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Fans Bring Back Half Life Game Series: Black Mesa Mod Launches 9/14
MojoKid writes "In a little less than two weeks, Half Life fans will have an opportunity to relive Valve's original 1998 title Half Life, albeit reborn and modified using the company's Source engine. The ambitious third-party project is called Black Mesa (previously known as Black Mesa: Source) and it's been in development for eight years. Black Mesa will deliver Half Life as you've never seen it before. It will have all new graphics, maps, a new soundtrack, updated voice acting, support for multi-core processors, hardware accelerated facial animation, and other goodies."
No really, it will.
They haven't completed it yet but still plan to. They are releasing up to the Lambda Core, so Xen and Multiplayer support will come later. That's still most of the game right there.
Because that would require creative imagination and energy.
Here you go. You're welcome. https://www.youtube.com/user/freemanmind?feature=results_main
Therein lies the root of my cynicism. Nearly a decade in the offing, little more than a few trailers and some concept them suddenly *boom*. I wish the team every success, but I'm afraid it will take more than a countdown and a nugget of backstory before I can offer them my congratulations.
Anon doesn't deserve a downvote, the mod has been "nearly done" for a while now, it's pretty much the Duke Nukem Forever of mods. I do hope that the wait was worth it, and I shall certainly get the mod and see for myself, but cynicism in this case is quite forgiveable.
Valve has shown pictures of l4d2 running on Linux. But i doubt they will be ready soon.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
Won't get excited or RTFA until I know, will it require a connection?
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
I played HL for the first time a few years ago; years after I'd played HL2. The game had tons of content, ingenious puzzles to solve, and maybe the best final boss I've ever fought in a FPS. Even with the low-end graphics, I still found this one to be a blast to play. Don't let the age of the game detract you from revisiting it.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Each to their own. I think I would be less interested if I played betas of it every few months. I tried this with Endless Space and although I liked 'having a say' and getting in early, now that it's released it's also old to me and not exciting any more. Still fun for a few hours of a rainy day but it doesn't offer anything new any more. The same would be true of this project had I been in on the dev - by now I'd be tired of it but instead I'm eager for it to be released and see it fresh as a finished product
Why? A mod is not done until it is done, and when it is being created by fans for free, it tends to take a while and proceed entirely at the pace of the people creating it, which (since they aren't being paid to do it under a certain time) is "whenever they feel like working on it." All properly done video games are "nearly done" for a very long time (years, sometimes) because going from nearly done to actually done is usually the longest part. Sometimes, they never actually do get finished even if they are released.
And Duke Nukem Forever is rather a bad example, given that, you know, it actually came out. More importantly, to my knowledge the developers of Black Mesa have never announced a release date or given a completion quantity ever, so the fact that they are now means there is no prior justification for such cynicism, since your hopes have never been actually let down. They have only been let down in your mind, which expected it to be finished before now. You really shouldn't be cynical if they've never actually failed yet.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
What has me worried is TFA states, and I quote "This will include our re-envisioning of Half-Life all the way up to Lambda Core."...uhhh...that's nice, except that is NOT where HL 1 ends, there's four more levels after that, Xen, Gonarch's Lair, Interloper, and Nihalinth.
So they've spent all these years and its just gonna end before it gets to the climax? What good is that?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
As someone who assisted in making a mod that took 7 years to release for Deus Ex, just because it's taken time doesn't mean the work is done. Volunteer projects have people coming and going, changes in art decisions, changes in tools, etc.
You will be baked, and there will be cake.
I recently played through Half Life 1. What fun! I introduced my son to it, he loved it too. Then he went to half life 2. He quit in about half an hour. We have talked about it, and while he is used to hi-res graphics and neat scenery, Half Life one, just the way it is, had atmosphere that just doesnt need an upgrade.
Sure I will play the mod, but I just dont think it will improve on Half Life one at all, in fact, I think it will detract from it.
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.
except that is NOT where HL 1 ends, there's four more levels after that, Xen, Gonarch's Lair, Interloper, and Nihalinth.
There's a reason why the "disappointing last level" page on TV Tropes used to be called "Xen syndrome". Perhaps they intentionally set out the parts not widely thought to suck.
They really should of released early
You really should have used "should've" or "should have". "Should of" is wrong.
That's the way of things these days. When you have nothing better to say, you whine and bitch about a substantial project, entirely created by volunteers, given away for free, and to which you have contributed nothing... as if they owe you something. I believe it's one of the requirements for the new Boy Scouts "entitlement" badge.
Even back when it came out, it wasn't a very good game.
I realize taste is entirely subjective, however, it won 50 awards. There is no way you can say it wasn't a very good game (did you mean fun?) when many games released over the last decade haven't come close to that.
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
They've said they will be releasing the rest at some point; they have this much polished now, and would prefer to give us something now rather than nothing for another however-much time until they have Xen onwards finished.
Are you kidding me? The Unreal single player was incredibly boring. You are fighting the same enemy, with pretty much zero intelligence, over and over. It's the same as Halo. Those games are only fun in multi-player.
Half-Life was the first FPS that interested me enough to play it through to completion. The Half-Life story is so much deeper than Doom. It makes you feel like you're in some kind of sci-fi-conspiracy-fugitive movie. There is an actual script, and it's quite humorous in places. They both involve multiple dimensions sure, but the involvement of G-Man makes everything in the Half-Life universe much more mysterious and creepy.
I quite like Shogo it has to be said. So much better than the crappy single player modes that are tacked onto the majority of today's popular shooters (Halo, COD, Resistance..).
which is totally what she said
If you are interested in playing this mod, you will need a game that uses the Source game engine. If you don't already have one, Steam has Half Life 2 on sale right now for $3.40. It looks like this deal will be available until 1pm EDT.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables