Monsters - FreeSlave/halflife-featureful GitHub Wiki

Wiki is deprecated. Proceed to GitHub pages!

This page describes new implemented monsters and new features of original monsters (comparing to Half-Life). If some original Half-Life monster is not listed that means it does not have any behavioral changes or new features outside of common ones.

Common behavior changes

  • After battle, in alert state, monsters try to freeroam and investigate danger sounds if npc_active_after_combat is set.
  • Monsters forget their enemies if they didn't see an enemy for some period of time and npc_forget_enemy_time is set.
  • When look for cover from danger, monsters will try to just run away if could not find a cover.

Path finding changes

  • Monsters now properly detour brush entities that block the path between linked nodes (e.g. func_breakable, or a closed door which can't be opened by a monster), instead of getting stuck. If the detour doesn't exist they fallback to the classic behavior (waiting for door to open or for func_breakable to get broken).
  • Corpses no longer block path finding when the corpse lies at the top of the stairs and the NPC is going up the stairs (original Half-Life bug).

New common features

  • images/spirit.png images/svencoop.png Health, relationship class, blood color, monster model and its gibs model can be customized in map editor.
  • images/svencoop.png Customizable hull size.
  • images/svencoop.png New parameter Is Player Ally inverts monster relationship with player.
  • images/svencoop.png New parameter In-game name to set a custom display name.
  • images/svencoop.png New parameter Monster Roaming to make monsters free roam on nodes.
  • images/spirit.png New flag Don't Drop Gun to disable weapon and item dropping upon death (applicable to monsters who drop a gun).
  • New flag Non-solid corpse that makes monster's model non-solid upon dying (useful if you want to prevent blocking doors or pushables by dead bodies).
  • New parameter Trigger Alternative Condition. Additional condition to fire a Trigger Target.
  • Repel spawners (human grunts and male assassins when they come down with a rope) have options to configure the spawned monster similar to monstermaker.
  • New parameter Custom Sound Mask to configure what sounds monster regards.
  • Monsters can correctly patrol on path_corners now (the feature was unfinished in Half-Life) and use wait times specified in path_corners.
  • impulse 103 (Report AI state) is much more informative now.
  • New parameter Custom Field Of View to configure the monster's field of view.
  • New flag Act ouf of PVS to make monsters look for enemies and listen to the world independently of the player's presence.

Squad monsters features

  • images/opfor.png When squad member dies while not being in combat others go into the hunt state searching the area for the attacker.
  • When squad leader dies the new one is selected to prevent squad dissolving upon leader's death.
  • Monsters now properly switch to the combat state when they get enemy info from other squad member.

Following monsters features

  • images/svencoop.png Many monsters who are by default player's enemies can be used to follow a player when set to be a player ally (similar to scientists and security guards in Half-Life).
  • images/spirit.png Ally monsters can be 'locked' by master, so they decline following even if they are not pre-disaster.
  • images/opfor.png Opposing Force soldiers following the player will attack player's attacker.
  • New flag Ignore player pushing to make monster ignore player's attempts to push them.
  • When monster is "pushed" by a player, but can't move away because of the other ally monster blocking the path, this second monster also tries to move away. This may help to get out when two or more ally monsters are blocking the player.

Talkmonster features

Talkmonsters are monsters who talk to each other and a player and can follow the player upon using. This includes allies from Half-Life and Opposing Force.

  • images/opfor.png New parameter Suspicious to make a monster pre-provoked towards the player.
  • images/spirit.png New parameter Refusal Sentence to substitute the default decline following sentence (when player uses a pre-disaster monster)
  • images/spirit.png New parameter Speech Group to make monster use sentences with a different prefix (e.g. make Barney use OT_ instead BA_ so he would speak like Otis).
  • New parameter Tolerance level to configure how easily monster gets provoked by player hits.
  • New parameter Custom voice pitch.
  • New flag Don't greet player that prevents a monster saying hello to the player.
  • New flag Don't idle talk to player to disallow idle speaking to the player.
  • If monster does not have a question sentence group or it's missing from sentences.txt, the monster will not try to start a conversation with other friend. In Half-Life talkmonsters could start conversations even in the absence of question sentences that led to weird situations when other monster answered to unspoken questions.
  • images/opfor.png If player is attacked by the enemy monster, the ally soldiers (Opposing Force human grunts) following the player will instantly know about the attacker even if they didn't see the enemy yet.

Monsters by faction

Note: this list contains only new added monsters and prominent changes to the original monsters (comparing to Half-Life).

Black Mesa Personnel

Scientist (monster_scientist)

  • Can heal allies, e.g. security guards or other scientists (originally scientists healed only players).
  • Healing now plays a medshot sound.
  • New flag Don't stop following used to prevent a scientist from stopping following a player if he could not find a path to the player at some point.
  • New skill value sk_scientist_heal_time allows to configure a delay before scientist can heal again.
  • Now just runs away from enemy if can't cover from enemy.
  • Scientists now correctly play a death sound instead of silently dying.

Sitting scientist (monster_sitting_scientist)

  • New flag Don't drop to the floor allows to make scientist sit at the same position as they do in the level editor.

Security guard (monster_barney)

  • New parameter 'Gun state' allowing to spawn a security guard with gun drawn.
  • Checks for friendly fire when shooting.
  • Now uses alert sentences (BA_ATTACK) when encountering enemy.

Cleansuit scientist (monster_cleansuit_scientist) images/opfor.png images/svencoop.png

Behaves the same way as scientist, but can't heal allies.

Otis (monster_otis) images/opfor.png images/svencoop.png

Security guard equipped with desert eagle. Has the same behavioral changes as a regular security guard.

Dr. Rosenberg (monster_rosenberg) images/bshift.png images/decay.png

Richard Keller (monster_wheelchair) images/decay.png

Generic civilian (monster_civilian)

Generic npc that acts like scientist but doesn't have an ability to heal the player. Requires configuration of model, body, skin and Speech. By default uses the scientist model and sentences. Suitable for making civilian npcs like construction workers, hostages from Counter Strike and unarmed male npcs from Condition Zero Deleted Scenes.

Female security guard (monster_barniel, monster_barniel_dead)

Female security guard from Azure Sheep.

Note: you'll need to add sentences with BN_ prefix to your sentences.txt and put corresponding sounds to your mod directory.

Kate (monster_kate, monster_kate_dead)

Kate from Azure Sheep, with support for kick attack.

Note: you'll need to add sentences with KA_ prefix to your sentences.txt and put corresponding sounds to your mod directory.

Xen creatures

Barnacle (monster_barnacle)

  • images/svencoop.png New skill value sk_barnacle_health allows to configure barnacle's health.
  • Barnacles won't grab monsters in Non-interruptible scripts.

Bullsquid (monster_bullchicken)

  • Spit projectile precision depends on difficulty level.
  • Can spit an alternative projectile - the slow poisonous ball. Depends on sk_bullsquid_toxicity cvar.
  • Restores health when eating.

Floater (monster_floater)

An alien creature cut from Half-Life with no clearly defined canonical behavior. The current implementation is taken from Field Intensity - floaters are suicidal flyers who come to enemies and explode. Take the model from Field Intensity to enable glowing sprites attached to the floater (with the standard model from Half-Life glowing sprites won't spawn).

The sounds used by floaters can be configured via Soundscripts.

Skill variables

Flybee (monster_flybee)

The fast moving flying creature with range attacks. Ported from Half-Life Invasion.

By default it uses ichthyosaur sounds. The sounds can be configured via soundscripts.

Skill variables

Houndeye (monster_houndeye)

  • Squad leader can play leaderlook animation (a feature missing in Half-Life).
  • Shut their eyes when sleeping.
  • Like a bullsquid, seeks for something tasty to eat.
  • Restores health when eating.
  • New flag Start sleeping to put houndeyes to sleep at the start without a need for scripted_sequence.

Panthereye (monster_panthereye)

An alien creature cut from Half-Life.

The sounds used by panthereyes can be configured via soundscripts.

The panthereye uses 3 animation events to perform their attacks:

  • Id 1. Left claw attack. The player's screen is punched to the left when he looks at the panther. Monsters and jumping players are pushed to the right side relatively to the panther.
  • Id 2. Right claw low attack. The player's screen is punched to the right a bit when he looks at the panther. Monsters and jumping players are pushed a bit to the left side relatively to the panther.
  • Id 3. Right claw high attack. Similar to 2, but the punch and the push are stronger (like in left claw attack, but the opposite side).

Note: each event deals the same amount of damage defined by the sk_panthereye_dmg_claw skill value. But one animation may include several events. E.g. attack_primary animation in the panthereye model distributed in the demo mod plays events 1 and 2 on different frames.

Skill variables

Alien slave aka Vortigaunt (monster_alien_slave)

Alien slaves got many new features. All of them can be disabled at compile-time.

  • Restores some bits of its health upon damaging targets with electro-attack.
  • When full on health vortigaunt gains an additional energy upon electrocuting enemies. The energy is used to execute new abilities.
  • images/svencoop.png Can revive fallen ally alien slaves using an excess energy. Unlike Sven Co-op implementation it does not halve the maximum vortigaunt health. Instead vortigaunt can be revived only once.
  • Can heal injured ally alien slaves spending an excess energy.
  • New ability: a coil attack.
  • Vortigaunt's arms are glowing upon charging an electro attack.
  • When a vortigaunt has an excess energy, his claws deal more damage (claws are glowing at the time of melee attack).
  • When idle, plays some additional effects like random lightning (a feature cut from Half-Life).
  • New skill value sk_islave_zap_rate allows to configure the rate of vortigaunt zap attack.
  • If player is ally, vortigaunt can charge player's suit armor (requires energy) kinda like in Half-Life 2.

Alien grunt (monster_alien_grunt)

  • Restores health when eating.
  • Hitting the alien grunt's head now counts as a headshot (fixed a bug of original Half-Life). The damage multiplier is still lower than the one from skill.cfg in order to not break a balance much.

Baby gargantua (monster_babygarg) images/svencoop.png

A smaller version of Gargantua monster.

Big Momma aka Gonarch (monster_bigmomma)

  • images/svencoop.png No Babycrabs flag to disable babycrabs spawn.
  • Monsterclip Babycrabs flag to apply Monsterclip flag to children.
  • Fixed a bug when dead Big Momma could produce pain sounds when her corpse is hit.

Zombified security guard (monster_zombie_barney) images/opfor.png images/svencoop.png

Zombified soldier (monster_zombie_soldier) images/opfor.png images/svencoop.png

Gonome (monster_gonome) images/opfor.png images/svencoop.png

  • Restores health when eating.

HECU military

Human grunt (monster_human_grunt, monster_grunt_repel)

  • When human grunt checks for friendly fire he takes into account all allies, not only those who are in the same squad as him.

Apache helicopter (monster_apache)

  • New parameter Rotor volume to configure rotor volume.

Osprey (monster_osprey)

  • New parameter Rotor volume to configure rotor volume.
  • images/svencoop.png New parameter Grunt Type to allow deploying Opposing Force grunts instead of Half-Life ones.
  • New flag No deploy, just fly to make osprey not care about grunt deploying and just fly on specified path. Such osprey does not skip path corners with low speed like the default one does to find the deploy point.
  • Number of grunts parameter to override the maximum number of grunts deployed at once.
  • Sound attenuation parameter to configure rotor sound radius.

Opfor human grunt (monster_human_grunt_ally, monster_grunt_ally_repel) images/opfor.png images/svencoop.png

  • When human grunt checks for friendly fire he takes into account all allies, not only those who are in the same squad as him.

Engineer (monster_human_torch_ally, monster_torch_ally_repel) images/opfor.png images/svencoop.png

  • Has same improvements as opfor human grunt.

Medic grunt (monster_human_medic_ally, monster_medic_ally_repel) images/opfor.png images/svencoop.png

  • Has same improvements as opfor human grunt.
  • Besides healing ally soldiers, can also heal ally scientists and security guards.

Drill sergeant (monster_drillsergeant) images/opfor.png

Recruit (monster_recruit) images/opfor.png

Heavy weapons grunt (monster_hwgrunt, monster_hwgrunt_repel) images/svencoop.png

Robots and machines

Black Mesa loader robot (monster_op4loader) images/opfor.png

Robo grunt (monster_robogrunt) images/svencoop.png

Turrets (monster_sentry, monster_turrent, monster_miniturret)

  • Death and 50% Health Remaining trigger conditions now work for turrets.

RoboCop (monster_robocop)

A boss robot ported from Poke646. Note: the resources for this NPC are not included in the sample mod. You can take them from Poke646.

Skill variables

Blackops

Female assassin (monster_human_assassin)

  • New skill value sk_hassassin_cloaking to control whether assassin can go invisible.

Male assassin (monster_male_assassin, monster_assassin_repel) images/opfor.png images/svencoop.png

  • When assassin checks for friendly fire he takes into account all allies, not only those who are in the same squad as him.
  • Male assassins with sniperrifles are capable of shooting from a longer range than regular ones. Also upon making a shot the model gets lighten up for a short period of time to help player track the sniper on dark maps.

Blackops apache (monster_blkop_apache) images/opfor.png images/svencoop.png

  • New parameter Rotor volume to configure rotor volume.

Blackops osprey (monster_blkop_osprey) images/opfor.png images/svencoop.png

  • New parameter Rotor volume to configure rotor volume.
  • New flag No deploy, just fly - same as for regular osprey.

Race X

Pitdrone (monster_pitdrone) images/opfor.png images/svencoop.png

  • Restores health when eating.
  • Fixed melee attack damage - in Opposing Force primary and secondary melee attack damage was mixed up.
  • When spawning via monstermaker, pitdrone always spawns with spikes loaded. In Opposing Force pitdrones spawned without spikes and unable to reload.

Voltigore (monster_alien_voltigore) images/opfor.png images/svencoop.png

  • Restores health when eating.
  • Does not stop range attack when enemy hides behind a cover to prevent abusing the interruption of long animation.

Baby voltigore (monster_alien_babyvoltigore) images/opfor.png images/svencoop.png

Shock trooper (monster_shocktrooper) images/opfor.png images/svencoop.png

Shock roach (monster_shockroach) images/opfor.png images/svencoop.png

Pitworm (monster_pitworm) images/opfor.png

Geneworm (monster_geneworm) images/opfor.png

Dead monster corpses

Self-explanatory list of new entities:

Generic monsters

Generic monster (monster_generic)

Generic dead monster (monster_generic_dead) images/spirit.png

Generic dead monster with custom model and configurable pose