Heya, guys!
In the interest of minimizing the amount of times we’re asked the question, we just thought we’d give you a quick update regarding Black Mesa’s 1.5 update.
So first things first, yeah, the update contains Workshop fixes, and appears to address the major issues we had in bringing HC to the works Steam Workshop! Huzzah! We’re definitely aware of the new possibilities. That said, unfortunately the community's already discovered some critical issues. We're not 100% out of the woods yet, but are so tantalizingly close.
Firstly, custom response context rules aren't supported. For those who don't know, these control NPC responses. For example if you press Use on an NPC, depending on the NPC they'll have a specific response. We use this for pretty much every NPC in the course, and it not functioning removes a significant portion of content.
Additionally, custom character manifests aren't supported. These control the characteristics of a given NPC instead of them being randomized. This is important if you want a consistent character, of which we have a few.
So yeah, there's still some hitches, unfortunately. Crowbar Collective is aware of them, and we're keeping our fingers crossed for solutions. On our end, we’d like to verify that everything else actually works as intended. We plan to run some internal tests first to ensure there’s no other hangups, and hit up Crowbar Collective if anything pops up. Aside from the Workshop stuff, we also need to investigate that LJM issue we discussed in the last update. But after that, if everything goes without a hitch (and after hitches get de-hitched), you’d better believe we’re gonna start the process of bringing BM:HC to the Steam Workshop!
We’re currently discussing what exact path and process we wanna take, and have some plans to sort through. Some decisions we’ll need to make include figuring out how to divy up the team (PSR has over quadrupled in size since BM:HC released), figuring out exactly what changes we wanna make to the existing Hazard Course before releasing, etc. We've been reworking our internal ticket system, the first time it's been notably touched in about 4 years. Exciting!
In the meantime, if anyone who has already played BM:HC has suggestions for the potential Steam Workshop release, let us know! Wanna talk with us more directly? We have a Discord community server for our other project Peer Review, though we’re open to discussion about BM:HC on there as well. If you’d like, you can join us there, talk with us, and give us any feedback you’d like.
We’ll get back to you guys with any updates. Fingers crossed, and hopefully see ya soon!
Good to hear things are back on track in the workshop's case since that was a big one, I hope the workshop is improved (if not already) to allow people to choose between simple replacements and full on mods/custom campaigns/maps on the menu.
Keep on trucking, guys! Can't wait to see it on the workshop!
Woohoo!
woot
It would be great to have this working with the retail release and to run through it again.
I'd also love the opportunity to redo my lines if such a thing were a possibility. Heh -_-'
Great to hear! Love that you guys are still so dedicated after so long. Hope it goes off without a hitch!
i know i have mentioned this before but i really cannot stress enough how much of a missed opportunity it is that Crowbar Collective ain't making a collab with you guys to integrate an enhanced version of Hazard Course into Black Mesa as official content. the quality bar certainly meets the standards. pretty much peanut butter and jelly situation, can't see what's stopping it from happening but i am not very savvy in the way the game industry works so surely there is a reason?
Firstly, Hazard Course is definitely NOT up to the standards of the main game. I can see how at a glance the community sees it, and sure, maybe it's heading in the right direction, but to PSR and I'm sure CC, it's definitely got a lot of work to do to get it up to par.
Secondly, it would be a major legal nightmare. They're a company now, there's laws for this sorta thing. Do they accept PSR as members of CC? Who? Do we forfeit our work to CC? Who's in charge of fixing it? Who gets paid for it? How much? This is just the EASY stuff, the list goes on, and the more you think about it, the more complicated it becomes. The only missed opportunity is if they would like headaches.
As a personal opinion, I don't see the benefit of it besides clout, and who cares about clout
i didn't mean it was on pair with their technological/graphical complexity standards, i'm mostly referring to the level design, writing and scripted sequences. i have played hundreds of user made content for half-life and yours is uniquely professional, to the point it's easy to see HC as a "canon" reimagination of the tutorial section (just like Black Mesa is considered for the main campaign).
i also didn't mean the kind of partnership you seem to be illustrating. but maybe the one i have in mind is not actually possible and i'm just too naive. i was thinking of something in the molds of the recent Left 4 Dead 2 update, where Valve allowed community members to work into additional features for their game. since HC was always meant to be a non-lucrative project i can't see why CC wouldn't welcome your team to help expand their title.
sure, that means Crowbar Collective would be materially profitting from PSR work that was never paid for. and i can respect why your team wouldn't want that, but it seems like a feasible deed should it ever interest you guys, not for the sake of clout (thank you, i just learned a new word) but to create a cohesive and well known Half-life 1 remake that sports all scenarios from the original game. you could still keep the free mod version available to the general public like CC did with BMS.
i don't mean to belittle your work or insult anyone, i'm just a fan throwing ideas in the air
Overall, this is good news, I think, and in these times any good news is more than welcome. Good luck with everything, lads
That's wonderful news. Finally it's about to happen. Lets hope they fix the remaining issues asap.