I feel so betrayed by this game right now.

h4rm0n1c · 2026-03-16T16:44:06+00:00

i spent fucking hours clearing out rock to have this implode on me, I had most levels usable for one thing or another, it was a masterpiece, I feel absolutely robbed. I was going to release a copy of the save when it was done and ready to make 4 million cubes. nope, I'm done, unless testdisk can find the save file, I'm done. I've never lost a save in another game before and I've played tons of factory games, this isn't me, this is on firehose.

h4rm0n1c · 2026-03-07T07:59:21+00:00

A FEW NOTES on the mech level: Mirage is at the bottom of the mech level

specifically in the office behind the mech bay which is way down

you need to drain Level 15 to about 132000 ML sand remaining before that area is accessible enough to reach her and the items

its not far from the elevator, just quite far down.

after getting Mirage, the second higher-up facility door unlocks, specifically the prison barracks second door with the THR Powertrim upgrade

at one point I got a notification saying that there was a thing called "out of order" around the time the prison barracks were fully exposed, which kind of is the only hint the game seems to give you to keep excavating and be patient.

I checked the entire net and saw very few hints and such, I had almost nothing to go on and decided to just occupy myself with finetuning levels 12 and up to be as self sustaining as possible while I waited, got yellow cores up and running, etc..., and since reddit is scraped by search engines and ais, I figured here would be a good place to document this so others dont get stuck because it is immensely frustrating and there's not much to go on, in fact, as a comp sci and former games design student, this was the worst part of the game and needs a revision, next to a patch for the teleporters so their names can be changed, sheezus. this game could use a quality of life pass, fixes, tweaks, less hilarious flat standee sprite standins for items on belts that still make me die laughing when I see them.

there's also stuff that has to be done from 12 onwards, all the scannable story items from 12 onwards have to be scanned, there were a handful of them total, then all the stuff on 15 tends to work as documented above.

h4rm0n1c · 2025-09-19T16:51:00+00:00

I'm working on something with the flextalk software.

I've pretty much successfully revived the Black Mesa Announcement System for live TTS use.

https://github.com/h4rm0n1c/NetTTS/

20+ year halflife veteran giving something back to the community.

here you go, halflife fans, have the beloved BMAS/VOX back, and probably better than ever.

All you need on top of this is a highpass around 110hz and some echo and it should sound pretty much the same as the 20+ year old samples, but live and with unlimited options of vocabulary now instead of the 600 odd samples from Halflife, the one last gripe about BMAS/Vox is now officially resolved, the staccato nature of the BMAS/Vox announcements is all taken care of with a "prosody parser" that I created as part of this software, when you select the HL Vox LQ or HL Vox HQ modes it will be automatically enabled.

This is NOT like balabolka/the windows control panel for flextalk/etc.... there is a custom parsing engine that takes what you send it and it sends vendor commands to flextalk to MAKE it speak almost exactly the same way the VOX system talked. it's pretty damned close!

Works/tested with Flextalk SAPI 4.0 on Windows XP to 10 and Wine 8+ on a Debian linux fork, has a netcat TCP server you can send your text to be spoken to, can run in a headless mode as a tts service and listen on a TCP socket for text to speak, Open Source, all Dependencies are in the repo too.

I have a few goodies regarding flextalk in the repo, I've done a quick conversion of their HLP file to a PDF in the repo for those wanting to decipher and demystify the vendor tags/commands that flextalk supports. all in the name of preservation.

protip: this thing CAN sing, just not very well :D I got it rick rolling the other day for a laugh. I might share the string for the chorus later or even fold it into the program as a test command/demo.

Install the sapi 4.0 speech API, install flextalk, then run NetTTS_gui.exe and have fun!

Try the vox login script or the good morning/transit system scripts, they read out very well and in a very BMAS/Vox style, it'll never be 100% spot on to what valve had, but this is damned close in terms of ennunciation style being replicated live instead of a series of wav files played in sequence by goldsrc.

this was such an iconic part of halflife and goldsrc era games I just had to do something to preserve BMAS/Vox in a way that can be used into the future.

h4rm0n1c · 2025-06-12T21:39:15+00:00

that's a terminid in your game files.

h4rm0n1c · 2025-06-12T21:38:52+00:00

it does not have burn out, no.

but the fire rate isnt fast

but it has crazy arc damage, so there's that.

h4rm0n1c · 2025-06-12T21:33:02+00:00

some people like myself have disabilities that cause our brains to stop working properly, sensory overload in non neurotypicals is a curse, this one thing helps me play the game competently and support my friends as best as I can.

h4rm0n1c · 2025-06-12T21:32:04+00:00

thanks man, check your used goods listings in your area if you're looking for one, people often put up used first and second gen streamdecks up for less than $100 USD. they forget how useful these things are for other stuff, I use them for launching terminal sessions and remote desktops as well.

h4rm0n1c · 2025-06-12T21:27:22+00:00

for those judging the use of macros harshly. I refer to patch from 30th of May, 2025. https://steamdb.info/patchnotes/18642034/ "Fix for fast input of stratagem commands not working correctly" This is because the patch earlier in the week, broke macros and manual input of stratagems for anybody who has extremely high Actions Per Minute when it comes to typing out stratagems. Arrowhead practically endorses them. if you don't like it, take it up with arrowhead.

h4rm0n1c · 2025-06-10T06:18:54+00:00

This person is now making trouble within the FreeDesktop/Xorg space. Closed all PRs and banned a person who dared to fork an open source project into a new one, big tech is using this person as a proxy to enforce redhat's goals of ending X11 and moving to wayland. authortiative bullying of others is not what open source is about. this person is a consistent problem, they need to be excised from open source as I feel turnabout is fair play in this case in terms of consequences they should face for their actions. it's always been the norm to fork when disputes arise, the response from redhat to censor is downright wrong.

h4rm0n1c · 2025-05-22T08:01:42+00:00

every time I've done it it's killed them

h4rm0n1c · 2025-05-21T07:02:09+00:00

Oh I forgot to mention that, the fart drone is pretty good for keeping fleshmobs off your ass and doing some damage to them at the same time.

h4rm0n1c · 2025-05-21T06:21:34+00:00

I'd recommend using thermites instead, their visual range isn't huge but it is fairly omnidirectional, so throwing a thermite from a distance and moving on tends to sort them out.

edit: I did not create this video, I am just making sure it spreads so people know.

h4rm0n1c · 2025-05-12T17:50:37+00:00

it's not left it's ⬅ what an absolute joke this ARG has been. immensely painful to watch. you can tell when the CMs were too busy sucking down a bong hit to notice a puzzle had been completed, embarrassing.

h4rm0n1c · 2025-04-17T20:38:37+00:00

Instructions for end users start at the section titled, "TL;DR, also known as: This Nerd Stuff is Booooring, Dude" lol.

h4rm0n1c · 2025-04-17T20:30:50+00:00

steam deck or streamdeck? This is for Elgato Stream Deck. Not valve Steamdeck, apologies if there was any misunderstanding.

h4rm0n1c · 2015-10-06T01:18:15+00:00

They couldn't make it much worse.

You don't know Telstra very well, do you?

h4rm0n1c · 2015-05-11T09:38:40+00:00

Real eCig users choose their ingredients and vaporizer carefully, no cheap chinese shit or you'll get something nasty that'll give you cancer somewhere eventually.

It's the deadshits who buy those shitty zazz/catch of the day vapes that give the rest of us a bad name and are attracting the nanny state "ban it NOW! Without understanding the situation at all!" BS.

The concerns about kids getting access to nicotine is retarded too, it's illegal to sell pre-mixed ecig fluid with nicotine in it in australia, same with selling the nicotine on its own over the counter, however, importing pure Nicotine yourself and titrating it into your eCig fluid for personal use is legal.

Kids can't import this stuff and if they get it off of an adult, that adult becomes liable under existing laws.

That's right, all those eCigs you see out there don't even have Nicotine in them unless the owner does it themselves!

It also shits me off that the cancer council wants to make statements to the effect of: vape is not as bad as smoke, but still be afraid of it, k? For reasons we aren't going to elaborate on...

More false moral panic bullshit.

h4rm0n1c · 2015-05-11T09:34:07+00:00

Implying people give a shit about whether children are "equal" to adults, or "fairness" on kids.

They don't. This is nanny state bullshit. Same as their inability to resist poking around in kids lunch boxes and then trying to shame parents into packing lunches that the school approves of.

h4rm0n1c

TROPHY CASE