Loved your video! Wish I could have done something as exhaustive as yours back then, it's been almost 10 years since I wrote the first lines of what would become HalfMapper. Unfortunately, as you mentioned, there are still some bugs and things I never got around to implementing, and I've moved to other projects and haven't had much time to even maintain it 😔 Not sure why, but I really enjoy seeing game maps being rendered all at once (to get a sense of the sheer scale of it, I guess) and isometric maps so that's how HalfMapper was born :P I wish other games also had similar viewers (e.g, Bioshock Inifite, GTA, and even some early 3d graphic adventures)

"This place is a whole lot bigger than I thought" - Security Guard

open world black mesa would be crazy in sven coop!

With S&Box's unlimited map size, I could see this being an RP map.

Next up: "Making A Complete 3D Map of Aperture Science"

Imagine if you put three people in this map and they each had to race each other to finish either Half-Life, Opposing Force, or Blue Shift first

I'd love to see an official map of every area of Black Mesa seen in every game made by Valve that edits them slightly to make them all line up and fit together.

Man someone need to turn this into a "open facility" game where you play as a science 1 day before HL1 this almost makes me want to learn how to program half life maps

first half of the quest has been completed, now we need someone to make this into a game we could explore :)

7:02 this is my new dream now

I'd like to clarify that the sense of the word "map" I am using is in the classic sense of a guide map, not as .bsp map (level). This could never be run in half-life like this. HalfMapper is merely for viewing and touring the levels. When I joke about an open world game, my emphasis is on how the game world is truly all connected into one world. If someone could create an engine and some game objectives that would have this make any sense, it wouldn't require all the level to load at once. That would be pointless. Even Minecraft loads in "chucks" necessary for the player to see. This is what Goldsrc and Source currently do. They load the map that is needed by the player at the moment, and then carry all player data (health, stats, etc) over to the next map when passing through a transition. The engines don't do this for multiplayer though. That's where the modifications would need to be implemented.

Honestly, someone should take this layout and make art of how these parts of the Black Mesa Research Facility look from a bird's view from the outside, It looks like the facility is mainly located on a mountain, so it's be cool to see how that would look!

Man this sure needed a lot of thinking.

I wish the developers hadn't done so much conflicting with each other space. If someone was about to make a giant Black Mesa map, he would also need to lengthen/shorten and change directions of some corridors.

I want an open-world Black Mesa MMO.

It's so frustrating that you were so close to perfection, but a Blue Shift map had to be rotated for some reason and ruin everything... anyway, thank you for this amazing work!

Amazing video and demonstration. I'm glad I'm not the only half life fan who wants the entire mesa to be 1 map

This is my dream. All the expansions connected. Ever since about 2 years ago, I always was interested in this idea. One Idea I thought would be cool, would be a 5 Player Half life game where you play as each character in their respective and seperate Areas. Of course, I know a problem with that is the speed, and the limitations of the Goldsource engine.

1:58 Ha! I new there was something wrong with that part of the game when i played it. Gordon does a 180 in the pipe in the cliff and comes out onto an area where the cliff was.

just imagine a roleplay of a functional black mesa, like going to another sector in a train system, it would be so frickin cool

This is something I've wanted for months, I'm really happy to see this!

Wow! That's a lot of work and effort put into it. It looks fantastic! Also, I can picture an open world Black Mesa map. I don't think it's possible to be made in GoldSrc engine and neither could be in Source engine but a man can dream.

I love how some open air areas are placed underneat underground levels :)

This idea was in my mind years ago. And I am very happy to see somebody did it Thank you !

Amazing job! It's very cool to see how much more things can be joined together and improved with enough effort!

This is amazing, must have taken so long, thanks for making this

Videos like this is why i love your channel and subscribed 2 it out of conviction . This video made my day

This is so cool. Makes me wonder if it's possible with other games in general. Great vid

I'd love to see a fully remodeled Black Mesa that is INTACT. Before the incident happened. I'd love to explore that!

Great to see a random video regarding topics I've taken my time to search on google like a year ago or so, but couldn't find anything good enough. Thanks, google, youtube algorithm and especially thanks to you, lymphoid. Not an essential video, but I feel satisfied with the shown presentation

Man, you did an amazing job

Just stumbled upon this channel. Good stuff!!

This is awesome! Next video should be traversing it!

Great job on filling out the sections. Now all that's needed would be to clean away the overlapping sections (and the leftover Xen sections), spin the orientation of Blue Shift's maps, and go through the dull work of attempting to retrofit the Decay locations into the pre-existing gargantua, and then it would be a truly complete 3d map. Also, worth noting that Decay's 8th and 9th missions do actually link up to each other, since you start in the same room both times.

I really hope someone does this with Black Mesa, I think a majority of those maps were thought out pretty well in their relation to each other, surface tension being the best example.

More than 20 years have passed by and there is still alot of things to learn about this game.

i can already tell this is going to be a great video

this is a strangely nostalgic video. It makes black mesa look a lot less laborious to explore it's nice

Useful info. I come from the Sven Coop dev discord. In Sven Coop, the devs merged the HL maps using official valve source assets (the original goldsrc assets were lost) and it mostly lines up everything just fine except a few details... BUT the big problem is just as this video says The Dam. People have come to the conclusion that between the dam and the next map there is a missing map. And there is. The map in question is the one you could see in a screenshot used ingame during the WON era before steam existed, it was used for adjusting the brightness of the game or the gama. The missing map was about a big gargantua fight with grunts in a huge open airfield with helipads. It was probably cut from the game because of engine limitations and the fact that the garg fight theme would be repeated too much in the game. I have not found the map anywhere, but someone had made a recreation of it..although I can't find it either anymore.

you are legend ,literally ,thats really impressive how you able to connect them all

somehow I never put together that the lambda core tower is directly below the xen teleport

Thanks for bringing this amazing video! 🙌

Tried working on mapping everything together for a tabletop game idea I had some time ago. One day I'll finish that. But seeing this in 3D finally is awesome! I'll have to find time to download and explore this.

Christ mate, amazing work.

What an amazing project... kudos

awesome work. Black Mesa looks so huge, it's even doubtfull such big complex may exist in real life)

“This place is a lot bigger than I thought.”

Nice video man :)

God, I hope someone can make that full-length open-world Black Mesa game. Even if it's nothing more than a walking simulator. I'd play the heck out of it!

I had this dream for a while, that someone will map up all the levels of the different Half Life games. It became true thanks to you!

I can't imagine the pain it should have been to make all of this... but what an impressive work ! Very interesting.

this man put in so much work we respect you man

Thank you, that was very interesting 👍

This is so cool. I wish i had the energy and time to do this myself. would be fun to try to adjust it to make it less accurate to game and more actually functional. (Move positions of elevators, rotate and flip things as needed).

I forked the HalfMapper project, added map rotating, and attempted this very same thing a couple of years ago: [I can't seem to post a link to the repo here, YT removes my comment] This video has finally convinced me to publish my configs, albeit in a woefully unfinished state. I hope I'll find some time to work on this project in the future. Noteworthy facts about this version of the project: 1. I had to take some liberties when aligning the maps (mainly based on the premise that Gordon got slightly confused while crawling through vents): - some maps have been rotated (most notably the Surface Tension cliffside) to eliminate overlap - some vents don't connect, they'd have to be slightly extended 2. I wanted to split the games into separate 'journeys' (I planned to modify the structure of the config file to allow choosing what journey to render): - never quite finished placing Gordon's second journey in its proper place, however using Opposing Force maps I figured out the approximate location of the Lambda Core so it's a matter of calculating the right offsets from there - you'd have to uncomment the post-Apprehension journey here if you wanted to see it: [link removed] (Keep in mind it's going to break apart if Gordon's first journey is also being rendered due to the end of Apprehension snapping to the previous map, so it's best to disable all other Half-Life chapters rn).

6:59 Ficou incrível! :D Isso deve ter dando um muito trabalho e estudo! 10\10

2:35 lmao I remember trying to do this one time with the Unforeseen Consequences maps until it became apparent pretty quickly that there was some major overlapping going on. An idea I always had was to modify the level transition zones since they tend to happen in places like corridors and vents. Since it wouldn't really be a big deal if it was a bit longer here or there was an extra corner there, you could get more leeway to line things up. An extra corner in say a vent would have the power to change where North/South/East/West are in all subsequent sections of the game.

Man, I've had this idea ever since I played the GoldSrc HLs. Imagine a survival horror game based on this huge map, a "lone" scientist crawling his way through the partially destroyed BMRF after the thermonuclear blast, some nightmarish creatures tailing you slowly but surely. Had a nightmare about the whole thing once, and the only other "thing" in the complex with me was an undead guy trapped in a hazmat suit screaming her mom to wake him up from that nightmare, truly horrifying, deafening and panic-filled screams. I always loved the claustrophobic atmosphere this facility has, would be a great setting for a horror experience.

I've always wanted to assemble an ingame black mesa, with some creative liberties taken to deal with intersections, repair areas ruined by the invasion, and fit things together nicely. It would be a lot of work, so I don't want to embark on it if someone has already done it, or if the engine can't handle a map that large.

Actually, something that might interest you: somebody did a mod for Half-Life Source that basically fixes all the bugs that plagues the official Steam release. Maybe to go with that, you can do a mod that merges the maps for that. Yes, I know that HL: resized is a thing, but the difference here would be that not only would the bugs that plague the resized maps be nonexistent (like missing Xen crystal teleport shards in C4A1), but the only level transitions would be between chapters. Level transitions within the same chapter would be merged.

Since we now have a complete 3D map of Black Mesa, imagine a complete 3D map of the Half Life 2 Citadel (This is just an idea)

HOLY SHIT I WAS WANTING TO DO THIS AND PLANNING ON DOING IT THANK YOU SO MUCH i havent watched it yet but it ihnk it is what i think it is

This is the result of loving your work

Two things: -Have you tried looking at Black Mesa in HalfMapper's isometric mode? -Is it possible to make measuremenets in HalfMapper, such as height difference between the lowest and highest outdoor area? Something like that could be compared to a New Mexico elevation map.

Good lock compiling that map in hammer.

Man this is wild! I wish we could play this at least in GMod, someone would definitely find a way to optimize it or even use it in RP servers. You did a great job

Dude this is so cool.

Great Video!

I'm amazed that they managed to make all of the areas interconnected so well

F*cking amazing work!

This looks like a logistical nightmare, and I can't believe you did it. Braver than most.

Cool seeing this combined together like a Souls map.

Nothing would be cooler than a full pre-disaster black mesa map

my god it's beautiful

wonderful work. I wonder if og developers actually took in consideration relative positioning and overlapping OR just coded modules separately with no worries. Fun fact, with current Web Technologies , this whole map-collage could be imported as a website. So ppl could inspect it right in their browser. That would be spectacular.

I'd love to see a fully-realized map of Black Mesa similar to this, but with all of the spatial anomalies fixed and empty spaces filled in. Hell, maybe even making it pre-Resonance Cascade. Imagine having a massive map where you get to be some sort of Black Mesa employee, doing various tasks that inevitably allow you to explore the whole facility while it's still intact.

I have been waiting for years for someone to do that, now all that's left iss find the game that can run it well, have a predisaster version and connect all doors so you can go all around using whatever paths you feel like.

You answered a 20 year old question that I had (if all the levels were put together in one map, would there be collisions?). Thank you so much for this!!

Lambda complex fit pretty well (but was needed small adjustments in elevator shaft length). I finished right now obj for it.

I wonder if somebody will remove the GabeN rooms, make the corridors longer/shorter, proper elevator heights, remove the Xen areas... Basically take the maps, remove what's not really part of them, and align them with the creative liberty of distances.

I just want to say... thank you so much

I single frame is about double the amount of triangles in a modern game. Wild.

I suggest removing the background noise in your microphone recordings. Most audio editing software makes it very easy to sample a selection of pure background noise, and remove it from the entire source file before you begin audio editing. Excellent project and video! A free-roam, open, complete, and playable Black Mesa map would indeed be amazing, and you have laid the groundwork.

dude it's truly mad i like it

Only 5 million triangles!? damn, nowadays a single character model can have that amount of triangles

This was very cool

The next challenge would be to add as many mods like Field Intensity that intersect the base HL or expansion playable areas. (FI's first half intersects with Decay and Blue Shift and it's second half with OP4 IIRC). Would cite Echoes but IIRC Echoes doesn't ever intersect the rest of Black Mesa.

Magnificent

This is awesome, I'd love to see it in-game with the rotation fixes and Xen pieces removed

first i search for this video in incognito mode now it gets into my youtube recommended

Amazing

You Goldsource god you...respect!

As someone who modded Half-Life, i can safely say that the entire engine has to be modified until the open facility game could be made. Maybe cause the specific weapons and entities. It's still possible though

The Level 3 Dormitories visited in the Decay chapter Domestic Violence are supposedly where the tram ride in Half-Life starts, though the entrances don't match visually.

Very interesting , 5M+ triangles is actually surprisingly low. I did not appreciate the volume spike on your outro segment music.

Great. I've always wanted to see all the sequence of the game maps at a glance. I guess it's possible to do the same with HL2.

I love how large chunks of the surface are underground

Looks great, Now if someone can make this into an actual workshop map somehow. This would be absolutely great. Oh and, Youve just earned a new subscriber as i find youre content interesting.

And if you add maps from Field Intensity. Or mods that took place in Black Mesa that feels like a Gearbox expansion. It can could make Blue-Shift and Decay maps connect where they are.

Technically, you should have included the Hazard Course, because in one of the Gearbox expansions you actually go through its portion during the campaign.