Black Mesa News

Hope the new year started off great for everyone.

We are really happy with the progress we made this month. We wanted to show some of it off and keep the information flowing while we wrap up the last 5 chapters.

Gonarch
Our biggest effort went into getting the entirety of the Gonarch chapter arted. Now it is in the hands of our animators, who will take the artists hard work and destroy it!

Displacement/Sculpted/Arted - By Matt Young

Cinematic Physics - By Russ Briggeman

Nihilanth
No pretty pictures for this one, but we would be remiss if we didn’t mention we have made huge strides with the end boss of Xen. Our lead programmer Chetan Jaggi and lead animator Nate Ayres have worked together to build out an entire feature set of attacks, defenses, AI, as well as effects for the Nihilanth. Now we’re balancing all these features and building the planned finale. I’d normally say “more to come” but we probably won’t have any more updates on this last fight as we want to keep it a surprise for everyone.

Before and After
In October we revisited some of our released media and posted some #Blocktober dev diaries. Here is the comparison of how far these shots have come since when we first posted them (You can open the image in a new tab for better viewing). Full disclosure: I did some light Photoshop work to make them read better at size and because our sun effect is just a bit too hot in its current form.





We really enjoyed putting together the #Blocktober posts, and want to do more write ups like it in the future.

Again, hope the new year started off great for everyone! We’ll be back with more updates before launch.

-Crowbar Collective

Hope everyone enjoyed last months trailer. Here are some additional updates and features we have added for the upcoming Xen release.




Using the GBuffer that we've developed for our new Dynamic Lights, we've added a dynamic, very flexible new fog system that replaces Source's legacy fog. The new "Xog" can be configured on the fly with instant results ingame, it can change over time with I/O, and it can vary in density and color based on height. Best of all, it's very inexpensive to render, costing about as much performance as a single dynamic light.

Our level designers were slack-jawed when they saw how much it improves the look of the whole game, bringing a true sense of scale to the levels.



Our original Alien Grunts were tank enemies that shot ridiculously powerful homing bees. They fit relatively well into the tough, cover-laden final levels of Earth. In the vast, wide open spaces of Xen however, they became extremely frustrating to fight.

The new Agrunt is the most mobile, unpredictable enemy in the whole game besides our assassins. They'll leap onto different platforms, find a way to outflank you, get in your face, and unleash a devastating secondary "hornet hurricane" attack. As a much-needed balance, the bees from them no longer home in on you, and individual bee damage has been lowered.

https://youtu.be/NFzgbYpybL0


The player only encounters Controllers once in the released game. They were a good, if a bit simple, final enemy type for the Earth bound levels. For Xen, we drastically expanded their abilities, turning them into a kind of overlord or mini-boss. We don't want to spoil everything about their new abilities -- but mind-control, telekinesis, and crystal-powered shields are just a taste of what players can expect.



These were another straightforward enemy from Earth-levels. We mostly teleported them straight onto the player and expected them to be gunned down in a few seconds. For Xen, we have worked them into a much more intelligent, emotional creature. In keeping with the original Xen, they won't be hostile to the player by default.



Flashlight shadows are back! Last patch we switched to one of our new dynamic lights, but couldn’t quite solve all the issues with shadows. For Xen, the flashlight will be positioned on the player to look like it is casting from lower on your chest. This creates interesting shadows and adds to the atmosphere in dark environments while still having a usable flashlight.



Better late than never. This is a feature that's been in other Valve games, but for some reason has been broken in Black Mesa, even from our very first mod release. No more hard-edged particle clipping!


(Notice the hard edges in the first image below)



Anyone that's tried to get the secret purple hat through Surface Tension has already begged us to enable running while holding objects. Turns out we need this for certain Xen sequences, so wish granted!




In addition to the improvements above, we have been grinding away at locking the final bits of design and arting for all our Xen levels.

While building momentum toward release, our goal is to lock down the chapters in order so that we don’t have to dedicate resources to them, and so all the subsequent chapters go faster and smoother. Here is where we are at:

Xen (~2-3 Hour Estimate)
This chapter is completely design locked, most of the art is done, and we are polishing the levels to be release ready. Left on the to-do list is merging art, polishing art, unifying skyboxes and effects across all 6 maps, optimizing maps, and finally a clipping pass.

Gonarch (~1-2 Hour Estimate)
These maps are design locked and are going through the art process. The goal is to be mostly art completed, and start in on its many animated scripted sequences in January. We learned a lot arting Xen and refined our pipeline to be more efficient going forward. There are also half the maps (3) in Gonarch as in Xen, so we got that going for us.

Interloper (~2-3 Hour Estimate)
This chapter is design complete, but needs refinement to lock the chapter. The goal is to have this chapter design locked in the next few days so that level designers and artists can start in on detailing it. Interloper is currently 6 maps.

Nihilanth (Super Secret Time Estimate)
We have started in on the core gameplay coding of the final boss. We wanted to avoid having the big boss be just a bullet sponge, so we have kept the design fluid and kept the environment interactive and dynamic. Most of the static art for this level is completed, but it still needs scripted animation set pieces.

Endgame (About 5 mins)
Endgame is locked, but needs some final animation and graphics updates. Endgame will be the last chapter we do a pass on, as it is dependant on a lot of final art from the other levels. Even in its current state we are very happy with how it plays out.

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We assume most of the people reading this have already pulled the trigger on buying the game (thank you), but we do have to mention that we are 60% off for the Steam Winter Sale! Black Mesa makes a great gift for friends and family. This will be one of the last sales before we ship Xen!



Thanks for reading— we plan on having a small news update and dev blog in January. Have a great holiday!

-The Mesa Team

Happy Birthday Half-Life! We’d like to thank Valve for creating this masterpiece; an important part of gaming history. Nobody on this team would be where they are today if it weren’t for this amazing, inspirational game. We are lucky to share in a tiny bit of their legacy.

“The Specimen will be delivered to you in a few (months)”

To Celebrate Half-Life’s 20th Anniversary, we have something special to share. Our first trailer for Xen! Be sure to go full screen and crank it up to 11!

https://youtu.be/TAIJich73NY
James McVinnie has once again done an amazing job with presenting our game. Everything in the trailer was captured in-game, and we hope to polish and improve our visuals as we get the entirety of Xen up to our standards.

“Morning, Mr. Freeman. Looks like you’re running late.”

Our goal is to release Xen on Steam in Q2 2019. This will allow us to finish Xen to a place where the entire product is stable, smooth, and most importantly...fun! We are already happy with the design state of Xen as it stands currently: almost everything is design locked and functioning as intended. We are going to be using the remaining time between now and launch to bring it up to our art and polish standards.

Playtests show that all of Xen will take roughly 6 hours to complete; longer for those who like to explore. The levels and design for Xen are largely original work (with cues taken from Half-Life), rather than just simply a remake of Xen.

We are extremely proud of what we have created, and will be showing off some of our deep graphics and NPC changes later in December, as well as a breakdown of where each of the chapters stand.

“Thanks, Doc.”

As always, thank you to our incredible community. The positivity and support is what keeps this team going. I got to go the Retro Game Con here in Syracuse, New York, and it was amazing to meet people who have stuck by our game since the mod days. I really cannot express how it made me feel to have people come up to our table and thank us for our work, and encourage us to keep going. Retro Game Con was a great reminder of just how supportive and positive our community is. Let’s keep that going, not just on Steam or the internet, but everywhere!


Again… a huge thank you to all our fans who have stuck by us through all these years.

Xen WILL be out in 2019, Half-Life will turn 21, and we can finally buy it that beer we owed it.

Happy Halloween!

For our last installment of #Blocktober, we thought we would tease something we’ve not shown yet (aside from a small tease in a dev blog post a long time ago). The Xenian swamp!



There is a lot of lore around Half-Life’s development cycle that talks about the larger plans, cut levels, and more planned locations for Xen. Due to time or technical reasons, many of these ideas never made the final cut. One of these was the idea of the Xenian swamp. The area was actually briefly seen during Half-Life’s resonance cascade scene, but was never revisited beyond that, though it is quite likely that Valve originally intended for you to end up back there at some point during the Xen chapter.


We wanted to bring this back in our version. Our Xen is all about realised potential. We thought it was a really cool touch to get a tantalising glimpse of the unique and interesting alien environment at the start of the game and then actually get to explore it much later, near the end of the game.



The original layout of the swamp was made by Xen Lead Chris Horn, and was intended to follow a river upstream across several branching paths, each leading to different encounters and gameplay areas. Quite a lot of our ideas and designs for Xen were originally more non-linear in nature, as an attempt to change things up from the linearity of the Earthbound sections. This was something which would later adjust, as we became more accustomed to Xen’s design and core ideas, and figured out what worked and didn’t work.



This was the initial blockout with some rough prop placement and with the major gameplay elements from the plan blocked out. This map was meant to be sprawling and winding; feeling like a confusing alien environment. As you reached the map’s conclusion at the top of the river, you would get to higher ground, and be able to look back across the maze you just navigated.






This map went through a large amount of revisions. The early versions didn’t play particularly well. It was far too easy to get lost and difficult to keep track of your progression and location, and we also found that lots of memorable gameplay sections and encounters were being missed. Things weren’t framed well in general because players could approach from multiple areas, and it was all too much to manage for players and designers alike.

This led into the map’s first major rework, similar to how the first map of Xen had been totally reworked (you can see details in our previous #Blocktober post). In fact, this was done by the same mapper! The first key idea which helped bring the map forward was to make it feel more “Xen” and less terrestrial by breaking the map up into several floating islands, which had somewhat collided together: thus allowing the river to flow across them. The idea was that this would help players track their progression better by allowing them to mentally “tick off” sections of the map as they got through it. This helped a lot, but didn’t solve all the problems.





Across many, many revisions, the valley/canyon maze following the river eventually gave way to a more interesting and complex path and cave puzzle, that further gave way to something even more ambitious, which we won’t spoil. Over time, the map became more linear, directed, and focussed, which benefitted it hugely. Due to its enormous complexity and size, the map also eventually turned into 2 maps! While a lot of the core ideas were maintained and developed from the original blockout, the overall look and shape became unrecognisable.

This map’s design and what we learned from it is something we really want to talk more about in detail after Xen has shipped. The multiple loops of iteration and feedback took this map from one of our most troubled, to one that we are most proud of. This was probably the toughest map to develop in the “Xen” chapter. It was a lot of work, and the lessons were hard, but we hope you’ll think it was worth the effort once you get to play it. We sure do!

Finally, here is an aerial shot of the same map, in its current state, matching the shot from the earlier blockout images. The shot below illustrates the top left quadrant from the earlier blockout image.




Now is also a good time to mention Black Mesa is on sale for Halloween! Until November 1st we are 60% off!