Test Chamber - How to use this forum

General Development Black Mesa
#1

Q: Why are you accepting community contributions?
A: The intention here is to create a forum for people who have played the game and want to help us continue to improve it. Essentially, I WANT you guys to mod the game for the better! And if your mods are great, I want them to have an avenue where they can get it integrated into the real game.

Q: What the heck is this forum for?
A: Specifically this forum is for sharing work-in-progress assets and discussing asset creation with others. We want to see you help us improve the game by improving/modding the content within it. We are excited to see what you guys come up with!

Q: What Kind of assets can we submit for the game?
A:
Allowed:
–Remakes of existing models/animations/textures/materials
–Remakes of existing Brush/Displacement Textures
–Remakes of existing FX
–Maps
–Sounds

Q: Can I take an existing prop and make a ridiculous high-res version of it?
A: No. In fact you cannot increase an assets current overall filesize within 1mb of difference. This is the only way we can ensure you don’t hurt performance of the game or cause any other problems with game stability.

Q: Can I submit my Halo mod?
A: Please don’t submit derogatory, offensive, copyrighted or otherwise unacceptable content. We won’t accept it.

Q: Why didn’t you accept my submission of random_texture_red_01?
A: Don’t submit partial sets. Some assets are part of a set, and that set needs to match and be consistent. If it is determined that you have improved only one part of a set, your contribution will be rejected so we won’t break consistency within the set.

Q: Can I have the source files for (random asset)?
A: We are working on a way to support this.

#2

I would absolutely love to contribute some models and props. I am a gainfully self-employed 3D artist (and programmer/designer), and can make some wicked-cool-shite… but have not yet made something I have brought into a game. Although, I am a whiz at modeling, UVs, skinning etc and have no doubt that this would be stuff I could in my sleep - so count me in. Not sure how I have gone this long without doing this, but I have a serious jones to do this.

Can you make a sticky about required specs (polys, UV map max size etc)… you know what else would rock?.. a small db of assets that have been made and are in the works… with thumbs etc… this could not only help reduce redundancy, but can help folks get ideas of other shit that can be made… you know, to make this be the best it can be.

#3

I think the Wiki would be a fantastic place for the latter point, if it had it’s own subsection.
Allowing new people to come in and look at what the community has made for the mod easily will be key to making this succeed, and the Wiki gives a platform for that.

On the former point, a sticky on the specs of each individual asset would get too huge, and again, I think the Wiki will provide a suitable platform.

I’m looking forward to seeing what deviations can be made, art-wise, and seeing what kind of techniques were used in the creation of official assets.

#4

[COLOR=‘Silver’]On the former point, a sticky on the specs of each individual asset would get too huge, and again, I think the Wiki will provide a suitable platform

Actually, I meant the specs (er, rules/guidelines) we are to follow for models, textures etc for submissions… it would just be nice to have that info in one place…

#5

This sounds tricky but I will see what I can do once I am done playing it. :wink:

#6

This is pretty awesome. I might contribute something after I’ve played through the game. Haven’t modeled in ages.

#7

What about community made multiplayer maps? Since maps aren’t allowed in here, where do they go, if anywhere?

#8

Would you make an exception as far as maps are concerned for the Hazard Course? I think some people are still working on that.

#9

Sorry, sounds are not allowed.

#10

I meant it’s tricky to improve something with only 1mb of extra space.

#11

-edit-

#12

Pretty sure this thread is for integrating things with the first release of black mesa. So you can still make custom maps and stuff, but this is an SP release so no new maps will be officially integrated, since they aren’t part of the HL story

#13

Out of curiosity, why aren’t sounds allowed to be submitted?

This is a cool idea! I may contribute. :smiley:

#14

Because it’s against universal law to attempt to override Joel Fucking Nielson.

Seriously, though, I really like this idea. I wonder how many people will actually have the skill to make it into Black Mesa.

#15

Interesting…
Are new menu and HUD themes allowed to be submitted?

EDIT: I would like to state that I doubt I’d change the HUD, but I would like the menus to look old school.
I quite liked the 1.5 menus for Half-life.

#16

I think this has been asked before, but did you end up using assets from previous community projects?

#17

Awesome, this means we may see balaclava and zombie hecu after all.

#18

Wouldn’t a new zombie require an entity in the map’s file?

#19

Yup. It would also require a new NPC class, judging by the pattern in the NPC entity names revealed a while back:

npc_human_scientist
npc_zombie_scientist

npc_human_security
npc_zombie_security

npc_human_grunt

etc.

#20

What we are expecting here are improvements to the current assets in the game. I have added clarification to the first post.

the db of assets is…the game itself. the required specs are…whatever the game is currently using. If you want to remake our toolbox model & texture, your new files would just have to be within the 1mb filesize difference, and we would have to judge that it matches the game visually and is actually an improvement.

This is a good point. I’ve changed the wording to say that you may post maps in here, but NOT for final submission. At this point in time we aren’t accepting community made new maps, but that could change in the future and it would be silly to ban it from the WIP forum since the community will exist regardless.

At this time, no exceptions. We reserve the right to change our minds later.

Debate-able. More triangles and more texture resolution doesn’t always make a better prop. It’d be easy to pump extra resources into all of the assets we made…and it would also crash a lot of computers. Our asset library is full of assets we made many, many years ago…I’m certain we could see improvements to those assets that help the whole game look better.

There are a lot of technical complications here. Timing, embedded data (choreography/lipsync/subtitle). Timing affects other things like animations and how those things sync. For the time being we would rather avoid these issues entirely.

It’s not against the rules.

There are a small handful that made it into the game, I believe.

If you could figure out a way to do this without adding new npcs. This might actually be possible as we have some systems in place for randomizing models…you guys will have to see what you can do.

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.