Fans resurrect Half-Life video game

BBC News - Fans resurrect Half-Life video game

 

great news. this was the first ever REAL game i played. before that it was space invaders,asteroids,donky kong,pac man etc
+rep to you for bringing it to the community's attention.

 

Do i get to kill dem headcrabs??

 

nope, you get to hug them instead

 

Awesome thanks :3 ye

 

This is ace news, I have been following and waiting for years and gave up hope of a release and then I see this news!

 

Thanks for the heads up. Rep+.
So is this that Black Mesa Source mod I head while I still was at school?

 

Awesome! I've been waiting for this since 2005. I'll be looking forward to playing a Half-Life marathon with this and then HL2 and its episodes.

 

Community driven improvements is what will keep games like this going. There are many games like this I like to see a reboot of.

 

I hope I remember about this on the 14th.

 

Looks like it will be released on Steam too!

 

Cool deal. Gonna snatch me up some of this.

 

Subscribed... So I don't forget.

 

It's sad to say that I haven't played either HL or HL2 :<

What is it like?

 

It's like a first person shooter. The immersion factor is what makes it so great and what made the original so revolutionary. There are no levels (unique for 1998). The AI is moderately intelligent (again, unique for 1998). The main character is a silent hero, essentially a blank canvas for the player to impart his experiences onto.

The original was a huge breath of fresh air for the FPS genre and the series is legendary because of that. The later installments are less revolutionary but are still exceedingly well crafted.

 

Wow, that sounds somewhat really good. I'm going to see if I can get a hold of the original first

 

Just to clarify, there are "levels" but they all blend together into one seamless narrative. What was truly revolutionary for the time was how the story unfolded. Everything happened around, to, and by the player either through his or her actions or real-time scripted sequences (rather than cut scenes).

 

Steam has the Half Life anthology for 15 bucks and the Half Life complete pack for 40. The complete pack includes both games, all the expansions, and some extra stuff like the original team fortress and hldm. The anthology is just the first game and the expansions for it.

 

HL1 is awesome, but the game suffers from what by today's standards would be considered shortcomings in terms of mechanics, fps have evolved for better and worse. I don't particularly miss those platforming sections in first person that required millimeter scale precision or the not so fun times i had trying to seamlessly climb off and on ladders. This isn't really a problem, but expect the currently available versions of HL1 to play like a 1998 game, an awesome one, but some things might feel old and outdated. It still is worth playing, i had a real blast with it and HL2 back in 2005-2006 and played HL2 recently as well, i gotta say, i still enjoyed it a lot.

I expect the remake will bring today's mechanics and tech to the game making it even more awesome, so if you want to play the first one, i'd wait for the 14th which is in two day anyways.

 

I'll only play this again if they add iron sights to the game. I hate crosshairs that Valve loves so much. I think crosshair in FPS games is about as lame as it can get.

 

It's funny because I fired up HL1 recently and the lack of aiming down the sights was actually jarring to me. Funny how something that didn't really exist less than 10 years ago is now a defacto part of the experience.

 

I can't recall a game that didn't let you turn it off. Though I do see the need to have iron sights as a replacement.

 

Yeah, it's really lame to see CS:GO streams of people killing each other without iron sights, using crosshair.

 

I stopped playing the original after seeing how much Black Mesa improved on it. Why play the original? Black Mesa is like the original on steroids.

 

It's finally available.
Has any one had a chance to play it?

 

Black Mesa isn't the whole game.

 

I know its not the whole game but its still more than enough for me due to the higher quality (for the time being).

By the way everyone, I had a lot of trouble downloading Black Mesa until finding a fast torrent with 27206 seeders. MD5 is legit too.

 

I think iron sights are lame. You spend the game staring down sights, and it just ruins the experience.

Implement iron sights and then there is no reason NOT to use them. Games want to encourage iron sights and so accuracy penalties are applied to 'firing from the hip' and huge accuracy boosts to iron sights and firing. Very few games have done it well - maybe the original day of defeat, red orchestra and BF1942/BF2 where its still impossible to spray with iron sights.

Just encourages camping and slows the pace of the game down.
I wouldn't be playing the new CS if they added iron sights.

 

How long is it then?
Fired up yesterday a bit. Mods did a great job.
Also they used "genuine" Eli and Isaac models in the right places. Dr. Kleiner looks so cool young .

Honestly, iron sights FTW. There are some games where there are no crosshairs options. Even if you paint a dot in the middle of the screen, it still doesn't shoot in the exact same location.
But I must admit, it's mostly game dependent. For CS/DoD/TF I couldn't imagine playing with ironsights. RO on the other hand where game flow is a bit slower ironsights are a big part of the gameplay.

 

Got it a few hours ago, already in chapter 4. Man, I feel like a kid again, this game is absolutely awesome

 

I don't get it. If you spend whole games staring down the sights you're doing it wrong.

 

I started playing it last night and I'm enjoying it so far. It brings me back memories of playing the original so many years ago!

 

Eh? I actually prefer iron sights though I'm not going to complain if they aren't there. Definitely won't make or break the game.

And there are plenty of breaks in 'staring down the sights' in almost every game that implements it. As long as they give you the proper POV angle penalty for doing it its done right. Popping in and out of sights is exactly how you would behave in reality. And vision blockage is the price for some accuracy. It would be extremely rare to find someone that can be accurate without sights.

I know fallout 3's shooting mechanics is only a small part of the whole if the game, but I love how they handled vats in the new 3rd person iteration of the series. Its sort of the sight mode with a cool down. Shooting guns out of the super mutant overlords hands is a good tactic. That tri-laser hurts.

It seems you have more issues with implementation of iron sights than the mechanic itself.

 

Playing Black Mesa this very moment.. Pretty impressive actually! And it brings back a lotta classic old priceless memories !!

 

It's beyond impressive - a work of art. The attention to detail is unreal.. I'm loving every second of it. It's GOTY IMO, I almost cried whilst playing through.

 

You lose the interaction with the gun itself when you have iron sights. Firing is much more alive when you can see the gun shaking and reverberating in your own "hands". It seems to just take you out of the environment continually by blocking out other visual stimuli.

It just slows down gameplay by implementing such a mechanic in arcade shooters.

It works in some games that I mentioned, but the fact that iron sights are now "industry standard" is just sheep behaviour without devs actually thinking about pros and cons.

And the way it is implemented is hardly 'realistic' either.

Anyway, Black Mesa has been terrific. Any idea when they will finish the game?

 

The game ran perfectly, so far. I haven't encoutered any bugs and I'm already through chapter 8. Playing it on hard and enjoying it. It does bring back good memories with every zone rediscovered. The team did a terrific job! The scrips are good and the level design is great. I would like to hear Gabe Newell's opinion on it.
Hell! They should hire these guys, even if it took them this much time.
People call it a mod, but the shear size and complexity makes it a game IMO! The end product is nothing short of what games studios make these days.
Really impressed!

 

I bought the original half-life from ebay for £2 , it looks very dated, also buggy if you stay on a lift once it gets to the bottom of the shaft you cannot move, so you have to jump off early, this is any lift, I am still going to buy the rest of the series.

John.

 

there's generally a movement speed penalty applied to aiming down sights, and your view is often restricted dramatically as well.

 

Black Mesa Review and Trailer

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Black Mesa review &ndash; Gordon Bennett | Metro.co.uk

John.

 

I'm probably gonna give this a go tonight. I don't mind the fact that they've left out the Xen part, that was easily the worst section of the game.

 

How'd you guys get it to DL?

I installed that SDK file through steam already. I went onto the official Black Mesa site and used their DL mirrors, but it's either it won't DL for me or it'll have a bunch of things it wants me to DL before I can actually DL the mod.

 

use the torrent:

Black Mesa - Download

 

Nvm. I found the gamefront mirror and it worked just fine. Just 3 files to download, put them in 1 folder, and then run the executable. Playing it right now =)

The only thing that's bugging me is the screen resolution can't go any higher than the 1024 x 768, even though my other games can run it at higher and I can't get rid of the black bars on the sides. Not bad though...time to be up a weebit later than usual.

 

What are you talking about?? You can change the resolution! I'm playing on 1920x1080. All you have to do in Video Settings is first change the aspect ratio from letterbox(4:3) to widescreen(16:9) and then the resolution options show up.

 

never mind this post....fix'd the issue. Sorry for the double post.

 

Ahhh isee isee. Thanks Prasad! Got it fixed now =) +rep

 

I am playing BlackMesa i am at a point with the huge lift, but the button does not work there is a few forklift trucks around, i can see a vent to get into, i have to climb up a few stacked boxes, but i cannot jump high enough, it`s the space bar right? , is there an extra high jump?

Thanks

John.

 

Space bar + CTRL to do the crouch jump

 

That worked thanks.

John.