Blue Shift vs Guard Duty

[dman1127]

So I feel it's well known now that the developers are hard at working on the blue shift expansion for Black Mesa. Some time ago however I discovered a second mod that's been in the work's for some time called guard duty developed by Tripmine Studious who are also developing Operation Black Mesa, I took a look at both projects and here's what I found.

Guard Duty has apparently been in development since 2009 and was actually picked up from a previous attempt called Barney's Tales which started back in 2006 before ceasing development in 2008, despite this I couldn't find a lot showcasing the project other then some videos showing the weapons shared with Operation BM. based on what I've seen it's similar to Black Mesa in that it's a total conversion of the base game. One thing I thought was cool is that the flashlight is similar to doom 3's flashlight in that instead of being mounted you have to physically hold it up with the exception of the pistol, it also takes the crowbar's spot of being the main melee weapon Barney uses which I like as it adds some uniqueness to Blue Shift, and that's about all I can say.

Now to be fair not much of the game has been shown yet, with that said I'm still siding with Black Mesa mainly because despite starting their remake years later Crowbar Collective have been much quicker with their development. Again to be fair these guys aren't selling the game (technically Blue Shift remake is also free to download but you still need to by Black Mesa in order to play it), so far from what I've seen it's just a mod, meaning they've most likely have been working on it in their free time, and their trying to remake Opposing Force on top of that. If anyone has anything to say by all means, in all honesty I just felt like getting this out there.

[phillippi2]

Crowbar Collective is not working on Blue Shift. Both of those are being made by other teams. Crowbar is said to be working on their own IP, now.

[dman1127]

Originally posted by phillippi2:

Crowbar Collective is not working on Blue Shift. Both of those are being made by other teams. Crowbar is said to be working on their own IP, now.

Oh, I looked back at the mod page and yeah. It's being made by HECU Collective, my bad. So technically that means other then patreon both modders are making these games for free and in their spare time most likely.

[Cursed Hawkins]

Originally posted by dman1127:

Originally posted by phillippi2:

Crowbar Collective is not working on Blue Shift. Both of those are being made by other teams. Crowbar is said to be working on their own IP, now.

Oh, I looked back at the mod page and yeah. It's being made by HECU Collective, my bad. So technically that means other then patreon both modders are making these games for free and in their spare time most likely.

Also there's literally another project on Steam that's basically a combination of the two expansions anyway.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/311810/Operation_Black_Mesa/

[dman1127]

Originally posted by Cursed Hawkins:

Originally posted by dman1127:

Oh, I looked back at the mod page and yeah. It's being made by HECU Collective, my bad. So technically that means other then patreon both modders are making these games for free and in their spare time most likely.

Also there's literally another project on Steam that's basically a combination of the two expansions anyway.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/311810/Operation_Black_Mesa/

I mentioned Operation Black Mesa in the post. I feel anyone who saw this would eventually find it with ease. I just wanted to see people's opinions on the projects.

[XanDer-XTX]

Crowbar Collective development was ofc more efficient and as you've said quicker and that could only have been achieved with a group of people who commit full time to get the game done. It's not easy.

It's worth mentioning that Black Mesa, which was in development since 2006, they got the 80% of the game done by 2012. I remember playing it with the Source SDK Base 2007 as a mod and was good to see how the engine could be pushed to the next level.

Lastly, Tripmine Studios has a long way to go with their game. Is it something that I look forward to? Well, I guess... not so much. I used to be excited about it though.

[Cursed Hawkins]

Originally posted by XanDer-XTX:

It's worth mentioning that Black Mesa, which was in development since 2006, they got the 80% of the game done by 2012. I remember playing it with the Source SDK Base 2007 as a mod and was good to see how the engine could be pushed to the next level.

Technically speaking the project started further back in 2005 because it was in response to Valve's piss-poor attempt at adapting HL1 to the Source Engine when everyone saw that Valve just ripped the guts out of HL1 and just slapped it in the Source Engine.
"Black Mesa was developed in response to Half-Life: Source (2005), Valve's port of Half-Life to the Source engine, which lacked new features or improvements. Two teams wanted to improve on the Source remake and eventually merged to become Crowbar Collective. While they had originally targeted a release by 2009, the team realized they had rushed to this point and reevaluated their efforts to improve the quality of the remake."

[Peter Brev]

"Crowbar Collective" was only official when the product went retail. Everything before that should not be using Crowbar Collective as the team name.

[Zekiran]

"merged"



Not according to any of the people I know of that worked on the first incarnation, but that's just a peeve. i still deeply appreciate the final product.

[Cursed Hawkins]

Originally posted by Peter Brev:

"Crowbar Collective" was only official when the product went retail. Everything before that should not be using Crowbar Collective as the team name.

Well that was what came from the wikipedia page, and granted those can be wrong about things at times.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mesa_(video_game)

[Peter Brev]

"Black Mesa is a 2020 first-person shooter game developed and published by Crowbar Collective." is not technically wrong, but it needs additional precision deeper in the article a developer would be better at providing.

[K12T6]

Black Mesa: Blue Shift will likely always be my definitive “Blue Shift” remake simply because it was first to market, does a lot of things really well, good cast of characters that do a great job at making the npcs feel less like cannon fodder, and, the biggest thing, style consistency. The original expansions had areas where they crossed over with Half-Life where they looked exactly the same, and voice actors were the same as well. BM:BS continuation of this goes a long way at making it feel like I’m playing in the same BMRF rather than another separate team’s rendition.