Operation Black Mesa mod for Half-Life 2

25 comments by DragonNOR on Sep 6th, 2010 digg this super bookmark

Hello everyone and welcome to the Operation Black Mesa September media release! In this update we'd like to present a few changes that are going to take place in how we present our media in addition to showing the actual material. From this point on we'll attempt making more regular updates. The updates, or 'in-betweeners' can range from everything to a developer blog, a short podcast discussing the material we've released and where we plan to take it or what we have in store for the next media release. This is done as much for our own sake as it's done for the community as it helps us keep focused at our work while at the same time keeps those interested in the loop so to speak. We won't disclose exactly what will take place when we do post something (except for the MR of course), so you'll have to wait and see what shows up first.

That being said, we can move on to the actual point of this article, namely the media! Since last time we've focused our attention mostly at characters and weapons, which has given some nice results that we're very satisfied with. That does not mean we've been totally without progress within mapping, as you can see here:

First of all comes the concept art, so that you can get a taste of what is to come. A good few of these were done by one of our new talented 3D modelers, Liz, who is currently working with John Cleese's clone. If anybody knows someone good at mimicking his voice, give us a call. The second part of the concept art shots were made by our long lost russian concept artist Ferapod who has now rejoicefully reappeared and is back on the job! The third and final part has been done by Arturo, who is also very active in modelling, having made among other things the Voltigore and the spore launcher!

  
  
  
  

Next up we have weapons. Our Texture artist and compiler/shader magician-in-training Dopefish fixed, compiled and tweaked the shaders for these weapons, and we now have ten weapons brought into the mod. Either by animation rig and/or as world model. Note that the shaders aren't applied in these weapon shots, but I can assure you all that they look great! We've also made some great progress with our NPCs and prop models, and now that our models are making their way into the build at ever higher speeds, it's just a matter of time before we can start the gibbing. In the department of prop modelling we've been joined by two very talented modelers; Thechan and Serma3D who are currently busy filling our maps with highgrade items, some of which will interact very favourably when hit by gunfire.

  
  
  
   
 

The weapons that have been rigged are the following: Wrench, Knife, Glock, Desert Eagle, Shotgun, MP5, Grenade, Sniper Rifle, Snark And Spore launcher. Of those only the snark and Spore launcher haven't made it into the build so far (although I suspect its only a question of when its added) and the only weapon that doesn't have a world model of these is the Grenade. The Rigging and animation was done by a two people, some of the animations were done by MR.Brightside while the majority has been done by our two newest additions to the team; Sparkwire and Sn1pe.

Next up is mapping. These moodsetting shots are from the chapter "The Package" currently in progress by Bono_Estente, skybox and lighting by Spockjedi. Soon to be filled by menacing black ops!

  
  

We've also made some great progress in the area of particle effects, as we've been joined by an extremely skilled particle effects editor named Bolty, but you won't be seeing samples of his great work until we get that video done. Did I just write that out loud?

Last but certainly not least, the video showcases. These were produced by our new modelling lead Neil Dorrington aka Nrd2001, who has been working hard on pretty much every aspect of the project and the MR, helping out where needed in modelling as well as making his own models and working on the screenshots and wallpapers and learning animation on the side.

We have also been joined by a few other people whose work won't be shown until the next media release. These include our two new coders 'Bluefire' and 'Danboe' as well as the texture artist Deady, the 3rdperson animators/riggers FrColley and Rooster, as well as our new HUD and 2D graphics artist Tabtoxin. You will be seeing more from these developers in the next MR.

Finally for recruitment. The positions we are currently looking to fill are Level Designers and Modelers (both character and prop modelling). We're always looking for people to work with, so if we've piqued your interest, drop by our forum and say hello.

We hope you liked what we had to show for now and that we spurred some interest from the development areas that we lack people in. For now, this is Operation Black Mesa letting you know we're still here, DragonNOR out.