Black Mesa - Train Ride

This world is made by the community.

Black Mesa - Train Ride

A 360° preview image of the spawn area inside the world "Black Mesa - Train Ride"

Created By

The Science Team

Published On

2021-12-30

Tags

Black Mesa, Source Engine, Half Life, Train, Tram, Long Loading Time, Tech Showcase

Introduction

Black Mesa - Train Ride is a world by The Science Team.

It is a merge from ports of various Source Engine maps and assets from the Half Life 1 fan remake Black Mesa by Crowbar Collective

The world can be accessed with: resrec:///G-The-Science-Team/R-b1f0e9cf-45c1-4945-88de-2cfa8ae5fa13

or through the in app world browser, searching for Black Mesa - Train Ride

Map overview

Wireframe render of the whole black mesa train ride map

Reaching the Main map

You spawn at the lower level of the Xen Museum

Resonite screenshot of the Xen Museum entrance area

If you go left or right from the spawn, you will find 2 elevators.

Resonite screenshot of one of the elevators inside the Xen Museum area

Using the down button inside either brings you to the main map train station.

Creditboard & Map settings

It is right in the middle of the Xen Museum behind the reception desk.

Systems and features

Most of the systems used in the map are recreations of their counter part from the Source Engine

GBT - Global Body Tracking

This system places SphereColliders on the head, hands, hip and feet.

The main use case is the collision interaction with objects and certain surfaces in the world, like windows and water.

GSS - Global Sound System

This is more of a library then an actual system.

The library holds most of the voice lines and some sound effects, including the necessary attributes for playback.

Grabbing the sound clip Slot reference and attributes Dynamic_Variables is done through the name of the corresponding clip from the game.

GUT - Global User Tracking

The current public release of the map (v0.5.2) has a bounding box based system, to detect if the local user is inside a zone.
These checks are used to drive the culling of parts from the map and transition between the different Soundscapes

Starting with version 0.6.2 of the map, it's gonna be based around colliders on the haptics layer.

Soundscapes

Based on the Soundscapes of the Source Engine

The current implementation is using tracking boxes similar to the GUT

Subtitle System

Displays subtitles at the lower part of the view.

The current version of the map includes the subtitles of all supported languages from the original Black Mesa game.

The subtitle system tries (if possible) to map the displayed text to closest possible Resonite language and falls back to english if none match.

Subtitles get automatically triggered by the GSS, if a matching voice line or sound effect was found.

Map Hologram

The middle of the room features a blueish hologram of the entire map.

All current users in the session are displayed as the mini info_player_start model from the Source Engine.

Hovering over the mini figures reveals an icon for teleporting to the matching user.

Quick Travel

Some of the security and green sliding doors are connected to various parts of the map, which allows quickly reaching most places in the entire map.

An alternative to the doors, is the Map Hologram in the middle of the Xen Museum.

Black Mesa game maps

The following maps from the game Black Mesa got ported, modified and merged:

• xen_museum
• Chapter 01 - Black Mesa Inbound
  • bm_c0a0a
  • bm_c0a0b
  • bm_c0a0c
• Chapter 02 - Anomalous Materials
  • bm_c1a0a
  • bm_c1a0b

Differences to the original maps

Chapter 1 & 2

The original game maps are self contained and require to pass through loading zones to transition between them.

All parts of chapter 1 and 2 (with the exception of the Xen Museum) are connected and can be explored in one go with this port.

Missing bits and pieces of the map parts got filled in where possible, so the user gets a more complete experience while exploring outside of the normal constrains from the original game.

Xen Museum

All additional rooms got removed from the Xen Museum, since the project is more focused on the introduction part (Chapter 1 & 2) of the original game.

External Tools

Table containing a list of tools used in the making of this project

Tool	Description
Blender	Blender is the free and open source 3D creation suite.
BSPSource	A Source engine map decompiler
Crowbar	Crowbar - GoldSource and Source Engine Modding Tool
GCFScape	GCFScape is a small tool that can open and extract from GCF files that were formerly utilized by Steam for game content storage.
Gimp	The Free & Open Source Image Editor
Plumber	A Blender addon for importing Source 1 engine maps, models, materials and textures.
Pragma	Open Source C++ game engine
Sledge2Resonite	A ResoniteModLoader mod for Resonite Enables users to import their own sledge file format based assets.
SourceIO	SourceIO is an Blender addon for importing source engine textures/models/maps
ssbumpToNormal-Win	Source SSBump to modern normal map converter
SSBumpToNormalGUI	GUI Tool for based on the Source ssbump to normal map converter
source-armature-toolkit	Flexible multi-purpose Blender plugin focused on fastening the workflow of working with Source armatures.
Tenacity	Tenacity is an easy-to-use, privacy-friendly, FLOSS, cross-platform multi-track audio editor/recorder for Windows, macOS, Linux and other operating systems.
VTFEdit	VTFEdit is a tool for viewing, editing, and creating VTF and VMT files.
VTFEdit-Reloaded	VTFEdit-Reloaded is a successor to VTFEdit
VPKEdit	A CLI/GUI tool to create, read, and write several pack file formats.

Contributions

Table containing a list of users who helped with the making of this project

User	Contribution
Beaned	Goose ai (wandering NPCs prototype) Initial footstep system
Coffee	A-Star pathfinding
Comeino	Notice me senpai sign
dfgHiatus	C# plugin & mod development help
Elektrospy	Map and Assets import and cleanup Optimization Documentation Ideas
Frooxius	For making Resonite
Gearbell	Vendingmachine ideas
Gourry	Making the fireextinguisher usable
Groxxy	General knowlage about the source 1&2 engines
Kal	Flipboard adscreen animation
KungFuMonkey	(The not forgotten) Consultant
marsmaantje	(All the) Systems Logix / ProtoFlux UIX
Ukilop	Redprint Regex magic
Zyzyl	Cleanup Plugins Consultant for weird dynamic variable behavior
3xit5yl3 (Andromeda)	UIX scrollbar

Legal Stuff

Permission

Crowbar Collective

Special Thanks to the Crowbar Collective for creating the Black Mesa game and Natalino Carlo (Community Manager), for giving the permission to port and use the assets and map parts.

HECU Collective

Special Thanks to the HECU Collective for creating the Black Mesa Blue Shift mod and Faber (HECU Team Lead), for giving us the permission to port and use the assets and map parts.

Copyright / Trademark

Legal Notice on Valve Corporation Copyright and Trademark Rights

All assets, content, and intellectual property associated with the Half-Life series, including but not limited to software, characters, game assets (models, textures, sounds, and music), and branding elements (names, logos, symbols) are protected under U.S. and international copyright laws. Valve Corporation retains exclusive ownership and copyright over these assets and reserves all rights to their distribution, reproduction, and modification.

License

All assets from the game Black Mesa are under the CC BY-NC 3.0 license. The content made by The Science Team is under the CC-BY 4.0