half life purists and nerds try not to get mad at someone else's perspective/opinion of the time period or date of the incident challenge: impossible

The real date has never been revealed. May 16, 2003 is a very popular speculated date, but it has never 100% been confirmed by Marc Laidlaw or any of the other HL1 devs

did half life or black mesa really start on may 16th 2000-3?

It may be something like a repeated event, like a specific meeting or something with updating security clearance. It's hard to tell. I just moved the colors as the different year layout meant it wouldn't line up without moving them around

Sorry to ask again, but what do you believe the colour legend in the big calendar (green, purple, light blue, etc.) is? I just feel curious as to how you managed it.

I don't understand why the keycards are so significant, because they're for a completely different company halfway across the world that is only mentioned in HL:A's storyline. The keys expiring in December 2001 could mean nothing because we don't know anything about that company's timeline. It could have shut down in 1999 and the cards just weren't gathered and destroyed properly.

Having read the Reddit post below, I stand corrected. It does appear that Valve wanted the game to indeed occur in 2000, but Laidlaw wanted it to occur in 2003. Interesting.

Clearly, the current canon follows Valve's directive, and as such, the HL:A cards and newspapers confirm that HL1 was in December. This makes logical sense. It is quite interesting to note that Valve (presumably) paid attention to the lunar stage of the 5th of December, yet was unable to create a proper calendar (since the one in the original Half-Life is a somewhat distorted take on a December 2002 calendar).

Right, many thanks!

Right, right. It's bolded Century Gothic

The calendar decal. The font as in the one used for letters, like "DIN", or "Arial", "Calibri", etc.

You may need to be a little more specific? I'm not sure what you mean by original overlay

Just for clarification to everyone in the comment section: Half-Life's date is purely dependant on the storyteller. Under Gaben's/Valve's canon (the modern one), Half-Life takes place around its release date, December '98. Under Laidlaw's original plans (the ones that led to Epistle 3), Half-Life takes place on May 16th, 2003.

Anyways, nice mod. May I ask if you figured out the font used in the original overlay?

Let me throw my two cents in, Marc Laidlaw wrote that it happened on May 16th in 2003, and he wrote the story for Half Life so it happened on May 16th, 2003

To the December-Truthers, I appreciate your passion, to find the concrete details in the backgrounds and the hidden easter eggs. However, there are multiple conflicting details and things that will never line up from game to game. For example; Gordon losing his ponytail, Gordon not having the HEV Mk 4 at the start of HL2 despite GMan saying he earned it, Barney in Blue Shift may or may not be Barney in HL2, and so on. Are these details worth fighting tooth and nail over? I don't think so. There's a lot to suspend the disbelief on, and a calendar being inconsistent is an anthill compared to larger things to keep consistent. If it's not your headcanon, you don't need to try to fight for dominance of the place of ideas space, just give it a kind smile and move on, or try to strike a friendly conversation about the details that each lead to your conclusions, and agree to disagree at the end. Have fun with the December textures, I'm glad you have your happiness, and I have mine.

I knew that the mod would be a little controversial, as mentioned already, but I really wanted to put this mod out there because I do know other people believe the May theory set up by the original games' manuals, and I wanted to use my resources to make the best replacement I could, even going as far as getting the correct fonts and editing the Periodic Table to remove the anachronistic elements that would've kept me up at night lol. I remember completely remaking that long calendar's grid to make it look good.

Headcanons are fun too, like I subscribe to the Gearbox games being canon, and I'm in love with the idea of the HL1 SPAS-12 somehow being the same shotgun in HL2, portrayed by a sticker that was on the receiver being rough and torn in HL1/BMS and the sticker being gone but you can still see the residue the sticker left in the right lighting.

Of course not! I do recognize that people say December 2000 bc the original HL calendar texture was December and the Newspapers in HL2 say the 7hr War happened near or in a January. I believe that both calendar opinions can coexist because everyone has their own copy of the game(s) and can make all the calendar textures whatever they want to fit with what they interpret as the canon. It's also partially why there's a sort of demand for the HD/PS2 Weapons/Arms and Gearbox content on the workshop, because people will pick their preferences and will sometimes stop at nothing to make their perfect modpack.

I just recently stumbled across this mod and saw a bunch of comments on people trying to correct you and your work. While I personally agree with Neinfeld's theory of it being in December of 2000, I completely understand that everyone has their own opinions and headcanon, especially since there still, to this day, isn't any concrete answer to the specific dates that certain events occur. Even though I won't use the mod (due to my previously mentioned beliefs), I highly respect your work and effort you put into this and hope you don't think of us December believers as non-considerate or rude.

Wow I never knew the game takes place the same month and year I was born that's kinda cool.

This is very nice

Sorry to finally get back to you after a load of silence. It should be fixed now.

The texture is missing it's alpha layer

Anomalous Materials but i am using the AM/UC overhaul mod

What map are you experiencing that in?

The black box below the periodic table which is in the texture file is showing in-game for reason

Well, because the last number in both the Black Mesa Incident and Gordon's Employment notice ends at 200-, it's entirely plausible that he received the employment notice in 2000, and the resonance cascade happened in 2003, or any number of combinations you see fit. It's all up to interpretation at the end of the day, and I'm not planning on making edits for the rest of the years (2000-2009) unless I'm getting paid lmao

I personally believe in the theory that Black mesa takes place on December 5th, 2000, mainly because it a makes no sense that Gordon made so many friends at black mesa in less than a few weeks, plus all the other evidence there is.
https://www.reddit.com/r/HalfLife/comments/hwoxla/i_have_found_the_exact_dates_of_every_single/
This mod is really good though, good for those who want to stick with the original canon. I really like the period table edit, it's a tiny but nice detail.

Yeah fair enough

Look, I'll be entirely honest, I respect the dedication to all of this research, I won't discredit you for putting all of that together. I am following the sources from the CombineOverWiki, which uses the date given by HL1's instruction manual of May 16, 200-. It's very possible the Incident takes place anytime between 2000-2009 with that kind of range. I used 2003 for the texture as I've seen places that state Laidlaw used that year in his notes, not only for the deep cut, but also for the sake of ease.

Night one of HL1 matches up with December 1998, December 2000, and December 2003. But it can't be 1998 or 2003 so it has to be 2000. If the Black Mesa incident concludes around December 7th, then that explains why the newspaper referred to "days of unexplained deadly phenomena.) And not weeks or months.

Had to break it up into two. Steam is a bit annoying sometimes.

Yeah i do find that a bit of a stretch. But the ID cards in Alyx make it almost impossible. The blue one expires on 09/28/02, and the orange one expires on 12/05/01. Making anything past 2001 impossible, as the key cards both work (with the 7 hour war/ portal storms taking out the service issuing authority for them.) Now it's possible that the Black Mesa incident took place on May 2001 right? Well it's unlikely as a newspaper from Alyx tells us that the 7 hour war took place on January second, as the line reads "Earth surrendered yesterday" and it was issued on the 3rd day of the calendar year. Now afterwards it says this."Earth surrenders following days of unexplained deadly phenomena." The phenomena probably being the portal storms. But if it took place in May then why wouldn't they say it was months or weeks of this phenomena? But it says days instead.

I dunno, 91 degrees Fahrenheit at 9 am doesn't seem like December weather, even for New Mexico.

It has been proven that the Black Mesa incident couldn't have taken place later than December 2001, because of the ID cards you can find in HLA.

Finally! now the game is playable!

I believe the May 2003 date to be the correct date of the Black Mesa Incident. In my recent findings, a temperature of 105 in December near Santa Fe, New Mexico, is highly unlikely. The records of temperatures that high in New Mexico only happen near June.

Also, apparently the Black Mesa Facility doesn't celebrate Christmas if the December date is true.

Yeah, the contention around it is complicated. I just subscribe to the May theory, so I made the calendar. If someone else thinks it's December, then they can keep the vanilla texture and not install the mod. I probably will change the name at some point, but I've got other things going on at the moment

Regardless of the mystery of what date Half Life 1 would of precisely happened on, I really appreciate the effort put into this mod. Keep up the good work!

https://youtu.be/v3RpPdriznY This vid might be worth checking out.

I think it was to coincide with the Dec '98 release window. But, hey, thanks for pointing out the wiki's state.

iirc that wiki is for the most part abandoned and outdated, with the combineoverwiki taking its place. Doesn't really matter that much since they both say May 16th-17th lol. Never knew that, not sure why they'd add December calendars... perhaps an oversight? Or just a retcon knowing hl

I know they're fan wikis, but still

They did, but I'm going off a couple places that say "May 16th, 200-"(1) and "May 16th, 2003"(2)
(1)(https://half-life.fandom.com/wiki/Resonance_Cascade)
(2)(https://half-life.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Half-Life_universe)

I could very well be wrong but aren't there calendars in the og hl1 with Dec on them?

yeah the thing is theres many different source, so its hard to tell wich one is the most accurate, but yours feels right for black mesa

In all fairness, he's giving information I wasn't aware of. I know the calendar texture in HL1 also said December, the one with the picture of the Earth, but from Marc Laidlaw's notes and a couple other places online say it occurs on "May 16th, 200-" or "May 16th, 2003", so I'm using that as my source and making it 2003 for convenience lol.

see buddy thats what i was warning you about lmao.. but honestly fuck em haha

Cool!

"canon" we never get a true date to the BM incident and most of the evidence we have points to December as shown in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3RpPdriznY&ab_channel=Neinfeld

i did. it isn't there. as a matter of fact, none of the addons i just downloaded are here

I recommend you sort the folder by Date Modified so the most recent workshop subscriptions are at the top of the list. Hope that helps