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Black Mesa Released
ProbablyJoe writes "The long awaited Source engine remake of the Valve's original Half Life has finally been released. The initial release only includes the story up until Xen, but the developers say they'll be adding the rest of the story, along with an online multiplayer Deathmatch mode, soon. The game is available to download for free, and only requires players to install the Source SDK (included with all Source games, or a free download). The highly anticipated release has also caused a huge amount of traffic for any servers hosting the files, with GameFront, GameUpdates, and Black Mesa's own CDN brought down within minutes of the release. The project has also been approved by Steam's Greenlight program, and will hopefully be available through Steam soon, though no timeframe has been given."
Thank you Black Mesa Team!
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
No crowbar nerf.
That was a joke.
Ha ha.
Fat chance.
(Anyway, this cake is great....)
The initial release only includes the story up until Xen, but the developers say they'll be adding the rest of the story, along with an online multiplayer Deathmatch mode, soon.
More episodic releases in the Half Life universe? NOOOOO!!!
/* No Comment */
Based on the development time of this, the Xen levels will take about two years.
But I'm not complaining, no one liked Xen anyway. Thank you, guys!
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
I have classes to study for and clients to work for, this is NOT a good time.
Over here: http://ftp.acc.umu.se/mirror/misc/BlackMesa/
Mostly used to hosting linux distributions, but this looks like someone might care to download too. Go ahead and eat a few gigabit/s for us. :)
They do have a torrent, just they hosted the tracker on GameUpdates which pretty much crumbled under the weight. Why they didn't use one of the many public open high-capacity trackers I do not know.
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
There's a torrent link on the official Black Mesa site, it points to:
http://www.mediafire.com/?khmzyygg4vetko0
I'm downloading it now, Black Mesa team says "Please seed!"
I still don't understand what was wrong with the original Half-Life? I'd love to play a fan made episode of Half-Life, but if I want to play Half-Life itself, it works great in Wine.
Is anyone else sick of remakes? Fan made or official, I don't care. Try something new!
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I still don't understand what was wrong with the original Half-Life?
The graphics are 14 years old. If you're sick of the remake, just don't play it. It's not like anyone is forcing you to, or even charging you money if you actually do want to. If people want to spend their time upgrading a 14 year old game that they really love because they think it would be even better with modern(ish) graphics, they can. And for the people doing so, it serves as a nice resume builder as well, whereas making their own game would probably not receive nearly so much press and would therefore be far less impressive.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
The graphics are 14 years old.
And? Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring is over 300 years old. Great works of art don't become less beautiful because they are old.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The graphics are 14 years old.
And? Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring is over 300 years old. Great works of art don't become less beautiful because they are old.
Video games do. Well, technically they were ugly to begin with, we just didn't notice because it was the best we had (and usually better than what came before). The graphics, mind you, not the gameplay.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Half-Life: Source used all of the same models and maps, but added the physics engine for rag-doll effects, used shaders for improved water effects, had some limited dynamic lighting improvements (I think?), replaced the pre-rendered 16-bit skybox with dynamic effects, and cleaned up the specular/normal maps for better bump mapping and such. That is, it was a port to a new engine, with almost no changes to the content other than the cleaned-up normal maps and the quick switch-out of the skybox. Black Mesa is not a port, but a remake. They redid all of the maps and most of the models that weren't available already as part of HL2, so it takes full advantage of all the new shaders and lighting stuff, and has much higher resolution textures and models.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
The fact that all the direct download links appear to be overrun, but the Torrent works fine is a strong argument for why Torrenting isn't in and of itself piracy.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
Seeing that TFC came out a little after the original Half-Life, I wonder whether there will be a Source port of TFC. Like Fortress Forever but without the bugs and the developers changing the gameplay every week and mistakenly make some classes MUCH stronger than others.
Why wouldn't they just port TF1 rather than TFC if they're going to redo everything anyway?
Then again, both a TF1 or TFC remake would have to compete against the juggernaut that is TF2.
Incidentally, TF2 has one of the problems that you complain about... constantly changing the gameplay. Yet that's what's kept it interesting over the last 5 years: TF2 currently has 10 game modes across 57 official maps (and all sorts of custom maps) and a wide variety of alternate play styles based on being able to swap out your weapons in the respawn room. The stock weapons are generally the most powerful with 4 major exceptions I can think of: Pyro's Flamethrower is inferior to the Rainblower or Degreaser; Pyro's Fire Ax is inferior to the Axtinguisher; Medic's Bonesaw is inferior to the Ubersaw, Amputator, or Solemn Vow; Soldier's Shovel is inferior to the Escape Plan, Equalizer, or Discliplinary Action.
Granted, the last major TF2 update basically added a Killing Floor mode to the game... but it needs special servers to run it since it's restricted to 6 players instead of the usual 24-32.
(Psst, TF2 is free btw if you haven't tried it... you just need a Steam account)
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
You've got a strange definition of malware/spyware.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...