Black Mesa

[Bleck]

http://www.blackmesasource.com/

I didn't believe it when someone linked me. I'm still sort of skeptical, in fact, since it's just a countdown to who knows what.

[Dhsu]

http://forums.blackmesasource.com/showthread.php?t=12261

We're freaking out over here! It is so exciting to share this news with you!

You can now Download the Black Mesa Soundtrack, courtesy of our very own Joel Nielsen, at the very generous price of whatever you want! Enjoy and share!

In the near future you'll see our Website, Wiki and Forums all taken down temporarily for renovations.

On September 14th you will see the first release of Black Mesa! This will include our re-envisioning of Half-Life all the way up to Lambda Core. We believe this is a great way to provide a complete-feeling 8-10 hour experience with a solid ending, make our fans happy and help us make the best overall game possible.

We are still working hard on Xen and BMDM, but instead of making you wait we are giving you Black Mesa as soon as it's ready! We're doing our best to help bring the immense vision of this project into reality, and we are very excited for what the future brings!

High-Fives Yo,

Carlos Montero - Project Leader

I am excite.

[Nonamer]

It would be ironic if the website crashed before the countdown ended. Either way, I'll check back in 12 days.

EDIT: It appears that the soundtrack download link is clogged. I'll get it later this evening

[Tables]

12 days later

Surprise! We thought it would serve the interests of the community to deliver the Black Mesa experience on Apple iPod and iPad, for the low price of just twenty dollars! We hope you enjoy it~

[42]

http://www.blackmesasource.com/soundtrack.html

The soundtrack is live!

[Ethan Rex]

Maybe Black Mesa WILL come out.

That was a joke. HAHAH FAT CHANCE

[Bleck]

...hey. Hey.

Who did that.

[Maxx Skywalker]

Ninja'd. I was on the site while it updated, as I am frequent visitor to those forums over there. Those people are crazy, but you know what, they got the job done.

Can't wait.

[Hyperion5182]

I've known about this project for awhile. This is a mod for HL 2. With A LOT of work done.

IF this project got shut down (which is possible) There is only one reason.

We've been hearing whispers fora while and very recent Concept art pics have been leaked linking to HL 3. Or EP 3. We're going to have to wait and see on this one BUT keep your eyes open. A countdown timer like this is either going to be the release of the project or a deadline for valve to put out some news.

As an HL fan i want to see the conclusion of this soo badly it aint even funny.

There's an interview on Rock paper shotgun concerning this project that was when it first really got my attention. It'll explain a LOT of what's happened with this project. Its worth reading

[Strike911]

Man, its like... its like... someone came from the future and told me... something impossible had happened.

Psyched!!!

[42]

Oh, by the way, Black Mesa is on Steam Greenlight.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=94128543

[JasAce5]

Okay, so one of the greatest mods of all time is coming out in less than 3 days(2 days, 17 hours, 50 minutes, as of this posting) called Black Mesa (Formerly known as Black Mesa: Source, but changed their name at the request of Valve)

So what is Black Mesa? If you have ever played Half-life, you should know exactly what it is. Black Mesa is a re-imagining of Half-life on the Source engine(version 2007).

On September 14th you will see the first release of Black Mesa! This will include our re-envisioning of Half-Life all the way up to Lambda Core. We believe this is a great way to provide a complete-feeling 8-10 hour experience with a solid ending, make our fans happy and help us make the best overall game possible.

We are still working hard on Xen and BMDM, but instead of making you wait we are giving you Black Mesa as soon as it's ready! We're doing our best to help bring the immense vision of this project into reality, and we are very excited for what the future brings!

Trailer:

We want to make sure all of you are ready for the big day. If you don't already know, Black Mesa will require the FREE Source SDK Base 2007 to run. If you are not too sure that you have Source SDK Base 2007 installed or you don't own any source based games, please click here to download and install the Source SDK Base via Steam for FREE.

I know many of you loyal Half Life fans are planning on taking a vacation day from work, calling out sick for school, or even both. We are working very hard to ensure your day off does not go in vain, and that every person trying to download Black Mesa will undergo a smooth and fast downloading experience. The approximate download size will be 3.03 GB, 8 GB uncompressed. At launch, a launch pad will be available offering multiple mirrors and options for download. These options shall be revealed during launch. So go ahead, take that day off and join us!

We know you all are very excited and we want to you share your gameplay experiences as soon as you finish playing. We also want to make sure to collect any bug reporting and get any resolved as quickly as possible. With that being said, the forums shall be moved to it's own separate server. So when you are finished re-visiting Black Mesa, we'll be here to hear all about it.

We are very excited and we are counting down the days right along with you!

- Josh Hubi (Release Personnel)

You can now Download [and listen to for free] the Black Mesa Soundtrack, courtesy of our very own Joel Nielsen, at the very generous price of whatever you want! Enjoy and share!

http://www.blackmesasource.com/soundtrack.html

I hope this soundtrack might pique some remixers' interests as well. I like a lot of the songs in the soundtrack and I can see some being remixed.

Main page:

http://www.blackmesasource.com/

also, if for some reason you don't have Steam, you can get it here.

[Garian]

And is among the first games to be Greenlit!

[Ethan Rex]

already a topic on it man, in which i made a hilarious joke.

found here.

[Doulifée]

damn that's game is finely crafted, just spent some time looking around on the various desk, also all those osha sign everywhere. it's also not a carbon copy some area are slightly different than the original.

[Brandon Strader]

And is among the first games to be Greenlit!

It was greenlit but being distributed outside of steam. Wtf?

When I can get it on Steam I'll get it.

[Hyperion5182]

The greenlight addition happened very late into the process. The approval came up either just as or barely before the intended launch date. I found it very easy to install and have found it very fun to play.

[Bleck]

I finished this. Criticisms;

- the voice acting was around the same quality as the original's - which was mediocre for a game released in the 90s. One voice actor for guards, three voice actors for scientists was especially jarring considering they all look different and even have different names now. I can understand all the army guys sounding the same, but the army guys also sound especially retarded, so it sucks. They could have done much better on this.

- there are several points where there's a profound feeling of 'where the fuck am I and what the fuck am I doing'. In making everything look super realistic they made it much more difficult to ascertain which button I'm supposed to push, which button can even be pushed, and where the hell are the buttons, anyway. The worst example was the Lambda Core sections, where there's an entire control panel of buttons in various places, but the button you have to push to open the drainage thing is... right beside the drainage thing, in radioactive water that you can't see through.

- I know everyone these days is a fan of the whole 'get hit by things, your camera angle shakes' sort of realism, but it was really annoying and out of place in this game. Especially horrible was getting locked up by a bunch of Houndeyes - their little sonic blast thing moves your camera so much that it makes it impossible to shoot them for at least a second, and if there's more than one they always manage to do it sequentially, so you get almost no chance to fight back.

- ending it right before you get into Xen was a baffling decision. It took them 8 years to do all this, why couldn't they just wait the extra couple of months to release it with Xen? They even give you the long jump module right before the portal fight thing, and you get no opportunity to actually put it to use.

Other than all that, it was really good!

[Doulifée]

I finished this. Criticisms;

- the voice acting was around the same quality as the original's - which was mediocre for a game released in the 90s. One voice actor for guards, three voice actors for scientists was especially jarring considering they all look different and even have different names now. I can understand all the army guys sounding the same, but the army guys also sound especially retarded, so it sucks. They could have done much better on this.

i was disapointed by the army voicing. the content of the chatter indeed but also the way the voice is rendered in game.

- there are several points where there's a profound feeling of 'where the fuck am I and what the fuck am I doing'. In making everything look super realistic they made it much more difficult to ascertain which button I'm supposed to push, which button can even be pushed, and where the hell are the buttons.

God yes, i was a bit lost in the blast pit with that. and with the small change made by the team you start to wander of they didn't change completely the location of a button you don't manage to find.

- I know everyone these days is a fan of the whole 'get hit by things, your camera angle shakes' sort of realism, but it was really annoying and out of place in this game. Especially horrible was getting locked up by a bunch of Houndeyes - their little sonic blast thing moves your camera so much that it makes it impossible to shoot them for at least a second, and if there's more than one they always manage to do it sequentially, so you get almost no chance to fight back.

you end up like the original half life, quick saving/loading a lot to manage health ammo. appart that the work on the bullsquid and the zombies is awesome.

[JasAce5]

I finished this. Criticisms;

- the voice acting was around the same quality as the original's - which was mediocre for a game released in the 90s. One voice actor for guards, three voice actors for scientists was especially jarring considering they all look different and even have different names now. I can understand all the army guys sounding the same, but the army guys also sound especially retarded, so it sucks. They could have done much better on this.

I will admit they could have done better with the army voices, the 'Ow he got me' was especially cheesy, but bearable. The scientists voices didn't all completely sound the same, especially when they added female scientists to the mix. Scientists sounding the same didn't help much, but it didn't hurt it in my opinion.

- there are several points where there's a profound feeling of 'where the fuck am I and what the fuck am I doing'. In making everything look super realistic they made it much more difficult to ascertain which button I'm supposed to push, which button can even be pushed, and where the hell are the buttons, anyway. The worst example was the Lambda Core sections, where there's an entire control panel of buttons in various places, but the button you have to push to open the drainage thing is... right beside the drainage thing, in radioactive water that you can't see through.

I will admit that sometimes I would get lost because of the maze like laboratory, but I found that locked doors looked the same, so I knew that they were locked without having to go check most of the time. Also about the buttons that need to be pressed were always glowing, so I didn't have to waste time figuring out which button to press. I also found that I could go back and talk to the scientist that told me what to do earlier and he would tell me my progress or what I should be doing, which always helps.

- I know everyone these days is a fan of the whole 'get hit by things, your camera angle shakes' sort of realism, but it was really annoying and out of place in this game. Especially horrible was getting locked up by a bunch of Houndeyes - their little sonic blast thing moves your camera so much that it makes it impossible to shoot them for at least a second, and if there's more than one they always manage to do it sequentially, so you get almost no chance to fight back.

Oh, boo hoo. You sound like one of those COD fags who complain about other FPS games when their health doesn't regenerate. The shotgun takes care of them with one shot easily. I rarely got hit by them because I would kill them before they could even manage to do their attack. Also, a grenade took care of most of them in that small room with a bunch of them.

- ending it right before you get into Xen was a baffling decision. It took them 8 years to do all this, why couldn't they just wait the extra couple of months to release it with Xen? They even give you the long jump module right before the portal fight thing, and you get no opportunity to actually put it to use.

Other than all that, it was really good!

Again, you sound like you are whining. I'm happy that they didn't wait for Xen to be completed because I'm sure most people were tired of waiting. And they gave you the long jump module so that it fit with the story. Taking it out just because they weren't finished with Xen would not make any sense.

[Gollgagh]

Oh, boo hoo. You sound like one of those COD fags who complain about other FPS games when their health doesn't regenerate.

uhhhh I'm pretty sure that's the entirely different direction from which he is complaining

Again, you sound like you are whining. I'm happy that they didn't wait for Xen to be completed because I'm sure most people were tired of waiting. And they gave you the long jump module so that it fit with the story. Taking it out just because they weren't finished with Xen would not make any sense.

The Black Mesa team's motto for the entire development was "It'll be done when it's done." It's not done. It's not hard to grasp why that's consternating.

You also might want to note that he really liked the game; he wasn't complaining for the sake of complaining.

[JasAce5]

uhhhh I'm pretty sure that's the entirely different direction from which he is complaining

The Black Mesa team's motto for the entire development was "It'll be done when it's done." It's not done. It's not hard to grasp why that's consternating.

You also might want to note that he really liked the game; he wasn't complaining for the sake of complaining.

I never said that he was complaining for the sake of complaining. When I said that "You sound like one of those COD fags who complain about other FPS games when their health doesn't regenerate." I meant in the sense that those types of people choose to see things as frustrating(not fun), rather than challenging(something to overcome).

Also, what is so confusing about the BMS team releasing part of the game that is finished? and also could it be possible that the Xen chapter would take longer than a couple months to finish creating? Yes, it is possible. So what is the sense in one chapter holding up the entire rest of the project? None whatsoever. That is like complaining to Valve, why did you do the next part of halflife 2 in episodic format?

[Gollgagh]

Also, what is so confusing about the BMS team releasing part of the game that is finished?

It's. Not. Done. Fullstop.

And for the record, I do think HL2's episodic releases are silly too.

[Crowbar Man]

and also could it be possible that the Xen chapter would take longer than a couple months to finish creating? Yes, it is possible. So what is the sense in one chapter holding up the entire rest of the project? None whatsoever

Are you aware how long the Black Mesa team has been working on this project, in total? It could very well be a very long wait until its ever "finished". Again, if its not included, its not done.

That is like complaining to Valve, why did you do the next part of halflife 2 in episodic format?

Legitimate complaint when its taken years between episodes!

[Bleck]

You sound like one of those COD fags

And you sound like one of those worthless pieces of garbage that refer to people negatively as 'fags', because you were raised by trashy morons who think homosexuality is abhorrent because they're afraid of their own tiny useless dick. Do me a favor and crawl back into whatever pisshole you crawled out of.