So, after a little bit of introspection, I’ve decided that I’ve been approaching the restoration of Black Mesa in completely the wrong direction. At its core, the Pre-Disaster project is about restoring the Black Mesa research facility to its original state. But really, isn’t Black Mesa itself a foreign addition to the New Mexico landscape? It will be much faster to just cut to the chase and remove the facility entirely- take care of a massive environmental and safety liability too, leaving only the pristine natural beauty of the American Southwest unmarred by rampant industrialization!
Here’s some media:
QUESTIONABLE ETHICS:
As you can see I’m making very good progress- there’s already not a headcrab, busted fluorescent light, or blood splatter to be seen! I’ve already got a number of quests planned, including “hike 80 miles to the nearest gas station”, and “hike 50 miles in the other direction for cell reception”. As the entire map is accessible I’ve had some trouble working in G-Man sightings, but have decided it would be best just to have him maintain a constant distance from the player so that he is always two pixels tall. For added realism, I’ve also added a very low-value trigger_hurt over the entire map area- over the course of several hours to a day, Freeman will gradually expire from dehydration and heatstroke.
OFFICE COMPLEX:
Still having some problems with the lighting in Office Complex, though: I am not sure whether the fullbright effect or the pitch blackness is better at communicating the fact that the player is completely encased in solid rock.
EDIT: I’m currently leaning towards the pure darknes. It better fits the dark, claustrophobic atmosphere of the original map while still being pristine and natural.
I was considering making the player not spawn 100 meters underground so they would at least be able to move around somewhat, but since the community response to my including warps in pre-disaster maps has been pretty negative I decided it would be better to stick to canon on this issue.