Black Mesa News

We were excited last month to see that a new group of modders is taking up the project of recreating Half-Life: Blue Shift in the lovingly modernised Black Mesa, and now the introduction is available to play. Black Mesa: Blue Shift's first chapter, which involves another long tram ride deep into the heart of the Black Mesa Research Facility, is now accepting passengers.

HECU Collective, the group of modders building the mod, says it will be releasing Black Mesa: Blue Shift chapter by chapter as they're completed. The first, Living Quarters Outbound, is downloadable from ModDB now, and it's a nice peek at the enhancements coming to the original expansion.

Admittedly, Blue Shift starts out in much the same way that Half-Life did, and there's not a lot to do on the ride from the living quarters area to Barney Calhoun's unassuming little Security Station 3 desk other than to gawp at the shiny new textures and lighting. But there's plenty to look at: pipes shine, the headlights on other tram cars create realistic glows and coronas, and there are re-recorded voice lines to overhear as you head in for what's meant to be a normal day at work.

Read the rest of the story...

RELATED LINKS:

A new Half-Life: Blue Shift mod is in the works for Black Mesa

Black Mesa's final big patch is launching as a "free Definitive Edition update"

Black Mesa: Definitive Edition is a major revamp of the Half-Life remake, already in beta

• Added ability to change multiplayer character model/skin on new UI client ( Still needs translation strings).
  
  
  
• Implemented translators credits page.
  
  
  
  
• Experimental Weapon Wheel for controller (hud_fastswitch 2).
  
  
  
  
• Fixed mouse wheel support in options menu.
  
  
• Added support for multiplayer join menu navigation.
  
  
• Fixed issue with game reloading after video settings change. Game will now save settings if you navigate to another tab.
  
  
• Updated functionality for UI navigation with controller/keyboard.
  
  
• Fixed issues related to random selection of UI items.
  
  
• Implemented support for carousel navigation (New Game menu, Load Game menu, Save Game menu).
  
  
• Improved support to change game bindings with controller/keyboard.
  
  
• Added support to change key binding in cell with "A" button (Enter) press.
  
  
• Fixed problem with option lists not appearing in UI navigation with controller/keyboard.
  
  
• Update UI navigation functionality. Now users can navigate through alert boxes with controller/keyboard.
  
  
• Fixed problem with UI navigation being enabled while dev-console is opened.
  
  
• Fixed UI soft lock issue with disconnecting from single player game.
  
  
• Fixed UI soft lock issue with disconnecting from multiplayer game.
  
  
• Disabled default keyboard navigation functionality. It causes scroll over items and prevents custom UI navigation functionality work.
  
  
• Added highlight to menu button that has active state to show user selection when navigating with controller/keyboard.
  
  
• Update UI navigation logic. Added logic to store selected UI item when navigating to next level of menu depth (to be able to select it again when the user goes up one level of depth tree ).

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Gearbox Software is most commonly associated with the Borderlands series nowadays, but decades ago it was also responsible for developing Half-Life: Blue Shift. This was a 2001 add-on to Valve's original Half-Life, which told the story of that fateful day at the Black Mesa Research Facility from the perspective of Gordon's security guard pal, Barney Calhoun. Now that FPS game is making the jump into Black Mesa, thanks to a group of modders called the HECU Collective.

The HECU Collective means for Black Mesa: Blue Shift to be exactly what you'd expect: an update of Half-Life: Blue Shift featuring all the enhancements and new features found in the modernised Black Mesa. The original Blue Shift, released several years after Half-Life, added an 'HD texture pack' that gave Half-Life a crisper look, and the leap should be all the more noticeable now, 20 years later.

Blue Shift isn't a long game - in fact, it can be finished in a single sitting - and it's the rare game told from the perspective of a low-level mook. You get to see a lot of the stuff going on behind the scenes in Gordon Freeman's story, and eventually even make a trip to Xen.

Read the rest of the story...

RELATED LINKS:

Black Mesa's final big patch is launching as a "free Definitive Edition update"

Black Mesa: Definitive Edition is a major revamp of the Half-Life remake, already in beta

Half-Life: Alyx is "free marketing, basically" for Black Mesa