Hello from the Black Mesa team! We have been GRINDING on this Xen thing, so let’s get right into where we are at:
Xen - Final Art/Polish
We are driving though each of the six maps, capping off the final tasks, and doing little bits of housekeeping to make the levels shine. We are also taking a hard look at the performance of each level to make sure the game runs as smooth as possible on the myriad of machines out there. Thus far, we have made significant progress with deep engine optimisations, as well as several sweeping game-wide asset optimisation passes. We are also looking into other engine fixes, such as batch rendering for props and displacements to further increase performance.
Gonarch - Final Art/Polish
We now have Gonarch arted and lit, with all the technical effects and animations implemented. All that’s left is to polish the animations and effects, and to make sure the player clipping is smooth throughout (as well as some water features). We are really proud of the many encounters, interactions, and fights with Gonarch throughout the chapter, and can’t wait to see how they play out there in the wild.
Show ‘em, Giphy...
Interloper - Design Lock/Art
We’re design locking the chapter while also building out the art and lighting. In order to get the art completed in record time, both the artists and level designers are creating placeholder assets so that we can detail the play space, then simply drop in the final art by overwriting the placeholders. We want to keep Interloper mostly under wraps, and the parts we do want to show off aren't quite ready for the spotlight. So instead, here is some art to give everyone a hint of what is in store for Interloper:
Old Concept for Interloper Exteriors By Eddie Hinestroza
Interloper Materials By Mark Foreman
Console Models Built with Modularity in Mind By Robert Chinner
Release
This is how we plan to release in the coming months:
Technical Beta - This will be a couple of maps to test the latest engine, and test the performance of our maps. This will be public, but more or less of a stealth release for people who are interested in helping us test. This way we can test on a lot of machines quickly, and have time to implement any crucial feedback.
Open Beta - After we have implemented the feedback from the technical test, we will push the entire game to open beta. This will give us testing for the rest of the levels to again make sure the game releases as smooth as possible.
Release - Though we are expecting all the betas to run well, if you have been waiting for the full Black Mesa experience, this is what you want to wait for. Once we know the beta does not set people’s machines on fire, we will switch the full game over to the main Steam branch and announce its full release! After this, we will continue to monitor feedback and ideas from the community for Xen, and release periodic bug fixes and updates.
Discord
In addition to these staggered releases, we plan on launching a public discord to work in conjunction with our Steam forums. This will be a great place to chat, report bugs, and get mini updates from the team. We are not sure when we will be launching this, but it will probably be with one of the betas. This is one of the ways we hope to engage a bit more with the community, and provide more regular updates and interactions.
Soon! ™
Thanks Again
Apologies for the silence over the last few months. We have been really diving into our work. Every once in a while we poke our heads up to see how far we have come, and how close we are to finishing this massive undertaking. We have more planned updates and fun stuff to show off on the way to the borderworld! Thanks!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/