Justice - SP

Thanks, Dark Tree.

I wonder how you made it without using the crowbar and the gravity gun. What did you use to kill the first prison guard (with a pistol)?

I agree it's tough, but that's my intent. The map was never designed for a beginner. I estimated the time for a player who has already beaten the entire Half-Life 2 but playing this map for the first time. Someone who hasn't played HL2 before can never survive the challenge.

The buggy was put in there originally to battle the antlion guards. But I just left it in the map after I replaced the antlion guards with the gunship.

Did you read my walkthrough, by the way? That should guide you along if you plan to go for a second trip through the map.

Thanks again for taking the time to play the map.

First off, I never found a crowbar OR the grav gun...so that made things a bit tougher. :/

Anyway, It was fun enough to play. You said it should take about an hour for beginners. I think that is fairly inacurate. I would say beginners would never even make it past the first gaurd. To even beat this map I would think you would need quite a bit of experience....I would say the average time it would take to beat it...if at all would be about an hour and a half.

It was hard...I will give you that...and I would never knock off points for how hard something was...unless it was near impossible.

The brush work was OK....I didnt see any badly stretched areas or any graphical errors which is great...however, it was very simplistic design. The statue in the middle of one of the rooms looked nice as well as the fountain.

If I would have known you provided enough RPG ammo for an entire army I might've used that weapon a bit more.

Also, there was no point to the buggy, except for you to refill some bullet ammo.

The ending...although not super abrupt (fadeout, one line of text), wasn't very fulfilling for someone who just had to one-handedly kill 20 combine with monsters and a flying ship. Varsity said it was difficult but rewarding when you beat it....exactly what was I rewarded with?

I love custom SP maps and I would say its worth a play (or two?).

The bottom line:
There were a couple of nice looking areas...but who the hell can notice detail when you are about to die the whole time!

I can't get on the d/l site, is there another site this can be d/l'd from? I keep getting error report

I tried the download link, and it seems to work fine for me. Try it again, the site might have been down temporarily.

Unfortunately, there isn't another site that this map can be downloaded. It took me a long time to find a site that can host my map.

Good luck.

PM me if anyone is having trouble downloading the map. I'll try to get to the bottom of it. Thanks.

I guess it may have just been down temporarly, I tried again today and all was fine. Thanx again

I just want to warn anyone who wants to try this map. It is extremely challenging, and it would be nearly impossible to finish if you haven't beaten Half-Life 2 yet. So consider yourself forewarned.

My recommendation is to quicksave the game frequently, and always walk carefully into a new area. You never know what's waiting for you.

This mod is intense. You start out with nothing and have multiple ways of beating it, and I love that. The gameplay was great fun, though I think it just barely crossed the thin line of too difficult/too dependent on quicksave. This was great fun overall.

Liked the map, good looking and fairly challenging. Killing the first couple of guards was a bit hard, after that not too bad. I liked the use of a variety of enemies, a 'scarier' basement would have been cool with fast zombies. Next make a new zone outside the gate!

The basement used to have zombies in it, but many beta playtesters complained that they're out of place. They thought it was strange to have zombies in the basement of a courthouse. So I took them out.

I still have a fast zombie in the map. It's hard to find. It's not even mentioned in the walkthrough, because it's not essential to beat the map. You can find him yourself by venturing to the fenced generator in the courtyard in the back of the courthouse.

Thanks for the comment, by the way.

I beat this in 15 minutes, and 5mins of that was wandering around trying to find my way around. I never went below 60hp and only used the HEV suit charger and not the health changer. Unless it was on easy, a lot of you suck. :P

This is not even close to being hard. P.S: I also did not beat the SP campaign, not yet anyways.

Wow, that's very impressive. You're either God himself or you used some cheat codes.

I just know what to expect from each enemy is all, since the AI is so predictable. Not to mention, at the beginning of the game, the gunship blew over the first turret, which made that ordeal very easy.

Ahh, using your wit very well indeed. You must breeze through Half-Life 2 easily.

By the way, you asked about setting the difficulty setting for custom maps. I don't know how to do that. I just make the map more challenging by enemy placement and arm them with various types of weapons. I also direct their assault to some extent, but I allow the AI to do most of the hunting.

I asked, but then I edited because I remembered that you set the difficult in the setting menu so I just figured it stayed on hard even with custom maps.

I like to make battle arenas with the AI and watch how they handle each other in a fight without me being the primary target. It's really interesting, and makes for some downright awesome un-scripted action! (since not 1 battle is EVER played out twice) This is primarily how I learned the ins and outs of the AI behavior.

The last three Elite Combines I have in the courtyard are the most interesting, in my opinion. They have free reign of the entire map, and with info_nodes dispersed throughout the map, they hunt for the player everywhere.

I played the last bit myself over and over again because I find the AI variations so interesting.

I haven't even used the elites yet, since I usually have the battles setup at rebels vs many, many combine (they're aim is just pitiful). I'll try having a elite only squad vs some rebels. Do you recall if you can limit the number of gunballs they have?

BTW, do you plan to make another map similar to this? I really enjoyed it.

Played it, liked it. What I didn't like, however, was the lighting; most places being so dark that it made combat almost impossible. The outdoor lighting is also pretty ugly too and I keep living with the impression that this would have been better-off with the sky_day01_04 skybox (with appropriate light_environment settings, of course!).

Very good! The bush work defiantly doesn?t say "amateur" it has a unique style and this is refreshing to see.
Personally I found it much too hard without reading your walk through. (Cause I didn't find the crowbar.)

On a side note i think allot of stuff is unnecessarily rendered and could be solved with the clever use of some area_portals. (Have a look with mat_wireframe 1) This didn?t cause me any issues but it may do with low end users.

Other then that nice work.

Thanks for your comment, Treb. I know I could've used area_portal to reduce framerates, but it was my first Source map. I was experimenting with Hammer 4 still at the time. I certainly learned a lot more about the engine since this map was published.

I am glad you like the architectural style. I had enough of the original Half-Life 2 "city-grundge" styled maps, so I thought I'd make something entirely different. I am happy that someone noticed.

So many downloads, but relatively few comments. I am curious whether anyone has found a better way to beat the map than my own walkthrough. If so, can you post it here?

It appears that most test players have a hard time finding the crowbar. So I am changing the gameplay a bit this weekend.

The new version should be available sometimes next week.

Hehe...I still think its funny I had to endure as much pain as I did to beat the mod without a crowbar or grav-gun....F6 became my best friend very quickly in this one..... 8/10

Sorry, I am improving the gameplay as we speak...

I did not intend it to be that difficult or painful.

Just uploaded the new version.

This map is... pretty bad. It looks good enough, but the gameplay is just awful. Swarms of combine soldiers, and all I have is a crowbar? Well, I did find a rocket launcher (presumably intended to be used againts the gunship which no longer poses a threat), but that's not really meant againts soldiers in close combat, and it doesn't have enough ammo. It's just too difficult to be any fun. I'm not going to rate it because I didn't really play it for that long.

Headx, did you read the walkthrough?

You went on a suicide mission because you didn't use your head to strategize before venturing into the hordes of Combines that you know are waiting for you.

There is a shotgun with plenty of ammo and health inside the prison where you started. But you weren't smart enough to find them.

Oh well, I guess it's survival for the fittest.

So I'm supposed to read the walkthrough before playing, because without the walkthrough I'm just commiting suicide?

Yes, that completely makes sense, and I'm sure that it's not an indication of bad level design.

I'm also sure that you are on well on your way to becoming the lead level desiger of Valve with the philosophy of "What? Didn't you read the walkthrough before playing my map? You're an idiot!"

As you can see from all the comments before you, you seem to be the only person who tried to confront the entire squad of Combines with just a crowbar. Evreryone else armed themselves with the appropriate weapon before going further.

I didn't write the walkthrough until later. Most of the comments were made before I even posted the walkthrough.

Granted, some of the playtesters did not even find the crowbar, that's why I modified the gameplay to allow intuitive but intelligent players to find those weapon cache and have a reasonable battle with the Combines.

And I apologize if I sounded too harsh in my previous comment. I was just disappointed when I receive a negative feedback on gameplay, especially after I spent countless number of hours in playtesting and reviewing people's comments.

One of them HL2 speedsters got this map and took it for a spin.

It's quite impressive. I never thought someone could finish this map in forty seconds. If you want to watch the demo, download it: http://www.hl2dq.net/uploads/1981621833/sp_justice_v3_o40.zip

It's divided into four .dem, about 2 MB zipped.

My experience of it was pretty much like headx I'm afraid, Satchmo.

The start was just waaaay too difficult for me. I tried umpteen times but on every occasion the sentry gun reduced a fair proportion of my health, and whatever health I had remaining would be polished off quickly by the gunship and loads of Combine before I could barely get a weapon. A few times I managed to get a weapon but died soon thereafter and gave up in frustration.

I won't supply a rating because I didn't get very far.

Thanks for trying. Make sure you are playing the latest version (v3). I have made some modification to the gameplay to make the start of the map less difficult (for example, I took out the sentry gun in the prison yard).

But I do appreciate very much for all the feedback. These comments allow me to constantly improve the gameplay.

I love this map. I sat down and played v3 six months after first playing v2 six times over again, trying to find the best route to take for minimal player damage. I actually managed to play through it without quicksave on the hard setting. It's a different sort of gameplay that takes a bit of getting used to. But I loved it, and it has great replay value. It reminds me of FarCry, how there's a completely open area that you can move through at your will. I never found need to look at the walkthrough. The most satisfying gaming experience I've had in a while, no exagerration. Ace.

Haha, I've been playing V2 all this time, didn't know there was a new version out.

Hey, about the difficulty, I really don't understand what the big deal is. For the start, you just have to listen and wait until the gunship is over the other side of the map, then hurry out and knock the turret over. Sure, you'll take a bit of damage, but not too much. Then it's just a matter of sprinting past the guards.

I liked the map a lot Satchmo. And after playing it through normally about 6 times I started playing around in other ways, such as spawning rebels outside (and extra guards for them to fight.), pretending they'd come to break me out. Great stuff.

Thanks for the comment.

Version 3 is somewhat different in the gameplay. The player must ascend the tower to beat the map, and there are some additional hidden goodies.

It's been so long.

How have you been?

My son is still playing this map, now that he's 11 years old.

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"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." -- Toulouse-Lautre, Moulin Rouge

I don't map anymore, and I am resigning from my partnership in my medical group.

I am becoming an airline pilot at age 50.

A lot has changed in the past five years.

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"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." -- Toulouse-Lautre, Moulin Rouge

Congrats! That's an accomplishment; and a completely different career goal. Glad to hear the Pit was part of your journey, and also your son's!

I remember this map well, and that it was pretty difficult. You should consider replacing one of the defunct mirror download links with a direct upload to the SnarkPit, so it's always available.

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202