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BMS Classic - "We've Got Hostiles" (Extended)

BMS Classic started out as a simple mod aiming to undo some of the changes brought to Black Mesa in 1.0 and 1.5, such as unnecessary railroading, insultingly excessive handholding, questionable balance decisions, and watered-down combat. Since then, it's evolved into an attempt to bring together the best parts of Black Mesa and Half-Life and expand upon them.

Bringing back HL1 setpieces that didn't make the cut for one reason or another, adding incentive for the player to explore and investigate off the beaten trail, trusting players to be able to think and reason their way through puzzles without force-feeding them the answer, expanding upon areas of the facility to make it feel more alive, and making the player have to think about how they fight to survive - that's what BMS Classic aims to do.

Many maps have also received an additional detail pass, making them more atmospheric and immersive by way of enhanced/reworked lighting and improved water visuals. Attempts have also been made to improve performance on some particularly troublesome maps, but given Source's limitations, there's only so much that can be done.


It depends. Other chapter mods, such as the Chapter Overhaul mods or VOX Restoration mods, aren't compatible. BMSC extensively edits many of the game's maps, so any other mods that edit maps are going to run into conflicts. Compatibility with some of these mods (namely the VOX Restoration mods and Black Mesa Character Expansion) is something I'd like to investigate further down the line.

Take heed - BMSC We've Got Hostiles is not compatible with RK's WGH Vent Mod.


For BMSC's purposes, no. While I did get permission from .RK to produce a BMSC-compatible version of Vent Mod, a number of factors led to me deciding to create my own WGH expansion. First and foremost is simply the fact that I don't feel comfortable editing and reuploading another modder's work like that, even with explicit permission - especially since BMSC's scope is significantly larger than Vent Mod's, and I'd rather not treat Vent Mod as just being a "footnote" of sorts in the full version of BMSC. Another major factor is that we wanted to add new setpieces to WGH, and while I probably could've modified Vent Mod to accommodate for my aims here, I feel that the end result would've felt inconsistent and slapped together.


BMSC is primarily a joint effort, between Vassago Rain and myself. Some chapters also have additional support or resources from other modders, as listed in the Contributors section.

It's important to note that BMSC is fundamentally a two-man effort. There's only so much we have the time, resources, and ability to do. As such, we've had to make decisions about what does or doesn't get added/changed. We're just two people with a love for Half-Life doing what we can here, to try and realize Black Mesa's full potential. If you have specific questions about why certain changes were made, or why things were added/removed/etc., feel free to ask.


This download is the BMSC edition of We've Got Hostiles, at its extended length. HECU combat has been significantly overhauled, and the shotgun has been given an explicit, intentional pickup near the start of the chapter. This allows for more variety with marine combat without the shotgun being awkwardly shoehorned in, resolves the oddity of the dead marine(s) near the beginning not having any weaponry, and mirrors the MP5's original placement in HL1.
Additionally, the vent crawl back from the surface has been extended and reworked - it's more streamlined than the vent maze in the original game, but still provides the player with more space to explore and more time to calm down after the battle on the surface.

A more detailed changelog can be found in the Workshop download folder - for this addon, that'll be somewhere like Steam/steamapps/workshop/content/362980/2432833926. The contents of the changelog can also be found in the pinned discussions.