Dungeon Master Forum

I think I'm still obsessed with the Half Life series, probably more so than DM. Something very special about the work that Valve did with this universe and story, and I can't wait for the next installments...

Anyway, there's always interesting things going on in the Half Life community and I wanted to collect some of it in a HL dedicated thread:

Black Mesa Mod
There's finally been some news on this mod that appeared to die a few years back. It's a remake of the original Half Life 1, but running on the HL2 Source engine:
http://www.moddb.com/mods/black-mesa
Also, an interview with the developers:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/05 ... ce-part-1/
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/05 ... -part-two/

"Alxy Vance" interviewed
Merle Dandridge, the voice behind Alyx Vance, interviewed on Podcast 17:
http://www.podcast17.com/interviews/aud ... dandridge/

Yeah, i've been waiting for Black Mesa Mod for years.. Hope that they will make it !

It's heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere!

raaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh ! installiiiiiing !!!!

I'm back home tonight. This will be the first thing I do!

Choose your mirror carefully, or it might also be the only thing you do is download it!

What mirror did you guys use? All the Euro ones suck, ModDB didn't even start, and FileShack seems to be broken... :-/
Perhaps I should just wait for them release it on Steam, would be a lot simpler!
EDIT: Never mind, GameFront is working and I'm getting 2.2MB/s, 22 mins to download

Yeah, I was awake early on Satuirday and the euro one sucked so much I used one of the global ones...probably was gamefront...

GameFront FTW! 15 mins to go....
EDIT: Holy ****, error at 99.9%, file got deleted! Gotta do it all again! *Sigh*

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!


Then again, my speed was 'only' 600kb/s, so i have no sympathy! :p

I managed to resurrect the "deleted" file, it was still in the temp folder and seems to be installing OK.... fingers crossed!
EDIT: Seems to have installed OK, dunno what all that error nonsense was about. Just downloading the SDK, then can play....

I got a couple of hours in last night. I'm very impressed! The attention to detail is astonishing! (listen to some of the conversations, and interact with the reception guard many times, etc.) The visual upgrade is great, and while not state-of-the-art, I think it looks really good, exactly what I was hoping for.

Some of the functional stuff is a little less impressive (headcrabs seem a bit unresponsive in places, jittery zombie animations here and there), but I can forgive any issues like that as it does successfully recreate the atmosphere of Half Life. And even though the music is all new, it still fits in with the soundscapes of the original game.

My one big gripe is that even small jumps over short objects require that really annoying crouch-jump combo to successfully pass them. Really silly to do that in places where it should not be necessary. Oh, and the military guys voice over is a bit silly and has lost the menacing "radio static" effect.

Not entirely sure how I managed to finish Black Mesa already, but I have! I clearly spend more time playing games than I thought!

It's very good, well worth the wait and an amazing piece of work by 'amateurs'. This is AAA quality in terms of production and scope, and setting aside a few issues mentioned above, I think it's very worthy of the name Half Life. Black Mesa FTW!

Of course, this release doesn't include Xen so it will be interesting to see what they do with that - as most people agree it was the weakest part of the original game.

Can't believe it's 14 years since I first played HL!

An interview with the project leader of Black Mesa:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/1786 ... und_up.php

Sort of Half Life related:

Portal's physics engine rebuilt in 25KB—on a graphing calculator
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/12/ ... alculator/

Rofl, that's epic .

Never before seen videos of the Half Life alpha from 1997:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/01 ... ife-alpha/

"Surface Tension" map added to Black Mesa mod:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/01 ... lack-mesa/

Half-Life 2 Walks The Dinosaur: Jurassic Life
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/01 ... ssic-life/

Seriously weird to see some assets that were not used, and some echoing the familiar. Also the whole engine feeling like Doom!

You mean Quake surely?

Never played Quake, so it feels Doom-y to me More the character movement and look than the true 3D movement of course

Black Mesa completed this evening ! That was soooo great ! So many additions to the original level design, great puzzles. That's a pure hit !
I hope we won't wait too much time for the Xen part, even if it's not the most interesting part of the game, I'd love jumping between floating rocks and fight giant alien spiders !

Black Mesa is going commercial! Fantastic news for all those dedicated developers.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013- ... al-product

Free update to Half Life 2 just released on Steam:
http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/hal ... -on-steam/

A couple of specualtive articles abut the long-awaited-but-increasingly-unlikely Half Life 3:

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/new ... e-20160708
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainmen ... me/484073/

Oh. My. God.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2W0N3uKXmo

Also very interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9K0eJEmMEw

So I'm playing Black Mesa again now that v1.0 has finally been released with the Xen chapters. I've got all the way to Xen, and Xen was a revelation for the first few areas: they really expanded it massively and created a whole new vibe from the original game, with stunning set pieces and great level design. But then I reached Gonarch's Lair and it's all gone downhill... hours and hours of pointless wandering just to get to a final face off with the classic beast. This has been a boring, tiresome and frustrating level and it's really strange to experience that after such a great experience up to this point. Anyone else playing this and have an opinion?