tim89
commented
11 years ago This behaviour interferes with a set piece in map c1a2a. On the way to the reception room (the room in which there's a scientist who turns the light off when he sees you through the window) there is a set piece where a scientist is supposed to get caught by a barnacle as he's trying to enter that room. Currently, if the player has a guard following, guard will attack the barnacle, freeing the scientist.
Should it even be possible to free NPCs from barnacles once they start to have their head devoured?
In HL1, NPCs would generally ignore barnacles, but in HLS they will immediately attack if possible. For example, in c1a3a there's a room with several soldiers and barnacles. The barnacles are set up so that soldiers will sometimes run into their tongues and get eaten, but by the time you get there in HLS, the barnacles are already all dead. This doesn't just apply to grunts, most NPCs have either "hate" or "fear" relationships set for barnacles, so they'll all just attack or run away, where in GoldSrc they just continue to ignore them. I don't know if HLS uses the relations system that HL2 has, but if it does NPCs just need to have "like" relationships with barnacles.