Black Mesa Source announces release on September 14
 

Black Mesa Source is a pretty ambitious "remake" of HL1 with current Source Engine capabilities. When it was first announced way back when, it was hotly anticipated, but quickly fell into a period of long development with no public releases. I had written it off too for a long time, but was surprised today to see that they had finally decided to do a release.

According to them, they have the game completed up to the Lambda Core- pretty much a good chunk of the game right to when the player goes to Xen.

The Main page has been updated with a counter, with a formal announcement on its forums.


Well, that just leaves Valve and HL3 =p

Still, with its protracted development cycle, not sure if it will make the big splash it could have made during the heyday of its cycle.

Re: Black Mesa Source announces release on September 14
 

You forgot the video!



Looks pretty good, been meaning to play through HL again, so maybe I will just do it in the Source engine.

Re: Black Mesa Source announces release on September 14
 

I wonder how many announcements for a release date they've had so far? I remember at least five, half of which were back in 2008. It seems rather suspicious to me that after such a long time with no media or word, barely even an update, they're suddenly ready to release what can be considered the full remake. We'll see, come 14th of September.

Re: Black Mesa Source announces release on September 14
 

Oh, this is awesome. I've been looking forward to playing this for the longest time.

Shame it's not the entire game (yet) - since I won't want to play it up to a point just to have to re-play it.

Re: Black Mesa Source announces release on September 14
 

The last one I recall them doing was in 2009, but they have more videos and screens to support that they have a more complete build.

Even missing Xen, that's still a lot of game made. Modding is really time consuming and it's hard to keep a team together, and honestly I thought they were dead when I stopped really following in 2011.

(I didn't like the Xen part of the game all that much anyways =p )

Re: Black Mesa Source announces release on September 14
 

I was just talking to someone about vaporware last night and BMS came up. Glad to see that's not the case! I remember waiting all night on the day before the projected date in 2009, and being hugely disappointed.

Now I've got to reinstall HL2.

Re: Black Mesa Source announces release on September 14
 

Black Mesa source was chosen, among with several other titles, as the first of Steam's Greenlight titles. It will be available for download through Steam as a result.

If you do not own HL2 for some reason, or any other source engine based game (Portal, TF2, L4D, etc), you can also download the mod if you have the (free) Source SDK installed.

Re: Black Mesa Source announces release on September 14
 

Tomorrow is the day, if their schedule holds. I'm still sceptical, so I'll believe it when I have the mod installed and see the first tram ride play out.

I'm baffled by its acceptance through Greenlight. Considering how it's a total remake of the original Half-Life title, I'd have imagined Valve would have sent them a cease & desist letter long ago. Instead, while fully aware of its contents, they allow it onto their own distribution system through a community vote? At least they know how to treat their modding communities.

Re: Black Mesa Source announces release on September 14
 

Valve are famous for knowing how to treat their modding communities. They're legendary for knowing how to treat their modding communities! They revolutionised how to treat modding communities! Much of their past success has been based on how they treat their modding communities. I'd actually be surprised if they haven't been offering the BMS team any kind of assistance to get them to this point.

Counter Strike, Team Fortress and Defence of the Ancients started out as mods, for crying out loud! The BMS team are likely looking at careers in Valve in the future!

Re: Black Mesa Source announces release on September 14
 

There be a countdown: Black Mesa: A Half-Life 2 modification

I'm not baffled at all, it's genius. We can be dicks and loathed like most major publishers or we can bring them under the Steam umbrella and make a shit-ton of money off them by being loved by the community? Is that even really a question?

They did make them take "Source" out of their name and then it was all cool.

Re: Black Mesa Source announces release on September 14
 

BMS is now officially out. I'm not sure on when it'll be available through steam (as with the other greenlight titles), but the official website has several mirrors for the installation manager. There's also a gamefront mirror :p

http://www.gamefront.com/files/listi..._Mesa/Clients/

Re: Black Mesa Source announces release on September 14
 

Black Mesa is Live, Download it Here! | GameFront

And yes, we are one of their official mirrors. We've been working with them about getting this organized for around a week now. :)

Also, they're files brought down our site. That's how much people want them. Impressive to say the least.

Re: Black Mesa Source announces release on September 14
 

Been playing it in the past hour. Very nice, pretty much everything I remember is there. It has played smooth for me so far, no noticeable problems yet. Some screens (I'm not running a strong rig, so it's not sharp):

Re: Black Mesa Source announces release on September 14
 

Just played a bit of it. I'm honestly quite surprised at the quality. They've managed to keep the memorable elements of the game, but still add their own touch to it. I was afraid the voice actors would be unable to sound true to the game, but they definitely managed to capture those too. It's not a wonder it has taken them this long to develop it, considering how high quality it is.

Re: Black Mesa Source announces release on September 14
 

3rd file just opens a blank page with this text on it;
So I've had to go elsewhere :( hate it when modders randomly split their mods into separate downloads for no good reason.

Re: Black Mesa Source announces release on September 14
 

3rd file just contains the md5 hash of the first two. It's actually not required for the game to run, its there for those concerned to verify that the files are the right size after they download them.

Re: Black Mesa Source announces release on September 14
 

They didn't split the download. As Jeff said the md5 file and the installer are there to help handle the installation of the content in the larger file. You'll see that files 1 and 3 are very tiny, file 2 is where the material is, hence 3 gig +

This is the same package they've given to other file sites, I believe.

Yeah, it's pretty nice considering this is a free mod. The voice actors are fine to me, but the delta squad guys are a bit off-putting to me. It reminds me of Helghasts in Killzone, lol.

Re: Black Mesa Source announces release on September 14
 

Ah, I see. I'll try running it anyway then, wasn't sure what the 3rd file was for!

Re: Black Mesa Source announces release on September 14
 

It's rather disappointing. The best bit is seeing the old environment you remember in a new form. But actually the maps don't look that aesthetic. Especially the red mountaineous area with sand looks bad, and really the map design looks like Source mods from 2004 –you can see they did them a long time ago. There's also a problem with the lightning generally in the whole game, many areas look too dark and the lights just don't look natural. They didn't use HDR because it took so long.

The AI is also terrible, you can get grey hair from some of the sections and get sniped from some tiny angle by a soldier who has an SMG. The houndeyes seem to be sticking to each other etc.

I'm very happy with the character models though. But I don't buy the "please no criticism, this mod was done by amateurs" line. If I'm dissatisfied with a mod, why would I be more satisfied if it was done by amateurs? Thanks for the hard work, but it's not covering HL1 well enough.

Re: Black Mesa Source announces release on September 14
 

I had totally given up on Black Mesa.

Then I hop on FF and find this.

My somewhat lame day has been redeemed.