News
‘Half-Life’ mod “Black Mesa” Hits Delay
Like some fans, I’ve come to accept that unfortunately, we just won’t be getting closure in the form Half-Life 3 (or even Episode 3 for that matter). Still, that hasn’t stopped some fans from keeping the Half-Life series relevant. Take Crowbar Collective’s Black Mesa mod, which looks to recreate the game using the Source Engine. The team has been at work since 2012, and was scheduled to release the highly-anticipated Xen levels in December of this year. Unfortunately, in a new post by project lead Adam Engels, that release is being delayed.
In the post, Engels gets to the bad news right away, stating that the team worked “very hard” to make the December release, but that the levels aren’t to the point of release. “Simply put, Xen has proven to be an enormous undertaking, and while we are managing it to the best of our ability, it is proving to take longer than we estimated.”
However, all is not lost, as Engels also talks about what other things will be in the December update, including the new features that are being developed for Xen. “We have changed a number of things within the Source Engine, and we want to make sure they all work on the myriad of PCs out there. By enabling the new tech on the Earthbound section of the game, we can get the engine/code fully stabilized on Steam before we drop the final chapters.”
Among the new features (which you can check out in Engels’ post) include a custom lens flare entity, dynamic lights, a 4-way texture blending system (similar to the one seen in Counter Strike: Global Offensive), and Image-Based Ambient Lighting. Also, the mod itself is currently 60% off until November 28th. So, if you’re interested in revisiting the original Half-Life (which is creeping up on its 20th birthday), this is probably the way to do it (for now).
All of us here at Bloody Disgusting are deeply saddened to learn that George A. Romero Foundation Founder and President Suzanne Desrocher-Romero has passed away.
GARF shared in a statement on socials, “It is with a heavy heart that we announce the passing of Suzanne Desrocher Romero. Suzanne passed away of natural causes on June 24 at her home in Toronto after a prolonged illness.”
The statement continues, “Suzanne was the fierce leader of the George A. Romero Estate and The George A. Romero Foundation. She worked tirelessly to preserve George’s legacy. Her work at the foundation will continue to inspire and live on for generations to come. The family asks for privacy at this time.”
Desrocher-Romero founded GARF in 2018, after her late husband’s passing in 2017, and has been a fierce advocate for his legacy and the arts. It was her mission to “strengthen horror as a serious field of global study,” and she was a tremendous fighter on behalf of Romero’s works and supporting new filmmakers inspired by his legacy.
It was Desrocher-Romero who spearheaded the recovery and restoration of The Amusement Park, and, as the person in charge of the George A. Romero estate, worked closely with author Daniel Kraus on completing unfinished novels like Pay the Piper and The Living Dead. She most recently celebrated the restoration of her favorite of Romero’s zombie films, Day of the Dead, and was hard at work producing the upcoming film Twilight of the Dead.
That passionate advocacy led to Suzanne Desrocher-Romero becoming family to Bloody Disgusting as well.
2023 marked the start of an ongoing partnership between Bloody FM and GARF on The Dead, a scripted audio series spanning multiple seasons that saw Desrocher-Romero working closely with the Bloody FM team and mentoring the series’s contributing writers with GARF. To say her loss will be felt internally is an understatement.
“Anytime George Romero is mentioned is good, because what we are doing is to provide a healthy legacy. We’re uplifting his legacy, we’re supporting the archive, and we’re also supporting the Horror Study Center. So, all of these three things are what the Foundation is striving to do. As far as I’m concerned, the more we say George Romero’s name, the better it is,” Desrocher-Romero recently told BD.
It’s the perfect encapsulation of her unwavering enthusiasm for supporting Romero’s legacy and the horror genre, and just a glimpse at how much she contributed to preserving it. She is, in short, an inspiration.
We send our deepest condolences to Suzanne Desrocher-Romero’s family, friends, and GARF.
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