Another Workshop Update news

Heya heya, dudes! We previously told you about the Workshop issues that still existed that prevented Hazard Course from landing on Black Mesa’s Workshop. We’d like to give you an exciting update on that situation!

Last update, we told you about some issues that were discovered with how Black Mesa handles certain important Workshop content. After telling you about them, we went out and tested a bunch, and found that issues went even deeper than that. Well, we reported the issues to Crowbar Collective and they set out to get things sorted.

Before too long, we got yoinked into a group chat with a couple of CC’s programmers and the lead level designer. From there, HC builds, Black Mesa DLLs and bug zoos were being passed back and forth like a motorized swing set. We gave them a problem, they sent us a fix to test, we broke it more and sent them new problems, they sent more fixes, and we repeated that for a couple weeks. To no one’s surprise, The Well of Workshop Problems ran deep, but those programmers clickity clacked away and got issues sorted one by one.

Thanks to all of this, we’re happy to announce that pretty much every Workshop-related issue we could find got fixed, and will be fixed publicly in Black Mesa’s 1.5 update. If you’re curious about specifics, then here’s a list:

• Custom scripts & resources files are now supported. This is huge, because it includes character manifests, captions, credits, soundscapes, response rules, all sorts of stuff. This is some of the big stuff that we mentioned in the last update.
• Custom choreo is now fully supported.
• To supplement that, the ‘scenes.image’ file is now being bypassed. It’s no longer required for functioning choreo, only VCDs. This has the added benefit that mods that include custom choreo no longer conflict!

Okay, yeah, we can already hear, you: “HC Workshop real? HC Workshop when?” The answer is a resounding “Very soon.”

There’s some issues that we have to address on our end first in order to ensure The Course is actually a smooth experience. Some things are a bit busted in translation from 2012 Black Mesa to 2020 Black Mesa. Simply copy and pasting the original HC release over breaks quite a bit. Most of it’s pretty easy stuff, some’s already been fixed, and some will need some grander reworking. Rest assured, we’re on top of it, and HC is now our team’s main focus.

On top of that, looking back at it, some of the mod hasn’t aged well. A lot of it we’re really proud of and don’t plan on modifying significantly, but some things you can tell were rushed or simply not given the care it should have been. We want to go over the course and touch it up in places we think are waaaay below par. Again, we’re not talking major overhauling, but spicing up some of the weaker parts of The Course. Additionally, Black Mesa’s got some new features since we released, and we’d like to explore that as well. That new lighting engine is pretty spiffy, be a shame to let it go to waste, don’tcha think?

It absolutely floors us that 5 years after release so many people are interested in this project, some even holding out for the Steam version. It excites us a lot to finally be able to do that, and we really hope it was worth the wait. We appreciate you guys’ patience and support, and hope you enjoy what we hope will be our own “definitive edition” of Hazard Course.

We’ll be back with another update hopefully super soon!