In a recent Reddit AMA, Black Mesa’s multiplayer level designer Joe R, revealed that the highly anticipated Xen levels for Black Mesa will be only coming to the paid version. Joe R claimed that it’s currently impossible to add these levels in the mod version of Black Mesa as Xen will be built on the new engine that powers Black Mesa Steam.
As Joe R wrote when a fan asked whether Xen will be eventually added to the free mod version:
“It’s impossible. In order to make Xen look the best it possibly can look, we need to upgrade the engine with new features. These new features will make it incompatible with the mod version.”
Joe R later shed more light in this:
“Since the paid version is on a newer engine, we aren’t able to back-update the mod version with some of the features of the paid version. That being said, we are looking into porting bug fixes onto the mod version that are found in the paid version.”
Black Mesa is an amazing Total Conversion for Half-Life 2, and is easily one of the mods that really deserve to be considered ‘paid’ mods. In fact, Black Mesa is the mod that Valve should use as an example for its ‘paid’ mods experiment.
The team behind it has done an incredible job, though it’s a bit disheartening that the Xen levels won’t come to its mod version.
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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Black Mesa is no longer a mod it’s a full game.
No sh*t sherlock
Correct but the mod is still available for download at Mod DB. So the question wether or not the Xen level will be coming to the mod is still legitimite.
Im fine with this, they obviousy need to give people a reason to buy it over the mod and its worth every penny IMO.
Id love to see these developers working on more PC games in the future and the success of Black Mesa will help them get to that point.
Well it’s obvious.
Thats a bummer. 🙁 I guess i’ll have to buy it now, once they actually finish the Xen levels that is.
What is a Xen level?
Xen is the alien part (last part) of Half-Life. Black Mesa was released without it
Black mesa basically is a ‘remaster’ of half life 1?
“In order to make Xen look the best it possibly can look, we need to
upgrade the engine with new features. These new features will make it
incompatible with the mod version.”
PFFFHAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Here’s the truth they should have told us since it’s not actually that bad:
“We’re working full force on the paid version so we’re not adding any new content to the free version. Since that wouldn’t make us money. Duh.”
They are understandably afraid that a mere graphics update won’t bring in many purchases so they’re keeping additional content behind a paywall. It’s not like they owe us anything. Since their PR side reeks of Ubisoft let’s hope this is not indicative of the kind of product they will release.