Black Mesa

[Reverend]

Don't know if anyone else has been looking forward to this as much as I have, or written it off as vapourware and forgot it even existed, but the source mod that claims to totally remake the original Half-Life is finally ready for release...almost.

Apparently they've got everything up to and including Lambda Core done, so they're releasing it as is and are planning to release (a greatly expanded and re-imagined) Xen later on as a game unto itself.

Anyway, the release date from the mod has been set for September 14th.

Oh and here's the trailer. Who knew 2009 would take so long to get here?
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G32_q_3es8E[/yt]

 

[John Clark]

I too have been waiting for this for a while. I'll be getting it as soon as I can (though playing will probably take a little while)

 

[Geckothan]

I used to know a mapper that was working on this, back when it was named 'Black Mesa: Source'. I think the project died out completely for a while, as most of the team seems to have changed completely. Given how many times it has been put on hold, I wouldn't trust that release date.

 

[Kelthaz]

Don't know if anyone else has been looking forward to this as much as I have, or written it off as vapourware and forgot it even existed, but the source mod that claims to totally remake the original Half-Life is finally ready for release...almost.

That's the one. I never did finish Half Life (I didn't play it until after Half Life 2, so I found it rather bland. Never did finish it.), so I've been really looking forward to this. Hopefully Xen gets a few improvements.

 

[Reverend]

I used to know a mapper that was working on this, back when it was named 'Black Mesa: Source'. I think the project died out completely for a while, as most of the team seems to have changed completely. Given how many times it has been put on hold, I wouldn't trust that release date.

As far as I'm aware the only date they missed was the 2009 one and since then the devs have refused to discuss a release date in even vague terms...until now of course. So I think that date is fairly solid.

Ah and for anyone who wants this mod to be available on steam; here's the Greenlight link and be sure to vote yes!

 

[Kadratis]

I'll believe it when I see it.

 

[Geckothan]

I used to know a mapper that was working on this, back when it was named 'Black Mesa: Source'. I think the project died out completely for a while, as most of the team seems to have changed completely. Given how many times it has been put on hold, I wouldn't trust that release date.

As far as I'm aware the only date they missed was the 2009 one and since then the devs have refused to discuss a release date in even vague terms...until now of course. So I think that date is fairly solid.

Ah and for anyone who wants this mod to be available on steam; here's the Greenlight link and be sure to vote yes!

Public release dates maybe, but I know that lots of their internal targets have been missed/ignored over the years. Most of the content in the mod that was supposedly 'finished' back when I used to follow its development has long been scrapped.

 

[Chris3123]

Awesome, I've been waiting for them to finish this.

II played through the original recently, so it will be fresh in my mind when I go through this.

 

[Reverend]

^It's actually been quite a while since I played the original. I think the last time I had it installed I didn't get much past 'On a Rail'. The game sort of grinds to a halt there. Thankfully I think the mod greatly cuts back on that section of the game.

Now that I think about it, I think I've only ever made it all the way to Xen twice, not counting 'Opposing Force' & 'Blue Shift'. It's actually quite a long game, even at the time and most especially by modern standards.

 

[Geckothan]

I've probably finished HL and HL2 (and the episodes) a billion times. The only HL game I don't enjoy replaying is Opposing Force, because it's painful in places with the difficulty turned up (as it should be) and it's too short (longer than Blue Shift, but at least Blue Shift is easy enough to blast through and enjoy in one go). The original HL has a perfect balance of length and difficulty.

 

[Matt S]

Glad to hear that this may be hitting soon. What is this redo, 10 years in the making?

 

[Reverend]

^More like 7 or 8. Considering it takes a professional *paid* team working 9-5 at least 12 months to make a game of this size, 8 years isn't bad considering it was done in peoples' free time and for no money.

 

[Matt S]

Looking forward to it, but just hope they finish the rest of it sooner than later

 

[Reverend]

You know I had planned on playing through HL2 this week to get me back into the HL groove, but for some reason the game is stuttering something awful! It was fine up until mid-way through "Route Kanal" but I'm not at "Black Mesa East" and it's damn near unplayable. I've owned this game for something like 8 years and have had it installed on this machine at least once before without any trouble, so you can imagine it's bloody annoying.

I just hope it's just HL2 playing silly buggers and not the source engine suddenly deciding it doesn't like my machine. If so, the chances of be getting to play 'Black Mesa' this week are decidedly slim.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

You know I had planned on playing through HL2 this week to get me back into the HL groove, but for some reason the game is stuttering something awful! It was fine up until mid-way through "Route Kanal" but I'm not at "Black Mesa East" and it's damn near unplayable. I've owned this game for something like 8 years and have had it installed on this machine at least once before without any trouble, so you can imagine it's bloody annoying.

I just hope it's just HL2 playing silly buggers and not the source engine suddenly deciding it doesn't like my machine. If so, the chances of be getting to play 'Black Mesa' this week are decidedly slim.

Try defragmenting your Steam files. That is the #1 cause of stuttering, due to the way the Source engine streams textures and such from disk. If they are spread out all over the drive, they will stutter if your disk isn't especially fast.

 

[Geckothan]

Are you playing it for the first time after a fresh installation? I seem to remember source games stuttering a whole lot the first time through, until all of their assets had been accessed at least once (mostly an issue when loading speech or starting new chapters with new sets of textures/props). I've never figured out why, and I'm not sure whether it's just an old bug that has since been fixed (I haven't played any source games in a long time), but it was definitely a noticeable issue for me.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

If that's the problem, then it is most likely the building of a texture cache that makes it stutter. Again, something a slow disk and/or high fragmentation would make that much worse.

 

[Reverend]

Yes it's a fresh install (though not the first time ever on this machine) and yes I did try defraging & verifying the cache...it helped a little but not much. It's still pretty noticeable.

I'm a bit surprised this is the first time I've encountered this problem. In the past this machine has coped with HL2 & the episodes, Portal 1&2, L4D 1&2 and TF2 without so much as a glitch. The only thing I can think of that's changed is that I've probably upgraded the GPU drives a few times. Oh well, I'll just chug along and see if matters improve on their own.

In other news Black Mesa has been greenlit on Steam. No clue if it'll make it on before friday. I'd be surprised if it does but I think I'll wait for Steam regardless...I mean I'm only in Ravenholm and have a long ways to go yet.

 

[Owain Taggart]

I'm curious to see if Black Mesa will have added new gaming elements that the original HL didn't have that have only been made popular recently.

 

[Reverend]

^From what I gather, with the exception of iron sights, I think they've stayed pretty faithful to the original. So no regenerating health, no only carrying two weapons and no cover mechanics. Thankfully.