Pressakey.com: Greetings and thank you for your time participating in this interview. Please introduce yourself., who are you and what is your task?
What do you like more: Shower or Bathtub?
[COLOR=‘DarkOrange’]Johannes Tripolt:
Hi - I’m an environment/prop texture artist and creative soul on the black mesa team.
Professionally i am working in the games industry as lead artist for a game developer in hamburg Germany.
I’m trying to keep myself fit, so all the training demands regular showering, but after a long and exhausting workday i’d like to relax in a nice and warm bath too.
Pressakey.com: I’d like to ask some general questions about black mesa first.
How did you get to know the project and when did you join the team yourself?
[COLOR=‘DarkOrange’]Johannes Tripolt:
First time i have noticed the project was while browsing for some source mods on moddb.
In June 2007 the team welcomed me with open arms after an successful art-test.
Pressakey.com: Carlos “cman2k” Montero - you team leader, has been making himself know with the capture the flag mod for Half-Life 2.
Did you too gathered your experience beforehand?
[COLOR=‘DarkOrange’]Johannes Tripolt:
My first experience originates from modding on goldsource (half-life1).
I did some texturing and sound work on smaller mods.
My first breakthrough was being lead texture artist and co-leader on the Half-Life 2 total conversion “Return to Mana: Legacy of the eight Elements” which i maintained working on till early 2007.
Pressakey.com: Half-Life: Source has disappointed a lot of fans out there, you too?
Was it your reason to try joining the project?
What’s your general motivation for this non-commercial mod?
[COLOR=‘DarkOrange’]Johannes Tripolt:
I have to say something in Valve’s defense: at no time did they claim to build a new version of Half-Life on Source.
All the screenshots they released beforehand showed the same Half-Life 1 content from 1998 with the exception of the water shaders they also used in Half-Life 2.
Other changes included the integration of rag-dolls, the physics engine (limited to a few selected objects) and better lighting.
Half-Life Source did make clear valve wasn’t trying to do a remake but wanted to show how easy it is to port content from goldsource to source.
Concerning the question why valve did not do a remake, they stated that the fans will do one themselves.
I have to say i’m happy Valve released Half-life Source they way they did.
The fan within all of us screamed out - Half-Life was a game that for many people out there changed the first person shooter genre forever.
Seeing it fail to hit today’s zeitgeist after 6 years was motivation enough to start project black mesa.
My motivation is resurrecting Half-Life the way valve would have done it themselves.
My ambition in giving Half-Life a chance to prove once a gain that it is one of the best games of our time even after 11 years and put a nostalgic smile on every fans face.
Pressakey.com: Black Mesa is in development for about 5 years.
How many people are working on it and how does it work out with all the different nationalities and jobs.
[COLOR=‘DarkOrange’]Johannes Tripolt:
At this time there are around 30 to 40 people actively working on Black Mesa.
Carlos Montero and a few other team members are developing professional games for a few years themselves.
I think a good team management and an optimized workflow is strongly tied to personal experience.
That way we are avoiding most of the mistakes other mod-teams are seeming to constantly do over and over again.
The main part of our communication is done in written form via a forum.
The benefit is having records that can be looking up time and again.
One of the biggest mistakes is planing without a transcription - you can talk all you want but after a month no one knows what has been said any more.
Crucial design decisions get on the record in an additional wiki.
Complex topics are discussed in teleconferences over skype by the responsible department leads (art, sound/music/voice acting, game design and coding) and get transcribed in written form on the forum itself.
Gathering, assigning and completion of asset and bug tasks are managed over a “bugtracker” - a dedicated software for task management.
This way no assignment gets lost even the smallest ones - at any time it’s apparent what, from whom and above all - when something has to be done.
Last but not least the most important one:
Our project is supported by SVN (Subversion Network).
It means everyone has the same version of files and directories - at every time changes to files and directories can be made by team members which are managed in a central place and available to all the others.
The obvious vantages are:
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No downloads of large single releases.
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Transparent file management - at any time you can look up who, where, when and what someone has changed.
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Excellent backup solution, a hard-drive crash of a single team member is not relevant for the security of the project, all the data is on an external server and every member has a mirror of the content on his local client.
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Motivation! The game is created right in front of you. Changes and new additions are instantly available and testable for everybody and if some implementations go wrong it can be undone with a few clicks.
Pressakey.com: Now on to the actual game.
Black Mesa let’s Gordon relive his revolutionary adventure.
Looking at the screenhots it comes apparent nonetheless that you are not doing a 1to1 copy of the classic, instead you are changing the architecture quite a bit.
How was that decision been made?
[COLOR=‘DarkOrange’]Johannes Tripolt:
Half-Life is quite a few years old - even if the story and gameplay is timeless, the visual appearance is not.
Not doing a clone of the old level architecture was first and foremost a functional decision not one based on taste!
The manifold areas of the original game where done with technical limitations, not to the extent to hold up against current games of the same genre after a decade.
The original levels where done in a very rudimentary approach common for the time - some areas purpose was hard to not at all to guess.
Giving the player a strong sense of immersion, the level designers, prop modelers and texture artists had to interpretate a lot of the surroundings.
All the level textures and detail objects, the used materials and their visual details had to be created in a fitting and functional way.
Every original level has been analyzed for it’s gameplay, visual functionality and with regards to content.
These got rebuild from the ground up in the way valve did it for their own games - by “orangemapping”.
It means, every level was blocked out first - the general shape was done in scale and on that basis, all the areas, color atmosphere, and the functional design where created for structural and area parts.
Pressakey.com: Does this have a fundamental impact on gameplay elements?
Thanks to the source-engine physics play a part.
Are you going to adapt some puzzles? Or does everything stay the same?
[COLOR=‘DarkOrange’]Johannes Tripolt:
Every Change, even if tiny was done with the goal of keeping the original gameplay in connection with current technologies like physics.
Which means puzzles are adapted in the way that there is at least a solution like in the original game.
We changed gameplay, level design and object placement to makes sure puzzles are solvable through additional new ways - a big bonus when it comes to replayability.
Pressakey.com: Talking physics - will you be able to find the gravity-gun?
[COLOR=‘DarkOrange’]Johannes Tripolt:
Short answer:
No
Long answer:
Although we use source’s physics engine, the gravity gun is not in Half-Life 1 because it is invented and built by Dr. Eli Vance sometime in the future.
One of the first things our programmers deleted from the code was parts concerning the gravity gun.
There is no console command to bring it back.
Pressakey.com: Big Topic. Coop. Very cool thing that makes my anticipation overwhelming. But there are moments in Half-Life where someone has problems imagining that scenario.
For example coming down ceiling parts in caves, ladders that break off and all the rest of it. Is coop being adapted accordingly? Or is singleplayer going to be optimized from the start?
[COLOR=‘DarkOrange’]Johannes Tripolt:
Here’s a small never before told technical detail:
Singleplayer and multiplayer (which includes Coop) are separate code-bases (Means code independent separate projects).
Coop is being developed on it’s own, the relevant levels are going to be optimized and adapted for coop so problems with actiontriggers are avoided later on during the story progress.
Pressakey.com: Cue Coop. Blast pit. An awesome level and thanks to three blind tentacles also very thrilling.
Are you going to be able to split off in coop and let’s say one player get’s the fuel going and the other one turns on the power?
Are the enemies going to be harder and larger in numbers if you are one the way in pairs?
[COLOR=‘DarkOrange’]Johannes Tripolt:
Details about the coop mode and a lot of other things are not going to be shown to the public until release.
Black Mesa is not just going to be a visually refined Half-Life, but there will be additions within the scope of the original.
Pressakey.com: Your project was first named Black Mesa: Source till valve came forward and asked you to cut the “Source” from your name. Was this the only action from Valve?
Or was there, other then the stick, the carrot in form of job offerings and support too?
[COLOR=‘DarkOrange’]Johannes Tripolt:
Us changing the project name from “Black Mesa Source” to “Black Mesa” was a marketing related decision for Valve to not not have the likelihood of confusion on the consumers part.
Our websites domain was unchanged in all of this: https://www.blackmesasource.com.
It was no “stick” action but a protection for both of us, our project and valves own titles and intellectual property.
Our relationship with valve is a good one, there has been regular communication between both teams and till now we have been handled very kindly by them, either in steam-news or technical support.
This interaction will bring a lot of pros till release and beyond for the project and the consumers.
I can’t talk details at this point in time out of respect towards Valve.
Pressakey.com: Concerning long time motivation you have integrated classic deathmatch half-life style. How many players are going to be able to play against each other?
Are there any changes concerning classic Deathmatch?
[COLOR=‘DarkOrange’]Johannes Tripolt:
It has already been mentioned that Carlos Montero has shown with projects like “Capture the Flag” that free does not mean valueless.
Out goal is not only bringing the original gameplay to the new millennium, but to pour in our experiences into Black Mesa Deathmatch so it not only possesses the strengths of the original but hits the mark of comparable games.
The Final playercount will be set after extensive playtesting our remake maps to make sure that at every point in time the gameplay is fun.
Pressakey.com: Do you got any plans for more project in the future with the current team?
[COLOR=‘DarkOrange’]Johannes Tripolt:
Naturally, there has been random talk about future projects, further collaboration beyond the current project is not ruled out.
But we are 100% concentrated on black mesa at the moment, such a mammoth-project does not leave you much time besides a 40-60h job, your partner or for even some Team members, wife’s and kids.
Pressakey.com: Opposing-Force: Source. Blue Shift: Source. Sounds realistic?
[COLOR=‘DarkOrange’]Johannes Tripolt:
Both projects are being worked on by other teams so there is no need for us to step in and redo that too.
Also, who’d like to wait another 10 years till Black Mesa: OF/BS.
Pressakey.com: Speaking of waiting. When is Black Mesa release?
[COLOR=‘DarkOrange’]Johannes Tripolt:
2009, like it was announced in the last trailer.
Pressakey.com: Is there anything else you want to have the fans knowing out there??
[COLOR=‘DarkOrange’]Johannes Tripolt:
We are often directly compared to multimillion dollar triple a titles, which are produced by professional, well paid developers with team sizes as large as 100 and more.
They got a shared workplace with the company providing hardware to work on.
There is a huge amount of expectations on the fans part, one which we withstand for the last 5 years.
Nonetheless we are hurt by unreflected, lacking of industry experience comparisons to Duke Nukem Forever and co.
Black Mesa is being developed by fans in their free time with no budget whatsoever.
Even if it is hard to imagine for the common laymen - 5 years is an astonishing short production time for a project of this never before seen magnitude.
Pressakey.com: I’d like to thank you the interview and your time!
[COLOR=‘DarkOrange’]Johannes Tripolt:
On behalf of the team i’d like to thank the fans for their ongoing support over the last years.
This project is dedicated to all the Half-Life fans out there and those who want to become ones.
