places are very well put together and the start area is gorgeous.

2 very annoying bugs though:
1) the closed captions have stopped working on black mesa itself but work fine in Blue Shift.
2) at the area where you have to plug in the detonator next to the sparking generators? the 2 headcrabs that teleport in behind the player keep causing a crash there if you shoot / hit them.... so that's an even bigger middle finger on top of the enemies cooooonnstantly TP'ing in behind you lol.

Having taken a break from playing this mod in December 2022, I've recently come back to it. I've started from the beginning, and while I've noticed no problems with game-play, I've experienced a lot of crashes to the desktop when loading saved games. It happens approx. 50% of times when I reload in-game, although I haven't had an issue when loading at startup.

My system specs:
Win 11
RTX 4090
64GB RAM
14900K
2560x1440

No mods, no 3rd party content.

A Game Ready driver update has made no difference to the issue.

It might just be me, of course, but I don't remember this happening when I played back in 2022.

All the best...

Hi, issue here. Big crash shortly after the beginning of "captive freight"chapter. Always at the part where you pick up the revolver for the first time near the crashed Jeep. Not only the game crashes but it turns off my whole PC! Never had that happen in any game.

If I break the plywood wall the second time I come across it but before Rosenberg asks me to, the game softlocks as nobody will recognize I broke the door and follow me past it.

I just played through the entire thing in one sitting because i enjoyed it so much, there werent any gamebreaking bugs. I played through it on hard difficulty, i would appreciate it if you would add a tiny bit more armour on the maps. The random banter the NPC have during the gameplay is hilarious.

The only issue i had was the performance, specially on the new released maps i sometimes dropped below 50 fps, with a high end setup. The cause for this could be either that you didnt have time to optimize it yet (wich is my guess since its just released) or maybe the good ol Source Engine is getting to its limits with the amount of detail on some maps.

Resolution: 2560x1440
CPU: I9 10900K
Ram: 64 GB 3600 Mhz
GPU: RTX 4080

I might just add even if the game is not fully done yet and Valve lets you release it as a standalone, i would defently pay for it, simply because from what ive seen you guys put in a lot of effort, which is not the case with many other Studios, i have the feeling that you guys deserve it.