Continuity mod?

Black Mesa Archive The Cafeteria
#1

I am not really sure this is the right place to bring this up, or if this has been discussed before, but here goes:

I am wondering if there is a mod in the works that ensures some kind of continuity between Black Mesa and Half-Life 2 and its episodes. Like implementing Black Mesa’s Test Chamber in Half-Life 2’s intro, or replacing Valve’s more 1-1 recreation of the Anomalous Materials lobby with Black Mesa’s more detailed version in Episode 2.

Of course, I don’t imagine that it is a thing that the dev team would work on. If anything I think something of this scope falls more into something the community would be likely to do.

#2

I dont think anybody has done that yet.
Its a nice idea though, but in my opinion its not really important.

#3

I think you can only really do this properly if you have access to BM’s sourcecode. I want this exact same thing :smiley:

#4

You would need to decompile the Anomalous Materials maps, the map with G-man’s Heart-to-heart from Ep2, and (copy, then) rename sdk_d1_trainstation_01 from the HL2 example maps, copy over the relevant brushwork and content, etc, but it would be fairly simple.
The hard part would be fixing up the decompiled maps and optimizing them so they don’t completely break the delicate resource balance that all three games have.

#5

Would be nice indeed…

#6

dev posts of late seem to indicate a decent chance of the source code being released in some way, so maybe it will be possible to do this properly :slight_smile:

#7

You don’t need the source code at all.All you need is the part of the map, some optimization and the G-Man scene and you’re done.

#8

Yeah, and many bugs along the way.

#9

The only problem I could really see being difficult is replicating the particle effects of the anti-mass spectrometer.

#10

there’s also some other stuff to really make it continuous for which you would need the source code

#11

I don’t follow. Apart from the particle effects, what’s there that can’t be copied?

#12

Gibbing, ragdols as physics props (headcrab), blood stains on viewmodel, stuff like that. The new features BM added that aren’t present in HL2.

#13

Oh, I don’t think he meant that. I think he only meant updating HL2 so that the BM Test Chamber and BM Lobby appear in the flashbacks in those games.

#14

Reading back, you’re probably right. Projecting my own ideas :smiley:

#15

It really is just a simple matter of transferring brushwork over then packaging the relevant texture/model/particle files. I actually attempted this about a week ago, I’ll probably get back to it. At some point.

EDIT: Well, not entirely. The actual challege is deciphering BM’s AMS room, because the area is extremely dynamic. It’s a matter of figuring out what’s absolutely needed for the AMS to look like it’s running (read: after stage two emitters are fired) and delete all nonessential entities.

And with that being said, it might be best to wait on a mod like this since BM hasn’t been fully released. And the AMS map is definitely going to see changes because, after all, the Xen parts aren’t implemented right now.

#16

Sounds pretty cool.

#17

My thoughts exactly. I’ll probably look into what I can do to make this and my own ideas towards continuity possible, though I have no experience in Source modding.

On that note, I think it would probably also be worthwhile to wait for Filip Victor’s HL2 update v3 to be released. If it lives up to expectations, it should fix most bugs and errors that have been introduced over the years, which would make things easier and more worthwhile, I think.

Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.