https://i.imgur.com/q1DduL8.png
Overview
Black Mesa is the famous re-imagining of Half-Life on the Source engine. The game is still in development, but is available as an Early Access title on Steam and is regularly updated. Development began in 2004, as a mod for Half-Life 2. Nearly eight years after, in 2012, the mod was finally released. It featured an original soundtrack and voice acting, along with a custom face creation system. Black Mesa was praised for its level design and generally high production values, but was criticized for its lack of both multiplayer and the Xen chapters of Half-Life's singleplayer campaign, along with the streamlining of some singeplayer chapters.
In 2015, Black Mesa was released on Steam. This version brought an engine upgrade, loads of bugfixes and visual improvements in many areas. Multiplayer is also included in the game now. Several classic maps, such as Crossfire, Stalkyard, Gasworks and Bounce are available to play, along with a couple of new maps. Xen is still being worked on. There is also Steam Workshop support, and a fledgling modding scene.
Screenshots
http://www.blackmesasource.com/images/portfolio/image1.jpg
http://www.blackmesasource.com/images/portfolio/image12.jpg
http://www.blackmesasource.com/images/portfolio/image11.jpg
http://www.blackmesasource.com/images/portfolio/image9.jpg
On June 20th, 2017 two new screenshots were released, teasing the big Xen update:
http://cdn.edgecast.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/8672783/c196a733b3ef228bb1a645e5f854a0f4388b21f0.jpg
http://cdn.edgecast.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/8672783/a747b51d505718fda2509877c4e6816e27ea4bf4.jpg
Trailer
https://youtu.be/zVYJ9o6Bddo
Soundtrack
https://soundcloud.com/blackmesadevs/joel-nielsen-bms-lambda-core
Select Mods
Bravado - a highly rated custom singleplayer map.
HD Pack Styled Sleeves - a recreation of the HEV suit sleeves from the HD pack for Half-Life.
Access Denied VOX - replaces the sound of the retinal scanners with the Black Mesa VOX, similar to Half-Life.
HECU Radio Voice Filter - adds radio filters the voices of marines.
Surface Tension Uncut - adds missing sections of the chapter Surface Tension. May not work with the retail game.
On a Rail Uncut - adds missing sections of the chapter On A Rail. May not work with the retail game.
Black Mesa: Insecurity - a remake of Blue Shift using Black Mesa assets. Still in development, with media updates from time to time. Not to be confused with the mod Guard Duty.
Devblog
Some developers write blog posts about different aspects of development on their forums. Especially the ones about level design are worth mentioning, for their in-depth explanation of the decisions and considerations that are part of the process:
The story of Gasworks, parts 1 , 2 , 3 and 4 .
An Undertow Is Born: The Story of Undertow
The story of Crossfire, an unfinished series consisting of parts 1 and 2 .
Website
blackmesasource.com
Xen Nukem Forever is coming soon I'm sure of it
Well I suppose now’s as good a time as any to share that Text has been teasing some juicy new information for a few days now. So... something? Maybe? Finally announcing that new graphical feature that’ll make my rig catch on fire this time?
I'm mostly curious about the various statements made there, including Xen apparently only being worked on actively since 2015 and it only really being possible through Early Access money. That is not very reassuring news considering Xen was promised as coming soon way back in 2012 when Black Mesa originally launched. I'm happy they're able to commit to their vision for Xen (whatever that is), but it's starting to sound like the team has been deliberately misleading on how far Xen really was for a long time now. That kind of hampers people's trust in any future statements regarding Xen, and in my eyes it's not entirely unjustified either.
this isn't a full blown, reputated developer team. they can be given any slack they need.
Oh, I'm not saying they need to be held accountable for it or anything, I'm just saying it's a bit odd we're learning about what exactly has been going on with Xen through Steam community posts from one of the devs. It feels surprising to me they didn't underline the fact that Early Access was necessary for the completion of Xen before, and that it's only been progressing at a steady pace since then.
It's not that it's a problem for me, more so that I feel like the devs could've probably avoided a lot of grumbling about Xen by just saying it might still be a while till Xen releases well before, instead of kind of leaving people hanging until they're in the final stretch. Of course, it's a fair point that being modders and fans at heart, they probably got a little too excited and promised Xen sooner than they could deliver as a result. I do feel like they should've admitted they were a bit overambitious sooner, but they kind of doubled down on it instead with the promised December release. Again, makes sense, but I also understand why this lead to people assuming that the team's stopped working on it altogether.
I absolutely agree though that any sort of "boo I bought this game you promised Xen in 2017, fuck you devs I want my money back" nonsense is totally unjustified and bordering on misrepresenting the nature of the whole project - yeah, it's being sold with the promise of more content coming, but no, that doesn't mean you're an investor or something entitled to anything.
I wonder if the area taken in the 2017 screenshots looks any different now
17 Jun @ 11:26am
We have some more detailed information coming pretty soon, so sit tight!
Oh man, that looks lovely.
I was going to say what's with the piles of garbage in gonarch's lair
Then i realized they were bs/houndeye bodies
http://www.blackmesasource.com/video/5.mp4
Oh boy, oh boy. Source engine can still look gorgeous!
Holy shit
Show someone that in 2004 and say it's Source and they'd call you crazy
It's incredible seeing the detail they've put into developing Xen
Oh shit son, this looks pretty as hell!
Also seeing all this ramps makes me think of bhops
Would anyone have any objections to me adding some of the new website mp4's to the OP?
wow, the video reminds me alot of the underground in portal 2. Very neat!
Why so many dead houndeyes in that pic though ? ;_;
So I just wanna clarify a few things here. I think a lot of the issues with the way our game's development has progress has always stemmed from the mod team's intent vs result.
Xen is a prime example of this. In 2012, post-mod release, the team 100% intended Xen to follow the mod within a reasonable timeframe. Some team members started working on "Black Mesa'ing" HL1's Xen, by recreating the original maps with our improved twists. However, the team largely burned out and fell apart beyond this point. About half the existing team disappeared at this point, I think. This is nobody's fault, and nobody is really accountable for it, as at the time we were still a mod team working in our spare time. The energetic shot of adrenaline was in late 2013, when Valve asked us if we wanted to go retail. This was basically our "phoenix rising from the ashes" moment.
However, by this point, we'd also realised that just doing a slightly improved version of HL1's Xen was absolutely not going to cut it, if we wanted to do BMS justice. All the existing tests and map versions just kind of, well...sucked. However, we also needed to get the ball rolling, but in order to do that, we had to get the game on Steam first. We were VERY BADLY lacking in talent, particularly programmers, and basically we spent years operating in a totally crippled capacity, trying to get the game into a somewhat functional state - back to where it was before. It was a tremendously demotivating and difficult period for us. During this time, our Xen lead and a mapper or two were still working away on Xen, and creating our new vision for it, while the whole rest of the team were focused on simply getting the existing game to work properly, and be something we would be able/proud to sell on Steam. This was so much more work than it ever should have been. Once we launched EA, we started attracting lots of really talented individuals. Our programming department went from basically a one man show (poor Deniz) to a fully fledged team who are absolutely KICKASS. Our art department blossomed too, and many of the existing, veteran team members were able to work much more or work full-time (such as myself).
Why am I telling you this story in so much detail? Well, this chain of events is highly complex and was never foreseen by the team when they said Xen would come following the mod release in 2012. We never mislead people, so much as our past statements of intent wound up working out entirely differently to how we thought it might. We never foresaw a simple adaptation of HL1's Xen working out so badly. We never foresaw it taking us YEARS to get the game into a functional, sellable state. We never foresaw losing most of the team to burnout following the mod release. You could argue that perhaps we should have foreseen these things, and I think that's potentially debatable. But that's not the point I'm trying to make here.
Another example of this would be selling the game in the first place. The team wrote on our community wiki somewhere in 2009 that Black Mesa was going to be free. At the time, the team was riding a pretty significant high in terms of progress, and the landscape of gaming was rather different. When the opportunity came to sell the game in 2013, the team was around half different people, and the lack of momentum and talent made selling the game the most logical choice for us. Particularly given that by this point we'd decided on a much more ambitious version of Xen, something to blow the rest of BMS away. Again I don't think any of these are things not something the team would have really been able to easily foresee in 2009.
We've never mislead people and said things like "yeah we're working on Xen, it's going great," when we haven't. People have sort of just always assumed that to be true because we said we would follow up with Xen, post 2012.
Isn't BM's engine highly modified though? I don't think you can do this with only mod level access.
Well now the thread name makes me feel like an asswipe
Not true, new shaders and lighting systems are 100% possible without engine access.
If you know what you're doing, you can implement PBR in an HL2 mod
Xen looks great! and astonishingly beautiful.
While we won't get a proper half-life for a very long while, remake of the end of first game which is eaven regarded by Gabe Newell himself as the worst thing ever (Xen, not remake, ha!) aaand in updated source is great! Keep on going! (also I loved that interview from september's PC Gamer! GJ)
That all looks incredible. I hope you kept the alien ventilation shafts in the factory. Something about that one place just struck me as so peaceful.
It reminds of Dear Esther.
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/143764/f51d0ae6-defa-40c0-aa39-2ec1ed5d13ba/20180429194331_1.jpg
@DIGITAL SPORTS when will you be fixing these ridiculous ties to not do this anymore.
People vastly understimate how hard and long is mod/game development. A lot of these situations are common to me and several friends so you have our sympathies.
However you people are really close to the end of the tunnel, your long journey is soon to end. YOU CAN DO IT!!! KEEP FIGHTING!!
These new Xen pics are absolute pieces of art, your Xen version is going to be super interesting at the very least.
It'd be cool if somebody took a crack at reanimating the zombies.
I really miss the thing-inspired zombie animations from HL1, their claws had a lot more motion and it made them way more creepy
Plus their heads didn't move like fucking castlevania medusas
As ludicrously excited for Xen as I am....I hope it coming out also means we finally get that tasty classic weapons pack.
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