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Black Mesa, the fan-made Early Access recreation of the original Half-Life is still progressing towards finishing the final content and it's looking damn good.

In the latest update posted on Steam the team showed off some short clips of what to expect and honestly, it's looking gorgeous. The work they're doing might be some of the most impressive to be done with Valve's Source Engine:

They included a number of other impressive looking gifs but I will spare you including all of them here. The point is, work is progressing and the finishing line is finally actually approaching. They're going through optimizations to the Xen levels, to ensure " the game runs as smooth as possible on the myriad of machines out there". They've also gone through "significant progress with deep engine optimisations" and "several sweeping game-wide asset optimisation passes".

They also put out their plans for the release over the coming months, here's what they said about that:

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.

You can find Black Mesa on Steam.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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const May 4, 2019
Quoting: ElectricPrism
Quoting: Patola
Quoting: ElectricPrismIMO "Open Source" should be split into two new definitions:

Public Source
Libre Source
It would not be a "split". It would be something else. Open source was never meant to refer to proprietary code whose source you could read. There were already software with "readable" but not modifiable code decades ago, like the PINE email client. The Open Source definition is a very strict one, with 10 points the license must meet to be considered as such.

Now, for Black Mesa... Will it leave Early Access before or after Star Citizen?

I wouldn't be surprised if the term had a loose meaning before the OSI came around and created a official definition for what "Open Source" is.

And if the OSI was there @ the beginning instead of tacking on meaning later, then they sure did a poor job selecting a naming schema that is articulate and accurate.

How much more could you fuck up. You might as well be Verizon + the FCC with the "Freedom Internet Act" which is basically the _ opposite _ of internet freedom for the individual and 100% bullshit.

Seriously I am not in the mood to be fed a line of bullshit about how the term "open source" was created with intentions on a specific meaning which is 100% clearly not in the name and confuses people down to this day in 2019.

Public Source and Libre Source will suffice for naming schemas following syntax that actually fucking makes sense so I am inviting anyone who wants to to use them when describing the nature of the code.
Sure, you now solved an age old problem that did hold back the global adoption of Libre Source software. Everyone praise this guy showing the epic failure of OSI, OSF and RMS, who have not been there from the beginning and oversaw this huge issue, that made one guy in this comment thread think valves game engine called source was open source. It is in fact libre source. No, wait...
Kristian May 4, 2019
AFAIK the Source Engine SDK contains only gameplay source code, not engine source code. It is a modding SDK like in the good old old days when they were standard for FPS games, like with Quake 2, Quake 3,Doom 3, Blood 2 etc

Ami wrong about that?

Many of the Litjech games have been mistakenly/misleadingly put on lists of games with source code available for that reason.

Edit:

On a different matter does anyone have a list of FPS games with 100% FLOSS code(game, engine, shades, tools etc)? Whether with or without free data?


Last edited by Kristian on 4 May 2019 at 6:34 pm UTC
TheRiddick May 5, 2019
valve should really make the source engines open-source!
MayeulC May 5, 2019
Quoting: KristianOn a different matter does anyone have a list of FPS games with 100% FLOSS code(game, engine, shades, tools etc)? Whether with or without free data?
I just found this a minute ago on reddit. Haven't explored it yet.
kneekoo May 6, 2019
Quoting: ElectricPrismIMO "Open Source" should be split into two new definitions:

Public Source
Libre Source

What you'd like to refer to as "Libre Source" is literally the Free Software as defined since 1986. Indeed, "Open Source" is subject to misunderstandings, which is why Richard Stallman explained Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software.

Ironically, "Free Software" also needs clarification to the meaning of "free", which is explained as “free speech,” not “free beer.”

What you proposed is also open to interpretation, with "Public Source" sounding like "Public Domain", which some people know as free to use and redistribute, which cannot be applied to everything released as open source software, but only to free software. As for "Libre Source", I guess that would work, but then almost anyone who cares about software licensing already knows that "Free Software" covers that, so is it really worth coming up with a new name? :D
MayeulC May 7, 2019
Quoting: kneekoo"Public Domain", which some people know as free to use and redistribute, which cannot be applied to everything released as open source software, but only to free software.
Since we're nitpicking, I would like to clarify that you are not necessarily free to use or redistribute free software as defined by the FSF. The GPL restricts your license choice, for instance. Public domain grants you even more freedom (but doesn't guarantees the freedom of users).

Also, there's the catch-all "FLOSS" I sometimes see, or "FOSS" which seems enough already.
kneekoo May 10, 2019
Quoting: MayeulCyou are not necessarily free to use or redistribute free software as defined by the FSF. The GPL restricts your license choice, for instance.
The Free Software Foundation makes it pretty clear what the four essential freedoms are, including this:
QuoteYou may have paid money to get copies of free software, or you may have obtained copies at no charge. But regardless of how you got your copies, you always have the freedom to copy and change the software, even to sell copies.
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