Black Mesa Source: Half-Life 1 remake

[DarkHoodness]

Yeah I made a topic about this earlier, but if I remember correctly it was over a year ago and I can't find it. :S

Anyway, today there's been a new development: A countdown clock has appeared on the Black Mesa Source website:

http://www.blackmesasource.com/

12 days, 8 hours until release at time of writing this, so definitely, definitely coming soon. Finally. After 8 years of me waiting for this. But kudos to the development team who have made this thing in their spare time and stuck to it for that long despite entire team shifts, level re-designs and changes in direction... And it's looking really incredible so far for a fan-based, unofficial hobby project, which is what some people like to forget. It's an impressive feat of game development.

This is an interesting article about their development process and the problems they've faced over the years.

Here's some screenshots:

[Varrok]

It's still hard for me to believe it's actually coming up soon... That leaked gameplay looked awesome

[Paul]

An actual release date

[Crashpunk]

'Bout time!

[Jordan]

Very excited for this

[Splat]

Looks awesome! I do look forward to this.

[Nate]

Do we know how this is going to be released? Is it going to be free or paid?

[Varrok]

It's a mod. They're always free. You might need to have Source SDK though, but it's included with most Valve Source games

[MeechMunchie]

They'll probably all end up being hired by Valve. It worked for Minerva.

[Varrok]

I remember the author of Minerva saying there'll be a new episode soon. But after he was hired by Valve, his definition of "soon" changed permamently.

[Crashpunk]

I've actually recently played Minerva and it was fantastic! It had some really great level design.

[Varrok]

And story

[mr.odd]

About dam time! Jeeze! I thought this mod died for how long they went with out saying anything about it.

[Havoc]

The thing with non profit mods is that, after a while, people start demanding updates and release dates. I've seen it with a couple mods that have been in development for 5+ years and it's a downright lack of respect. Nearly all those mods now have a 'it's done when it's done' policy and hardly give out any updates for that reason. Making updates (fancy graphics and videos) also takes a lot of time that could be spent on the project itself.

Unless a mod maker says the project is dead, don't assume that it is. Especially with big projects like this.

[Splat]

They'll probably all end up being hired by Valve. It worked for Minerva.

Maybe they'll get jobs making HL2 Ep3!

[DarkHoodness]

Oh look, it's even BBC News worthy. Top 3 read news article today.

For some reason that made me smile more than seeing the countdown clock on the website.

[Mr. Bungle]

Oh, wow. This came outta nowhere. I've been waiting years for this, as have many others.

I'm glad it's free, too. Such a good mod (I imagine, and from looking at screenshots) that I'm sure if they (or Valve) wanted to they could slap a price tag on it.

[Laser]

I've heard that the voice acting for the remake is even worse than the original

[Varrok]

I've heard that the whole remake is worse than the original


...and that some JAW members have bladder problems.

Can anyone confirm that?

Wait, we're NOT talking about ABE HD? *Confused*


About Black Mesa, the dubbing from the leaked gameplay is good for a fanmade game.

[xXxrenhoekxXx]

I've been waiting for this thing for years,
I thought it was going to come out in VALVe time,
I can't wait.

[DarkHoodness]

I've heard that the voice acting for the remake is even worse than the original

The voice acting for the friendly characters is spot on, while for the soldiers, they didn't want the player to sympathise with them so had their voice acting sound terrible deliberately.

It was a bad design choice though since when you don't make bad characters believable with decent voice acting, then it just ends up being crap, rather than making the player not like them. Fortunately they've changed that now after listening to feedback.

[Laser]

Well that makes it much better! I am even more pumped to play this game!

[Splat]

I just wonder how close the G-Man will sound compared to the original and HL2. Have the makers fitted in other HL2 characters like Eli Vance, Dr Kleiner and Dr Breen?

[dripik]

I do hope they will keep the G-Man's voice as it was originally. It's a very effective voice.

Dunno about the other characters, but Dr Kleiner appeared in some form as a generic scientist figure in HL1.

[Varrok]

There will be both Kleiner and Eli in BMS.

Btw Darkhoodness has gone gold? He sold that many copies?

[Nate]

I don't really know how this works, but couldn't they use the resources and sound files from the original game?

[Bullet Magnet]

Low bit rate, kinda shit. And the other characters hardly speak to you. HL2 and its expansions have scenes that play out like cinema where you control the camera by walking around, but in the original they just wandered around mumbling irrelevancies until they either died or announced their intention to cower in one spot, radiation be damned.

[Nate]

So the new version has more dialogue? What else has been changed from the original other than a graphical rejig?

[Varrok]

Level design, to be more credible. And other stuff - it's not 100%-true-to-original-remake. And afair the devs said they don't want to use any of the original content in BMS

[Havoc]

BMS is on Steam Greenlight and has 5% of the required votes so far. Everyone go vote!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile...s/?id=94128543