Black Mesa: Source Gameplay

[Lionheart]

I'm really looking forward to this

 

[qubit]

Actually that's not true. It takes long to develop a game from scratch. You have to first outline what you even want to do, concept images, concept graphics, game plot, problems during development, decisions during production etc etc. Things can go as far as how green should the grass be or should commandos soldiers have green camo or the grey urban camo.
All this can accumulate loads of work time.

In case of Black Mesa, they had everything done already, they just had to remake it. Which still requires time, granted, but nowhere near as much as doing it from scratch.

Perhaps, I dunno. I think you should direct this comment at benetanegia, as he knows a lot more about this than me.

One thing I do know though, is that remaking something with improved graphics and sound won't be trivial either.

 

[Mindweaver]

Actually that's not true. It takes long to develop a game from scratch. You have to first outline what you even want to do, concept images, concept graphics, game plot, problems during development, decisions during production etc etc. Things can go as far as how green should the grass be or should commandos soldiers have green camo or the grey urban camo.
All this can accumulate loads of work time.

In case of Black Mesa, they had everything done already, they just had to remake it. Which still requires time, granted, but nowhere near as much as doing it from scratch.

All good points, but these guys don't make games for a living. They have been making this game in there spare time. I'm sure if they had a kickass studio, and a big bank they could have finished this years ago. We are lucky they are even completing this game.. I mean most people would have gave up working on something for so long, and not getting any kind of reward. And right now the only reward I see them getting for completing this will be that it's a hit and everybody loves it! So, all the people calling it "Black Mesa: Forever" should think about what they are saying and not be so harsh.. Last time I checked "Duke Nukem: Forever" made money after the long wait. What's these guys getting? A pat on the back?

 

[Benetanegia]

In case of Black Mesa, they had everything done already, they just had to remake it. Which still requires time, granted, but nowhere near as much as doing it from scratch.

Yeah, that's not something the actual developing team does and in established developers it's done concurrently with the development of the previous game. It takes 2 to 5 years of actual working on models, textures, level design, gameplay, testing...

Conceptualization of the game can take several years if you count from the time someone had some idea until it becomes a full fledged project but that's beyond the point.

And whoever says the BMS team didn't have to work on the concept, is really, really wrong. BMS is not only adding new models and textures, it's about porting the "feeling" of HL1 to a more modern FPS constructed from scratch in a completely different engine. It was all explained in blog-ish posts in their forum (not directly but if you followed them, you ended up learning the whole process). They had to decide what to change, how much to change and in which way they wanted it changed in order to make it a "modern" FPS without sacrificing changing what made HL such a great game. They also had to plan the development like any other developer does. No one would ever be able to acomplish what they did if they were just a bunch of unnorganized people and they weren't, you could feel this simply by the high requirements to join their team. There was a lot of thought behind BMS, even before they started and a lot after they were in development too. In several ways they might have wasted more time on conceptualization than the original HL team, since the original team knew what they wanted to do and only had to go about to doing it.

 

[RejZoR]

Yeah, they had to make concepts, you always have to when you're designing something, but like i said, you again know how zombies are suppose to look and how they attack. You just have to "facelift" them. Which is A LOT easier than making them from scratch. I mean it took probably ages for Valve to come up with zombies like we know thm and those screaming Houndeyes.

 

[Benetanegia]

Yeah, they had to make concepts, you always have to when you're designing something, but like i said, you again know how zombies are suppose to look and how they attack. You just have to "facelift" them. Which is A LOT easier than making them from scratch. I mean it took probably ages for Valve to come up with zombies like we know thm and those screaming Houndeyes.

It's not as simple as you make it, and it's concept artists who do that while modelers and texturers are doing the work concurrently for other models, but let's concede that.

Now, level design? HL1 levels were mostly empty, now you have to fill them with something to make it look 2004+ and this poses two problems. First (because the priority is to keep HL1's feeling) you have to know to which extent this emptiness comes down to level of technology and to which point it was made on purpose to create a determinate feeling or atmosphere (lonelyness for example), before the action kicks in (level of tech could not be it, because other areas were populated with details, a lot of it had to come from "isolation/relaxation of senses" before the action kicks in, something Valve had mastered). Level design is NOT knowing how to use the editor, is also knowing how to create the levels so that the desired gameplay mechanics can happen, or so that it tells or contributes to the story and mindset of the player. BMS team had to take all those empty rooms and create them to match 2004 standards. That's problem number 2. The have to actually design the levels. And just to reiterate it, because you can never stress that enough, designing those levels is NOT opening up the editor and putting 4 walls here, and a crate here... There's a reason that de_dust 2 is by far the most played CS map, for example. It's level design is almost flawless. And btw, while we are at it, CS, CS:S and CS:GO are perfect examples of how level design has much more to it than placing boxes and walls here or there and using better textures and more poligons.

 

[D007]

Modding sucks.. It is a thankless, stress fest, full of cry babies and unappreciative children.. I learned that lesson the hard way... No more modding for me..

 

[RejZoR]

@Benetanegia
I still stand by my argument. If you have the existing game which you want to remake, you just have to add more stuff and not ruin the original feel and in multiplayer games, not ruin the balance of the map. And thats basically it.

 

[Benetanegia]

Sure man, that's basically it. Simple.

 

[qubit]

Sure man, that's basically it. Simple.

Yup, it's "simple" in the same way as when I have to make up my own news story from one or two stories. On a bigger story, it can take hours and takes an awful lot of hard work and concentration. It's just the same with this mod, but on a waay bigger scale, so yeah, I won't belittle these modders efforts. Who are doing it for free. In their spare time. Respect.

 

[Benetanegia]

I also have to admit that with the simplicity glasses on, the world is beutiful tho. Try it.

World peace: get a bunch of people in a room. Sign peace. Simples.

World hunger: make food, give food. Yay!

 

[alexsubri]

Will I need HL1 or HL2 to play this?

 

[Mindweaver]

Will I need HL1 or HL2 to play this?

No, this will be a standalone source game. But you will need the Source SDK Base 2007 installed. Get it free on steam!

Only 2 hours left! Who is excited? I for one am pumped! I thought about making a new thread to ask this next question, but there is already to many threads.. So here goes.. What was your specs when you played HL1?

Mine was:
PII 400Mhz
128mb PC100
Monster Voodoo 2 8mb (awesome card)
2x 6gb harddrive (No raid just 2 drives)
12x cdrom
Soundblaster Live!

 

[brandonwh64]

What was your specs when you played HL1?

Mine was:
PII 400Mhz
128mb PC100
Monster 2 8mb (awesome card)
2x 6gb harddrive (No raid just 2 drives)
12x cdrom
Soundblaster Live!

Mine was:
AMD K6-3D 450Mhz
64mb PC100
Voodoo 3 2000
2GB Hard drive
8x cdrom
Soundblaster 16 PCI

 

[Mindweaver]

1:30 Left! I'm exited! Check out what someone said on the Black Mesa facebook page!

and check this out!
Here is the link to download the full res.

EDIT: My belly is hurting... I may need to go home... hehehe

 

[AphexDreamer]

To think I'm home when its only 20 minutes away and I have to leave for Class.

Will be thoroughly enjoying the crap out of it when I get home though.

THE BETS PART IS. I HAVE YET TO BEAT HL1
I've beaten everything from HL2 and up several times but HL1's graphics were just too old school for me to get into.

COMMENCE AMAZING COMMENTS BELOW!

 

[Mindweaver]

So.. No body else besides me and brandon wants to share there system spec's on the first Half Life play through? I figured everyone would eat that up... Come on post up guys...

EDIT: UNDER 10 MINUTES REMAINING!

 

[Wrigleyvillain]

I've beaten everything from HL2 and up several times but HL1's graphics were just too old school for me to get into.

Yeah me too. And at this point I don't know why I never ended up playing it like around 2001 or so. But never did..

 

[brandonwh64]

So.. No body else besides me and brandon wants to share there system spec's on the first Half Life play through? I figured everyone would eat that up... Come on post up guys...

EDIT: UNDER 10 MINUTES REMAINING!

As soon as the timer ran out the website crashed LOL

 

[Mindweaver]

As soon as the timer ran out the website crashed LOL

lol I've been watching it too.. lol I think they are putting up a new site. On my 1and1 site it could take a few minutes to update, maybe even up to 30 minutes.. That's if shit goes wrong.. lol

 

[1Kurgan1]

As soon as the timer ran out the website crashed LOL

Y2K!

 

[GLD]

I am looking forward to this.

 

[Mindweaver]

Y2K!

lol They just updated there facebook page... lol But like I said it may take a few minutes to get the new site up and running.

I just read that the site is about 90% loaded.. So just a few more minutes..

UP!!!!

NOPE still Loading on the back end..

 

[xBruce88x]

So.. No body else besides me and brandon wants to share there system spec's on the first Half Life play through? I figured everyone would eat that up... Come on post up guys...

EDIT: UNDER 10 MINUTES REMAINING!

AMD K6-2 500 O/C 550Mhz w/ 2MB Pipeline burst cache on motherboard
3x 256mb PC-133 SDRAM
Amptron 598-LMR "Super 7" AT motherboard
SiS 530 w/ 8mb shared memory
20GB Maxtor Fireball "slim" 3.5in hard drive IDE 100/133
Lite-On 4x/2x/24x CD-Rom
Windows 98SE w/ Plus! Edition modification (added some features that were later built into Win2k, or it was a mod adding features from win2k to 98se... I forget... it wasn't the official Plus! edition)
eMachines 19in CRT 1280x1024
350w AT power supply, generic brand.

Y2K!

I LOL'd

I guess I'll have to wait a little longer for BMS... Oh well.. back to my marathon of Black Lagoon.

 

[Wozzer]

Managed to get to the download manager by looking through the source.....
http://release.blackmesasource.com/pages/download_manager.html

Not getting much further with it. The second mirror seems better than Gamefront. Haven't tried the torrent.