Developers of Black Mesa release estimated date of completion and plans for final chapters

[ThinkWithPortals]

Source: http://www.pcgamer.com/black-mesa-team-outlines-xen-levels-timeline-aims-for-summer-launch/

 

Quote

Off the back of its Halloween update and coinciding sale, Crowbar Collective has announced a rough timeline for the Xen portion of its Black Mesa Half-Life remake. Still living in Early Access, Black Mesa's take on the otherworldly locale that rounded off Gordon Freeman's first outing will portray what Crowbar reckons Valve would have done "without the limitations of the time."

That means its maps have been redesigned and expanded—both in size and in number. "We wanted to use the holiday and the sale to announce our rough timeline for Xen. We are currently targeting a summer 2017 release," says Crowbar via an update post. "We will keep you up to date on our progress and we plan to show off some media as we finish developing Xen to give everyone a glimpse at what we are working on."

 

For those of you who don't know, Black Mesa is a fanmade/community project aiming to completely remake the entirety of Half-Life in the much newer Source engine, with revamped graphics, models, physics, SFX and environments.

 

The developers have been working on this for many years now, and they have managed to revamp most of the game, but a key part has been missing: the climactic Xen chapters and the final boss fights. The community has been asking about these chapters for literally years now, anticipating the completion of the project. The devs have said time and time again that Xen is indeed coming and that redoing this part of the game is very, very challenging, but now for the first time we get an estimated date of completion for this project, when Half-Life, one of the greatest games ever, will have been overhauled and brought up to modern standards: summer of 2017.

 

They also included pictures showing their plans for overhauling Xen:

 

 

 

What do you think? Personally I can't wait for Black Mesa to be finished. The thought of having one of my favourite games of all times (and one of the greatest of all time) completely overhauled to 2016 standards of graphics, sound and modelling really excites me. Half-Life, as good as it is, really hasn't held up visually and I think that once Black Mesa is done it will introduce a new audience to the franchise, who were previously put off by it's 1998 graphics and engine. Now they just need to redo Half-Life 2

[matrix07012]

Good, just bought it in sale.

[Mira Yurizaki]

Is it bad that I don't really care about Xen?

 

I kind of want them to work on an OpFor or Blue Shift update. Though I could've sworn someone was working on an OpFor update.

[xentric]

Cant wait. I bought Black Mesa thinking it was just to fan make game. Come to find out at the end it was remake of Half-Life 1.

[Anult]

So it happened after all.

 

Black Mesa will officially be finished before Half Life 3.

 

Never thought I would say that.

[PlayStation 2]

IIRC Black Mesa is built on the same version of the Source engine Counter-Strike: Global Offensive uses.

[dalekphalm]

I'll be glad when it is finally released - though it's widely acknowledged that Xen was the weakest part of HL1. I played Black Mesa when it first came out. And man, the fucking Soundtrack is amazing. You can download the whole thing from their site (with donations accepted).

[AshleyAshes]

5 hours ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Is it bad that I don't really care about Xen?

 

I kind of want them to work on an OpFor or Blue Shift update. Though I could've sworn someone was working on an OpFor update.

I kinda agree?  I mean, I feel Xen is necessary for complete, but it's also the stage of HL1 that bored me to tears.  The entire feel of the game changed the moment you jumped through that portal and entered Xen.  Though I'm hopeful that they make it much more interesting and I'll totally play it.

I played Black Mesa because I wanted to experience the awe and wonder that the classic Half-Life single player experience gave me back on my bad new eMachine eMonster 500a after Christmas 1999 and I wasn't disappointed when it came out in 2012.   Even on that reimagined 1080p DX9 tram ride I smiled and giggled as I relived an experience from more than ten years ago.

[unsubscribed]

I have played original HL 1 the moment it was released. Graphics were amazing at the time. There was nothing that well made at the time. It would be interesting to play it again using this new build.