Roundtable discussions?

It's a mod. http://www.blackmesasource.com/ It has however gone through steam Greenlight, so it'll appear on steam soon enough.

Isn't it made by Valve developers though?

Not that I know of. Maybe some work on it, but it's not an official valve title, just a mod for the source engine.

edit: You will need the 2007 Source SDK Base installed to play the mod. Make sure to get it from steam > library > tools

Anyone have a download link for Black Mesa Source that actually works?

*****Update*****

Nevermind, found one: http://www.shacknews.com/file/32999/black-mesa-source-10-windows-free-game

I tried shacknews but it buggered up at the end. I'd recommend just using the torrent. Never use browser for anything > 1gb :(

Some quick impressions from my playing of it today:

Gameplay is pretty much what you'd expect from playing hl2. Decent amount of gameplay options on the settings, fov slider, auto aim is enabled by default for some reason. Only had 1 crash so far. Maps are quite detailed, lots of things to interact with, especially in the early stages before you get weapons.

A nice touch was when, on one office level, I used a flare to light a headcrabbed guy on fire - this set the sprinklers off. There are some alternate paths through levels too which is great, and a variety of achievements.

So far I am enjoying the game a lot. I really love how the game doesn't hold your hand and drag you around telling you where to go all the time. Instead it uses good level design to show you where to go. Plus the platforming elements are down very well. The combat feels similar to HL2, probably because its on the same engine. There is a lot of detail in the maps, many objects to interact with and a lot of just random stuff that has bits of humor laced into it. Just had it crash once on me recently, which was after playing about 6-7 hours total. I have yet to run into any graphical errors, I've seen videos where peoples games render in bright vibrant colors. I have run into a bug a few times where an object will get stuck in the environment and when I walk by it'll launch off into the air and take out a good chunk of my health. But I will say that the load times are fairly long. I've had it load for up to a good minute a few times. Not exactly sure how far into the game I am, but I guess that I am at least half way through. I should hopefully have it beaten in the next couple of days.

My loading times are fine, only feels like ~5+ seconds for a quickload, maybe 10s max for a level change? I have noticed a few graphical glitches (Decals dissapearing when you get close to them, bad placement of UV seams on models, along with some other minor things here and there) but nothing gamebreaking. I agree that the level design is good in guiding you to where you need to go / what you need to do, although I bet there are going to be people who get stumped / lost regardless of this.

I just finished the game, so I'm ready whenever you guys are. I haven't noticed any graphical errors or in-game glitches like you guys have been talking about, but I have had the game crash on me a few times. It's not a huge deal though, since the game auto saves so often.

There were a couple of spots where I wasn't sure where to go. One of them was just me being stupid though. The other was during an area where you have to flood the nuclear reactor core. I had hit all the switches in the different areas and successfully flooded the core, but I couldn't figure out where to go next. It turns out you have to jump into the water in the core and swim down a really long tunnel. I thought of doing this originally, but you couldn't see to the end of the tunnel and it looked like it was either inifinite or like there was an invisible wall preventing you from making any further progress. I thought if I tried to take the tunnel I would just end up drowning, but after running around for about 15 minutes not finding anywhere else to go I tried it out, and sure enough you come to a room at the end of the tunnel just before you drown.

I am a little disappointed at where the game ended though, since it's not the entire Half Life game. It makes me wonder how long it's going to take them to program the rest of the game.

I'm almost finished with the game but the overall gameplay; the navigation, is at the most confusing state.

I always wonder rhetorically, will it be rage-prone sooner, by seeing and experiencing the whole gameplay myself?

 

I feel like I'm getting closed to finished, will report back when totally done.

In a lot of respects the gameplay is quite dated, although this isn't always a bad thing. It's not AS railroad as Cal of Dooty, nor driven by cinematics... but it still is a shooter at its core. The puzzles don't really do much for me. They do break up the combat, which is nice, but I don't really feel clever by solving them. Most can be solved by trying every possible combination of things, ie by clicking everything that looks dynamic. I probably can't criticise the mod for this though, since it's a recreation of Valve's game.

I'm ready to go when you guys are. How were we planning on doing this, because I figured some kind of audio recording is what we decided on earlier. I'm down for anything, I already have Skype, Vent, and Mumble.

I think text would be more professional. We won't have the mismatched quality of our different microphones + skype compression (or whatever), plus text is easier to edit. I do think we'd benefit from having the initial discussion over voice though, since then it can be recorded and the ideas will just flow easier, hopefully making the discussion come across as more natural.

Say we aim for next weekend to do the discussion, what timezone will it be in? I'm in Australia GMT+10 timezone. We'll probably need to find a day we're all availible and then figure out a specific time.

 

Next weekend should work for, but I do work on Saturday from 12:00 am to 8:00 am. I'm in the US GMT -5 timezone. What about Sunday? If it is Sunday morning for you, then it would be Saturday night for anyone in the US.

Kill those head crabs guys. We need to make this happen! :D

Well I'm in Chicago, so that's American Standard Time.

Well since that didn't happen, how about we just do it in this thread, edit into a final document and post?

To get the ball rolling: "Black Mesa has been in the works for a long time, what initial impressions did you guys have of the mod?"

It's more of a brain simulator than a horror FPS.

It's a mix of both really. At first I was really impressed by the quality of the mod - the introduction sequence in particular was great, although I haven't played Half Life 1 so I can't comment on how faithful it is to the original. The gameplay on the other hand was pretty much what I'd expected from having played half life 2 and the episodes - the gunplay is definitely oldschool, and the AI is pretty unforgiving. It's quite easy to be killed but there's enough range in difficulty settings for those who prefer to spend time on the puzzles. Which unfortunately, I didn't think much of. Of course for these things I can't blame the developers of the mod, who were simply recreating Half Life, but really most things were solved by spamming the use key on everything, or looking for anything that appeared interactive.