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Guard Duty is the name of the second campaign in Operation Black Mesa and is an upcoming fan-made re-imagining of Half-Life: Blue Shift developed by Tripmine Studios.

It is largely considered by the community to be a companion to the Crowbar Collective's Black Mesa, although the two developer teams/projects are not associated with each other.

Overview[]

Guard Duty began its development in Q4 of 2009 as the 2nd unique project attempting to remake Half-Life: Blue Shift on the Source Engine.

The previous Blue Shift remake project, known as Barney's Tales (referred to as Blue Shift: Source in media images), which began development in 2006[2], was a completely separate team and project from Guard Duty.

When Barney's Tales ceased development in 2008, the (eventual) creator of Guard Duty contacted the Barney's Tales team and planned an arrangement to take over and continue development of Barney's Tales with a new team.

The plan to continue the development of Barneys Tales with a new team did not succeed, because none of the project files were transferred over to the new team. The only thing that was transitioned over to the new team was control of the moddb page itself.

Having nothing other than the moddb page itself, there was no other option other than to start a totally new project from scratch with the new team. This is when the brand new project was created and titled Guard Duty, as an homage to a former name of the original Blue Shift[3].

The decision to use the same moddb page, rather than create a new one, was made primarily to retain the same fan-base and community awareness of the project. This was helpful in attracting attention to the new project early on, but has also led to confusion amongst fans who incorrectly perceive Barney's Tales and Guard Duty as the same project.

Development Timeline (Ongoing)[]

On January 28, 2012, the team merged with the Operation: Black Mesa developers and formed Tripmine Studios. At the same time, they released the first update media for both projects.

On May 1, 2012, the team announced the second update of the media after the merging of the two teams[4].

On September 19, 2012, they released the cover art for the mod in Russian, posted on Facebook[5].

On December 8, 2012, they released more screenshots and concept arts for the project in the following event of the 2012 MOD of the year[6].

On February 17, 2013, they announced the Greenlight vote for both projects on Steam[7].

On May 28, 2013, they released a video demonstrating NPC combat AI.

On March 29, 2014, they released screenshots and concept art from both games in a media update. [8]

On January 16, 2017, a monthly update post was posted on the Tripmine Studios Forum.

On July 28th, 2018, A summer update post detailing the studio's progress on both projects was posted on the Tripmine Studios Forum.

On June 3rd, 2019, Another summer update post gave fans a much closer look at in-game weapon and character animations.  

Details[]

The main objectives of this project:

  • A complete re-creation of each chapter.
  • Models and sequences will push the game engine to the limit.
  • Multiplayer will be completely different then other modifications. Rather than a Deathmatch mode, there will be Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag modes. There will be a "running, surviving, and working together" game mode, with the purpose of escaping the facility before it is completely destroyed. This won't be in the initial release.
  • New voice acting, sounds, and visuals.
  • Level design of the chapter will be expanded. It will utilize the Source Engine.
  • Complete original music tracks that is not sharing with the original game.
  • An all-new soundtrack.

Gallery[]

Concept Art[]

Screenshots[]

Models[]

References[]

Externals links[]

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