Black Mesa Nearing Completion, Trailer Released

Today, the Black Mesa Team released an impressive trailer for their remake of Half-Life . The remake is a total-conversion mod for Half-Life 2, bringing the updated graphics and AI of the Source engine to the original game. The team has been dropping hints lately that the project, which began in 2004, is almost done, and the trailer confirms that it will be out in 2009. They also recently announced that they've "dropped Counter-Strike: Source as a requirement for Black Mesa, and from now on, the only thing you'll need to play the mod is a Steam account with any Source engine game installed! Black Mesa is now running completely off of our own content and base Source shared content, and we felt the vastly increased user base more then [sic] justified creating all the extra assets needed to make this switch."

Comments

Awesome!

[mrchaotica]

So, now they're going to get started on Opposing Force, right? ; )

Legalities

[Xest]

Are they legally allowed to do this if Half-Life is still for sale and as Half-Life: Source exists?

When we built a port of the original Teamfortress Valve came to us and made it quite clear we can't use the same set of weapons, names for classes and so forth because that would infringe on their IP even though all our assets and code were built by us from scratch. This was admittedly for a different, competing engine to Valve so I suppose it's slightly different and looking back I can imagine thus Valve probably weren't completely honest about what we could legally do.

I'm suprised Valve are willing to allow this if it will risk the admittedly small sales of Half-Life they may still get or do they feel this will instead increase sales of newer source engine games?

Of course the other question is how is this any different from Half-Life source?

Still I don't want to detract too much from the achievement this is. Releasing a mod of this scale can truly be a time consuming task that requires a lot of effort and discipline and I have to congratulate them on reaching this point. I truly hope Valve don't waste their time with a last minute cease and desist!

Re:Legalities

[pwolf]

you pretty much answered your own question... first off you were making a port for a competing engine, not using Source. Second, they were developing TF2 so why would they want someone else making a newer version of it on a different engine while they can make money off of theirs? I bet they haven't made a big deal about it because they had no plans to make a Half Life remake and the modders are using Source.

Re:Legalities

[pwolf]

sorry, let me rephrase slightly... Yes there is already "Half Life: Source" but it looks like the old version with updated textures and physics. I don't think they had plans to do a complete remake like TF.

Re:Legalities

[Stormwatch]

Are they legally allowed to do this if Half-Life is still for sale and as Half-Life: Source exists?

Valve certainly knows this exists, and did not object to it; their only interference was requesting it not to be called Black Mesa: Source, as once planned, so people wouldn't think it is an official mod.

Of course the other question is how is this any different from Half-Life source?

Half-Life:Source took the original game and moved it to the Source engine. Same old models, same old levels, same old textures - hell, they didn't even use the High Definition pack. Other than better water effects and physics, it was no improvement at all. In contrast, Black Mesa is pretty much a rebuild from scratch.

Re:Legalities

[Barny]

And with the original HL now for sale for less than a dollar on steam combined with the fact you will be paying a minimum of $10 to be able to play this (must own a "source" game already), I don't think Valve will mind at all, the fact this has gotten so far along without them nay-saying is likely a good sign.

Re:Legalities

[andy9701]

Plus, I believe that this mod was originally called "Black Mesa Source" (hence the website URL), but Valve requested the name change so that it wouldn't be confused with an official project. If they didn't approve of the project at all, they would have just shut them down then instead of only requesting a name change.

Re:Legalities

[Xest]

I was fortunate enough to work on quite a few good mods through the years but it was the politics that put me off in the end.

There's a lot of time wasters out there and you find yourself spending a lot of time dealing with them. As your mod picks up pace you can start to get some good people on board and not deal with this but getting their is tough. When you do get there you still have the issue of people having differing visions and sometimes showing their true colours when they don't get their own way and stuff like that.

This is why I have to have a lot of respect for people behind projects like this here because I know all too well what the hazards are in getting this far. Building a mature team that's willing to accept a single person in charge of the actual vision of the mod/game whilst having someone capable of carrying that vision through in a solid manner and not pandering to personal nags or people on the team simply not adhering to that vision is easily as hard as actually producing the game assets and code- particular in a distributed environment like many mod teams across the internet.

The alternative is to go it alone and build code based mods- presumably this is how Garry's mod started, I don't know if that's still that way if it ever was but his mod is about the only HL2 mod I tried and even then only shortly after it's early releases but it was pretty fun to play around with.

Re:One word!

[billster0808]

You'll still have to buy something that uses the Source engine.

Re:One word!

[Anonymous Coward]

Suggestion: The Orange Box is worth every cent.

Re:One word!

[SanityInAnarchy]

Or download a demo.

The AC is right, of course -- Orange Box is worth it, or if you don't want to spend that much, Portal is absolutely worth it. But if, for some reason, you don't realize that yet, it'll probably work by downloading the Left 4 Dead demo, say.

Re:PS3

[Anonymous Coward]

Cower before the might of our mods, puny console gamers!

Re:Great!

[Hanners1979]

I'm sure this game will sell well

Err.... It's free. It isn't being released by Valve either.

HL1 is the greatest game ever.

[master_p]

Ok, I do not know if HL1 is the greatest game ever; for me it was. I never had so much fun with a computer game. The reason? a note from the article that I really liked may shed some light into it:

"Maybe I'm leaning too much on fond remembrance here, but I prefer the isolated, solitary feel of the first Half-Life to the more character-driven atmosphere in the sequel."

I couldn't agree more! I like HL2, but it did not give you the isolated solitary feel of HL1. I really like FPS games that put me as the solo action hero against the universe. I really miss FPS games of this kind. I have put all my hopes on DNF, but it seems like it will never be released...

Re:One word!

[Blimey85]

From what I've read the Left 4 Dead demo is no longer up. They pulled it so the servers could be used just for people who bought the game. Is that incorrect? I have Orange Box for my 360 but I don't have a legit copy for PC. Not really wanting to buy it a second time so I can play this mod, but from seeing the trailer, this mod looks pretty damn awesome so I'll end up buying something so I can play it.