Black Mesa development team releases Definitive Edition of game as beta

A Definitive Edition of Half-Life 1’s semi-official remaster, Black Mesa, is now available. This edition, which is available in beta, mainly takes the graphics of the previously released levels to the level of the more recently released environments.

In a blog post, the developers of Crowbar Collective explain that they mainly bring the improved lighting effects, which are already in the Xen levels, to the earlier levels that are located on Earth. The new dynamic light system is also being implemented more widely. That light system is also used in the context of gameplay adjustments. For example, the lights in the Power Up level will now be turned off everywhere, causing the sparse remaining lights to produce strong dynamic shadows.

The reason they go back to those earlier levels is because the first releases of what was then a mod took place in 2012. Since then, the quality of the development studio has improved, creating a gap between earlier and later work.

Black Mesa started out as a mod for Half-Life 2, after people were disappointed with the improvements Half-Life: Source brought. That game did run on Valves at the time new engine, but there were hardly any graphical improvements. It wasn’t until March of this year that there was an actual release of Black Mesa, after five years in Early Access.