We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.

Black Mesa, the fan-made Early Access recreation of the original Half-Life is still progressing towards finishing the final content and it's looking damn good.

In the latest update posted on Steam the team showed off some short clips of what to expect and honestly, it's looking gorgeous. The work they're doing might be some of the most impressive to be done with Valve's Source Engine:

They included a number of other impressive looking gifs but I will spare you including all of them here. The point is, work is progressing and the finishing line is finally actually approaching. They're going through optimizations to the Xen levels, to ensure " the game runs as smooth as possible on the myriad of machines out there". They've also gone through "significant progress with deep engine optimisations" and "several sweeping game-wide asset optimisation passes".

They also put out their plans for the release over the coming months, here's what they said about that:

Technical Beta - This will be a couple of maps to test the latest engine, and test the performance of our maps. This will be public, but more or less of a stealth release for people who are interested in helping us test. This way we can test on a lot of machines quickly, and have time to implement any crucial feedback.

Open Beta - After we have implemented the feedback from the technical test, we will push the entire game to open beta. This will give us testing for the rest of the levels to again make sure the game releases as smooth as possible.

Release - Though we are expecting all the betas to run well, if you have been waiting for the full Black Mesa experience, this is what you want to wait for. Once we know the beta does not set people’s machines on fire, we will switch the full game over to the main Steam branch and announce its full release! After this, we will continue to monitor feedback and ideas from the community for Xen, and release periodic bug fixes and updates.

You can find Black Mesa on Steam.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
20 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
See more from me
The comments on this article are closed.
17 comments
Page: 1/2»
  Go to:

MayeulC May 3, 2019
Are they considering contributing back some of their improvements to the source engine? Quite some mods and games might benefit from them, and it's not extremely worth it to keep them to themselves :)
lqe5433 May 3, 2019
That is not open sourced engine
edo May 3, 2019
Quoting: lqe5433That is not open sourced engine
who said it was?
g000h May 3, 2019
Picked it up on Early Access some time ago. Glad to see the continued progress and improvements. Not sure when I'll begin playing, but possibly when it leaves Early Access.
Massinissa May 3, 2019
Quoting: lqe5433That is not open sourced engine
Isn't Black Mesa supposed to run on Source Engine ? oO
Liam Dawe May 3, 2019
Quoting: lqe5433That is not open sourced engine
Source Engine, not open source.
ElectricPrism May 3, 2019
IMO "Open Source" should be split into two new definitions:

Public Source
Libre Source

AFAIK the source code for the Source Engine is Public Source, of course the license is not Libre, and Documentation and Support are not up to the minimum standard most devs would require to bind themselves to selecting it as a fate.

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/source-sdk-2013

IIRC Unreal 4 Engine is in the same boat, Public Source but not Libre Source


Last edited by ElectricPrism on 3 May 2019 at 6:26 pm UTC
MayeulC May 3, 2019
Likewise, software does not need to be libre (se CLAs) nor open source (see Icculus ports) for people to contribute back :)
Sorry to have started this discussion. But I still feel like a GPL-ed engine could go places if developers weren't afraid of that license.
Marky May 3, 2019
Quoting: ElectricPrismIMO "Open Source" should be split into two new definitions:

Public Source
Libre Source

AFAIK the source code for the Source Engine is Public Source, of course the license is not Libre, and Documentation and Support are not up to the minimum standard most devs would require to bind themselves to selecting it as a fate.

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/source-sdk-2013

IIRC Unreal 4 Engine is in the same boat, Public Source but not Libre Source
I think the term "Source Available" already exists for this kind of situation.
ElectricPrism May 4, 2019
Quoting: Patola
Quoting: ElectricPrismIMO "Open Source" should be split into two new definitions:

Public Source
Libre Source
It would not be a "split". It would be something else. Open source was never meant to refer to proprietary code whose source you could read. There were already software with "readable" but not modifiable code decades ago, like the PINE email client. The Open Source definition is a very strict one, with 10 points the license must meet to be considered as such.

Now, for Black Mesa... Will it leave Early Access before or after Star Citizen?

I wouldn't be surprised if the term had a loose meaning before the OSI came around and created a official definition for what "Open Source" is.

And if the OSI was there @ the beginning instead of tacking on meaning later, then they sure did a poor job selecting a naming schema that is articulate and accurate.

How much more could you fuck up. You might as well be Verizon + the FCC with the "Freedom Internet Act" which is basically the _ opposite _ of internet freedom for the individual and 100% bullshit.

Seriously I am not in the mood to be fed a line of bullshit about how the term "open source" was created with intentions on a specific meaning which is 100% clearly not in the name and confuses people down to this day in 2019.

Public Source and Libre Source will suffice for naming schemas following syntax that actually fucking makes sense so I am inviting anyone who wants to to use them when describing the nature of the code.


Last edited by ElectricPrism on 4 May 2019 at 5:31 am UTC
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
The comments on this article are closed.