Hello BM Forumgoers. It is I, DKY from the PSR Digital team. You may know us as the dudes who recently released the long-awaited Black Mesa Hazard Course mod-of-a-mod for the BM Free Version. Yes, I know you’re all waiting for a Hazard Course port for the Steam version. We’ve gotten in touch with the Crowbar Collective about our woes, and although it won’t be nearly as easy as we once thought, BM Hazard Course Workshop Edition is definitely going to happen at some point in the future.
But that’s not what I wanted to talk about today. Today I wanted to let you guys know about a little experiment that we at PSR will be conducting over the next several months or so.
During the past few years, while we were busy developing the Hazard Course, we, like many other mod teams before us, have been assaulted by the incessant cries of “IZ MOD DEAD? Y/N” and “WHEN WILL HAZZERD CURSE BE RELESE” at relentless rates. Although we have always tried to be transparent about our work, some people just don’t seem to ever be satisfied with the amount of news and media we post. Faced with such impatience and greed for new mediaz by the ever-hungry public, at one point one of us joked, “We should just stream all our development work on Twitch to shut them all up.”
And then we stopped in our tracks. And then we thought to ourselves-- “Hey… what WOULD happen if we streamed all of our development work on Twitch?”
Introducing PSR Digital’s next project:[/size]
403 Aurelius is a mod project (and experiment) that the PSR team will be working on over the next several months (or more). The goal of this experiment? To see what happens when we develop a small mod behind absolutely no doors whatsoever.
Yep, you heard that right. No doors. Literally every last bit of development will be entirely visible to the public. Everything, from level design to programming to team discussion of mechanics, will be recorded and documented in a publicly-accessible space for all to see. The goal of this experiment is to show the public exactly why projects like ours take the amounts of time that they do, and to showcase the effort and processes behind them in full detail.
Heck, we’ll even be streaming our development work live to the public whenever we can (and post recordings of our work whenever we can’t). The entirety of the current state of the mod, from our (tentative) timelines to our bug report lists, will be available for everyone to look at. This way, there will be absolutely NO room to ask what the progress on the mod is: everyone will have access to all the information on the project that WE the developers have. You guys will be able to make the call for yourselves. Fair warning though: this does of course mean that the entire project will already be spoiled basically from day one. So if you hate spoilers with a burning passion, then perhaps this is not the project for you.
So… 403 Aurelius, eh? What’s the mod even about, anyway?[/size]
403 Aurelius will be a Total Conversion mod based on the Source Engine. Taking place in the year 2021, our nameless protagonist-- an investigative reporter-- acts on the instructions of a mysterious, anonymous tipster and infiltrates the headquarters of the Harland Broadcasting Corporation to expose a corporate scandal. Little does our protagonist know, the company has much darker secrets than insider trading…
The first half of the game will focus primarily on stealth and achieving objectives by infiltration. The player will need to gain access to secured areas of the HBC building, avoiding both surveillance systems and the night shift security guards patrolling the building. The player will need to collect information about the company conspiracy, as well as perform strange hacking tasks for the Mysterious Tipster. The second half of the game is anticipated to have more traditional, guns-blazing FPS gameplay after s!@# hits the fan.
As a mod that will be notably smaller in scope (in a probably vain attempt to limit the amount of time we’ll need to develop this project), the current development plan only calls for three weapons and two enemy types. As of right now, we plan to include 10 to 12 small maps, all of which take place in the HBC HQ building (located at 403 Aurelius Street in an unnamed city in the northern United States). By constraining the gameplay to a single building, we hope to limit the scope of this project to a reasonable size without devolving into a huge mega-mod.
So how far along are we right now? Great question! True to our word, we’re gonna show you EXACTLY how far along we are. We’ve already started pre-production over the past few weeks, and as of the time of posting, we already have a number of development recordings available for you to get bored of watch! Head on over to our development website to stay up-to-date with the current status of the project!
Development Videos[/size]
Here are some introduction videos in which we each introduce ourselves and explain our intentions with the project:[/size]
DKY:[/size]
youtube.com/watch?v=aC9AEXj … HV&index=1
JeffMOD:[/size]
youtube.com/watch?v=zxC7jNv … e=youtu.be
Crypt:[/size]
youtube.com/watch?v=kYTd8rw … e=youtu.be
And here’s a sample of some of the past developer streams we’ve already recorded:[/size]
The Beginnings of Our Mod:[/size]
youtube.com/watch?v=zKV5FfU … pxLTwEk_HV
HUD Concept Art:[/size]
First Floor Layout:[/size]
youtube.com/watch?v=yrx8G9WnHJo
First Floor Preliminary Orange Map:[/size]
youtube.com/watch?v=LLw3MWQ … pxLTwEk_HV
Taser Concept (Part 1):[/size]
Taser Model (Part 1):[/size]
For the full list of development recordings, check out this page of our wiki.
Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channels for live stream notifications and new video posts if you want to follow the project.
Also, make sure to like us on Facebook, so that you’ll be able to check out our streams immediately when we announce them:
…
ModDB page will come soon, so stay tuned for that too!
Hope you guys like what you see! 