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."

Comments

BEST GAME EVER

[Bodhammer]

Thank you Black Mesa Team!

Please

[davewoods]

No crowbar nerf.

...Black Mesa?

[Anonymous Coward]

That was a joke.

Ha ha.

Fat chance.

(Anyway, this cake is great....)

Re:...Black Mesa?

[Quakeulf]

You know what Gordon Freeman would say to that?

Would you?

He would probably say something along the lines of:

"..."

In pieces

[Tarlus]

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!!!

Godammit.

[jiteo]

I have classes to study for and clients to work for, this is NOT a good time.

Another mirror

[maswan]

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. :)

Re:Seems like a perfect application for BitTorrent

[dopaz]

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!"

Re:BEST GAME EVER

[Baloroth]

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.

Re:Comparison to HL2 port from Valve?

[canajin56]

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.