Happy Birthday Half-life!

[Crypt]

@Han_Shot_First

I just checked my BMS install, which I haven’t touched since august of 2013. Nothing happened. That’s odd.

Try updating the SDK Base 2007?

[Tuskin38]

@Llohr

So I go to load up Black Mesa tonight, and something strange happens. It has 40 minutes worth up updating to do! I’m going to go ahead and assume that that means the new free version is out. Awesome.

That was the source SDK updating. Mods cannot be updated through Steam, unless they’re distributed through Steam, which the current version is not.

Edit:

Whoops, didn’t notice page 22.

[Kazioo]

Nice: https://twitter.com/MarcLaidlaw/status/423661802086350849

[Lord_Grievous]

Great news !!

[Tuskin38]

I’m not sure how that is great news? I mean I guess they could ask him story questions.

[Medkit]

@Tuskin38

I’m not sure how that is great news? I mean I guess they could ask him story questions.

Google and Me might be at odds, but if anything Black Mesa related happened there, could you throw me a link please?

[Tuskin38]

@Medkit

Google and Me might be at odds, but if anything Black Mesa related happened there, could you throw me a link please?

They were invited because they are devs working with Steam. They uploaded some images on the facebook page

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.727024010649744.1073741825.391087910910024&type=1

[Rudy]

Oh man I really can’t wait to spent some cash on this game that the devs really deserve.

[Diabolical]

Black Mesa project lead talks Valve’s “really compelling” VR holodeck tech

Carlos Montero is lead environment artist at Cryptic, the chaps who make Neverwinter. But he also moonlights as project lead of Black Mesa, the Source remake of Half-Life - and it’s likely for that reason he joined a select few at Steam Dev Days for a private tour of Valve’s VR cave.

Much of Montero’s description correlates with the account of a Dev Days guest on Reddit. Invited into a room walled with “QR-code looking symbols”, he donned a headset which tracked all of the codes for positioning.

Where the Oculus Rift offers an experience static from the neck down, Valve’s demo allowed guests to walk around the room and explore the space projected by their goggles. A “special carpet” featured raised areas, which let Montero know when he was leaving the space or reaching the limits of his cable.

“With Oculus Rift, I’ve gotten dizzy within 30 seconds of my first try while standing,” said Montero. “With Valve’s demo I stood and walked around for 30 min without getting dizzy.”

Over the course of a series of demos, Montero had his preconceptions thrown off a cliff. In one, he found himself stood on the edge of a precipice. Despite experience with hot-air balloons and rock-climbing, he felt immediately in danger: “My body wanted to spread out, balance myself.”

Asked to step off his platform and into space, Montero found himself “way more anxious than I should have been”.

“I had to spread my legs out wide and tip-toe my way out into the open air,” he wrote. “Once out there, I was told I was one of few percentage of people who successfully did this without freaking out.

“Standing in mid-air was extremely uncomfortable - my body wanted me to go back,” he went on. “Eventually I went back and felt much better.”

In one demo, Montero was placed at the foot of an “insanely huge” Blade Runner-style skyscraper, for which the “sense of space and perspective was nuts”.

In another, two spheres - one perceptually 100 feet in diameter, the other 30 feet - rotated “effortlessly” around the room in a manner Montero found “disconcerting”.

“It’s hard to describe, but it felt very surreal,” he said. “My conscious mind did not want to accept that what I was seeing was real - my brain was believing that it WAS real.”

A Portal 2 turret assembly demo highlighted one potential drawback of VR that Valve have noticed - normal maps, used commonly in contemporary games to make flat textures appear 3D, don’t work.

“I could look closely at the machine arms and tell the normal maps were fake,” said Montero. “They broke down very badly.”

In later demos of art made specifically for VR, however, Montero noted that the combination of VR with “high-poly geometry” made objects appear immaculately detailed, and was a “bit mind-boggling”.

Mind-boggling is very much what Valve are reaching for. They told Montero they’re wary that, in both hardware and software, it’ll take a very compelling experience to overcome the general public’s “stage fright”.

Valve explicitly told guests that the experience was not designed for consumers - rather, it’s the standard to hold consumer VR to in the next few years though. They also said, though, that they’d built a similar room for Oculus.

The full account reads like the first notes of a continental explorer - filled with import, and so novel as to sound surrealist. What do you lot make of it?

https://www.pcgamesn.com/black-mesa-project-lead-talks-valve-s-really-compelling-vr-holodeck-tech

[bur]

[striker]

Now it’s just haptics and smell that have to follow…

[Kazioo]

Game Informer March issue: “The Black Mesa Modification Team shares the challenging development history of its Half-Life remake.”

https://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2014/02/04/march-cover-revealed-2014-3151321.aspx

[striker]

Too bad, no gameinformer issues for my country.

[Crypt]

“ya we decided it was not good e nuf so we redid it a lot and it was good now so we released”

Naaah, I’m actually curious what they have to say on it, and what there really is to share.

[Swaggless]

I know I’ll be picking up a digital issue. I’m curious. Some other good articles in there as well.

[King_Kaddo]

Oh boy I read some troubling news about the Dear Esther devs and their problems involving licensing costs and support from Valve dealing with Mac and Linux ports of the game. What do you think about this and Black Mesa?

https://www.littlelostpoly.co.uk/dear-esther-and-unity/

[Shaddy]

Are we gonna get more new news this year since HL2 is ten years old in november?

[bur]

about 7

[totktonada]

Hi! You told us more about the upcoming November release of the Black Mesa on a new engine in November. In Steam, is paid. But we can not give you money and play the full version of the mod. Please tell me how much longer?

[SomeDude]