Half-Life Fallout: RPS asks: where is Black Mesa Source? - interview - Half-Life Fallout

The mod recreation of Half-Life using the source engine,(in)famously operating on Valve time^TM had a little sit down and chin wag with the good folks at Rock, Paper, Shotgun.
Project lead Carlos Montero speaks about how and why they started, and what they've been up to since what feels like the long long ago time of our ancestors.
While you're at it, Enjoy the old, but still beautiful 2008 trailer attached to this news.
Some choice tidbits below:

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RPS will post more tomorrow, so cheer up, it ain't vaporware, and they're not cutting corners to rush it out the door either. It'll be done when it's done. (maybe with hats, but probably not).

It's weird; I read the entire interview and Carlos Montero sounds just like Gabe.

I wish these guys the best of luck, they don't owe the community anything and their passion for quality is admirable.

But I have the same reservations I had from the start, when a mod takes this long to develop by the time it comes out it could easily look outdated technically- which normally wouldn't really matter but the only appeal of this is that it is a MODERN interpretation of Half Life, so it better feel modern. And yet as the interview suggests if they keep on scrapping their work because they feel Valve does better work with the Source engine... how can they ever catch up to Valve's pace of evolution?

i never understood why they didnt release the first chapter, and the next every 6 months, having the whole team dedicated on 1 level would speed things up.

Humbug, on 09 May 2012 - 03:51 PM, said:

I know what you mean, but I don't think they've been trying to keep up with Valve in terms of technology. They've only done one upgrade, and that was back in 2007 or so I think, and that was simply because it became available at an opportune moment. They did a big overhaul of more or less everything they had done up until that time, partly because the better tech meant they could achieve a higher standard, but primarily because many of the developers felt that the mod as a whole was sub-par. The 2009 deadline was their target to upgrade everything, but clearly it wasn't enough time. If they're to be accused of anything, it's having the standards of a perfectionist. My fear is that because it's been worked on for so long, will it ever be done? I've been assured by many of the developers that it will be, as they're just tweaking and play-testing now.

suicide_mission, on 09 May 2012 - 08:05 PM, said:

That would never work for several reasons, chiefly because it would likely take far longer than 6 months, but also because having 60 developers working on something as complex as that just wouldn't be feasible. Added to that, they are working in their spare time and across the world; it's hard to communicate clearly and adequately in those conditions when you're not working together. For all this, they've done an incredible job if you look at the most recent screenshots.

I'm not an avid defender of BM by any means. Personally I think they've messed up a couple of times; they've done a few upgrades and a few overhauls, they've had setbacks from hackers and team members getting jobs, raising a family, moving house, leaving the community altogether. This has taken almost 8 years of their lives, but the point is they're still here working on it and it's looking good. Fair play to them.

The race is on.

What will disappoint us first?

BM or EP3/HL3?

It is inevitable.

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

jdowny, on 09 May 2012 - 05:26 PM, said:

hmmm, i dont get it. Why would it be any more complex than people working individually on their own thing. If everyone pushed hard for a single level or chapter, then their combine effort would complete it faster.

After 8 years, and 14 years since the original Half Life, I would gladly pay them to work on this rather fulltime than haphazardly & disparate.

I think they just want to release the game as a whole, rather than in episodes.

Though I agree with you that the focus of an episodic development might get you result sooner, releasing as a whole will ensure everything is more or less equal in quality/tech used.
Especially since they started from scratch and learned and improved a lot over the years.

i remember some years back john Carmack's comments about episodic gaming. He said something to the effect that even if You only want to release the first 10% of the game in terms of playtime the amount of work to be done is a lot more than 10% of the total. Maybe that's the problem..

As much as I respect the devs for setting such a high standard, they should also take a look at DNF as an example as to what happens when you keep developing indefinitely. Set yourselves the final deadline and just release this thing already.

phool, on 12 May 2012 - 06:06 AM, said:

I agree wholeheartedly, set a deadline and push for that release, bugs & all. Even today's multi-million dollar games would never be released if they expected perfection. Anyways, it and can be fixed & polished later, release now!

Thank god Valve doesn't listen to us

Humbug, on 09 May 2012 - 05:51 AM, said:

Personally, idk what goes on behind closed doors but I get the feeling that they were like "yeah lets do this" and then at some point thought "screw this, but we are so far into this we might as well finish" like you said they owe nothing to the community and yet it has been how many years? I wish them the best of luck too, and some fun a joy to anyone working on the project who feels bored a tired of making it.

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QFT

suicide_mission, on 12 May 2012 - 09:27 PM, said:

Disagree. This is a SP mod, most people are not going to play through it more than twice. The release needs to be solid. I can sympathize with them and I know for sure that if I was one of them I too would find it heartbreaking to release subpar stuff after slaving away for years.

suicide_mission, on 12 May 2012 - 05:57 PM, said:

Well this is a mod, done by people in their spare time. I don't think they should be shooting for perfection, but considering they spend time on it when they can rather than do it as a daytime job a deadline seems like a failure waiting to happen.

No too mention that Humbug is right, a SP mod isn't likely to get a lot of replays. Especially if their initial release is sub-par and they're banking on patches to update it.

It boils down to simply whether you'd like it to play well and be bug-free or not. Most people aren't so superficial with games and play them simply because they're good. If you want to play Black Mesa purely because of looks then you're playing it for the wrong reasons, though in my opinion it's looking damn impressive.