Slashdot Mirror

From the Black Mesa wiki, you don't need to buy any games to play the mod, as the Source SDK Base 2007 is free to download through steam.

Valve has already "blessed" this effort, and the Black Mesa devs have said as much. There will be no C&D letters.

From Valve (in January 2007...)

Congratulations to the Black Mesa for Half-Life 2 MOD team for picking up the Most Anticipated MOD Award for the coming year from Mod DB. Over 80,000 votes were cast for MODs built for a number of different games, and they have been crowned this year's most wanted. More information on this ambitious project to recreate Half-Life 1 from scratch in the Source engine is available on their site. We're as eager to play it here as everyone else.

The only thing Black Mesa did was remove "Source" from the mod name, but Valve allowed them to keep the domain because of fan base recognition.

No really, it will.

Are companies still agressively beating down any fan mod that dares even closely resemble their IP these days or do they turn a blind eye to it now?

Some do, some don't. Valve are allowing the development of a complete remake of their original flagship game, Half Life 1. Maybe because, like a lot of people, they don't think it will ever be completed.

As for multiplayer? What a failure of an idea. Only some games need it and even most of those fail. Adding multiplayer into every game will just fragment the playerbase even more. We've seen what happens with most multiplayer games, already. At best, people play them for about a month or two. Then when you decide to try and play it, you're the only person on the PLANET trying to play multiplayer.

Not always true. I've been playing Day of Defeat: Source for five years now and there is still a decent number of servers around. In fact the original Day of Defeat is 10 years old this year and is still popular. Generally speaking if a game is really good then people will carry on playing it. Hell you can still play Quake 1 online if you want.

Meanwhile, it'll continue to detract from the quality of the single player.

True, this is often the case - see Call of Duty for example. Their games used to have single player missions that would take more than a single evening to complete.

These guys are damned determine to misunderstand gaming and ruin it. Sometimes a great single player experience is all you want.

All you want, maybe. Sometimes a great multiplayer experience is all I want. Not always. But sometimes.

Oh - and multiplayer *local* on the same screen? Hell no. You go play on your OWN screen. I like my big giant screen without the image being deformed or squashed. I don't care how big it is, I still want it for myself. I hate split screen and never ever ever would use it.

Wow. Are you just resentful because you don't have any friends? Sometimes people come to my house that like playing games. Should I say "No, either you watch or you go home and play from there"? No! We both sit in the same room, play the same game and have a laugh together. Yeah you get a bit less screen but it's more fun! Me and my old flatmate played Call of Duty Nazi Zombies to death on split-screen mode. I played it a bit in online multiplayer mode and even though there was twice as many players and we got twice as far in terms of levels, it wasn't as fun as having someone else in the room enjoying it too - shouting at each other and taking turns to reload because there are so many zombies coming at you. I'd be happy to see more games like this. It used to be that every game would have a two player option - even if it wasn't particularly great (I'm looking at you Luigi). Consoles like the NES were designed for a couple (or more) people to have fun together. Now it's just you, sat alone in your living room, not even talking on a headset.

Anyway, I digress. This is just another pointless Slashdot "One True Way of Gaming" article. Different people like different things. Some people like multiplater, some singleplayer. Some both. Personally I just like good games, be they single player, multiplayer or whatever. I wouldn't want a multiplayer Just Cause 2 just as I wouldn't want a Singleplayer Team Fortress.........actually that would work. Cooperative Half Life 1 remake? Fuck yes.

I knew there was something I forgot to do this week! It helps pad out now to the inevitable announcement that Black Mesa has been cancelled.

Not to mention Black Mesa, which they havn't stopped.

I've completely lost interest in Half Life. It was one year (June 2006 - October 2007) between Episode 1 and Episode 2 of HL2. It's been three years since Episode 2, and the story has lost its appeal.

The next Half Life game i'll buy will be Black Mesa, a third party port of the original Half Life to the Source engine. Episode 3? I might read a synopsis on Wikipedia and go "Oh, so that's what happened..." and then forget about it again.

Rest assured we are still waiting for Black Mesa. The vaporware list will be long and healthy this year.

From the Black Mesa Forums, posted today "Hello Black Mesa fans! We come to you once again with an update. It's now the end of 2009, and we know many of you have literally counted the days down until this fateful month. We are floored by the level of support you have given us and are very excited we're so close to reaching our goal. Unfortunately, to our great disappointment, Black Mesa will not make a 2009 release. Cynics may now rejoice, bets may be collected, and I think a mod team member has to eat his shoe, but we hope our loyal fans will forgive us and realize that the delay will translate into a better final product that's (hopefully) more easily available to everyone. Once again we apologize for what has to be very disappointing news. We placed a 2009 deadline on ourselves to motivate us and bring this 6 year project to a close. And while we didn't quite make it, we have come very close, and you can expect a complete, polished game to hit your hard drives in the near future. We'll be sure and update if anything changes. Until then, hang tight, it's coming!" http://forums.blackmesasource.com/showthread.php?

As for Half-Life, the first installment is getting a makeover, albeit as a free mod.

In the works since around the release of HL2, they expect to finalize it this year.

Check them out here. Join the forums, or just have a look at all the newly modeled weps and beasties.

Personally, it's been the longest wait for the most-anticipated re-imagining of a classic.

halflife is in the process of being remade on the HL2 engine http://blackmesasource.com/ I dont quite know wheres its at in the making today but the trailer does bring back the memories

Playing the original HL now is a little disappointing - we've seen what can be done. I think that's what drives these guys:

http://www.blackmesasource.com/

Summary: voluntary effort to remake the original HL but using the source engine and shiny new, graphically more appealing design.

Check out the video, it's very impressive - I can't wait to have a play when they're done.

The human condition is one of striving - we will never be happy with what we have; we will always look for the next greatest thing. And if that doesn't make you proud to be a human, then you're not an engineer.

Y'know... me too. I couldn't remember if Black Mesa was going on for six or seven years, but it could have been either for this thread. It's pretty much the same idea.

Updates for Black Mesa are few and far in between, but they are still working on it. As an aside, Black Mesa recently had a server crash and the old forums died; they are working like slaves to get it working again.

Whether for Deus Ex or for Source, I have to believe that making a game for the sake of the game is the best motivation there is.

As for others **kofluserkof** that would chide the modding community for lengthy projects, I think they have the wrong idea. It's not the ray-tracing engine or lighting effects that make a game popular, it's the balance of action and intrigue, the character insight as well as nice visuals that make for a great game.

"Hype" is for commercial games, modded games are by the community, for the community; their popularity comes naturally.

Besides, for the >5% of us, it's nice to have a fresh game that doesn't require a quad-core SLI system to play it.

As for Black Mesa, I made a fan video for it, and I plan to do another if there's enough time before the next media release.

For anyone interested, details on Black Mesa (a complete re-telling of the Half Life story from the beginning) can be found here.

If anything, it shows that all there's all kinds of ways to market your game and if it is enjoyable, people will pay for it.

Now, looking at this year's possibly popular indie games, I think Crayon Physics Deluxe will be a hit, and I hope Fez (video here), which I haven't heard of since February 08 will post some news, and finally there's Braid again, which is coming on the PC!

Additionally, if you include game mods as indie development, I'm looking forward to Neotokyo, a total conversion mod for HL2 that has its inspiration in Ghost in the Shell, and Black Mesa Source, another total conversion for HL2 which is the original Half-Life ported onto the Source engine.

Weird that nobody mentioned OpenTTD yet, the Open-Source version of Chris Sawyers "Transport Tycoon Deluxe", creator of Rollercoaster Tycoon.

It's probably more a clone than a remake, because you can play in the exact same way as the original, but you can also enable optional bugfixes and actual game improvements, like working multiplayer support.

There is also Black Mesa, a remake of Half-Life 1 with the newer Source engine. Pretty exciting, too.

Tell them to skip buying the original and wait for Black Mesa Source to be released.

Not according to the site. They are using some models and textures from HL2, but the intention still seems to be to recreate the entire original game. I'm expecting to see it around 2017.

No, HL: Source doesn't do anything for the graphics; it uses the old textures and geometry. The better alternative is Black Mesa.

Not even close to what I mean; HL:Source is the original Half-life game assets ported over directly into the Source Engine, the only changes are that it runs much better, has the source water and physics, and a couple of shiny, basic shaders on some of the textures. It looks the same as Half-life, but if you're going to replay it, now you can do it in Source. I'm talking about exactly what I said before, redoing the game; new models, new textures, all of the new Source goodies from the latest episode, new AI, redone maps... everything. Like I said before, there is a team working on this, it's called Black Mesa http://www.blackmesasource.com/, and it's exactly what I want and what I think a lot of other Half-life junkies want.

Still, you can't retrofit certain things afterwards, like better architechture and more polygons. Take a look at Black Mesa: Source and compare it to the original Half-Life... the improved level design makes a gigantic difference. You could add improved textures and effects into Half-life, but it would still show it's age.

Err, no, I don't remember HL: Source being a letdown. It was exactly what I expected; HL1 in the Source engine. The huge improvement in lighting quality was quite nice when replaying HL1.

I should point you towards Black Mesa: Source, which seems to be what you want; a professional quality full remake of HL1 in the HL2 engine.

The most exciting thing in my mind right now is the project Black Mesa:Source. Playing through the original half life with updated graphics? Kick ass.