Today, Valve announced the first 10 games which have amassed enough votes of confidence on Greenlight to be approved for worldwide distribution on Steam. Among the chosen are Half-Life remake Black Mesa and our 2011 Mod of the Year pick No More Room in Hell. Each game will release independently in the coming months as its development is completed.

Here's the full list of approved games:


Black Mesa
Cry of Fear
Dream
Heroes & Generals
Kenshi
McPixel
No More Room in Hell
Project Zomboid
Routine
Towns


"The Steam community rallied around these titles and made them the clear choice for the first set of titles to launch out of Greenlight," Valve's Anna Sweet said in a press release. "Since launch, hundreds of titles have been submitted, with more coming in every day. We expect to be announcing more titles coming to Steam via Greenlight soon."

Only a few days remain before Black Mesa's Higgs-inclusive LG Orbifold teleportation (thanks, Kleiner) zaps it onto our PCs this Friday, and the team's latest batch of screenshots invokes a similar sense of mystery and alien terror Half-Life's original preview shots carried so long ago. Check out Resonance Cascadians the Vortigaunt, Houndeye, Bullsquid, and Gargantua below.

September 14 is the release date for the first build of one of the most long-awaited mods of all time. The Black Mesa project remakes Half-Life in Valve's Source engine with prettier textures and lighting. Gordon's beard is now super high-res and headcrabs are 20% prettier.

The first release "will include our re-envisioning of Half-Life all the way up to Lambda Core," according to project leader Carlos Montero, writing on the Black Mesa forums. "We believe this is a great way to provide a complete-feeling 8-10 hour experience with a solid ending, make our fans happy and help us make the best overall game possible."

To celebrate the announcement, the mod team have launched an ominous doom clock, the likes of which I haven't seen since way back in July last year. When the clock hits zero we'll finally have the chance to sample the action shown in the official trailer, released three years ago. These recent screenshots offer further evidence that Black Mesa Source is actually happening.

The fan-made remake of the original Half-Life in the Source engine, Black Mesa: Source, has now been in development for about 8 years. And, it seems, the end may finally be in sight. The team of volunteer Xenophiles has released a batch of new screenshots, and project lead Carlos Montero told Polygon he would "characterize our first release as being pretty close to completion."

For those of you just now joining us, Black Mesa: Source was a fan-created initiative that arose in direct response to the poor reception of Half-Life: Source. While Valve ported the same game we know and love into its now-legendary engine, it still had the same 1998 low-polygon, low-res visuals of the original game, when many gamers had expected a Half-Life remake with Half-Life 2's improved graphics. That is, essentially, what the Black Mesa team has been plugging away at for the better part of a decade.

According to Montero, the project will be released to the public in stages. The first of those stages, he told Polygon, is nearing completion. We've included the whole, fresh batch of screenshots below. Bonus points if you can identify where in Half-Life's interdimensional debacle each of them was taken.

Some leaked footage claiming to belong to the elusive Black Mesa Source mod has appeared over on Valve Time, showing some classic weapons and environments renovated in Valve's Source engine. The video shows a bit of violence from the 'On A Rail' mission. But for the odd detail, like iron sights aiming for the Magnum, it all feels very familiar, albeit a fair bit prettier than the original. Take a look.

The footage follows the official release of some new Black Mesa Source screenshots back in June. The mod's been in development for many years and hardly anything's been shown, until now. What do you think?

It looks as though Valve are working on a proper follow up to the Source Engine they've been gradually improving over the course of the last decade. Valve Time have pulled numerous references to a "next-gen 'Source 2'" engine along with various "Source 2 tools" icons from the guts of the Source Film Maker.

Valve have previously played down the need for an entirely new version of Source, and have concentrated instead on updating the original version to keep up with modern engine tech. That's worked quite nicely so far, but if these references are correct, a more significant step up is on the way. Here are a few of the pulled strings referring to Source 2.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
def setEngine( self, version=ENGINE.SOURCE ):
'''
Set the engine version for the project, i.e. 'Source 2'
------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Line 1387:
'''Return an str with the current engine version.
If key doesn't doesn't exist, assume 'Source', otherwise invalid -- assume next-gen 'Source 2'.'''
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Exciting stuff. But it wouldn't be a post about Valve and the future without somebody saying something about Half-Life 2: Episode Three. Is the reason that it's taken so long that it's being built in a more advanced engine that will explode our minds when it's finally released? I have no idea. Here are the icons that Valve Time discovered. Look at that high fidelity hammer. Oooo.

When Half Life: Episode 3 concept art surfaced on the facebook page of fansite ValveTime yesterday we were sceptical, but it's increasingly appearing that they really could be from the long awaited sequel.

Most of the artwork depicts a snowy wilderness with characters clad in winter clothing. This tallies with location the Borealis, the Aperture science ship that was revealed to be stranded in the Arctic in Episode Two. More intriguingly several of the stranger pieces of artwork contain the word 'Xen' in the file names, the Alien world visited in the original Half Life's final act.

OXM have been on top of the story and note that moderators on the Steam forums are claiming the pictures are genuine. Meanwhile fansite Lambda Generation traced the images back to a (since deleted) Picasa gallery belonging to Valve artist Andrea Wicklund.

Now here's the bad news. Although they were only recently discovered these images were all uploaded to Picasa in March 2008, only a few months after the release of Episode Two. This means that even if they are genuine, they aren't necessarily indicative of the direction Valve are taking now, four years later.

You can see the full gallery of images over at Valve Time.

It's alive! A bunch of new screenshots have gone online for Black Mesa: Source. In case you'd missed it, or forgotten it in these years of silence, BM:S is a fan project that aims to recreate the entirety of Half-Life 1 in the Half-Life 2 Source engine. The devs promised to releaser more details if their Facebook page hit 20,000 likes. It did, and they have. So without further ado, here are eight new screenshots for Black Mesa: Source.

It's been quiet for so long, I never thought I'd get to write that. It's worth keeping an eye on the Black Mesa site for more updates soon. "This is just the beginning. We have more in store for you in the near future! Hold on to your lab coats!" say the team on Facebook.

Oh happy day. As someone who resents leaving the safety of his Ubuntu desktop every time I want to play a game or do some benchmarking, today's headline from Phoronix.com is frankly the news I've been waiting for for years.

Valve has been recruiting for at least one Linux specialist to help port Windows games with this job ad since January. But it looks like they're getting very serious, and keen to push on with the project. Phoronix' Michael Larabel has received an email from Gabe himself asking for help head hunting.

The email to Larabel, which has been confirmed as genuine, reads:

We are running into a bunch of performance issues in Linux drivers (e.g. 50 millisecond draw calls because thedriver is compiling a shader). 

We'd like to hire someone to work on these performance issues. If you know of anyone we should be talking to, I'd appreciate getting connected with them. 

Gabe Newell 
Valve, Bellevue

This isn't overly surprising, but it is reassuring. With the rapid rise of Android as a gaming platform, and recent changes to the Linux kernel which integrate Android code, there's every reason for developers to start treating open source more seriously. The Humble Indie Bundle has proven that there's a market for Linux gaming too, as grateful Tuxheads spending more than Mac users.

It could well be that they're looking for someone purely for internal testing and research with no firm plans to bring Steam or games to Linux yet. But neither the ad or the email seem particularly speculative.

I'd never be as foolish as to predict the rise of the Linux desktop, but the operating system is pervasive in other ways that might become a more common desktop alternative.

We've seen some impressive fan-made Portal guns in the past, but they've been rare, costly one-off projects. Valve are giving us the chance to get hold of our own Aperture Science Handheld Portal Devices without having to burn ourselves horribly putting together an injection mould. Joystiq mention that, at Valve's request, toy manufacturers, NECA have put together a life-sized Portal gun. It'll hit the shops this summer with a $130 price tag attached.

There will be lights and those lights will change colour, but will it make the "pwung" noise? There's only one way to find out, and that's to buy at least five. Perhaps ten. Maybe more. More. MORE.

NECA will also be releasing a line of Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2 and Half-Life action figures, a few of which were shown off at the NYC Toy Fair. The Team Fortress 2 wiki has a snap of the new figures, you'll find that below along with a few shots of that Portal gun. Baggsy the Heavy.