A few suggestions rolled into one topic

[Coozins]

I have a few suggestions (I know, I've made several thousand since I first registered here).
Firstly, in normal Half-Life the alien grunts seem to only use a few of their death animations, despite the fact all the unused ones have differents acts (ACT_DIEHEADSHOT etc.). It'd be nice if these unused animations were used in HL:E.
Secondly, would it be possible to make the crashing helicopters look more realistic? In Half-Life, they just sort of point downwards and smash into the nearest solid object. I think it'd look nicer in their noses pointed slightly downwards still but they spun as they fell, with only a few small explosions coming off them (like in Half-Life 2) as opposed to loads. Helicopters spin when they crash in the GTA games, and I thought it looked pretty good. It'd also be nice if they caught fire when they fell and lay there burning when they hit the ground (love their ragdoll-based crash, by the way).
Thirdly, could gibs have ragdolls? It'd looks so much nicer if when things were blown up their gibs flopped around in mid-air instead of being stiff like they are in normal Half-Life. Maybe some parts could stick to the wall and slowly slide down? They could also have impact sounds to make them seem more... squishy.
Thirdly, it'd be good if the gargantuas bit things heads off, picked them up and threw them, smashed their bodies with their "hands" and stomped on people as well as sending that weird red stuff at them. There are already animations for all of these attacks ("attack",  "bitehead", "throwbody" and "smash"). They could also fall over dead instead of exploding, which seemed a little odd to me. Why would an organic being explode? Presumably Valve did it to stop them constantly going through the walls when they fell over dead, but that wouldn't be a problem with ragdolls.
Fourthly, this has probably been suggesed before, but I think the shotgun shells should eject when the shotgun is pumped instead of when it shoots.
That's all (for now), tell me what you think.

[SaxonSwine]

Good points.  Personally I would like to see Gibs done away with all together.  Gibs look rubbish and cartoony to me, somehow games just can't pull them off; it just looks better to have ragdolls; I like the idea of a helicopter spinning around before crashing (hard work?)

I think the problem with the Garg is that when a monster dies, their body becomes non-solid (or at least does in Vanilla HL) so you can walk straight through the corpse*, which would no doubt be a problem with a dead Garg   I guess maybe the Garg has petrol for 'blood', hence its ability to shoot flames, and hence why it explodes?!

* you can of course still hit it with weaponry.

[Matt]

Firstly, in normal Half-Life the alien grunts seem to only use a few of their death animations, despite the fact all the unused ones have differents acts (ACT_DIEHEADSHOT etc.). It'd be nice if these unused animations were used in HL:E.

Not really much point since deaths are now handled by the physics system rather than animations

[Coozins]

Yeah, I just thought of the ragdolls.
As for the gargantuas, I presume the corpses could be made solid somehow. I suppose, however, that if they are solid then they might block the way you need to go (in Power Up, if you kill it by shooting it then instead of using the electricity, it could block the train's way.
The helicopters could have a death animation where they spin instead of it being coded to spin. Whichever's easier (presumably the animation).

[Morpheus]

One gripe I have is that when I smash my crowbar against a piece of metal or an alien tree, they make the same sound. Fix possibly?

[Coozins]

What? When you hit the trees with a crowbar it makes the crowbar hit body sound, not the hit wall sound.

[Cookie man]

I think the tree is unbreakable so it does the hit metal sound, but I guess it will be fixed with the new physics system? Xen trees do the hit body sound. But the normal ones sometimes do the hit metal/wall sound. The good thing about the sound problem is you can know if the object or wall is breakable or not, it helps when looking for ah lets say secret areas in mods?

[Coozins]

Are you talking about these:



or these?

[Cookie man]

The first picture definitely does the hit body sound so I think its the 2nd picture that does the hit metal sound.

[Coozins]

Ah, right. I thought that you and Morpheus were talking about the top picture things. Yes, the reason for there being a metal hit sound is that the fungi (bottom picture things) don't have their own entity. They're simply monster_generics with a solid, invisible box around them. The HL:E team could make them into separate entities, but it seems like a waste of time for things that don't do anything apart from sit there.

[Morpheus]

T'was the fungus I indeed meant. You'd think when you hit the alien trampoline things too it'd sound squishy.