Crowbar Collective has announced that the final version of the Source Engine remake of Half-Life, Black Mesa, is now available on Steam. In order to celebrate this announcement, the team has also released a brand new trailer that you can find below.
Black Mesa is a fan remake of the first Half-Life game in Source Engine. The game hit Early Access on May 5th, 2015. However, Crowbar Collective has been working on it for the past 15 years.
Furthermore, the Black Mesa team has revealed the full patch notes for version 1.0. According to the changelog, the team has done a complete overhaul pass on the combat design and guidance for all the earthbound levels. The team has also redesigned the HECU marine AI, upgraded the Vortigaunts AI, and built a new, modern user interface.
Below you can find the complete changelog for Black Mesa 1.0.
Have fun!
Black Mesa 1.0 Patch Notes
Game-Wide
Our time in Early Access gave us lots of opportunities to beta test new content and talk with our community. We took what we learned during the development of Xen, and applied it to the Earthbound Chapters.
- Improvements to every major combat arena in the game
- Redesigned puzzles for clarity and intention
- Enhance environments to highlight objectives
Art
We took a number of sections throughout the game and updated them visually to help the game feel more cohesive. We also made better use of the dynamic lights that we created for Xen.
Artificial Intelligence
HECU
- Better utilize cover and movement in general
- Put suppressing fire on players last known location and where they expect you to be
- Use grenades more strategically and more often
- New environmental analysis lets them track, flank, and move in for the kill
- Use weapons and abilities depending on their class
- Occasionally use RPGs (grenadiers)
- Use under barrel MP5 grenade launcher (commanders)
- Drop med kits properly (medics)
- Marines wearing a gas-mask will now use alternate, radio-filtered, deepened voice lines, which sound much more like the original HECU!
- Use more voice lines and communication
Vortigaunts
- Dodge on spawn or dodge when player aims at Vort
- Better navigate to the player
- Use close-range charge attack (Dispel)
- Use dynamic lights when attaching
- Vorts AI now behave differently depending on how brave or scared they are feeling, which is based on damage taken / done to the enemy.
Balance
- Slightly nerfed assassins to have lower health and accuracy
- Nerfed Abrams 50 cal damage to make it less murderous
- Buffed Apache 30mm damage slightly
Code Fixes
- Optimized sun shadows
- Optimized dynamic lights
- Fixed bug with popping sun shadows
- Removed view punch from smaller caliber weapons
- Fixed trip mine hitbox
- Added dynamic lights to portal effects
- Fixed NPC teeth being black or bright colors
- Made sure all tripod and ceiling turrets use tracers
- Fixed gravity in Earthbound
- Fixed HECU calling wrong SMG animation
- All new, modern user interface
- Expanded options with descriptions and performance cost
- Fixed HEV chargers giving you 76 charge instead of 75
- Fixed slide sound effect playing each time the player crouched
- Changed tank machine gun accuracy for better game play
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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15 years of work comes to conclusion, must be an amazing feeling for the devs
Indeed.
they’d be the most incompetent group of people if it took 15 years of continuous work to release this game.
What did you do in the last 15 years?
a lot.
Masturbation doesn’t count though.
it did for your mother.
1. It was probably not their main job.
2. its started as simple hobby just a conversion mod.
3. their resources and manpower are probably not on par with even a budget games developer size.
4. it was not just a simple coat of pain its almost a whole new game with different design,sound and voice acting everything was reworked and reimagined.
5. they are not professionals and yet they strove to finish this project compare it to many “professionals” on kickstarter that run away with the money or deliver a product with many of the features promised missing.
And what did you do in 15 years apart being an internet troll?
I don’t know call hardvard university and check my name with them, they’ll let you know.
I dont think they’ll approve of what their janitor is posting online…
Its just as good for us that had to wait that long 🙂 Its a Win Win for everyone!
Finally some good news for the HL franchise
Damn, this game is nothing but wonderful!
Gonna play it again, but now with a trainer to freely explore and have even more fun.
Best remake for the best game ever.
They even made Gordon proud <3 xD!
They even managed to have the original voice actor for Gordon Freeman
Well, Im gonna play it again I guess! Delete all the saved games, update everything and start from scratch.
I havent played the new Xen yet so it gives me something to look forward to at the “end” of the regular chapters.
Now the question is, do I go in drunk or wait a few levels…..
Awesome trailer and amazing achievement!
I dont know about you guys, but this is the best thing that ever happened in gaming for me. Age of empires 2 Remaster comes close. This is what i always wanted and i finally got it. I’m sure i’m not alone. Half-Life 1 was one of the first truly epic games and the first modern FPS. Doom and goldeneye were a pale comparison.
Anyways, here is a comparison if anyone wants to see how good it compares to the free 2012 mod.
MOD 2012 VS Black Mesa 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfUU8Y0CG7E&lc=z23ihbgjfon3xx5w304t1aokgij110w4mphgs3g0nkrrrk0h00410
So how come the finished product only features one choice of anti-aliasing, FXAA?
best remake