Black Mesa - legendary vaporware Half-Life remake finally out

[Lemming42]

The next step of the beta is out, including the Gonarch chapter. A lot of the problems I had with the first set of maps continue - there's a lot of weird, pointless busywork you have to do to proceed. You arrive in the Gonarch arena and begin looking around. Eventually you find a platform with a crystal and three wires leading out of it. You must follow each wire across the much-larger-than-necessary map to find a crystal, which you must press to light up that wire, and then go back across the bit you just traversed to get to the next one. There's nothing cool or interesting at each crystal, and I don't know why you have to do this. I don't know what was wrong with the way it happened in Half-Life - you arrive in the arena, Gonarch rushes out to meet you, and you're off.

Visual design remains outstanding but I'm confused by some of the design decisions.

 

[Dayyālu]

Visual design remains outstanding but I'm confused by some of the design decisions.

You just described Black mesa in a single phrase. Congratulations.

Seriously.

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

I liked HL2 and Black Mesa( played when it was free mod and no Zen though), fight me.

 

[Infinitron]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/362890/announcements/detail/1613896871988932184

Xen/Gonarch Beta is LIVE!
2 AUG @ 4:40AM - [BMS] ADAM-BOMB

Testing... Testing...
Beta time! We’ve pushed all of Xen and Gonarch’s Lair to the public beta branch on Steam. The technical beta was just 3 maps, the complete Xen and Gonarch’s Lair is 9 maps.

Thank you to all who tested and who will test for us. We think the feedback so far has made the levels in the technical beta significantly better, and it would not have gotten there without the fresh eyes of the community.

Interloper, Nihilanth, and Endgame will follow after this beta and will double the map count to 18 total maps.

Earthbound
Earthbound has had a soundscape overhaul, fixes to game breaking bugs, and recompile of all the maps. If you take a trip through the earthbound chapters and find any game breakers, please let us know.

Soundtrack
Also a reminder, the complete Xen soundtrack is available NOW. You can check it out here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqWbjZ_t9qDlY08FPwztA2wXoil0mzusM

Also available wherever you buy or stream music.

Spoiler

Known Issues
As we posted earlier, here are some known issues in the current beta. Please report any issues you find to the Steam forums or our Discord[discord.gg].

-The flashlight and other dynamic lights occasionally cut out, then return when you go into the next room. We are investigating.

-In the last map of Gonarch’s Lair, Gonarch might be frozen when he should be playing a stabbing attack. You’ll know it when you see it.

-DO NOT USE OLD SAVES. It will cause issues.

-Linux is launching, but we are still working on getting the graphics to display properly. We apologize for this taking so long.

-You will see large black voids in the levels if you look back the way you came. These are the areaportals (an optimisation technique) not interacting correctly with the fog/xog. We have a simple fix for this that will go in for later patches.

-Some props have the wrong material properties. This is most noticeable in Gonarch’s Lair where it sounds like you are walking on boxes instead of rocks.

-We have greatly increased performance across all maps, but there is still a noticeable frame drop in the Xen swamps as you leave the door into the lower swamp.

-Beneathicles (underwater barnacles) don’t respond to Gluon or explosive damage. This makes them a bit of a pain to clear, but will be fixed!

-Long jump sound effect sometimes plays on map load. We haven’t yet been able to pinpoint why this his happening or why it only happens on some computers.

-Knockback Houndeyes occasionally push you into and through walls, causing the player to get stuck.

-Occasional crash to desktop in Gonarch’s Lair chapter. We think it is something related to the mortar attack.

-In order to fix a crash, HEV crystal chargers temporarily do not have a dynamic light.

-Bebcrabs sometimes walk on 2 legs instead of 4… it’s hilarious.

-Gonarch can occasionally run past you in an important chase sequence. We have tweaked the map to fix this, but it may still happen.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you again to all who have participated, or will participate in the public beta. We may be a bit quiet with updates as we grind and grind in order to wrap the rest of the game up. Hit us up on the Discord [discord.gg]if you have any questions!



Discord - https://discord.gg/PSZfh8N

Twitter - @BlackMesaDevs

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/BlackMesaDevs

 

[Razor]

A while ago I played through HL1+ all the xpacks and right after HL2+ xpacks back to back. From a gameplay perspective I say by far the main difference between the two is that HL 1 is noticeably more faster. Everything from reloading animation to jumping/crouching to enemy attack speed/move speed/ reaction speed etc. Makes the combat feel much faster and fluid. HL2 was way more slower in every department, leading to a much more slowed down gameplay.

The only thing that HL2 IMO got better gameplay wise was the more limited ammo counts- forcing the player to actually use different weapons and juggle around with them in combat. In HL1 the shotty alone got something like 125 buckshots max and a double barreled shotty blasts cleaved through at least half of the enemy units in one salvo.

 

[PulsatingBrain]

I'm amazed to see this finally approaching a finished state. I've fucked around a little with the early access, but can't wait to actually play the whole thing

 

[Psquit]

Same here. I've played the mod version then pirate the steam version (because fuck you). Now I own the game thanks to that discount.

 

[Morgoth]

And yet, BS is nowhere near as fun as the original Half-Life. Nice timewaste try from the devs though.

 

[Lemming42]

Interloper part one out now. Glitchy as fuck, being a beta, but the concepts are great - you get to visit a Vortigaunt village and the alien factory (shittiest part of Half-Life IMO) is touched up.

 

[LESS T_T]

Coming out before Alyx?: https://steamcommunity.com/games/362890/announcements/detail/1724246478625804044

Black Mesa Complete Beta

From Start to Finish

The whole of Black Mesa, from beginning to end, is available on “public-beta”. Check out the known issues below, and give it a go! We are so pumped to have this out. We appreciate the feedback from the community; as we said before, it has proved invaluable.

How to Opt Into the Beta

-Select “Black Mesa” in your library
-Right click and go to properties

-Select the “BETAS” tab at the top right
-Click the drop down and select “public-beta”

Spoiler

Beta Release Notes

-Added Interloper C, Interloper C1, Interloper D, Nihilath boss battle, Endgame
-Changed grenade aim point to be center screen for easier aiming
-Fixed sprint animation playing while swimming
-Fixed shotgun misfire after reloading
-Fixed RPG unguided mode in Earth levels
-Fixed having to press “shift” after each level load with “Always Run” enabled

-Tons of small changes and fixes to the “Xen chapter”
-Fixed Nihilanth intro model
-Fixed most area portals rendering black
-Fixed leaf sounds, and ability of certain objects to fall through them
-Fixed cave long jump in Xen B to be more forgiving
-Fixed houndeye path kill brush in Xen B1
-Key lit bullsquids on bullsquid path
-Minor improvements to art and guidance at end of Xen B1
-Fixed missing sun lens flare in Xen C
-Fixed missing sun lens flare in Xen C1
-Fixed players being able to skip puzzle in Xen C1
-Fixed third plug puzzle so that short cord can not be used in long cords place

-Tons of small changes and fixes to the “Gonarch’s Lair” chapter
-Fixed some lids not blowing off in Gonarch A
-Fixed crashes when player jumps on physics objects (like the rock columns in Gonarch)
-Fixed hard transition from Gonarch A to Gonarch B
-Improved player guidance
-Added red lights to all fumers to better highlight them
-Added “gate” on second ledge before crystal cave so that player can not back track, and soft lock the game
-Increased frame rate in crystal cave
-Improved fire trap
-Put explosive barrels next to each crystal in water cave to better explain gameplay element
-Removed fire from Gonarch final fight
-Lowered Gonarch green fire damage and screen shake

-Tons of small changes and fixes to the already released Interloper maps
-Remove first tentacle that could easily block player path
-Fixed model darkening at start of Interloper A
-Improved player guidance
-Removed phys objects that were on player path
-Small art fixes
-Made long jump path clearer and easier at end of Interloper A
-FIXED CRASH IN INTERLOPER A!
-Better key lighting for player path in Interloper A1
-Fixed most of the water seams in Interloper A1
-Minor art and bug fixes in Interloper B
-Better player guidance in Interloper B
-Fixed players skipping mechanic intro and breaking area portals at start of Interloper B1
-Improved player guidance in Interloper B1
-Minor art and collision fixes to B2
-Interloper B2 no longer fades to black at the end of the level

Known Issues

Overall Difficulty. We suspect some parts might be too hard or too easy. We’ll be watching play throughs and taking feedback to find these issues and fix them.

Performance. We have improved performance across the game, and targeted specific areas to increase the frame rate on all machines. Even with these fixes, there are still some areas we want to improve. For now, don't be afraid to lower your settings if you are getting low frames.

Factory Breaks. We are guessing players will be able to find creative ways to break the factory maps. We don’t expect any of them to be full blockers, but we are anxious to see what players can do to these complex setups, and how we can mitigate issues.


So it is finally out, on beta, for everyone to play. We hope you enjoy it. We will be watching.

Thank you!

 

[Lemming42]

Oh shit, momentous day in history. Gonna give it a full run-through tonight.

I hope they gave Xen a serious touch-up because the last beta had some really stupid parts. There are a lot of parts where it's completely unclear what to do or where to go, which isn't really the Half-Life experience. The Gargantua chase in particular was just crap.

 

[agentorange]

its crap. save your time and replay the original

 

[A_boring_GOG_bot]

its crap. save your time and replay the original

So your advice is : " ignore the Black Mesa release and play the original HL instead " ?

 

[Tehdagah]

The original isn't good either.

 

[Lemming42]

Finished. They've made the existing parts from the previous betas a lot better and less bloated. The new areas could really do with a similar bit of revision, but for the most part you know where to actually fucking go most of the time now.

The final boss fight is unintentionally hilarious, you have to dodge area of effect attacks and leap between deadly bolts of lightning like a fucking Dark Souls boss, but at the same time, FPS final boss fights always suck and I don't really see much else they could have done other than make it a circle strafe bullshit fest.

The only properly bad part, and it's genuinely bizarre that they even included this in the game, is a section near the top of the spire that leads to the Nihihihiaihilaihanth. To explain it very briefly, you have to destroy shield generators to kill alien controllers who are using the shields. This involves standing on a healing pad that restores your HP and HEV to max, while also standing near new crystal things that recharge your gluon gun ammo. You literally just stand still, getting shot repeatedly by the controllers, and shoot at the shield generators. As long as you don't get knocked off the healing pad, you can't die, and you can't run out of ammo. It's hard to explain in words, but anyone who plays this beta will surely agree that this part was completely dumbshit insane. I don't get it.

Mostly good overall though. I like the story touches. It really feels like the alien controllers are panicking and trying to stop you now, unlike in Half-Life where they basically just let you walk up to their leader and murder him. There's a lot of cool segments where they set ambushes for you and try to kill you with the factory stuff, including a really awesome part where they send this crate thing you're riding into a room with loads of lasers. The final boss also teleports parts of Black Mesa itself into the arena now, like whole rooms, which I guess is meant to show that the Xen aliens are gaining stronger portal control over Earth. It looks cool anyway.

 

[agentorange]

Xen looks like a World of Warcraft dungeon now. The visual direction in this mod is terrible in general but their idea of Xen is by far the worst part. This whole game is a great example to point to for when trying to describe how modders lack any sense of pacing or restraint, from the intro sequence where they keep the crowbar from you in favor of running around for far too long throwing flares at zombies, to the ending sequence where they changed the Nihilanth portal area to look like every other part of their Xen, filled with purple garbage and tons of flying aliens, instead of the ominous black void that it is in the original.

 

[Lemming42]

All criticisms of Xen are fair but I'm constantly puzzled by people complaining about the visual direction of the pre-Xen segments. Almost every area is a completely logical re-imagining of the original game, while still being an almost identical remake. Residue Processing for example I thought was fantastic, and the old 1950s areas of the facility from Blast Pit through to Apprehension look the part excellently.

Agree about the portal at the end though. I liked the idea of the alien birds congregating at the portal but the black abyss in Half-Life 1 is way more striking. They also seemed to remove the distorted human voices you hear coming through the portal, which really sucks.

The more I think about it since beating it, the less I like the stupidly long spire section at the end. I mean it's seriously fucking terrible, infinite Gluon ammo and leaping around between healing pads like a jackass, it's like something out of nuDOOM. I never really hated original Xen as much as everyone else, I think a more faithful remake of Xen with a few extra maps and superior revisions of the original maps would have worked just fine.

 

[Morgoth]

The Marines in Black Mesa sound like total normies. The whole sound design is a big let-down in general. Also tried Xen over the weekend and I felt bored out of my mind after 30 min. Uninstalled.

 

[schru]

It was always more than likely that Black Mesa would turn out bad, it was just too ambitious a project for a team of modders that would change every few years—to recreate the original game up to Half-Life 2's production standards. All they had were ambitions. It's not necessarily even the team's incompetence as there just haven't been any examples of successful shooters like the original Half-Life that would make interesting use of all the capabilities of newer engines. Valve's sequel was different and what made it interesting just doesn't translate back in any straightforward way. It's readily visible in much less ambitious HL2 mods which limit themselves to having similar gameplay, but without Valve's special finesse with balancing scripting and encounter design the combat on Source just tends to feel very simplistic and banal.

The 2012 release of the mod was inferior to the original in every way. It had stupid changes, worse player movement with an especially annoying jumping model; it looked worse (save for maps by that one mapper who made interiors like this one) in a way that added more detail without being able to make it look good and the lighting and contrast in many areas were just bad; the simple recognizable style of all the guards and scientists sharing basically similar, very endearing personalities was replaced by pointless additional ‘flavour’ and weak attempts at emulating Valve's writing in the sequels; the new music was bad; and most importantly, the combat was much more cumbersome and awkward—they made the aliens and the Marines attack in a more relentless way, but in a way that feels like a modder tinkering with a system he doesn't really control, so the movement patters are worse and the somewhat increased difficulty was just tedious.

 

[Lemming42]

Other than On a Rail, the game is like a one-for-one remake up until Xen. I don't get the majority of these criticisms.

It had stupid changes, worse player movement with an especially annoying jumping model;

Not sure what you mean here. Doesn't it just have HL2's jumping mechanics? Maybe it changed since the 2012 mod release.

it looked worse (save for maps by that one mapper who made interiors like this one) in a way that added more detail without being able to make it look good and the lighting and contrast in many areas were just bad;

It looks great to me. The visual design is easily the strongest thing about the game. Again, it's pretty much an exact remake (discounting On a Rail, which is sadly gutted) and all they've done is flesh out rooms in a totally logical way. Blast Pit has a few extra 1950s/1960s-era computer machines and a control room overlooking the pump station, Office Complex has a couple of extra office props like shelves in some rooms, Residue Processing has a couple of control rooms where people would logically be overseeing the waste treatment machinery, etc. They preserve Half-Life's direction for the most part but make minor changes to make the facility feel more plausibly realistic. What should they have done instead?

The only major change I can instantly think of is to the dam in Surface Tension, where they add an extra stretch of road between the first Marine encounter and the dam. It's a big change but I think it works, since it follows a Half-Life-ish model of encounter design, where you basically design combat around using the environment. There's the explosive barrels trap to trigger on the marine squad on the road, then a sniping position to take out the marines in the car park. Works pretty well and leads to a reasonably fun combat encounter IMO, as well as giving you a chance to test out the long range capabilities of your relatively newly aquired crossbow, which you don't really get to do in Half-Life.

Oh, there's also the scripted sequence where you sneak out with the guard towards the end of Surface Tension to get to the control booth. That part does suck absolute shit.

the simple recognizable style of all the guards and scientists sharing basically similar, very endearing personalities was replaced by pointless additional ‘flavour’ and weak attempts at emulating Valve's writing in the sequels

Most of the new dialogue does suck ass but it's pretty limited. Most of the script is just the same as the original game. After Unforseen Consequences the only new dialogue I can even remember is the scene you get if you save everyone in Office Complex, and the speech the scientists give at the end of Questionable Ethics (I liked this scene). All guards and scientists still have basically the same voice and almost the same personalities.

the new music was bad

Agreed. It's decent music but it almost never fits what's happening on screen. I'm waiting for someone to just mod the original soundtrack back in because it's pretty much unbeatable.

the combat was much more cumbersome and awkward—they made the aliens and the Marines attack in a more relentless way, but in a way that feels like a modder tinkering with a system he doesn't really control, so the movement patters are worse and the somewhat increased difficulty was just tedious.

They've changed the combat a lot since the 2012 release. The Marines act a little more like Half-Life marines now, where they run over, shoot at you, then run off screaming "AGH MEDIC" before walking into their own grenades. Combat still blows but it's necessarily going to blow on the source engine and it wasn't good on GoldSrc. Like with Half-Life, the encounter design is solid enough to cover for the shit combat. There's a lot of fair criticisms to make about Black Mesa combat, but not many that don't also apply to Half-Life. The only problems I have are the reduced Marine AI capabilities and the weapons feeling weaker in that HL2-esque way.

 

[HansDampf]

It had stupid changes, worse player movement with an especially annoying jumping model;

Not sure what you mean here. Doesn't it just have HL2's jumping mechanics? Maybe it changed since the 2012 mod release.

I've played the free mod from 2012, and everything he said is true (except about the graphics). Jumping felt like Gordon doubled in weight. And marines loved to snipe you with their MP5 from across the map.

 

[Jenkem]

ITT: people crying about an unfinished game in open beta as if it is finished even though the devs have clearly stated they are waiting for feedback to do gameplay/balance passes..
also some of the people that complained about the original levels that were in beta a month ago are now saying they were improved and are better now.

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

Played whole Black Mesa recently and must say that majority of criticism here subjective at best and idiocy at worst. Although there indeed exist one retarded place in Xen where game spawns at you thousands of Alien Controllers and you somehow should dodge all amount of crap that these shitheads throw at you and cheese your way with gluon cannon( all this was on tiny lift with no cover, whoever did this should burn in hell). In general however, I liked Xen in Black Mesa more than in original, I remember original Xen as brown ugly floating pieces of shit with lots of parkour. In Black Mesa Xen still has fair amount of jumping around, but at least not as ugly. "Muh voices and black void" - is just nitpicking at this point, moment was so unmemorable in first game, I completely forgot about it.
Music and sound is subjective, I liked music in original HL and in Black Mesa it was ok, not as horrible as retards here claim.
Overall I liked original HL and like Black Mesa, "critics" here act like devs fucked their mother/sister/wife/husband and forced them to play their game.
Go cut your veins and make world better place, you bunch of emo whiners.

Edit: I remembered what I also found disturbing in game - in some places enemies was too eager to rush me. Although they wasn't intelligent in original too, that for sure.

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

Perhaps I was too harsh to people for voicing their edgy opinions, but I just finished game and after that people reactions here was so in dissonance with what I was experienced, just holy shit.
Like some people deliberately trying shit on game for very corrupt and hideous reason. Shills to big companies upset by success of indie studio? Competitors in modding business (lol)? Sounds crazy, but who knows, reactions a bit unnatural.

 

[Dexter]

I dno about any of that, I just know I bought this last Sale and I AM going to play it instead of Half Life proper before HL: Alyx comes out, hopefully they're also out of Beta by then. The only memory of the first Half Life I have is trying the Demo back when it came out and even back then thinking the 3D graphics and animations are utterly cancerous. I did finish Half Life 2 though, even though I originally bought the Orange Box for Counter Strike: Source.