My pleasure, brother! I'd enjoy this game so much less without your mod.

Thanks in large part to you for testing it and giving feedback so many times, Skummeh!!

At this point, HLA is unplayable for me without Merciless. Most important mod in the workshop!

Nice, I hope you will like the new difficulty!

Hahah, you've got a mod for almost everything! I just downloaded that one - will try it out next time! Kudos!

Well, since you dont seem to like bullet sponge enemies, have you tried my mod merciless half life alyx? You may like that one too and it is compatible with the campaign and with most of the workshop maps

Awesome! Really great to hear that it is possible! Grunts vs Officers is a great idea too! Sure hope the Officers would be on our side xD Fighting Grunts is more fun in my opinion as they have explosive tanks and throw grenades sometimes, and die in fewer shots rather than being bullet sponges. Recoloring enemy Combine is also a good alternative idea because it allows for all variety of Combine troops to be used both as enemies and as allies.

Thank you for taking suggestions! Looking forward to more great content from you and Xuoth!

As far as I know, Gunman Contracts enemies are combine soldiers using custom models.

Making two group of combine fight against each other is easy enough, maybe grunts vs officers could be an interesting arena.

Thanks for the idea and your nice comments!

I see. Thank you for explaining the issue! I have no idea how Gunman Contracts implemented the citizen npcs.

Then perhaps it would be easier to make enemy combine spawn instead? Like two groups, one friendly to you, and the other enemy. There is a map called "Customisable NPC Arena" that does this. It also paints the friendly combine blue to distinguish it, so maybe for your arena, the enemy combine (not friendly) could be painted red or some other color to distinguish them from yours?

Just throwing ideas. A Christmas wish if you will! If none of these are possible, I understand :(

The problem is, this game has very few npcs. There are not working citizens, vortigaunts nor striders, so that is not that simple to make.
On most of my maps you play as a combine if you are interested, but only antlion arena 1, 2 and 3 have combine teamates.

@Cuser Thank you for replying!
I will definitely check that one out, since you say it has gunplay! Thank you for making it!

That said, what I really like is the fact that you defend a simple outpost ALONGSIDE your Combine troops. There's something so cool about being on the same team as the Combine, seeing them fighting and signaling and chatting. I love maps that have you play as the Combine, and think there's not enough of them. This is why I'd like a map just like this Antlion Arena 2 map here, but instead of Antlions, civilians or rebel combines that could shoot back, so it's a proper battlefield.

If you ever feel like making a new Arena map, please consider making something like that! I'm dying for more Combine-ally content!

Thanks Xspy70!
If you haven't already maybe you should try the last map we made, Combine arena.

Hey @Cuzer and @Xuoth, these are amazing and I love them! Thank you for your hard work!

But would it ever be possible for you to make a Citizen Arena instead? Us Combine defending our outpost against invading citizens (or rebelling Combine units if citizens are too hard or buggy to include). I would really like to be in a gunfight instead!

PS: I really liked seeing reinforcements Combine come down from the drop ships!

One more Antlions left to do

My playthrough ---> https://youtu.be/pCj_jF-NV4Y

Thanks
Then you shoul play antlion arena 3 xen!
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2628554532

best addon of my whole life i love it

Because chargers turn the shield on against antlions, try to get into melee range and shoot the shotgun on semiautomatic.
Grunts, on the other hand, shoot their shotgun on full auto, so they are the most suitable combine soldier in order to kill antlions.

than why have a grunt with a shotgun when its almost the same thing

In my case it is because the charger doesn't behave well against antlions. I put one on early stages of the map and he couldn't kill a single antlion.

why my boy charger be left out on almost every custom map

No problem. If you need more help, you can ask me. I will try to help.

Ahhhh, I see. I had heard that one too, but never realized it could work so flawlessly. thank you! I might experiment with some bullseyes and see if I can still keep the flanking and back flip behavior.

In my map there are two stages.

On stage one all antlions jump over the wall, these antlions never backflip.

On stage two the door opens and several new group of antlions start spawning, this antlions don't jump over the walls and they allways backflip.

At first I had the same issue you mention with antlions missing the jump because they were facing and enemy instead of the scripted sequence.
The trick is to make the antlion friendly towards all its enemies with several ai_relationship, this way the antlion doesn't engage any enemies and faces the scripted sequence correctly. When the antlion jumps over the wall you turn it hostile again.

They have issues facing scripted sequences correctly when they have an enemy. Interesting, I’m assuming you call the scripted sequence when they spawn, before they actually fully acquire an enemy (or all the enemies are in the same general area, so glitches are less likely). That would explain why I noticed them not backflipping for the first couple waves. I’ve had issues in the past trying to get antlions to jump over gaps with SS’s. They’d sometimes miss the ledge if I stood in the wrong spot.

I am not sure I understand you well, it seems that you know how to set up a scripted sequence.
Just in case, I opened the antlion in model editor, I searched an animation that suited me (I think it is one of the flyattack animations, don't remember exactly, I can't look at it now), then I made a wall with a height that allows the antlion to jump over it without passing through it.
I hope this helps you, what are the issues you talk about? Maybe with more info I could help you better.

Just saw this and thought the antlions jumping over the wall was so cool. How did you accomplish this? I’ve had issues in the past with antlions and scripted sequences

Definitely craziness with Merciless Antlions. Recorded a video here: https://youtu.be/qov0jcouK8I

Then you should try it together with my new addon merciless antlions

Played this every time as a warm up.

Played this again after quite some time and it's still an absolute blast. Such a stressful fun time! Review video here: https://youtu.be/RgWZgt36sS8

I dont know why but its really fun with the DOOM playlist

I see, thanks for answering :)

@Cuser
No, it was more the description. I'm use to playing the "normal" maps. Moving through the map from A to B kind of levels. I'd never played a Defensive map so I didn't think much of it. But I'm very happy I gave it ago. I've played through it three times so far. Great work.

I don't know much about the modding tools but a defensive firefight would cool. Combine vs Combine or something.

Thanks Jellybean, I am really curious though, why wasn't you specting a lot from this map?, Is it because the pictures or something?

I wasn't expecting a lot from this but I had so much fun playing it. StarShip troopers the mod!
Great job.

I realized a dream thank you ( from france) ! you rock

Many thanks! XD

With the music of starship-troopers-theme, it's was the best mod of HL-Alyx i have ever played ! Realy !!!! WELL DONE !!!!

Nice! Thanks for sharing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWdCAn7ilBs

Made a gameplay vid with some funky Half-Life remixes added to the audio.

Just look at the table where the guns are while activating a lever, you will notice the difference.
The fixes I made seem to have worked then, good!

Ahhh ok...good2know. I didn't note a huge difference in the quality. Regardless, seems like it's working great now!

It disables dynamic resolution, sets a new resolution manually and changes the msaa values

I just played through twice on Antlion Troopers running Max Performance without crashing. What does changing the performance settings actually do?

It would be good to realize exactly what is causing the map to crash. I have made some minor tweaks to try to prevent the crashes, hopefully they will work.

Thanks...now that I'm getting the hang of it I'm going to do different things on each playthrough. I'll also experiment with the quality settings and see where it crashes for me now that we have narrowed it down.

FYI, the YT link Cuser shared below is blocked in the USA. Use this link instead which is the same song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPefJdjzoy0

Nice run!, I enjoyed watching it, I guess the difficulty is ok now. I will check the scripts anyway and try to fix the random crashes.

By the way, for anyone who has seen the movie, this map doesn't have music just in case you want to play it with this (or some else) music on the background:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIe0VXO3Tyc

I think it's the perfect song for this map, since obviously it`s based on the movie.

That seemed to do the trick. I made it all the way to the end without crashing. I actually had to lower the game difficulty to Normal as I twice got overwhelmed on Antlion Troopers when it was set to Hard. I made another unlisted video if you want to watch my playthrough:

https://youtu.be/pd57jgMJPnE

Could you try again without changing the performance settings with the levers?

Strange, nothing special was happening when those crashes happened, I suppose it has to be due to one of the changes I made today, probably too many antlions at the same time. I will have to check all the antlion scripts and maybe reduce the number. I managed to get the map playable on antlion troopers difficulty and I didn't get any crashes. If any one else is experiencing random crashes and wants to tell me, it could be helpful to me.