Black Mesa Source

[Thrik]

I think it looks great. HL1 has aged so much I literally can't bring myself to play it anymore, whereas this looks aesthetically appealing even if it's not sporting the same fidelity we enjoy nowadays.

[PhilipK]

Judging from the screenshots I think the actual art content looks better than a lot of big retail titles art now.

Looking forward to play still

[dux]

The only person who said it looked bad was rick, and he was taking the piss. The only thing I said that looked wrong was the alien grunt.

stop getting your panties in a bunch.

[Skjalg]

Anyways, after even valve themselves went out and said that they wanted to shift to doing episodic content, plus the fact that half-life is way longer than half-life 2.

Why didn't the black mesa team decide to divide this up into chapters and release them one by one? I mean, why do they need to dump 10 hours of game play after 12 years of development, when most people have forgotten about the engine, hell half of the people that even follow the mod probably don't even got half-life 2 installed at that point. Why do the exact same thing that most "how to make a mod"-guides tell you not to do.

It just doesn't make any sense to me.

But, don't get me wrong, if they manage to pull off a release after all this time, then its a huge achievement.

[-HP-]

Still looks ok to me tbh. It's not Crysis or Uncharted but no one expects it to.

[Jetsetlemming]

I haven't exactly timed them, but HL1 and HL2 feel pretty equal in length (really super long compared to modern games) in my memory. Also HL2's a much more memorable course, HL1's levels all kinda blur together in my mind. It was super advanced for its day but it's still a corridor shooter with lots of reused content and tricks. HL2 on the other hand is nearly constantly changing as you go along, at the very least in environment. HL1 has what, four types of locations? Hallways, production areas, desert, Xen?

[Skjalg]

HL clocks in on about 10 hours, while Hl2 took people about 6 hours to complete iirc.

Half-life is blurry in your memory because its probably a long time since you played it, and if you generalize the locations like that then you could say that HL2 had nothing more than a eastern looking city and a hallways in a combine tower. Go watch a speed run of HL1 and you'll see that it has a lot of different memorable locations to offer. You mentioned desert, but i distinctly remember the first time i saw the "surface" when coming out of that pipe (which is feature in the trailer posted above), but I also remember the dam where you had to swim down and open a hatch. I also remember the train ride in, where you glimpsed this helicopter with sun rays coming down from cracks in the rock. All "desert" locations, but memorable in its own ways.

[Sentura]

hl2 took me 14 hours to complete, i think hl was of the same length if not a bit longer

[Thrik]

Haha, yes I think it's fair to say you burned through them pretty fast Skjalg. I was at about 12 hours for Half-Life 2, and I took way longer with HL1 (partly because of not being particularly great at games back then).

[Skjalg]

http://www.steampowered.com/status/ep1/ep1_stats.php Average completion time (5h 40m)

http://www.steampowered.com/status/ep2/ep2_stats.php Average completion time (6h 53m)

So I guess you guys are right if you are thinking of these two combined ^^

[D3ads]

Half-Life 1 took me about 2 weeks on first playthrough lol, the AI was state of the art back then and it took many hours of tearing my hair out trying to beat the funting human grunts and I didn't know how to circle-strafe back then as well which didn't help matters. Now I can take them all out without hardly taking a scratch

Are you guys seriously saying this looks bad? Sure it isn't next-gen mindblowing graphics, but it still looks extremely good. It's a mod, and an epic huge mod at that. It is amateur developers doing this for free in their spare time. Of course it is going to take a long time and every aspect isn't going to be perfection.

Geez, mapcore is the last place I'd expect people to jump on a dedicated group of modders because they're using a SLIGHTLY dated engine. For shame.

This one speaks the truth, seriously, HL1 has many different enviroments to counter for, there must be over a gig of props just on their own...

[Squad]

Why didn't the black mesa team decide to divide this up into chapters and release them one by one?

My guess would be because BMS is a total conversion, and not a map pack. So even to be able to release one chapter, you'd still need to finish all the code, weapon/character models, art, etc (except if some of that stuff would only appear in later chapters, but in comparison that'd probably be not that much).

[Skjalg]

Why didn't the black mesa team decide to divide this up into chapters and release them one by one?

My guess would be because BMS is a total conversion, and not a map pack. So even to be able to release one chapter, you'd still need to finish all the code, weapon/character models, art, etc (except if some of that stuff would only appear in later chapters, but in comparison that'd probably be not that much).

yes, but we all know that what takes a lot of time here is the levels and art for the levels. a remake of all the guns and the monsters for the "first" episode wouldn't take THAT long. and having something released would speed team morale and get the second release out of the door pretty quickly.

And then when the balls start rolling... well just look at hourences total conversion in UDK;)

[Jetsetlemming]

HL clocks in on about 10 hours, while Hl2 took people about 6 hours to complete iirc.

Half-life is blurry in your memory because its probably a long time since you played it, and if you generalize the locations like that then you could say that HL2 had nothing more than a eastern looking city and a hallways in a combine tower. Go watch a speed run of HL1 and you'll see that it has a lot of different memorable locations to offer. You mentioned desert, but i distinctly remember the first time i saw the "surface" when coming out of that pipe (which is feature in the trailer posted above), but I also remember the dam where you had to swim down and open a hatch. I also remember the train ride in, where you glimpsed this helicopter with sun rays coming down from cracks in the rock. All "desert" locations, but memorable in its own ways.

I tried to replay it back during the 10th anniversary $1 sale, but only got about five hours in. It was taking a long time and didn't feel like I was going anywhere fast and it wore on me

Now, the expansions, Blue Shift and Opposing Force, those are completely beatable due to their shorter length, and I had a bunch of fun replaying OpFor after giving up on HL1.

[Erratic]

I still say OpFor is better than the original Half-Life.