Very nice stuff, the lighting in source always felt out-dated compared to its newer version like CS:GO.
As I said in the Steam forums, you guys did great. Can’t wait to try it out!
Need to replay the game as soon as the next update is released!
Played the mod version of ST: Uncut and really really looking forward to next release.
Later this month is not far away, so my nerves are still under control!
Very excited! Is CSM going to be applied to all/most of the maps in the game or just certain ones, like ST?
I figured that was probably the case, but never hurts to ask.
I’ll just have to make sure I keep that in mind for structures outside the immediate playable space.
Which reminds me, I had a map in the works before my schedule got hectic… I should continue on it.
Has Crowbar Interactive thought about adding some of the improvements from CS:GO https://blog.counter-strike.net/workshop/maps.php
Some of the improvements from that page that Black Mesa would benefit a lot is Static Prop model lighting improvement and the Cube maps seen here https://blog.counter-strike.net/workshop/maps.php#cubemap
Since you guys added your own CSM maybe some of these improvements can be made by yourselves too?
CS:GO code is not available to licensees, otherwise we’d likely already be on that engine branch (it has a lot of other improvements over the other Source engine branches too). The CS:GO engine is also not licensed either. So for now, those improvements will stay in CS:GO, unless Valve someday decides to make the code available, or we decide we need some of them and try and do our own implementations (CSM is our own implementation, for example).
Will you add multiplayer entity for hammer like timer or round type ?
That´s something the server owner would determine, right?
And if you really need to do that, just use point_servercommand.
Two questions to add about this, does the CSM suffer from any of the issues that CS:GO had? Other than lightstyles the CSM in CS:GO had issues with displacements and pre-computed lighting.
The shadows casting onto the videmodels, can mappers utilize that for indoor maps with stuff like env_projectedtexture?
Sorry for these questions I’m just interested in this is all and I realize working with duct-tape engines like Source is a real chore.
Holy crap, I decide to check the BM forums on a whim for the first time in who knows how long, and this is what I find. :jizz: That lighting is absolutely gorgeous.
And here I remember this post:
Glad you’ve changed your mind!
I’m not sure what those issues in CS:GO with displacements were, so I can’t say if ours suffer from that or not. Could you elaborate on that? To my knowledge, we have no bugs with displacements that I’m aware of. Nor am I sure what you’re referring to with pre-computed lighting either. To my knowledge, the issues with lightstyles was CS:GO’s only problem with regards to pre-computed lighting. This is something we have addressed.
Shadows cast onto viewmodels are only handled via CSM, not by env_projectedtexture, we didn’t write anything for that to my knowledge, so projected textures will still just be stock Source functionality.
That post from Brian was more than a year and a half before we started working on retail ST Uncut, a lot changed since then - especially the fact that I improved immeasurably as a mapper and the team’s resources and motivation shot up massively when we released the game. Brian has done the lion’s share of the asset work for ST Uncut and he’s a big part of the reason why it’s as great as it is today, we wouldn’t have done it without his amazing support, feedback and work. For sure. The man is a machine!
And he was right. The team never stopped me from being able to port my mods across to the retail workshop, the main reason I never did was because of my insistence on doing ST Uncut properly, and also the voice of the community. And we didn’t bring my existing maps up to retail standards (as he said, it would have been way too much work). Instead, I redid them from scratch! A pedantic difference maybe, but his statement still stands true!
But the layout of ST Uncut is still the same between the mod version and the Retail version?
Or do we need to relearn the route again? Cause anybody who played the mod version, knows exactly what to expect, what to do…
And about the lighting, alot of hacking was done to the engine itself?
Familiar but not identical, far from it. The basic gist of the route is the same, execution is very different overall - particularly the transitions, which are longer and more fleshed out. C2A5I (Garg map) is absolutely incredible now. I can’t wait to see what people think of that section now, personally it’s my favourite area in the entire game. For real. It’s hard to explain why so I’ll leave it up to you guys to find out when you play it. I’m not really talking about gameplay so much as the idea and the atmosphere.
All the new lighting is at an engine level, and was complex as hell. The CSM touches almost every part of the renderer.
That’s nice and all, but you should improve AI for human grunts too, since they run and gun with perfect accuracy.
But anyway, glad to see some news regarding singleplayer again 
That isn’t an AI issue, that’s a balance issue.
For the upcoming update, the HECU accuracy is now reduced by half when they are moving. There are many other fixes and changes in the update as well that haven’t been mentioned here.
It’s not much of a bug with the displacement but rather just wasn’t done well for displacements https://blog.counter-strike.net/workshop/maps.php#displacement
As you can see before Valve fixed it, the shadows on displacements were very pixellated and blurry compared to the shadows on props and brushes.
I hope you will make HECU AI closer to their HL1’s counterparts,because it was one of the most memorable things from the first game,which impressed me a lot and while i partly agree about HECU OPness ,at the same time i think ,that they should’t be nerfed to the ground only because someone complained about their difficulty.There are already an easy and medium options for casuals,we are fighthing against special ops and they are intended to be a hard enemies,otherwise they weren’t sent there if they can be beaten by the science guy and that’s why i prefer Half-Life 1 over Half-Life 2 and the same applies to Black Mesa.
Well seeing as though HL2 combine AI was HEAVILY scripted and we are using that as our base for the HGrunts we are stuck with the same limitations with out a massive rewrite. For most of this project we had only 1-2 part time programmers. We now have 4. If we have time to address AI in the future we will consider it. You have to understand how much work a engine switch is, there are massive amount of new problems when we did that and each time Valve updates the engine and network code it has a trickle down effect game wise introducing new bugs that have to be fixed. CSM was the same way, lots of issues popped up that needed fixing.