Tag Archives: Black Mesa

Train2Game News: Steam Greenlights concepts

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Valve has introduced a new area to Greenlight where developers can upload concepts and get feedback from the public.

Concepts are free to post for feedback but won’t be distributed. The idea is to get opinions from the community. Examples of concepts already uploaded are Portal expansion Afterword, Elevator Engineer, Savegame Explorer, first/third-person logic shooter B.R.I.S.k, Vertex Wars and more.

This is a good place to see how a game idea would do out on the market which can be invaluable information. It can stop you working on a part of a game that might not be so popular with the paying public, giving you more time to concentrate on another part that is popular.

In addition Steam now allows software to be submitted to Greenlight. It follows the same rules as games do on Greenlight. That is, there’s a submission fee ($100) and the community votes whether they want to see the app/software released on Steam.

Steam Greenlight has been generally updated to show friends’ favourites and recent news on the home page, plus some other minor extras.

To date, thirty games have been ‘greenlit’ by Steam including the Half-Life mod Black Mesa and Project Zomboid. The only game to have been released from the service so far is McPixel.

Train2Game news: ‘Learn by making mistakes’ says Black Mesa mod project lead

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Train2Game Blog readers are likely to have seen one of our posts about the benefits of modding, but the benefit of building your own games or levels isn’t just that it’s good for your portfolio, you’ll also learn a lot while doing it.

That’s what happened for the guys behind Black Mesa, the much anticipated but rather delayed mod that’s bringing the original Half-Life into the source engine.  Project Lead Carlos Montero told Rock, Paper, Shotgun that, if anything, there are delays because the team are learning how to build a game, often by making then fixing mistakes.

“This hasn’t been about polish for polish’s sake; it’s been about learning all there is to know about how to make great games, and using it to make a great game. There aren’t any shortcuts there. We just had to learn by doing, by making mistakes, by screwing things up and starting them over again.”  said Montero.

“Sometimes along the way we have learned things that fundamentally changed our way of thinking, and sometimes we have gone back and fundamentally changed parts of the game to reflect that.”

The Black Mesa project lead added that, the team are very eager to release the game, but only when they’re totally happy that it’s good enough.

“So no, I don’t think it is tempting to over-polish at all. We are all eager to get the game out. We are dying to get this game out and show everyone what we’ve been working on, but we aren’t so eager that we would sacrifice our values and what we believe will make this game great. We aren’t going to put out something that isn’t good enough for us.” Montero said.

Read the full, fascinating, interview over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

In an interview with The Train2Game Blog, Valve’s own Chet Faliszek told us modding s a great way for aspiring game developers to  practice and show off their skills.

There’s more modding news on The Train2Game Blog, while the latest from Valve is here.

What are your thoughts on the comments from the Black Mesa project lead? Have you found modding to be a great learning experience? And are you looking forward to the mod eventually being released?

Leave your comments here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game forum.