Is it still alive ... yes but it's on hold. I haven't touched hammer in months. Don't worry, this is normal. Once or twice a year i lose interest in anything related to mapping, and after 2 to 5 months it starts coming back. I'll probably begin again just before summer, though that's just a guess based on the last 6 years. Having said that ... if you're looking for something to do, you can offcourse do some entity stuff if you want. But it's not like there won't be any time to do so later on. I can put the source file online from when i started, just tell me if you already want to work on it.
Empty, could you do some beach sand explosions? And some water explosions too? Right now the arty_2 effect works for the beach, but some variation would be nice..
Here is what I've been working on for the ambience, I'll work on more things as silk does the brush work, displacements, spawns, etc. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btQ_cEgv1p0
I had a look at that BM stuff we talked about Harry. Removed all bones except for one harrier, skinned the transport mesh to that bone. It works, but imo it won't look very good. The harriers are only animated until they are "shot down", which is just the first 100 frames or so, out of 1800. I could probably create a more suitable animation for this map from scratch. But having them animated will remove some dynamics out of things. I think the better approach is what you've got going in the video above. Unless there is some way to control via entites or something in Hammer when a prop stops being animated and goes into dynamic physics or whatever? Edit: That cliff path looks pretty damn sexy btw.
That would be crazy awesome if a map had mines on it. Think NF escort with mine fields here and there. Or if you could take over a small building on a map your sides mines will spawn there.