Black Mesa Source - Release Date

The Game Room
21

So, anyone playing it so far? I’ve gotten right up to where the military shows up and I’m taking a break now.

So far, I think I actually like it more than the original Half Life. The voice acting is pretty good, except for the female scientist who sounds a bit mechanical. I can’t tell if the voice actor for the Eli Vance cameo is bad, or if I’m just hearing the fact that I know he’s supposed to be Eli and doesn’t sound the same. Kleiner’s voice actor was okay though.

My only complaints, really, are more source engine problems than game problems – it loads a bit too frequently for my tastes, but I can’t remember how often the original HL loaded. There’s also a bit of slowdown from time to time, especially if you have your flashlight on around a bunch of particle effects.

Overall they made the game a little easier, they give you security guards far more often, at least in the beginning. They also changed the very beginning post-cascade quite a bit, spoilered for any who want to experience it:

Instead of getting a crowbar and pistol relatively fast, they have a security guard accompany you. You can either hide in the corner or pick up the flares and throw them at zombies. I mostly just ended up hiding in the corner since the guard could handle it himself for the most part.

The AI for the guards and such is actually pretty good, they still occasionally shoot you in the back, but it’s pretty rare. They do get out of your way, and I think the coolest thing is that they’ll tell you to check your six if there’s an enemy sneaking up on you (can’t remember if HL2 did that).

Despite them making it a little easier because of all the guard escorts – they seem to have beefed up the houndeyes and bullsquids. Houndeyes are very hard to kite with a crowbar now – even fighting them with a pistol can be dicey since they seem to have the ability to pull off their attack faster and with a bigger range (though it seems to be a cone in front of them rather than a full circle now). Bullsquids fire a scattershot instead of a concentrated burst now too so it can be pretty difficult to dodge. The bullsquid from the ice room I actually had to resort to grenading.

There were a few cute easter eggs and references, like

Dr. Kleiner thinking the headcrab that teleports into the tank after the cascade was cute. And Eli being worried about his family.

So far, bar the voice acting hiccups, I’d probably believe you if you told me Valve developed it. It’s an absolutely top notch game, period.

ETA: Though jumping over lasers seems like even more of a bitch this time around, but then I’ve always hated crouch jumping.

They’ve also added some improvements over things I thought were silly in all versions of HL(2), specifically they got rid of flashlight battery and limited sprint (you still can’t shoot while sprinting, though).

22

There’s a lot of crap in the world, but there are a lot of really generous people who share their talents on the net for free.

23

I just finished downloading and am installing now. Can’t wait to suit up :smiley:

24

Got to On a Rail. I’m taking a break because I HATE On a Rail. So far I’m having about as much trouble on Black Mesa normal as I usually have on Half-Life 2 Hard. It does feel a lot easier than the original HL though, which I have a tendency to turn the cheats on for – maybe I’ve just gotten better at Half Life though. The Carbine (or I heard it was a Carbine – the “assault rifle”) is feeling kind of useless though, even at range the shotgun seems to be the better choice-- at extreme range the magnum. I just find myself burning through ammo for it, not getting many kills, and then switching back to the shotgun (or magnum for range). I don’t remember it having this little killing power. It certainly wasn’t as strong as either of those guns before, but it feels REALLY wimpy in this game – and has such a bad ammo/kill ratio that it’s pretty much useless unless you’re going through a room of grunts with ammo for it. This is ignoring the secondary fire grenade launcher, of course – that gibs whole groups of enemies gloriously.

I think they put more Magnum ammo in the game. I don’t remember using the Magnum much in HL, but that may be because I was paranoid/being an ammo hoarder. They give you ammo for it often enough that if you only use it when you need to make pinpoint 1-2 hit kills (which isn’t that infrequently if you take hits like me and then need to play sniper for a while), it’s very good.

Did anybody else have trouble with the tentacle monster? I felt like its AI was screwed up, exploding things didn’t grab its attention like it’s supposed to. Oftentimes the tentacle nearest you would just end up not moving. Eventually I just resorted to tanking/dodging it on the way up the silo to press the button.

25

I don’t believe it. I’ve been waiting forever for this, and I have to go away for the weekend!!!

26

Yeah, I’m seeing that too. It doesn’t seem to notice when I throw grenades or satchel charges. I’m having to just wait for it to randomly pay attention to the other side of the room, then running for the next door before it notices me again.

27

I downloaded the game yesterday. I am very far, almost to the Lamda reactor.

The levels aren’t 100% same as the original, but this isn’t always a bad thing. Seems they have omitted some of the sillier puzzles, like the one where there’s electrified water on the floor and you have to put some boxes to jump on.

But some good scenes miss too. I liked On a Rail on the original. Now it is too short. Also there was a scene in the original with an elevator. I would drop a satchel, send the elevator up where marines were waiting and blow them to pieces.

I play the game with everything maxed out and do not have any issues. Loading takes less than 10 seconds and the loading points are far apart, like in the original. Mind you, I have a rather powerful rig, Intel i7, lots of RAM, SSD and an ATI 6870.

I really liked the magnum in the original game, but yes, you get to it rather late (it is at the bottom of the tentacle monster pit) and there wasn’t enough ammo. I like it that you get it early now.

28

Remember that I was very early on, the Tram ride alone has three or four loading screens (and did in the original HL too I think), so it was skewed. It does load fast, but I forgot that they get a lot farther apart when you get into the meat. My rig is no slouch, Radeon HD 5970, 4-core 8-thread 3.2GHz i7, 12GB DDR3 RAM. I still get a little bit of noticeable framerate drop when there’s lots of fire – but ONLY if I also have my flashlight on. It’s one of those things where it probably only drops to 25-30FPS or so – nothing terrible, but low enough that I can tell.
Also, something I didn’t know about: Xen isn’t in the game, the game stops at the warp. Apparently Xen is going to be released next year as a separate game entirely, presumably with completely original levels since Xen sucked in HL.

29

Fat chance.

Seriously, I never really got into the Half-Life games, even with owning the Orange Box. (To be honest, I bought it used and just for Portal.) Is it worth giving it a shot? And how well would it work on my laptop, seeing as how my desktop is dead?

30

I’m very impressed by how professional everything is. I looked up some HL1 screenshots, and the difference is staggering. Even though the environments are kinda samey (underground lab, underground bunker, underground office, underground lab, etc) the environments feel very different and it’s hard to get lost.

One of the touches that stands out to me is very simple; the static effect when you get close to radioactivity. Even though there seems to be no effect to Freeman’s health, the effect works almost on a subconscious level to give you that ‘get the FUCK out of here’ feeling.

I haven’t touched a FPS since the original Wolfenstein, and I’m glad about the ‘easy’ mode and the bee gun.

31

Another fun detail (Spoilered because it’s an enemy that shows up later in the game)

The assassins that show up actually have long-fall boots like Chell from Portal has: http://wiki.blackmesasource.com/File:Femassassin.jpg

32

Yes… I noticed that. I spent a lot of time looking at their feet what with starting that fight with 1HP left. At least they’re not nigh invisible like they used to be.

33

I just played through the chapter Residue Processing, and I’m thinking the physics engine in the new version is breaking some of the platforming puzzles. There are at least three rooms where I’ve looked at the difficult moving platform jumping puzzle that you’re supposed to solve to pass the room, declared ‘fuck that!’, and then proceeded to find enough barrels and crates to build a ramp to just climb to the exit to the room instead.

I also managed right after launching the missile to get into a hallway you aren’t supposed to be able to enter. I didn’t realize you were supposed to double back, and instead used a barrel and crowbar to smash a window in a locked door, and then found myself in a short corridor with broken textures and no exit. Oops.

34

The only downlod links I can find on the site are for some shit called 7zip or File Opener.

After searching all over hells 1/2 acre I found what I think is the actual game from AtomicGamer but the best download rate I’ve gotten so far is 22 kbs.

No game in the world is worth this.

Any suggestions before I throw in the towel?

35

There are two files you need, the .7z file, which is just a 7zip archive, a slightly different archive than a zip – and the .exe, which will use the 7zip decompression algorithm, even if you don’t have the actual program installed, to extract the 7zip and put the files in the right place.

It’s very likely that a lot of their bandwidth is really low on their mirrors since so many people have downloaded this month, so I think they recommend using the torrent to download both: BlackMesaNewTrackers

Though you do need to install software like uTorrent or Vuze to use a torrent file, of course. Alternatively, just download the 7z file you see from the site along with the .exe, because that’s what you’ll get anyway.

ETA: Most installers are in reality just self-extracting zip, 7zip, RAR, or proprietary file compression archives, you just don’t notice because they roll it all into one file instead of two. I don’t know why BM didn’t do this, but they may have just not been experienced enough to know how to make it one file instead of two – or they wanted to provide the option to run the game from the download directory without installing it to Steam.

36

I just looked at the 7z file, you may want to do the torrent anyway. The file is over 3GB and a lot of browsers can’t download files over 3GB (or 2.5-ish, it seems to break around 2.8 IME). They can try, but they usually start having problems and get endlessly stuck around 2.7-2.8GB downloaded because of filesystem size limits, so most people recommend using a download manager or torrent for files > 2-3GB because they have code to handle when the file hits the breaking point (unfortunately I don’t know the technical facts, I hear it has to do with filesystem block size).

Alternatively, they got greenlit on Steam Greenlight and as long as Valve is cool with the mod getting recognition on Steam, in a couple months you may just be able to download it directly from Steam.

37

I’m up to the ninja assassin level. So far, I think the game is great. Very glad they chose not to limit flashlight and sprinting, but I also think they made more situations where you need the flashlight. I find that a little annoying. It’s fine for atmosphere now and then, but what’s wrong with light most of the time?

Also seem to get hung up on objects more than in other HL games. Like if you’re walking on uneven surfaces or there are objects. Gordon will just stand still until you crouch and crawl away. That happens a lot, especially in the On a Rail sequence when there are many surfaces you have to step up on.

But any criticisms are obviated by the fact that they did this for free, and did it very well!

38

One other thing I realized is not a good change…

In other HL games when selecting weapons, you press 3 once and you get the machine gun, twice for the shotgun and three times for the crossbow. In Black Mesa - perhaps thinking this would be helpful - they’ve made it so if you’re holding one of those weapons and press the 3 button it automatically gives you the next one down the list.

This has caused me to frequently get the wrong one when I’m in a hurry. I’d much rather I always got the same weapon from performing the same action. Not a form of “smart” weapon selection that ends up causing me problems.

39

First things first…

I am clearly an idiot, let’s just get that out of the way.
Now that we’ve established that, can someone please tell me how to install the GD thing?

I have a file called “BlackMesa.7z” that’s 3.11 GB (3,343,315,892 bytes).
I have something called Mega Zipper that starts when I double click the file and then, nothing.

It sits there and says “Loading” forever (last time I tried I gave it 10 hours) without apparently doing a damn thing.

Given the fact that we’ve already established that I’m an idiot can someone please tell me what I need to do?

40

See post #35.