Comments - natedgreat3

apparently there's something wrong with the "reply to comment" option hehe previous comment was for Jeppe

Oh don't worry, we're keeping all the best stuff until the game ;) Which would you rather have us show, the zombie scientist, or the zombie security guard or marine? Surface Tension has a single shot that is like 2 years old, and the marine commandos are one of 5 types of marines.

By now we hope its starting to become apparent that Black Mesa is a re-envisioning of Half-Life rather then a remake. We fully intend to keep the series canon but we also are ironing out flaws (yes there were many flaws hehe), varying enemy placements, changing HP and damage values, fleshing out all the levels, and in general adding lots and lots of touches and balances of our own. That's always been our goal, so while that sounds pretty scary, all the many changes we've shared with the public have been very well recieved, so we're confident we're on the right track.

Our goal is for Black Mesa to be Half-Life if Valve was making it today, not Half-Life with prettier graphics. There is a difference ;]

However, this is not something we can definitively show by screenshots or even gameplay videos... you have to play Black Mesa for yourself. So the team views people suggesting there's no creativity involved in this mod the same way we view people insisting the mod is dead: We comment occasionally, but mostly just sit back and watch, knowing they will ultimately be proven wrong =]

We need to tone down the flame war in here guys.

Wraiyth is very much entitled to his opinion and the mod team has made a point of listening to ALL critiques. Everybody stop flaming him for his opinion.

And Wraiyth you've probably figured out by now the vast majority of people are not agreeing with you, no matter how many walls of text you type out explaining yourself. So I'm not sure how much I'd bother at this point =P

lots more on the site, over 70 new shots I think the final count was.

whatever's happening to our site, I blame Santa Claus

unandpw has once again been banned on both his accounts. Unfortunately for him, writing DEAD 200,000 times on here and all the developer's profiles isn't going to do anything to make the mod die =D

Its really, really hard to estimate a build percentage. Even the development team can't agree on it =P Between that, and how much people seem to react to the slightest rumor of a change about it, the percentage will remain at 50% for now, we'll probably ratchet it up some more once we hit a major milestone, such as a beta.

All media images, except for the loader model, are actual, ingame models. The m4 has been heavily, heavily optimized and is actually a fairly small polycount.

Congratulations on making the top 100! :D best of luck to you guys

sooner then that ;)

We've opened up some "Critique Black Mesa" threads on our forums for you to critique our work => We do love taking C&C. Here's what we DON'T like. "Black Mesa sucks all your maps suck you guys suck. k bye." Or, similarly, what Wraiyth said, "you guys shouldn't have won a Visual Delight award your maps are bland k bye."

This doesn't do anything for the mod haha.. theres no suggestions on what to change, no HELP for us here, its just all negative. He didn't even mention what other mods deserved the award better then ours, and Kester had to coax him to reveal what maps he thought were bland. And even then, he was just specified Lambda Core, something about same textures, and no HDR and that was it. No help to us, all negative. (btw, we do have HDR in all our maps, and there is HDR in all screenshots.)

By all means, we welcome critiques of all kinds, no matter what they are. But its annoying when the "critiques" consist of vague generalized sentences. We certainly can't change anything listed in these types of suggestions, because "the map shots are so far nothing mind-blowing... it needs more work" is about the most vague sentence one could come up with. What, exactly, is Wraiyth suggesting we change? all our maps? =>

btw, thank you Moddb for our Visual Delight award. Its much appreciated :D

Nicely done guys =)

thanks man =) we'll have an update soon

A little less then 2 months ago we had an interview with Planet Half Life, with some new media.
Planethalflife.gamespy.com

Once again, use of the Doom 3 engine is not debatable whatsoever. We will NOT be using it in any way, shape, or form. It appears the main proponent of this (creoleplane) doesn't understand the essence of the HL series anyways, since he's mentioned cutscenes (none of the HL series have ever had any) and non-linear gameplay (HL series thus far have been completely linear, and yes that was on purpose).

The Doom 3 engine may boast more technical marvels then Source (even though that's debateable) but the extremely high system requirements, coupled with the overall plastic look of the engine made for a graphical experience that, to me, is technically superior to Source, but graphically inferior. Overuse of spec maps. Low poly environments and enemies. Sharp edged, black shadows. Almost non-existant physics. Horribly fake characters. These are things inherently wrong with the Doom 3 engine.

Lets not forget that the updated Source engine for Episode II will have dynamic shadows and lights, which is the only real feature the Doom 3 engine has that Source does not. We have no need for realtime weather effects since the player is underground for 80% of the game, destructible terrain isn't needed either. And lets not forget that Source has PHYSICS, something Doom 3 barely added. Cinematic physics in Episode II, which we hope to take advantage of, will only sweeten the deal.

So yea.. feel free to debate whether the Doom 3 engine is better then Source, but there's no question we'll be using Source for Black Mesa.

/steps off of soapbox

The website now has a temporary splash page. Clicking on it will redirect you to our public forums in GamerNode, which are very much alive and well. Once again, we are NOT dead, our public site was basically deleted by a hacking attack.

This temporary splash page will most likely remain in place until we launch the new website and the media release

holy crap you guys.. we release media 2 weeks ago and just b/c the website is off everyone thinks we're dead once again?

meh well I mean I personally don't care, I just find it hard to believe ppl are that stupid. If you wanna panic (or just troll) about Black Mesa being dead... then fine by me... you'll just be embarrased time and again :P

We do apologize about the website being off (even though it was never updated anyways haha) we have made the decision to leave it off until our new site, which has been in development for some time, is ready. Expect at least a few more weeks.

We may set up a forward though for the forums b/c I know Forums.gamernode.com is impossible to remember :D

anybody checked the planet half life home page? my what a pretty new website

Yea we are trying to track down the domain registration information so we can at least get a temporary page up on the site. Its been 2 years since we've needed to use the info haha.. stuff like that has a way of getting lost

When the new site comes up, it'll probably be launched with the media release.