We’ve seen a lot of amazing fanmade Half-Life live-action films in the community over the years, but for the most part, these have been shorter, smaller creations developed on budgets ranging from “tiny” to “zero”. And while they mostly hit all the right notes even with these minimal resources, one just can’t help but wonder… what if a few of the community’s biggest and bestest filmmakers decided to aim higher than the rest–namely, by putting together a more sizeable budget–offering the fans a more substantial fanfilm than we’ve ever seen before?

Well, it seems the wheels are finally turning on a non-profit, fan-funded Half-Life webseries that might just give us what we’ve been clamoring for: 40 minutes of Gordon Freeman, fighting aliens and spec-ops soldiers on the surface of the Black Mesa complex! And no sword fights.

I never thought I’d ever be writing that headline.

The original Half-Life was first announced in early 1997, initially set for that year’s holiday season. But one very impressive E3 1997 showing later, and suddenly Half-Life was on everyone’s radar – expectations were ramping up, and suddenly, Valve were in the center of the gaming world’s attention. And so, later that year, close to their projected release date, Valve decided that a delay was in order. Once they’d attained it, a lot of the pressure was off, and the team at Valve spent began to intensely evaluate every aspect of the game, and all of the content they had created in one year of development.

And while there had been a considerable amount of progress, and the game itself was in very good shape, it just seemed like there was something missing – as Valve engineer Ken Birdwell stated in The Final Hours of Half-Life, the game simply wouldn’t have gone “over the edge anywhere“. To Valve, it seemed like Half-Life could be a lot more revolutionary and a lot more groundbreaking. Thus, in late 1997, an entire game’s worth of content and design was completely scrapped, and Half-Life underwent a complete redesign, fully from the ground up.

What gamers eventually got one year later in November of 1998, amounts to an entirely new game (in fact, according to Ken Birdwell, it really is a Half-Life 2 of sorts). But what happened to the Half-Life that never was – the “Half-Life 0” that Valve unceremoniously threw out the door?

Suddenly, that piece we ran the other day seems oddly relevant.

This is an editorial piece written by Lilgreenman, longtime Half-Life obsessive and Valve community member. It summarizes and recapitulates the events of December 2011 – when it seemed like the whole Internet was aflame with rampant Half-Life speculation. Just in case you didn’t catch that little episode of community history, or maybe if you’re still wondering how the hell we fell for all that fake ARG gibberish.

Oh, and Happy Holidays!

To me, at least, it feels like it’s been much longer than a year since the anticipation for Valve’s Half-Life 3 really kicked off.

UPDATE: In the very same interview, Gabe also revealed the fate of one of Valve’s most secretive game projects. Check it out, right here!

Earlier this summer, we found traces of code within the Source Filmmaker that clearly indicated Valve is actively working on “Source 2“, a next-gen game engine built on Source’s foundation. While the news made quite a stir all throughout the Valve community, it didn’t have the same effect it would have had, if Valve had officially confirmed Source 2’s existence.

Well, some months later, it appears we finally have been given just that. Read on!

Things haven’t been the same since. The doctors say my addiction to Team Fortress 2 (and by extension, my addiction to hats) may never be cured.

This is a review/critique of Black Mesa: Source (a free fan-made remake of Half-Life), co-written by Mimaz (co-host of the Steamchat Podcast) and Vic (previous lead editor of LambdaGeneration).

Black Mesa is a difficult game to judge.

Update: This article has been updated with further information on the upcoming first release of Black Mesa: Source. Check it all out, within!

You may or may not know that the work I do, especially here, tends to demand some pretty crazy late night hours of me. Consequently, I might sleep in worse than Gordon Freeman himself (after all, we can all imagine why he was late for that faithful experiment).

And sometimes, it so happens that the universe itself will directly conspire against my sleepy ways.

Like now.

UPDATE 3: Facepunch member J*Rod has created an insightful and very informative explanation of how Source 2 might work, based on what we’ve seen in the leaked code. If you can’t read code (or as I like to call it, hieroglyphs), then this is your lucky day.

UPDATE 2: LambdaGen fan 3rrorVirus has made this hilarious little video about this whole Source 2 debacle – check it out!

UPDATE: Facepunch member DevinWatson has compiled a full list of just about every single Source 2 reference in the SFM files. Take a look!

Yeah, it gets better. Waaay better.