I bring you... the Xen Levels in Black Mesa

General Development Source 1
#1

Literally.

:3

[COLOR=‘Black’]trollface :retard:

UPDATE

First Xen map (and a modified version of the preceding Lambda Core map) is up for download here:

https://www.gamefront.com/files/22396510/xBM_R1.zip

MATERIALS AND TEXTURES ARE NOT INCLUDED! YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR OWNING HALF-LIFE: SOURCE AND EXTRACTING THE RELEVANT FILES TO THE PROPER BLACK MESA DIRECTORIES YOURSELF.

When in doubt, just extract the entire “xeno” folder from HL:S to BMS\materials. You’ll also need everything pertaining to the skybox neb7.

Clarification

This is not intended to be an exhaustively awesome attempt at creating a Xen for Black Mesa before the Devs do. Rather, it’s meant to hold us over during the wait for Xen, via laughs and giggles by seeing just how crappy the original Half-Life Xen low-poly geometry and low-res textures were, in comparison to Black Mesa’s hi-def weapons and NPCs.

This is meant to be nothing more than a STRAIGHT PORT of the original Half-Life Xen levels to the Black Mesa game. It is in no way representative of how Xen will actually look like in Black Mesa. Please don’t misinterpret my intent. This is meant to be a half-assed joke project, although it admittedly takes more effort than one might think. If you wish to volunteer to help with the porting project, PM me and I’ll see what you can work on. :slight_smile:

#2

Well, that wasn’t what I expected :wink: . Nice job!

#3

Good show old bean!

#4

Upload them and I’ll play them

#5

OOhhh… I could live with this + Ultimate Def. texture pack until Xen is actually released. Could you post instructions on how to do this?
Also, this might be something good to post in The Test Chamber.

#6

dafuq, just watched it a minute ago

#7

Yeah, just didn’t bother to make a thread until now.

You would not believe how much fixing up I had to do to get it to work.

I almost have a new respect for Valve’s efforts with HL:S. :frowning:

#8

Heh, now this was a suprise-

#9

Sooo… I’m guessing it’s not as simple as throwing some files in a folder and edditing some .cfg’s? How complex would the process be now that you got it working?

#10

Well consider that many Half-Life: Source entities don’t exist in Black Mesa. Then consider that none of the models, none of the materials, and only a handful of audio files are actually shared in Source. This means you need to extract the original texture/material files, and a bunch of other content, to the proper Black Mesa directories to get everything to even show up properly.

Then consider that, because of the outdated entity I/O system, almost every entity interaction on the map becomes broken. So you have to manually reconnect the logic using the newer Source system, via decompiling, editing in Hammer, then recompiling.

Then you need to rebuild many objects from scratch, with hackish logical equivalents, including the zappy purple things, because their entities no longer exist in Black Mesa.

And then there’s the lighting! The new system is slightly different from HL:S, especially in HDR, which means you have to adjust lighting levels for each light source so as to not make things look stupid. I still haven’t gotten it quite right… this version is a bit too bright yellow, as opposed to the darkish blue of the original.

And then the NPCs and NPC spawners, which are all nonexistent and/or outdated in Black Mesa, which means you need to use logical equivalents. Luckily the AI pathing system is basically the same, so there isn’t much you have to do there, except in a few places where you need to add a node or two to adjust for the new NPC attack ranges in Black Mesa. (I’m looking at you, Vortigaunt!)

I’ve only “kind of” finished the first map, really. :frowning:

EDIT: I’ve had a thought. If I could finish up the rest of the maps, it might even hold us over until the release of the official Xen. :slight_smile:

That said, seeing as fixing up Xen map 1 was such a chore… are there any volunteers who feel like helping me with Gonarch’s Lair and the rest? :stuck_out_tongue:

#11

Okay, interesting. It makes sense.

As i said in my first post, you may want to consider posting this on The Test Chamber. Although, even if you do get enough people together and successfully do this, how would you distribute it? I doubt it’d be legal to just throw the maps into a zip, and based on your description the process is to advanced for a user to do manually or for a script to execute…

#12

That is impressive. I assume that it’s only one map because you couldn’t be bothered to convert all the Xen maps?

#13

I doubt it fits in the Test Chamber forum. That’s for actual improvements to Black Mesa. I don’t think it’s for custom maps/mods.

I’m not sure how legal it is to redistribute HL:S content anyway.

Yeah so far. I’ve only been at it for about a day or so. Gonarch and Nihilanth are sure to give me problems though since there aren’t currently working versions of those guys in Black Mesa…

#14

Heh, I was actually thinking about doing this exact thing myself, only remaking the textures, but after taking a look at the dated entities in Anom. Mats. I decided not too. Gonarch was pretty scripted, or at least it seemed like it. You could probably use a lot of scripted sequences and make it look like the player’s actually doing much. Func_Brushes/physbox/something parented to it (Gonarch) that activates the next script when it takes a certain amount of damage. Just a thought.

Good luck w/ the Nihilanth, though.

#15

OH MAN!!! =P

#16

Haha! I loved it! Really clever!!

Edit: 3333218 said : “I was thinking here and… With the same logic you’ve made this, could you please kind sir make a Half Life port to Black Mesa? What I mean is, can you transform all objects/stuff from Half Life Source into Black Mesa Source stuff? That would be nice for many reasons. (Specially to shut up the purists). (I must state here that I loved BM)”.
I agree. Wish it could be possible, just for curiosity.

#17

Terrific!

#18

Oh gods, this is awesome. I like seeing HDR in Xen, it makes it look a lot prettier.

#19

This is great! I would totally play this through in place of the Xen update if you went ahead with the rest of it. Not sure if you think it’d be worth the effort, of course, but great job dude!

Now I’m craving Xen even more…

#20

I’m gonna give it a try and if I can get at least as far as the first map I may give you a hand.

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.