“A teleporter mishap deposited Gordon deep within Black Mesa’s engineering levels.
Unfortunately the high powered machinery was acting as homing beacon for incoming vortigants.
Can Gordon find another teleporter before it’s too late?”
I built this as an ‘unoffical’ entry to the MinimalismVille mapping challenge run on RunThinkShootLive.com. The challenge was only open to HL2 maps but I thought I’d make one in Black Mesa as a bit for fun. All general rules were followed (except building it for HL2) and it was constructed in 2 days. Building something in such a short time frame was extremely challenging. I was probably too ambitous and the map is very rough (I skipped cubemaps completely).
For the minimalism theme I’ve tried to build an old school brush based map, with minimal props and models, only one gun and only one type of npc.
MinimalismVille was a 50-hour mapping challenge. The focus of this theme was to use a little as possible. The mapper decided what was “little”. It was only open to Half-Life 2: Episode Two maps, that is why this is an unofficial entry. In addition to this unofficial entry, Five Zero – Stone Temple for Half-Life was also entered.
- Title: Beacon
- Filename: bm-sp-beacon.7z
- Size : 1.76MB
- Author: JamaicanDave
- Date Released: 26 May 2017
Currently, Gauge does not operate with Black Mesa releases.
If you require more help, please visit the Technical Help page.
- Copy bm_beacon_miniv.bsp into the …\Steam\SteamApps\common\Black Mesa\bms\maps folder
- Copy bm_beacon_miniv.ain into the …\Steam\SteamApps\common\Black Mesa\bms\maps\graphs folder.
- Launch Black Mesa
- Open the console and type map bm_beacon_miniv and now press ENTER.
WARNING: The screenshots contain spoilers.
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1,276Overall
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64365 days
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 4 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 0 Hours, 13 Mins
Shortest: 0 Hours, 10 Mins by Hec
Longest: 0 Hours, 15 Mins by DjReplica
Total Time Played: 0 Hours, 52 Mins
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It’s always nice to play Black Mesa maps as there aren’t that many of them around. This one has a very depressing and grunge feel to it, mainly because of the textures but also slightly due to the layout.
It seems fairly believable but I would have liked to see the central column as some sort of energy conduit with glass showing plasma or something.
What’s more important though is the combat and the layout works really well in that regard. You get attacked from all sides and angles but there are still places to hide or at least wait.
I would have liked to have seen less grouping of enemies, but of course if they move and follow you around then that might be hard to stop.
All in all, I enjoyed it, but as with Black Star, a Half-Life mod I was recently playing, the textures have a significant effect on the mood and ambience of the map and as a standalone map it could leave you with a negative feeling.
I say play it, but play on a harder difficulty than normal because the layout deserves it.
Manually
Easy
12 Minutes
I quite enjoyed this. Its nice to see people mapping for Black Mesa as its the closes thing to a sequel we have right now.
It follows the theme very well, in my opinion. The layout is simple and with one enemy and one weapon, it is pretty minimalistic in that regard.
Gameplay is simple as well, defeat the slaves before they defeat you. Simple does not mean easy or boring.
It’s nice to see again maps for BM.
And yes, it’s map on theme Minimalism.
Uh. So can you make competition for Black Mesa?
Mappers should make map for black mesa on diffirent themes.
So. Map is really cool
I hadn’t realized as I watched the video first but if the player is meant to be Gordon then why are your player’s hand models like a HECU uniform and the HUD green? These aren’t there by default so I’d suppose the author deliberately changed them.
It’s because Phillip has the Hazard Course After Disaster map pack installed. In that you play a HECU. It replaces the view model hands, HUD colour and various other things. Unfortunately the mod authors haven’t set it up properly and these changes seem to affect everything you play in Black Mesa.
Personally I think if your going to create a map or mod that changes vanilla assets and settings you better be damned sure it reverts back to normal once the player finishes. It’s one of the reasons I haven’t installed, let alone played After Disaster.
I am shocked. I will delete my local Black Mesa files and start again.
It’s ok. I knew there was also that mod left over but didn’t think the two would overlap.
Speaking of “Hazard Course After Disaster”, is there any remaining way to play this?
Very solid unofficial entry, it definitely screams minimalism at you. However to call it a little nitpicky, i’d give it a 10/10 if the predictability was combined with unconventional introductions of the areas that the player could plan his tactics, because after a while the shooting and cover do become boring, however because it was that short of a entry, i didn’t had a strong feeling for it becoming repetitive.
I did like the different transitional forms of acceding through the level and the little atmospheric feeling, most of the entry had logically uphold areas that serve a purpose with the exception of the vent, which looked like it was pretty much there to make it diverse but very unfitting for a realism scenario, as the entrance didn’t had props or decals to signify the existence.
Difficulty curve seems to be a constant of just 2-3 enemies to deal in a parallel, nothing too difficult, even on hard difficulty i didn’t take any hits.
However to put this aside, very empirical entry.
Manually
Hard
15 Minutes
This was another cool JD release. Its mapping was planned out with a minimalistic concept focused on battling Vortigaunts with only your old but trustable MP4, and your ability to move fast and think strategically.
The design is a simple “go from point A to point B” linear path, but the combat just fits well into the minimalistic concept.
I also agree with Phillip that textures look murky and sometimes depressing, anyway, BM is full of those sad dark industrial environments. The bodies of grunts and vortigaunts lay there on the ground added a little spooky touch to all the map. Maybe if a G-Man sighting would have been added a great touch to the whole mysterious aura of the map.
Manually
Medium
10 Minutes
If there’s one thing I learned from this, then it’s “wait till the vort charges, let him miss, shoot him into slimy bits”.
Phillip said to play it on a higher difficulty than you usually would, so I played it on Normal. Pretty nice layout and gameplay, and very well balanced, too – I had just emptied the second-to-last MP5 clip when I finished.
The layout gets a bit repetitive after some time, but it’s a solid exercise in combat and the map isn’t long enough for it to actually get boring. Visually, the map reminds me of Portal’s “Escape” areas rather than Black Mesa – possibly due to the worn-down feel and the lack of props. It sure fit the theme of minimalism and was a welcome change.
Manually
Medium
15 Minutes
Was this map built for a certain beta of BM ? I have my BM beta set to none (current ‘public-beta’), and when I try to load the map, it crashes to the Steam main library page.
I’ve tried it with the 2012 BM free version also – same result.
Thanks for your efforts.
Sorry, just talked to JamaicanDave about this. Black Mesa’s updates over the years have broken most old maps including this one. You might get lucky and find a version of the mod or game it works with.
The best bet for up-to-date and playable BM maps is to check the Black Mesa Workshop in Steam. Unfortunately this map was not updated, but JamaicanDave does have several other workshop maps that are fully playable and worth your time.