Black Mesa - legendary vaporware Half-Life remake finally out

[Metro]

Bundle or gtfo.

 

[Maggot]

Got this from the steam sale before refunding it. Feels like how Excidium put it which is like a poor man's Doom 3 "with none of the mood and non threatening enemies". It's slow and they seem to be going out of their way to make it more cinematic with an anti bhop mechanic and a timer on the long jump. At one point in the game I had a friendly scientist blocking a door with 5 headcrabs on the other side just walking into him trying to attack me. Scientists can no longer heal you like in HL1, moving backwards and sideways slows you down, and the game runs worse than better looking source games. Also I couldn't find a way to disable chromatic aberration when you get hit. Might be worth getting for dirt cheap when they finish Xen but I didn't feel like it was worth playing through the whole thing when the game's not finished.

 

[ciox]

chromatic aberration when you get hit

 

[Maggot]

I also played the multiplayer which was pretty shit. It's like HL1DM with all the fun stripped out.

 

[Infinitron]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/362890/announcements/detail/1700554379793850828

Summer Update
22 JUNE - [BMS] ADAM-BOMB

Summer Sale
Hope everyone is having a great summer. Black Mesa is now on sale for 60% off! It’s a GREAT time to pick up the game at a discounted price

Xen
There has been lots of progress on Xen. We have started external playtesting. The first two chapters, "Xen" and "Gonarch's Lair", clock in around two hours. For reference, all five chapters of Xen in HL1 can be completed in approximately one hour! We are really excited to show our work to everyone, but we also want to save the majority of Xen as a surprise.

Here is a brief breakdown of our current progress in each chapter:

Xen - Final Polish
We have locked the majority of the Xen levels. Most of the design and art is completed, and we are polishing one or two rough edges in the design.

Gonarch’s Lair - Art
As you can see, we have a good amount of art completed for Gonarch. We are doing some last minute design revisions to get the gameplay tight and consistent throughout the chapter, and then we can drop in our already created art. As you might guess, this chapter is very heavy on code and animation. The first map is locked, the second map is finishing its main art pass, and the final map is undergoing some design iterations, with some art already implemented.

Interloper - Final Gameplay
This chapter has gone through a hefty number of positive and ambitious design revisions since we started it. We are really happy with the direction and iterations that have gone in, for all five maps. They are very close to gameplay complete, and are playable start to finish. We are currently finishing the modular art pieces, trimming some of the chapter’s “fat”, and polishing the last of the rough design edges to produce a streamlined and action-packed conclusion to Xen’s main story.

As Interloper is a significant departure from the rest of Xen, our intention is to get Xen and Gonarch’s Lair completed through the final polish stages first, before shifting the entire team onto Interloper at once, to finish this chapter up in one quick fell swoop.

Nihilanth - Gameplay/Art
The art for this level is completed. Without giving too much more away, we have a really exciting evolution for this chapter, and we are starting the final push to get this chapter completely coded, scripted, and animated.

Endgame - Final Polish
This chapter is locked. There are some dependency assets and some polish we have to implement once the rest of the game is complete, but other than that, it is ready to go.

Multiplayer Playdate - 6-30-18
The Black Mesa devs are getting together for a play date on on Saturday June 30th at 12:00 PM EST (midday). We are looking forward to filling some servers, blowing off some steam, and having a good time.

Celebrating 20 Years of Half-Life
Oh cool, so it’s already JUNE. Time flies when you are grinding toward a deadline having fun. As many of you are probably already aware, Half-Life will be TWENTY this November. We obviously plan on doing some BIG THINGS to celebrate the game that inspired us and became such a huge part of all our lives.

One of the events planned is Black Mesa (Crowbar Collective) having a booth at Syracuse’s Retro Game Con[retrogamecon.com] November 3rd and 4th. Stop by if you are in the area and chat with us. I went last year as a guest and had a great time (and got some sweet video game themed magnets too). More info on this event to come.

We are also considering doing a dev marathon stream of Black Mesa, Half-Life 2, Episode 1, and Episode 2. Would anyone be interested in watching us do that? We would have to figure out the logistics, as we are all not in one place, but that is something that sounds like a good time to us.

There are some other big ideas we would really like to do, but can’t talk about just yet. If you have any ideas, please let us know!

 

[jaydee2k]

If it's going on like this release of Half-Life 3 will be earlier...

 

[Wunderbar]

Looks awesome tbh.

 

[A horse of course]

Looks like my ex-wife.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

Jesus fuckin' Christ..

They also updated the game’s archaic crouch-jump function. "The player automatically crouches when they jump now, which makes it feel a bit more modern. Crouch-jumping was cool back in 1998, but these days it feels overly complicated."

what the hell?!

 

[Alienman]

Wow... Funny as hell.

 

[†††]

Jesus fuckin' Christ..

They also updated the game’s archaic crouch-jump function. "The player automatically crouches when they jump now, which makes it feel a bit more modern. Crouch-jumping was cool back in 1998, but these days it feels overly complicated."

what the hell?!

Glad they're taking bugged mechanics out of the question. DarkSydePhil changing the market for the best

 

[Morgoth]

Looks awesome tbh.

Wunderbar!

 

[Solid Snail]

It looks good.

 

[LESS T_T]

Q2 2019, 6 hours of playtime estimated for Xen: https://steamcommunity.com/games/362890/announcements/detail/2537111426405732058

Half-Life is 20! - Xen Trailer!

Happy Birthday Half-Life! We’d like to thank Valve for creating this masterpiece; an important part of gaming history. Nobody on this team would be where they are today if it weren’t for this amazing, inspirational game. We are lucky to share in a tiny bit of their legacy.

The Xen Trailer

“The Specimen will be delivered to you in a few (months)”

To Celebrate Half-Life’s 20th Anniversary, we have something special to share. Our first trailer for Xen! Be sure to go full screen and crank it up to 11!

James McVinnie has once again done an amazing job with presenting our game. Everything in the trailer was captured in-game, and we hope to polish and improve our visuals as we get the entirety of Xen up to our standards.

Xen Timeline

“Morning, Mr. Freeman. Looks like you’re running late.”

Our goal is to release Xen on Steam in Q2 2019. This will allow us to finish Xen to a place where the entire product is stable, smooth, and most importantly...fun! We are already happy with the design state of Xen as it stands currently: almost everything is design locked and functioning as intended. We are going to be using the remaining time between now and launch to bring it up to our art and polish standards.

Playtests show that all of Xen will take roughly 6 hours to complete; longer for those who like to explore. The levels and design for Xen are largely original work (with cues taken from Half-Life), rather than just simply a remake of Xen.

We are extremely proud of what we have created, and will be showing off some of our deep graphics and NPC changes later in December, as well as a breakdown of where each of the chapters stand.

Thank You

“Thanks, Doc.”

As always, thank you to our incredible community. The positivity and support is what keeps this team going. I got to go the Retro Game Con here in Syracuse, New York, and it was amazing to meet people who have stuck by our game since the mod days. I really cannot express how it made me feel to have people come up to our table and thank us for our work, and encourage us to keep going. Retro Game Con was a great reminder of just how supportive and positive our community is. Let’s keep that going, not just on Steam or the internet, but everywhere!

Again… a huge thank you to all our fans who have stuck by us through all these years.

Xen WILL be out in 2019, Half-Life will turn 21, and we can finally buy it that beer we owed it.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I might actually give Xen: Source a look.

Sometime.

Eventually.

 

[Fronzel Neekburm]

You know what bothered me the most about this? I mean, apart from the botched level design where perfectly fine levels were turned into a cluttered mess or needlessly complicated levels were streamlined to such a degree you had to ask yourself why they even bothered putting them in there in the first place. Or the addition of shitty platforming sections - because, obviously, that's the one thing Half-Life fans were always craving for: more platforming sections.

But the thing that bothered me most was the voice of the Vortigaunts. Instead of using the original sounds, they went with the Half-Life 2 sounds of some raspy-sounding Hollywood actor saying things like "Ga la lung!". The vortigaunts had such a cool, unique, alien sound to them in the original Half-Life. Hell, to this day I wonder how they created these sounds. But here, it's pretty obvious you're listening to some 60 year old voice actor doing nonsense lines.

Black Mesa very much reminds me of the Revision mod for Deus Ex. It's so obvious that it is a labour of love, but it simply isn't too much fun due to all sorts of subtle (and not-so-subtle) changes. On the other hand, Half-Life Source is the most half-assed thing you can imagine, yet, because it doesn't try to "re-envision" things that worked perfectly fine in the first place, it's the superior remake. Which is a shame, really.

 

[aweigh]

lol this thread is from 2009

 

[garren]

But the thing that bothered me most was the voice of the Vortigaunts. Instead of using the original sounds, they went with the Half-Life 2 sounds of some raspy-sounding Hollywood actor saying things like "Ga la lung!". The vortigaunts had such a cool, unique, alien sound to them in the original Half-Life. Hell, to this day I wonder how they created these sounds. But here, it's pretty obvious you're listening to some 60 year old voice actor doing nonsense lines.

Yeah the new vortigaunts suck, they sound less threatening and also are. The charge up time for the lightning blast is much slower, it used to be a really quick charge and blast and you needed to GTFO of the way fast, now you have time to leisurely walk out of the way. They also seem to be just slower and less aggressive overall.

 

[racofer]

lol this thread is from 2009

By the way, I'm no longer interested in playing anything HL related.

 

[HansDampf]

But the thing that bothered me most was the voice of the Vortigaunts. Instead of using the original sounds, they went with the Half-Life 2 sounds of some raspy-sounding Hollywood actor saying things like "Ga la lung!". The vortigaunts had such a cool, unique, alien sound to them in the original Half-Life. Hell, to this day I wonder how they created these sounds. But here, it's pretty obvious you're listening to some 60 year old voice actor doing nonsense lines.

Valve changed the Vorts in HL2 probably to make them more likable, because they are supposed to be your allies. They talk and sound almost like humans which seems a bit lazy. It could have been interesting if instead they had to communicate the HL1 way.

 

[Wunderbar]

 

[Lemming42]

Looks exciting, ignoring the fact they're taking the absolute piss with the constantly-shifting release date. The lilypad jumping segment in the second video made me laugh, like something out of Crash Bandicoot, but Xen is meant to be surreal and alien so it works.

Really hyped to see what they do with the Vortigaunt factory area. Apparently during Half-Life's development it was planned that Gordon would somehow liberate the Vorts and have them rebel against the Alien Grunts, maybe that's something they could go for.

The other thing is that they'd better integrate On A Rail Uncut into the game, as they did with the Surface Tension Uncut mod. Unless they already have.

 

[skacky]

Looks great overall. Pretty excited for this. I love the original Xen but I'm curious to see what they did.

 

[Yosharian]

Do you get XEN with Black Mesa or is it a separate purchase?

 

[Lemming42]

No separate purchase, it'll be a free update for anyone who has the game on Steam.