Hey, folks. Merry Christmas! Happy holidays! All that jazz.
So, there was no update at the beginning of the month. Part of that was because we've been hard at work on touching up Unforeseen Consequences and Office Complex, and part of that is because I've been planning for this.
The first 2.0 update for BMS Classic's Earthbound chapters is here! We've been poring over the game from the beginning, noting areas in need of rebalancing or refining, bugs that need fixing, stuff like that. I've learned a hell of a lot since I first started working on BMSC around two years ago, and providing a consistent level of polish and quality - as well as a reasonably balanced difficulty curve - has been one of the main goals for a very long time, so it's about time to revisit the work that's been done before.
UC 2.0 features several enhancements that I'm planning to extend across the rest of the game, such as proper flowing water, the addition of health syringes as pickup items, lighting and fog adjustments, some improved NPC behaviour to make the world feel more alive, and more. On top of that, some flow adjustments have been made - with the intention of allowing the player to engage with certain puzzles and make their way forward on their own terms, whether that's by tanking damage or straying from the beaten path.
Unforeseen Consequences v2.0 can be found at the Workshop page here, as well as a more detailed changelog here. Also, here's a few choice screenshots.
While it's not quite ready yet, I'm also happy to say that Office Complex 2.0 is proceeding quite nicely. I'm not quite sure on an ETA for it yet - but keep an eye out for that, because it'll be coming soon. :)
Thanks for sticking with us on this project so far, and happy new year! Here's to seeing Xen released sometime this year, eh? :P
Thanks for the update!
Great to see you still hammering away at this, really makes replaying Black Mesa all the more interesting!