I’m ready for the delay, come on!
1 Like
I hated those babies in the original.
Why They literally did 0 damage as long as you have 1 power on the HEV.
That’s a cable. Map is very polished, because I polished it myself. There are no gaps in displacements there.
8 Likes
Thanks for all the work you guys have been doing. We are Jack’s excitement.
Bonus points if you get the movie reference.
I am Jack’s complete lack of surprise (at the quality of CC’s work, can’t wait to finally play!)
3 Likes
The developer branch in steamdb get a new update about 11 hours ago, the build ID is now 3917279.
5 Likes
Adam-Bomb popped in verifying your thinking. post #12, 9 and 16.
1 Like
Black Mesa: Xen - Opening Minutes
3 Likes
Wow, so seeing it in action I now have some thoughts.
-
Love the HEV-armoured zombies and the exploding houndeyes. Great modifications to make existing enemies more of a threat.
-
The long jump looks different? It seems to activate after the player jumps, which is weird since jumping from a crouched position it what normally does it. I dunno, maybe I’m stupid.
-
The level design looks really open. I’m not sure how I feel exactly, because I’m used to HL being a thoroughly mostly-linear game. I guess I like Metroid Prime, that’s another shooter about exploring giant alien worlds and wrecking shit.
-
The plant switches you have to blow up to move are weird. They’ve got cords coming off them, like they’re electric. Shooting the…seed dildo pod apparently makes them work but also changes the color of the light on the cord? Why would you not just have it die, other than that that cord leads you to the thing it affects. It kind of reminds me of Homestuck’s Alternian computers, where you basically had a sack of green slime and worms with wires in it, that somehow acted exactly like any Earth machine.
-
Speaking of Metroid Prime, I hate to say this, but the atmosphere feels very…“Hollywood Alien World”? It doesn’t remind me of Xen in HL1, and I get that was the point, but that was from a gameplay perspective. Aesthetically it just doesn’t match? The lush forest and plants everywhere don’t cotton to my perception of Xen as a bunch of floating hemorrhoid shits with live bees shoved into them. It looks a bit more classic near the end and looking out into the big space vista, but it’s still very blue, and Xen is mostly pale green and yellow. Obviously this isn’t gonna change much before release and I don’t really mind that since it’s meant to be a different interpretation anyway, but I felt like it needed to be said. Maybe it’s just that neither Half-Life nor it’s many attempted remakes are monoliths that a consistent vision springs forth from, so if I’m playing a remake of Op4 or BlueShift (or a new Half-Life game, god forbid), the synchronicity of that vision is going to be at least a little awkward.
Maybe other remake devs will just steal assets from this game though, I guess that’s possible.
Regardless, it still looks great, I don’t want any criticism of this to overshadow my praise. I’m extremely excited and honestly can’t believe we actually made it to this point. I joined this forum in like sixth grade after the initial release, and here I am seven years later anticipating the same game all over again.
I can’t wait to to explore everything. I wan’t to check out every plant, rock and stone.
3 Likes
Looks like we have shoot a parasitic plant off the leaf plants for platforms. That is why it goes from red to blue green. The red is the bio of the parasite not the main plant.
As for the looks, the 6 minute looks more like a traditional xen, but remember Xen is a boarder world, a dimension between dimensions. IT is a mix of all sorts of things. And it looks like they are using original consepts of xen instead of the cut down version we did get with half life.
New features noticed in those trailers.
-
long jump can stop mid air and has 3 bursts my guess is a triple jump or just to allow more mobility.
-
Blue crystals recharge your suits. The HEV zombies around it and the player had blue glow when near them, as well as who ever was near it gaining 2 armor when coming into contact.
-
love the hints at xen tech in the swamp, I mean seriously organic and crystal teleporter.
No clue what those spinning blue scanners are but I Hope some of them have turrets in later levels. I mean I would love to place down some defensive turrets to make things easier.
The ign article
3 Likes
Is it just me or the gravity on Xen seems to be the same as on Earth?
1 Like
Just you, looking at it the jump height is higher, and there are a few times in the video where they fall from heights that would cause damage on the surface levels.
2 Likes
I noticed that there is no fall damage, but the gravity still felt the same, you fall fast, you can notice that when he jumps from leaf to jump and also when he jumps on the xen jump pad, also the headcrabs jumping around seemed the same too.
6 Likes