Seriously though, I found out about the mod through google around Oct 2006 right before the merge with GamerNode? but didn’t believe it was really gonna take off until I saw the new screens and music on moddb. I think it was around Media Release 8 when I first started posting.
I had just really gotten into half life a few years back and I just stumbled upon it. Of course I wanted every piece of information I could find on it so I read the ‘got a question’ thread. Then I realized the community here was pretty… interesting.
In all honesty I think I found out around late 2007 or early 2008, but I tried to distance myself so the wait would seem less grueling. I started to stalk to forums after Christmas in 2008 for no reason whatsoever. And after the release date was missed, I came back and made an account around August in 2010.
I found out about it back in 2009. I admit, I didn’t really pay much attention to it, as I was sort of pessimistic, but after actually looking at the progress they were making, I got hooked.
^ This. Exactly.
It was mid 2005, back with the sexy old site. I can date it because it was definitely before the moddb splash page came about. I didn’t join the forums until much later though.
I think I heard about this mod from a friend back when they first got things together into the leakfree site, back in 2005. I didn’t post much back then, and I kinda forgot about the site for a while. The last couple years I’ve come to this forum almost every day, without fail. I’m a bit shocked at my dedication to this.
I don’t remember now. I read an article in a website about “top 10 games that you will never play” talking about how amateur developers hides in the fear of disappointing the community and giving excuses like “it’s free” or “when it’s done”.
Duke Nukem was number 2.
:freeman:
around 2006, when i was looking for some funny Half life movie teaser trailers and i found the first BM teaser 
I met this mod on April 8, 2005. On that day planethalflife.com posted a few pictures about the project, one was a render of the Gargantua. I am following this mod ever since.
Yeah, since I still remember that day I had to check the archives, and here is the link to that post.
I was looking for a Quake 2 single player mod, ended up on Ytube and then ended up here.
I think it was either PC Gamer or Computer Gaming World.
I saw the original screenshot of the Dam and thought “neat.” It wasn’t too long after that I signed up for the forums. Early-mid 2005.
I was looking for the download of the HL1 hi-definition pack.
PCGamer Magazine! Still have it! maybe its worth a pretty penny to some fan haha!
I think I found it browsing the Combine Overwiki’s list of mods. The icon for that section of the wiki is after all a Black Mesa screenshot and I think that caught my eye.
I wanted to make good Source maps in Hammer. That never really panned out for me, but during my many Google searches, somehow I wound up here.
I came across the trailer using Stumble Upon. That was late 2008.
Google. I typed hardcore porn and this was the first thing to pop up. “Black Mesa Source” sounded pretty kinky. I clicked here, looked at some screenies, watched the trailer, and orgasm-ed the whole way. I was satisfied both physically and mentally.
I think I was looking for midget porn and happened upon a link about HL source, and then something about a remake of the original HL with the source engine that was supposedly way better than HL source.
So a few clicks later I ended up on an earlier version of the forum and liked what I saw. In retrospect if someone had told me it would take this long to make I probably would of lost interest in it, but then I’ll have to wait for time travel to be invented so I can go tell my past self to keep looking for the midget porn instead of investigating that link.