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Black Mesa – The Half-Life Remake isn't perfect, but it's incredible
With Black Mesa, the Crowbar team has implemented a particularly ambitious project: The remake of the first half-life is after 16 years of work released as version 1.0 on Steam. In an "Ask Us Anything" on Reddit, the developers answered numerous questions from fans. They also dealt with problems such as corrupt savegames.
Your savegames can break with every update
Lead level designer Chon made it clear in an answer on savegames that these endangered with every update in the code are. The blame lies with the source engine and the way it processes saves.
Unfortunately, there is currently no solution for thisunless you would rewrite the entire engine. But you don't have the time or the energy for that. Chon announces, however, that only a few updates will come after leaving Early Access. He hopes that the problem will not occur too often.
What other problems did the engine cause?
According to Chon, the team developed one during the development of Black Mesa "Hatred Love" to Source. He puts it like this:
"She does some things exceptionally well and a lot of things … well … not so well. Much of our job as a level designer boils down to struggling with this source nonsense."
In addition to the savegames, the engine also does, for example when loading levels
Why did the creators choose Source?
Writer and designer Ben praises the engine for, among other things many practical NPC toolsSource provided: While complex interactions and dialogues were not yet possible in the original Half Life, these are now available in the rework.
Source was originally developed in 2002 and has been continuously revised and expanded since then. The limitations of the engine can mainly be traced back to age – at that time games were smaller and easier to develop.
What are the next projects of the black mesa makers?
At the moment, Chon clarifies that one is not yet in the process of relaxing. Instead, the team closely monitors player feedback. One had considered to make further remakes, however one is now pretty burned out and want to develop their own new games in the future.
Chon also emphasized that they were in contact with Valve, but definitely not going to develop Half-Life 3. But there is still hope for a third part: The soon-to-be-released Half Life: According to Valve, Alyx is "only the beginning".
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