Spring has breached the Black Mesa perimeter... and brought savings!

Black Mesa Spring Sale - 50% OFF!

Crowbar Collective plays w/ LambdaGeneration!

To watch or join, visit this link:

Join Our Communities!

Report to Sector C for your Spring orientation.

UNFORESEEN SALE

Public Beta Updates

How to Provide Feedback

Looking Forward

The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world...

Things are off to a quick start at Crowbar Collective in 2025! Here is what we've been up to:

Second Wind Podcast/Plays Black Mesa

ICYMI: Black Mesa x Black Mesa

Rogue Point: Dev Briefing #2

See the Dev Briefing #2 here:

Wishlist Rogue Point here:

We can't wait to share more soon!

The perfect Holiday Gift

Don't let this deal FALL by the wayside...

About that Xen I owe ya..

ICYMI, here's their epic trailer for Focal Point:

You can download the FREE mod on:

You can support HECU Collective's efforts here:

Don't own Black Mesa? Get it at 75% off!:

Now get going, Calhoun!

Updates, Anniversaries, and Sales (Oh My!)

Black Mesa Sale and Update

Rogue Point Announcement

HECU Collective's Blue Shift "Focal Point" Chapter Coming Soon!

Half-Life 2, 20th Anniversary

We are incredibly excited to share with the community what we've been working on...

Rogue Point

Crowbar Collective x Team17

Wishlist on Steam

Watch the announcement trailer

Barney Calhoun's adventure continues!

Here's the short list of fixes and added features:

• New and improved scenes for Living Quarters Outbound and Insecurity chapters;
• Improved skybox textures, lighting and Post Processing in all earthbound surface maps;
• Added responsive surface sounds to some environments that will be played with nearby explosions;
• Improved all explosions SFX and added distance attenuation to them;
• Added completely new surface properties for certain props with unique physics sounds. (E.g. barrels, tarps, monitors, crates);
• Updated many BM and BM:BS textures/materials;
• Various other visual improvements.

We can't wait until **November 17th**!

Hello everyone, Welcome to Fall, and a Black Mesa beta patch post! We have pushed a build to public-beta that includes a bunch of fixes to some lingering issues, and WAY better Linux/Steam Deck support. ___________________________________________________________________

Highlights

• Improved game start up for a smother first time launch and improved stability
• Fixed an issue that caused the game to crash to the menu when changing video settings during gameplay
• Fixed performance issue with moving wires (Thanks to npc_pigeon, narkvic, and the community)
• Re-added DXVK for Windows as a launch option
• Significantly better native Linux implementation and Steam Deck support

Detailed Patch Notes

Windows:

• Reintroduced DXVK support on Windows.
• Upgraded DXVK to version 2.4.1 and removed the redundant custom Vendor ID from the configuration file.
• Improved the Qt runtime setup in the Windows Launcher to preload necessary libraries for ANGLE if needed.
• Restored throttling policies and their application to game processes under power management.
• Updated the launcher icon on Windows

Platform independent:

• Resolved an issue that caused the settings to crash due to concurrent exclusive access to the internal game save file during gameplay.
• Fixed the missing "_back" cable texture set, addressing visual inconsistencies.
• Thanks to npc_pigeon, narkvic, and the community for their efforts in identifying the solution. These additional files effectively mitigate the engine's error messages about missing VMT files, enhancing overall performance in scenarios featuring moving ropes. This is particularly noticeable during the rocket elevator sequence in "On A Rail."
• Aligned the Vertex Format in the Skin GBuffer shader with that of the Prop GBuffer shader to ensure consistency across shaders handling similar data.
• Updated backup code for statically lit bump-mapped props, ensuring that props are marked as non-statically lit if the static lighting checksum does not match, preventing lighting artifacts.
• Recompiled all Inbound Tram models using the newer Studio Model Compiler to resolve tangent-related issues and improve visual fidelity.
• Enhanced the Job Pool to support more than 16 threads, optimizing performance for multithreaded tasks.
• Updated DX Support Autoconfig to align Intel/AMD GPUs with NVIDIA, ensuring that the game launches at 1080p by default instead of a low 4:3 resolution like 640x480.
• Introduced functionality to automatically run auto-configuration if the configuration version differs, ensuring that every installation reconfigures itself on the first launch after an update.
• Addressed various issues within the game, resulting in improvements in several areas. Feedback from players who opted into previous beta tests indicates that the sporadic crashing they experienced has been resolved.

ToGL/Linux:

• Updated ToGL/Linux shaders with the latest GBuffer changes to ensure the application of up-to-date rendering techniques.
• Cleaned up the shadow filter state in ToGL/Linux, resulting in more accurate and stable shadow rendering.
• Migrated ToGL/Linux to use the OpenGL 3.3 Compatibility Profile, enhancing compatibility with a broader range of hardware and driver configurations while maintaining access to modern OpenGL features.
• Introduced an optional experimental Binary Shader Cache for ToGL/Linux, accessible via the -glusebinarycache command line option on Linux and native Steam Deck builds, which improves shader load times on supported platforms.
• Resolved a half-pixel halo issue in the ToGL/Linux rendering pipeline, improving visual accuracy in rendered scenes.
• Added per-triangle and optional per-vertex validation for studio models to resolve issues in ToGL/Linux related to static and dynamically lit models. A second pass for per-vertex validation can be enabled via the +r_studio_validate_vertices 1 command line argument.
• Improved lighting buffer quality on ToGL/Linux to resolve a red hue in specular highlights, ensuring consistent visual output across platforms.
• Added a missing window icon on ToGL/Linux to address a minor visual issue.
• Configured default arguments for the Linux launcher to optimize display settings on Steam Deck, ensuring a better out-of-the-box experience for AMD/Intel GPU users.
• Fixed debug assertions in Havok that leaked into the release build on Linux, preventing potential crashes during runtime.

Proton/Linux:

• Forced the shipped DXVK configuration on Proton if no overrides are provided, enhancing compatibility with Proton 9.x and newer versions.

Tools:

• Implemented proper support for mirrored UVs in the Studio Model Compiler, ensuring that newly compiled meshes do not introduce visual bugs due to incorrect tangent data.

What We Need Help With

• Is the game getting flagged by any antivirus (Such as BitDefender)?
• On AMD GPUs (7 Series) is the game still crashing on public-beta when players go underwater? We have not been able to replicate it on a number of machines with AMD GPUs, and people who have switched to our new test branch have not had the crash happen! Please file a support log on Discord if you touch the water in Unforeseen Consequences and the game crashes
• How is Steam Deck and Linux Working? Is the out of memory crash still happening?

Troubleshooting Virtual Desktop Installed

• Check for a Windows update
• Validate the game files
• Install the following redistributables:

• https://download.microsoft.com/download/2/E/6/2E61CFA4-993B-4DD4-91DA-3737CD5CD6E3/vcredist_x86.exe
• https://download.microsoft.com/download/2/E/6/2E61CFA4-993B-4DD4-91DA-3737CD5CD6E3/vcredist_x64.exe

• https://download.microsoft.com/download/C/C/2/CC2DF5F8-4454-44B4-802D-5EA68D086676/vcredist_x86.exe
• https://download.microsoft.com/download/C/C/2/CC2DF5F8-4454-44B4-802D-5EA68D086676/vcredist_x64.exe

• https://download.microsoft.com/download/1/7/1/1718CCC4-6315-4D8E-9543-8E28A4E18C4C/dxwebsetup.exe

Launch Options

Known Issues

• The monitor in AM is displaying four screens again :(
• DXVK Windowed full screen still acts as regular full screen
• In DXVK, it is possible to lose your mouse while in the menu. Pressing the console button (`) twice will fix this
• Linux does not have sun lens flares

What an August!

SALE is live from August 24-29

Focal Point Trailer!

Happy Summer, fellow scientists! Hope the axial tilt is finding you well. Black Mesa is discounted for the Steam Summer Sale, so tell all your friends! https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/ We also wanted to give a quick update on what we are up to.

AMD Water Crash

Reimplementation of DXVK

Intel Arc Cards

Start Up Crashes

Greetings Scientists!

Hello again, scientist! Well this has been excruciating. We apologize for any scares and the inconvenience of having the game get reported as a virus. We have fixed the issue and also put up a number of other patches! Here are the patch notes:

Antivirus False Positive FIXED!

Temporary Removal of DXVK

Improved Controller Support

• Fixed an issue which prevented some Steam Deck users from climbing ladders or using trams
• Fixed an issue where custom controller bindings were not persisting
• Fixed an issue where controller camera movement would not obey iron sights sensitivity
• Reworked Gyro Aim which is now handled separately in accordance with Steam Input best practices
• Also added in_gyro_look_yaw_sensitivity and in_gyro_look_pitch_sensitivity console commands for controlling gyro sensitivity.
• Revamped default controller layouts:
• Official Layout for Black Mesa - Standard Controls. Our official bindings for devices without gyro support
• Official Layout for Black Mesa - Standard Controls. Our official bindings for devices with gyro support
• Official Layout for Black Mesa - Steam Deck Controls. Our official bindings for Steam Deck, adding trackpad support for the main menu
• New Steam Input Game Actions:
  • Quick tripmine - for quickly placing tripmines.
  • Quick frag - for quickly throwing frags.
  • Use crowbar - for quick crowbar switching.
• Added a console command, steam_input_show_bindings which will bring up the Steam Input configurator via the Steam Overlay.
• A helpful guide on controller troubleshooting with Steam can be found here

Gameplay

• Fixed an issue where auto-aim would aim at items the player was holding (like ground sentries)
• Adjusted auto aim values in skill.cgf to have a longer range and be more magnetic

Dedicated Server Fix Soon

• Still testing internally but we did fix:
• Build process for dedicated servers (a compile switch was missing)
• This should resolve some crashing issues with dedicated servers

Auto-Aim

Known Issues

Video Settings Crash

Some UI Elements Need Localization

Invalid Game Configuration

Virus Detection False Positive

Updated Launch Options

Incoming Patches

Steam Input

• Upgrading Black Mesa to use Steamwork V1.52 for better input implementation
• [TO CONFIRM]: Fixed custom controller bindings not persisting
• Fixed an issue that prevented some users from climbing ladders and using trams on Steam Deck
• Lowering controller deadzone for better feel
• [NOTE]: A helpful guide on controller troubleshooting with Steam can be found here

Video Settings Crash

Dedicated Server

• Fixed build process for dedicated servers (a compile switch was missing)
• This should resolve some crashing issues with dedicated servers

Auto-Aim

Black Mesa and Steam Deck

Hello, fellow zombie scientist! Weve just released an update to Black Mesa. Our goal was to improve performance, improve controller support, and fix a number of issues, without breaking your save files. https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/ Here are the patch notes!

Key Updates

• Improved performance of the game (Vulkan, UI optimization, New Renderer/New Post Post Process Optimization)
• Fixed cases where game would crash on startup
• Fixed UI flickering and artifacting
• Fixed crash in the first map of Interloper that players were experiencing
• Improved controller support using Steam Input
• -Click here for detailed notes on adjusting controller support
• Fixed hitch when weapon decals are first applied to gun
• Re-enabled weapon decals by default

Rendering/Performance

• Ported the game to DXVK 2.3.1 (first launch option)
• Performance enhancements have been implemented for the New Renderer and New Post-Process systems, particularly noticeable in scenes featuring water
• Fixed moss shaders and direction control for both vertex lit shader and skin shader (for props with/without phong)
• Fixed halflambert/warp/specwarp related problems across all the shaders
• Unlocked the even higher graphics setting in options menu
• The lighting quality settings in the New UI have been updated to reflect recent changes.
• Monitors and refract views can now leverage the New Renderer features
• God Rays support has been added for the sun and local lights
• -Note: God Rays are intentionally turned off for monitors and reflection views
• Improved the blending quality of normal maps within 4-way blending
• SpotLight cookies should now work on any orientation. Cookie sprite sheet no longer needs to be square.
• Black Mesa now requests high-performance power management on Windows, which should reduce power throttling impacting performance
• Implemented the ability to dump environment variables (-dumpenvironment launch option), assisting in resolving potential issues
• Lots of misc graphics fixes
• Disabled CPU-based backface culling for Func_Brush models
• Disabled CSM for viewmodels for secondary cameras
• Fixed flicker near Light Volume edges
• Fixed Xog artifacts with cheaper water

Controller Support

• Xbox Controllers
• Playstation Controllers
• Nintendo Switch Pro Controllers
• We have also implemented proper Gyro support for Steam Deck!

User Interface

• Modified the Game/UI rendering synchronization, aiming for stable UI presentation across all three available modes
• Updated the UI frame limiter logic to enhance the smoothness of frame pacing, which was particularly noticeable when vertical synchronization was active
• Improved performance by optimizing the texture lock implementation within the UI
• Resolved the issue where the UI occasionally failed to render at full size after resolution adjustments
• Fixed alpha blending of UI with background map
• Added a number of missing translators, including the 2012 mod translators (need to track down a list of who did what language)

Bug Fixes

• Interloper A crash fix
• Resolved the issue where the Tau Canon would crash upon the owner's demise
• Addressed a potential hang issue upon exiting the game
• A reflection bug involving Xen fog at extreme angles has been fixed
• Transparency issues in fake water have been resolved, and it now supports New Renderer, New Post-Process, and CSM
• Resolved outline artifacts present in alpha-tested materials
• Resolved an issue where view models were improperly identified within one shader, leading to lighting and shadow inconsistencies
• Fixed a bug related to the Diffuse Warp when using more than eight slots in the atlas
• Fixed a Workshop Client issue related to double initialization, which had the potential to cause crashes

Known Issues

• Alt-Tabbing while using Vulkan can sometimes crash the game
• Anti-virus can sometimes flag the game as malicious even though it is not (well see what we can do about this)
• Minor UI overlap errors on some ultra wide monitors
• Some UI elements need localization

Blue Shift

GREETINGS!

Even headcrabs can be sentimental . We're trying to spread the love, by getting you some Black Mesa action, at a deep discount! Be sure to grab your copy of Black Mesa, NOW 80% OFF!

Can we take just one minute today to share how PUMPED we are about this? What started out as a labor of love, turned into this amazing adventure we are on today. We're extremely proud of what our team has built, and thrilled so many people are connecting with it. We couldn't have done it without all the love and support from our community! Game on, Scientists. Game on. THANK YOU

Attention, scientists! It is time for the Steam Winter Sale! Experience the epic Half-Life universe like never before in Black Mesa, featuring modernized graphics and refined gameplay mechanics. As part of the Steam Winter Sale, Black Mesa is now available at an 80% discount! Take advantage of this fantastic deal from today, December 21st, through January 4th. Grab it before the offer ends! https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/ Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for the latest developer updates and news.

Back to where it all began. Come hang out, let's talk about the design of Half-Life, and take a trip back to 1998! https://www.twitch.tv/crowbar_collective

Greetings, all Black Mesa personnel! We would like to celebrate the 1st Anniversary of Captive Freight with you and talk about Focal Point! HECU Collective has been hard at work on the 5th Chapter: Focal Point and theyve just released an article showcasing some amazing graphics from it! We are aware that many of you have been asking about the release date, and you can now [url=https://www.moddb.com/mods/black-mesa-blue-shift-remake/news/chapter-5-focal-point-december-2023-article]find out the expected time in the article here! We hope you enjoy discovering all the amazing work theyve been putting into their project! Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for the latest developer updates and news.

Attention, all Scientists! As the temperatures drop, daylight times become shorter, and the Winter Solstice is around the corner, I hope you are ready for the Steam Autumn Sale! Dont miss this golden opportunity, as Black Mesa will be at a magnificent 80% off! Face off against an army of classic enemies with better graphics and effects today! There has never been a better time to pick up the crowbar and play! https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/

Happy Halloween, scientists! Steam Scream: The Revenge is here! With it, we have amazing titles currently on sale, and among them is Black Mesa with an 80% discount! For some of our veterans headcrabs may be just another target, but for those that are sensitive to scary aliens and seek the thrill, make sure to visit our page before November 2nd! https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/ Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for the latest developer updates and news.

Attention, scientists! It is time for another sale! Step back into the world of Black Mesa and relive the legendary Half-Life story! Take advantage of the 80% discount, available from September 18th to September 25th. Act fast before the week is over! https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/ Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for the latest developer updates and news.

Greetings, Scientists! Don't miss the chance to witness Gordon Freeman's unlimited power with his mighty crowbar in Black Mesa's "Return of the Sale"! Get it now at 75% off from July 27th to 31st Check out the Discord for more information! Get the game today on Steam! https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/

Attention, scientists! It is time for another Steam Summer Sale! Experience the epic Half-Life universe like never before in Black Mesa, featuring modernized graphics and refined gameplay mechanics. As part of the Steam Summer Sale, Black Mesa is now available at a 75% discount! Don't miss out on this fantastic deal from today, June 29th, through July 13th. Grab it before the offer ends! https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/ Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for the latest developer updates and news.

Greetings, Scientists! In the spirit of National Selfie Day, June 21st, we're thrilled to announce the launch of our Community Cosplay Contest! If youre interested in participating, all you need to do is dress up as a character from the Half-Life universe, take a cosplay selfie (or picture!), and submit it to the #cosplay-contest channel on the Crowbar Collective Discord! The winners will be chosen based on community votes. The top 3 cosplay photos that garner the most reactions will be declared winners, and the community members who submitted them will receive a Crowbar Collective Premium Pullover Hoodie! How to Join You may submit your cosplays starting today, until July 5th on the Crowbar Collective Discord server. Afterwards, we will lock the channel and allow community members to place their votes by reacting to the cosplay photos they like the best! The winners will be announced on July 12th! Rules 1. Only 1 entry per contestant 2. The cosplay must be of a character from the Half-Life universe. 3. Your submission must contain a physical item with your Discord username written on it to prove the authenticity of your cosplay. (e.g. a piece of paper) Editing the picture to write your tag on it does NOT qualify. 4. Partial cosplays are accepted (e.g. face only with accessories and/or make up, torso only pictures etc) but please make sure to have your Discord tag written and visible in the picture. 5. NO content allowed that can be construed as pornographic, NSFW, religious, or political. 6. After the submission period ends, we will lock the channel and allow all members to react to the entries to place their votes. Were buzzing with excitement to see all of your creative and impressive cosplays! For the latest developer updates and news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Greetings, Scientists! Today we are celebrating Blue Shifts birthday, HECU Collective has been hard at work with Chapter 5: Focal Point for Black Mesa: Blue Shift! In order to make this day even more colorful, HECU Collective has prepared an article, showcasing their progress. We were also very excited to see these sneak peeks, as well as the one below, shared exclusively with the Crowbar Collective community! Check out the article for even more!

Greetings, Scientists! Today is a momentous day for Black Mesa, and it is all thanks to you! We're over the moon to announce that we've reached an incredible milestone with 90,000 Overwhelmingly Positive Reviews on Steam! Your support, passion, and engagement have propelled us to this achievement, and for that, we are deeply grateful. In honor of this accomplishment and our gratitude, we've decided to hold a special giveaway. We'll be sending out three exclusive Crowbar Collective Science Team Shirts to some lucky members of our community! You're invited to join the giveaway until June 9th! Don't miss this chance to get your hands on our coveted Science Team Shirts! Check out this link for more details!
Once again, thank you to all our scientists for your tireless dedication and enthusiasm for Black Mesa. Your continuous support means the world to us! Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for the latest updates and news.

Attention, all Black Mesa personnel! This May the 4th, we're inviting you to celebrate with us in a galaxy not so far away! Black Mesa is cutting its price like a lightsaber, and for a whole week, you can grab the game at 75% off! Head over to our store page between May 4th and May 11th to take advantage of this deal! Experience the Black Mesa facility, and unleash your inner Gordon Freeman, the scientist who might be able to give even a force-wielder a run for their money. https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/ A big thank you to YeetusNaggus for the art! Happy Star Wars Day, and May the Source, be with you! If you have already joined the rebellion, consider joining us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram!

Attention, all Black Mesa personnel! The voting period for our Impression Contest has come to an end, and the results are in! We are excited to announce the top 3 winners of the contest, who impressed the community with their outstanding character impersonations! 1st Place: TSGPrestonEvans#0315 2nd Place: Amicus#1000 3rd Place: kamaano#1615 Join us in the Crowbar Collective Discord Server to check out all the entries! A massive thank you to everyone who participated in the contest and to those who took the time to vote on their favorite entries. We truly hope you had fun during this contest! We will be contacting the winners shortly for the delivery details of their Crowbar Collective Mugs! Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for the latest developer updates and news.

Attention, all Black Mesa personnel! We are thrilled to announce our Character Impression Contest! Put on your thinking caps and get ready to impersonate a character from the Half-Life universe. If you'd like to participate, all you have to do is record a short video clip (maximum 30 seconds) of you impersonating a character from the Half-Life universe, and submit your video in the #impression-contest channel on the Crowbar Collective Discord. The winners will be selected based on community votes, and the top 3 videos with the most reactions will win a Crowbar Collective Mug each! Submissions are open now! We will be holding the community vote in the #impression-contest channel from 21st - 28th of April, so be sure to submit your entry before the 21st! Rules: [olist]

Get ready to fight off those Headcrabs once again, scientists! Re-experience Half-Life with updated graphics and improved gameplay mechanics in Black Mesa. Put on your HEV suit and grab your crowbar, because the Headcrabs are hungry and waiting for you. Black Mesa is on sale for a limited time for 50% off! This offer is only available until March 23rd, so grab it before it's too late! https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/ Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for the latest developer updates and news.

Attention, all Black Mesa personnel, As the Crowbar Collective, we are thrilled to celebrate Black Mesas 3rd anniversary on Steam! It has been an incredible journey for us, from the early days of development to the game's final release on the platform. We're humbled by the incredible response we've received from players all over the world. The positive reviews, fan art, and support have been overwhelming, and we're grateful for every single person who has played and enjoyed our game. Black Mesa is a testament to the power of the Half-Life community, and we're honored to have been a part of it. We hope that our fan-made remake has introduced new players to the franchise and helped reignite the passion of long-time fans.

3rd Birthday Giveaway

Greetings Scientists! We are excited to announce the winners of the Black Mesa Valentine's Day Baking Contest! We received numerous entries showcasing your creativity and baking skills, and we were thrilled by the response. After a week-long period of community votes, we are now ready to announce the winners! Without further ado, the winners of the Black Mesa Valentine's Day Baking Contest are: 1st place: Astraea#7019, with their incredibly baked Headcrab Cranberry Cloud Bread. Congratulations on winning the grand prize of It Takes Two!
2nd place: republica#4037, with their delicious White Chocolate Hearts & Heart Crowbar, they have won the second prize of Cuphead!
3rd place: John the Panda#0574, with their adorable set of Stained Glass Cookies. Congratulations on winning the third prize of Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime!
We would like to thank all participants for their hard work and dedication to baking. We were amazed by the variety and creativity of the entries, and we are grateful to our community for voting to determine the winners. Join us on the Crowbar Collective Discord for future contests and more! Once again, thank you all for taking part in this contest, we are looking forward to more events in the future! Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for the latest developer updates, and news. - The Crowbar Collective Team

Greetings Scientists! Valentines Day is fast approaching, and we are excited to share that we are now accepting entries for our Valentines Day Baking Contest! If youd like to take part, all you have to do is take a picture of your home-made baked good or dessert, that includes a piece of paper with your discord tag written on it, and submit your image in the #baking-contest channel on the Crowbar Collective Discord! The winners will be selected by way of community vote. The top 3 pictures that receive the most reactions will be the winners, and the community members who submitted them will receive the following rewards: 1st place - It Takes Two 2nd place - Cuphead 3rd place - Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime

How to Join

Rules:

Greetings Scientists! The Community Hat Contest has come to an end! Thank you all for taking part in this event, it was a genuine delight to see all the cool hats! While we enjoyed all the entries in this contest, we can only have 1 winner! Hats off to @Shinotama#7918 for their excellent piece of headwear! Congratulations on the new Crowbar Collective Snapback Hat!
If you would like to get one for yourself, you are welcome to do so here! Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for the latest developer updates, and news.

Greetings scientists, We would like to wish you all a happy Chinese New Year and good luck with the year of the Water Rabbit! Dont forget to check for snarks in bunny suits before you put on your suits, scientists. We would also like to remind that the Community Hat Competition is still ongoing in the Crowbar Collective Discord. Dont forget to submit your entries before January 27th! Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for the latest developer updates and news.

Greetings Scientists! We are excited to share that we are now accepting entries for our community Hat Contest! If youd like to take part, all you have to do is take a picture of your hat, helmet, or other headwear, and submit your image in the #hat-contest channel on the Crowbar Collective Discord. The winners will be selected by way of community vote. The hat picture that receives the most reactions will be the winner, and the community member who submitted it will receive a Crowbar Collective Snapback Hat!

How to Join

Rules:

• Only 1 entry per contestant
• The hat can be bought, crafted, or otherwise acquired.
• The image must contain your discord user tag on a piece of paper in order to prove you have this hat.
• NO text or symbols allowed that can be construed as pornographic, NSFW, religious, or political.
• After the entry period is complete, we will lock the channel and allow all members to react to the entries to place your vote.

Greetings scientists, A brand new year is upon us! We want to thank all the scientists that have made the Black Mesa community so awesome this year! As a reminder, the Steam Winter Sale is still ongoing as well as the merch giveaway for those who wish to enjoy Black Mesa for 75% off or win some merch as a new year treat! Have a safe, and happy New Years Eve. Well see you in 2023, scientists! https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/ Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for the latest developer updates and news.

Attention, Black Mesa personnel, With the Steam Winter Sale finally here, we wanted to do something extra for our wonderful community before 2022 ends. Thats right! Its time for a Holiday Secret Scientist raffle where you could win some of the new Crowbar Collective Merch! There will be 4 winners total, each will receive one of the crates below, so if you want to throw your hat in the ring to win some awesome Crowbar Collective Merchandise, join the giveaway here before January 5th!
Black Mesa is now 75% off for the Steam Winter Sale! Get your Black Mesa access before January 5th here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/ Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for the latest developer updates and news.

Attention, Black Mesa personnel, The time has come! HECU Collectives Blue Shift mods Chapter 4: Captive Freight is out now! If you havent seen the trailer showcasing the new chapter you can watch it using the link below. The new chapter is available for download on ModDB or the Steam Workshop. ModDB Download Portal Steam Workshop Download Dont forget to play chapters 1, 2, and 3 trying out the newest chapter, as the previous chapters have also been updated with new features, and bug fixes! Watch the Trailer Trailer recorded and edited by ALLAN Soundtrack for trailer composed by Pawe Perepelica Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for the latest developer updates and news.

Attention scientists, We are pleased to let you know that we have launched a brand new Crowbar Collective merch store, just in time for the holidays! The store offers a wide range of themed merchandise thats sure to bring joy to any Black Mesa or Crowbar Collective fan. You can check out all the merch HERE! One tip before you head out scientists, the hoodies run a little on the small side. The medium sample we got fit a medium build, but was just a bit tight. The store has a 30 Day Make it Right Policy. We cant wait to see you walking around the facility in your new Crowbar Collective gear! We hope you all have had a great start to the holiday season! Thanks. - The Crowbar Collective Team

Greetings scientists! HECU Collectives Blue Shift mod is receiving a new chapter! Chapter 4: Captive Freight will be out on December 10th! The new chapter comes with tons of new content along with bug fixes and additional features for previous chapters! Fixes and added features:

• Critical bug fixes (No more softlocks and invisible cables!)
• Gameplay improvements (Better Guidance throughout Chapter 3)
• Visual improvements throughout all chapters (Better lighting and models)
• Animations improvements
• Performance optimizations
• Addition of interactable telephones (Who leaves them all hanging?)
• Support for more languages (Ukrainian, German, Czech, Korean, Traditional Chinese, Vietnamese and French)
• Updated UI and its navigation
• Barney's finally got his package delivered!

ModDB Mod of the Year 2022

Attention, Black Mesa personnel, The Autumn Sale is about to go critical! Black Mesa is now 50% off during the Steam Autumn Sale. Suit up, and step into the Test Chamber before November 29th here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/ Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for the latest news and announcements, and join our Discord server for game tips and tricks.

Attention scientists! 24 years ago today, Half Life was released! We owe a lot to the Half-Life franchise, and it will always hold a special place as the series that Black Mesa came from. We are happy to have been a part of the source engine community all these years, and so today, join us in celebrating the 24th Anniversary of Half-Life! Are you feeling old yet? Lets hope not! Happy birthday Half-Life from the Crowbar Collective team!!
Join us on Discord, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for the latest developer updates and news.

[previewyoutube=pkupkoaO_fs;full][/previewyoutube] Greetings Scientists, At long last, we are doing a final update on the Black Mesa X Intruder mapmaking competition now that the judging process is complete. Due to unforeseen scheduling issues, we have prepared a wrap up video showcasing the winning maps and honorable mentions instead of the planned developer livestream.

The Winners

Third Place: Black Mesa South

Second Place: Foreseen Sequences

First Place: Potential Energy

Developer Wrap up Showcase Video

Greetings, scientists! At long last, we are finally ready to unveil the winners of our recent LambdaBuilds: Escape From Black Mesa mapmaking competition! We were blown away by all the entries that we have received and, despite how hard it was to pick out 3 winners, have finally determined the top-3 for this excellent event. Below are our top-3 from third place, to the grand prize winner:

• Third Place: Taking 3rd place is Little Red Star by Midlou! Congratulations on a job well done!
• Second Place: In 2nd, we have The Xenian by SNW! We were impressed by your work and appreciate your submission!
• First Place: The grand prize winner of LambdaBuilds: Escape From Black Mesa '' is Biotech by BeefBacon! While it was difficult to pick a winner from all our great submissions, this one was the one that captured our imagination most. Excellent work, and enjoy your hard-earned prizes!

Honorable Mentions

Where to play the maps:

• Official Steam Workshop Collection
• ModDB Portal Download

Hello, fellow zombie scientists!

YOU are Challenged to Escape!

Thanks to Our Partners

Steam Scream Fest

Attention, Black Mesa personnel! Yesterday marked the official end of our mapmaking competition LambdaBuilds: Escape From Black Mesa. Before we get on to what's next, we want to take a moment to say thank you to both LambdaGeneration and ModDB for hosting this exciting event! We believe that these kinds of community-focused competitions are a great way to celebrate our shared love of Source Engine games, and are thankful to have had the opportunity to collaborate on Escape From Black Mesa with them.

Next Steps:

Announcement of the winners:

Official Map Collection Release:

Post-event live stream:

Have you joined the official Black Mesa fan page?

Hey there, scientists! We wanted to remind all facility personnel that there is still time to submit an entry for our mapmaking collaboration LambdaBuilds: Escape From Black Mesa. The deadline is only a couple of weeks away, however, so be sure to grab your crowbars and get to work! Alongside this reminder, we also wanted to share a few pieces of helpful information.

Where to find help:

Uploading your submission:

• Link to to the Steam Guide
• Crowbar Tool Download Link

Attention all science personnel!

Judging and Announcement of Winners

Final Developer Livestream

• Black Mesa Instagram
• @BlackMesaDevs Twitter
• Black Mesa Facebook
• @SuperbossGames Twitter
• Superboss Games Facebook

Greetings, scientists! What is your favorite time of year? Ours is HALLOWEEN. We are excited to announce our Halloween Level Design Competition called LambdaBuilds: Escape From Black Mesa, a collaboration between LambdaGeneration and ModDB. We are obviously big fans of both groups, and have been wanting to do a level design competition for some time. So what better way to mix our favorite time of year with two really great communities? To kick off the festivities, Black Mesa is 75% off until Sunday! https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/

Theming: Eerie Escape Room:

Scope:

Prizes:

1st Prize:

• RTX 3070 TI
• $100 Steam Gift Card (USD)
• Custom Black Mesa Mouse Pad
• Black Mesa Display Box

2nd Prize:

• GTX 1660 Super
• $100 Steam Gift Card (USD)
• Custom Black Mesa Mouse Pad
• Black Mesa Display Box

3rd Prize:

• Corsair Keyboard
• $50 Steam Gift Card (USD)
• Custom Black Mesa Mouse Pad
• Black Mesa Display Box

Important Links and Information:

Attention to all science personnel! Today marks 10 years since Black Mesa was released as the definitive way to revisit Half-Life on the Source engine! Were so proud of how far weve come since then, and are grateful for the tremendous support from our community over the past decade. Black Mesa wouldnt be where it is today if it wasnt for all of you. To celebrate this huge milestone, our friends at LambdaGeneration have released the Black Mesa sub-community on their website, which will act as the official fan page for all Black Mesa personnel! If you havent joined yet, please head here and sign up today! Furthermore, we are teaming with LambdaGeneration to hold a 10 year anniversary Gleam giveaway. Were giving away 3 sets of $50 Steam Physical Gift cards to the top 3 winners. To enter the giveaway, follow this link. Complete as many tasks as possible to earn more chances to win! The giveaway runs until September, 20th. Winners will be announced shortly after. Thank you for a great 10 years, scientists, The Crowbar Collective Team

Attention to all science team personnel! We are so excited to announce that the mapmaking competition featuring Black Mesa and Intruder has finally begun! Given that both of these titles are FPS games that developed out of a love of Half-Life, and its modding community, we thought that this mapmaking competition would be an excellent way for both the Black Mesa and Intruder communities to showcase their love for these games, and their creativity! With that being said, there are a few things we wanted to share with all you scientists:

The Map Making Contest Has Begun!

Bundle Information

Stream Announcement

Attention all science personnel! Fire up those DalSYS computers! On July 28 at 12 PM CST, worlds collide as the Black Mesa and Superboss Games developers will be playing Intruder with one another in an epic crossover livestream event! The stream can be found at right here! While youre at it, make sure to check out Black Mesa and Intruder using the links below! https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/518150/Intruder/ Crowbar Collective x Superboss Games https://www.instagram.com/blackmesagame/ https://twitter.com/BlackMesaDevs https://www.facebook.com/BlackMesaDevs https://twitter.com/SuperbossGames https://www.facebook.com/SuperbossGames

Save the date, Scientists! The Black Mesa x Intruder mapmaking competition is coming on July 28th, and its coming in hot! Dont miss your chance to take part in the best mapmaking contest ever created to win exciting prizes! https://youtu.be/kZbVvpejxL4 Stay tuned to our socials and keep up with the latest news: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blackmesagame/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BlackMesaDevs Twitter: https://twitter.com/BlackMesaDevs Make sure to check out Intruder on: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SuperbossGames Twitter: https://twitter.com/SuperbossGames And reach out to other map makers and players on our Discord server. See you on the Island, Scientists. Trailer made by SepkoSFM Crowbar Collective x Superboss Games

Big day today, Scientists! The Administrators are excited to announce that we are collaborating with Superboss Games, the makers of Intruder, to bring all of you to the Black Mesa facility for an exciting new event, no HEV suit required! Coming soon, we will be hosting an epic mapmaking contest to solve the scientific problem of combining Black Mesa and Intruder together! https://youtu.be/eLKSEyx9utg Teaser made by SepkoSFM Join the other scientists on Discord, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for more details on this exciting event! Crowbar Collective x Superboss Games https://www.instagram.com/blackmesagame/ https://twitter.com/BlackMesaDevs https://www.facebook.com/BlackMesaDevs https://twitter.com/SuperbossGames https://www.facebook.com/SuperbossGames

The Summer Sale is about to go critical! Black Mesa is 75% off during the Steam Summer Sale. Suit up and step into the Test Chamber before July 7th here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/ Join the facility on Discord, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for the latest developer updates and news.

Our Steam page is about to go critical - as we announce that weve surpassed 75,000 Overwhelmingly Positive Steam Reviews! We would like to thank every single scientist who has played and enjoyed the game so much over the many years. From our 2nd anniversary to the Noclip Documentary, the start of 2022 has been such a blast, and expect plenty of cascade-inducing events and announcements throughout the year! Join in the celebrations with us on Discord, leave your Steam review here to help us reach our next milestone, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for the latest developer updates and news: bit.ly/3lQhVKs Look forward to hitting 100,000 real soon! The Crowbar Collective team

Black Mesa is about to go critical! Not only did Noclip release their Resonance Cascade-inducing Black Mesa documentary (watch below), but the game is now 50% off till 24 March! [previewyoutube=G_TcAxAKCAI;full][/previewyoutube] Tell your families and friends that this is the best time to purchase one of the iconic games ever made. https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/ Dont forget to show your thanks and support to the Noclip crew by subscribing to their Patreon, and subscribing to their brand new YouTube channel. Noclip Patron Noclip Crew Youtube Channel Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for the latest news and announcements, and join our Discord server for experienced player guidance and support.

The Administration and Noclip are proud to announce that the Black Mesa documentary is available to watch now! [previewyoutube=G_TcAxAKCAI;full][/previewyoutube] Join Danny and the Noclip team as they journey through our facility, discussing recreating Half-Life, from finishing Xen, and taking on the Nihilanth. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for the latest Black Mesa news and announcements, and join our Discord server to celebrate this momentous occasion with us!

Ga'glah! After months of behind-the-facility work, were proud to announce that weve been working on a documentary about Black Mesa, exclusively with Noclip! [previewyoutube=NGureVWbxHo;full][/previewyoutube] As you may know, Noclip is a crowdfunded media company dedicated to creating video game documentaries. We took them on a journey through our facility, discussing the two decades of development, and revealing how a team of fans went on to fix Half-Life's unfinished final chapter. The full 2+ hour documentary arrives later this month (March 2022), exclusively on their YouTube channel. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for the latest documentary news and announcements, and join our Discord server to celebrate this momentous occasion with us!

Time flies so fast, Scientists! In just a blink of an eye, Black Mesa turns two today! We wouldnt be able to reach this milestone without the utmost support of our community, whose strength surpasses the Resonance Cascade. To celebrate this milestone, were giving scientists the chance to win one of two $100 Steam Gift Cards, and a Black Mesa key, from today till March 13th! Enter here: https://bit.ly/3tuKTCi
Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for the latest news and announcements, and join our Discord server for experienced player guidance and support.

Happy Lunar New Year, scientists! To celebrate, Black Mesa is now at a Resonance Cascade-inducing 50% off. Suit up as Gordon Freeman and relive the iconic FPS game, but hurry. This discount ends February 3rd! https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/ Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for the latest news and announcements, and join our Discord server for experienced player guidance and support..

Hurry up, scientists, I can't keep it open forever! Black Mesa is on sale with a 75% discount in Steams Winter Sale. https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/ Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for the latest news and announcements, and join our Discord server for game tips and tricks.

Pay attention, scientists! Fall for G-Man all over again with Black Mesa, now 60% off in Steam's Autumn Sale. https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/ Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for the latest news and announcements, and join our Discord server for game tips, tricks and virtual Tesla Tacos!

Our Headcrabs are hungry, scientists! So reach for that crowbar and this scarily good discount of 60% off, till November 1st: https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/ Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for the latest news and announcements, and join our Discord server for game tips, tricks and virtual Tesla Tacos!

Our giveaway has gone critical! Were delighted to announce, after much anticipation, the winner of the Black Mesa x Origin PC custom PC! We raise our crowbars to:

Andrew Y

Weve got some exciting stuff going on! Weve deployed a patch for the game (it will break saves), but more importantly, we have kicked off a BLACK MESA CUSTOM PC giveaway with ORIGIN PC! You have from now until October 6th to enter to win the ORIGIN PC pictured below!
To really amp this up to 105%, we set the game to 75% off! https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/ The Custom Black Mesa PC Click the link below to enter to win this beautiful piece of custom hardware. The team at ORIGIN PC made sure it didnt just have brawn, its got brains too! Enter To Win Here! (https://bit.ly/3nECs6f) PC Specs

• CPU - Intel Core i5-11600K
• Ram Memory - 32GB of Corsair Vengeance White RGB PRO DDR4 @ 2666Mhz
• GPU - EVGA RTX 2060
• OS Drive - 480GB Force MP510 NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD
• Storage - 500GB BarraCuda Seagate HDD

• Fixed crash in Interloper A (offset enemy spawn in times).
• Fixed the HEV chargers giving you the wrong charge amount.
• Fix for No Free Edicts issue in Interloper (timer on Interloper Agunt Pods).
• Optimized Interloper elevator sequence.
• Fixed female scientists not healing you.
• Fixed HEV scientist bodies showing revolver icon on item pickup.
• Added enginetools.txt to the bin folder.
• Implemented a fix for the new UI not working on Linux.
• Fixed hangs on Linux when pressing the Escape button.
• Fixed for the workshop on Linux.

• Fixed bug with video quality presets.
• Added separate label for gamepad options in menu (scroll down in the menu).
• Added enable/disable for vibration on controllers.
• Added an option to invert the Y-axis on controllers.
• Added sensitivity sliders for X and Y axis on controllers.

• Fixed WGH subtitle crash.
• Updated/fixed translation files based on community feedback.
• Fixed Arabic not being oriented correctly.
• Fixed text size during HEV bootup sequence on various resolutions.

• Fixed Lambda Core portal white screen bug (the spinny bits were killing players on teleport).
• Fixed smoke clipping through distant blue haze on Surface Tension cliffside.
• Slowed down bunker explosion animation on Surface Tension Cliffside to better portray sense of scale.
• Fixed scientist falling speed in Office complex.
• Fixed a small visual issue with the Taus sprint animation.
• Fixed missing wall stripe near control room in Unforeseen Consequences.
• Fixed weapons being removed if a satchel or snarks are thrown into portal 9 in Lambda Core.
• Adjusted emergency shutters in Lambda Core to prevent players from backtracking where they should not.
• Fixed rare softlocks in On A Rail (for the tram elevator by the rocket).
• Fixed I/O in Nihilanth chamber that would cause player to have noclip in endgame.
• Update to dm_crossfire skybox art.

Hello again, Hope everyone is enjoying summer (in the upper hemisphere anyway, winter if not). If you are interested in helping us test a new patch (out on public-beta), wed really appreciate it. There are a few issues we cant reproduce on our end, so check out the Needs More Testing section if you have had any of those issues or want to help out. This Next Patch Will Break Saves We had to edit the levels for some of the fixes, which means we had to invalidate old saves to make sure it didnt break people's games. You can restart the chapter or load the map via the games console. Sorry for any inconvenience, hopefully you were not in the middle of a hat run! Code Fixes

• Fixed the HEV chargers giving you the wrong charge amount.
• Fixed female scientists not healing you.
• Fixed HEV scientist bodies showing revolver icon on item pickup.
• Added enginetools.txt to the bin folder (probably needs to be updated).

• Fixed bug with video quality presets.
• Added separate label for gamepad options in menu (scroll down in menu).
• Added enable/disable for vibration on controllers.
• Added an option to invert the Y axis on controllers.
• Added sensitivity sliders for X and Y axis on controllers.

• Fixed We Got Hostiles subtitle crash.
• Updated/fixed translation files based on community feedback.
• Fixed Arabic not being oriented correctly.
• Fixed text size during HEV bootup sequence on various resolutions.

• Fixing smoke clipping through distant blue haze on Surface Tension cliffside.
• Slowed down bunker explosion animation on Surface Tension Cliffside to better portray sense of scale.
• Fixed scientist falling speed in Office complex.
• Fixed a small visual issue with the Taus sprint animation.
• Fixed missing wall stripe near control room in Unforeseen Consequences.
• Fixed weapons being removed if a satchel or snarks are thrown into portal 9 in Lambda Core.
• Adjusted emergency shutters in Lambda Core to prevent players from backtracking where they should not.
• Looking into fixing rare softlocks in On A Rail (for the tram elevator by the rocket).
• Fixed I/O in Nihilanth chamber that would cause the player to have noclip in endgame.
• Update to dm_crossfire skybox art.

• Attempted to fix crash in Interloper A (offset spawn in times).
• Possible fix for huge FPS drop during the rocket raise in On A Rail.
• Fix for No Free Edicts issue in Interloper (timer on Int barrels).
• HEV suit pickup still crashing the game in some languages.
• Implemented a possible fix for the new UI not working on Linux.
• Fixed hangs on Linux when pressing the Escape button.
• Possible fix for the workshop on Linux.

• Some RPG crates might not give you full RPG ammo.
• Some MP maps may be missing minor props.
• Chapter titles may be formatted wrong on higher resolutions (fixed on dev side).

The Black Mesa facility is proud to announce that weve surpassed 60,000 Overwhelmingly Positive Steam Reviews! From Barney quotes to your love of Houndeyes, your reviews have been a joy to read over the years and we wanted to share our 3 favorites to celebrate this achievement. If youve left one of your own or have another you prefer, share it with us in the discussion thread!


But thats not all we have to celebrate. Weve also been ranked #106 in Steams Top 250 Best Games List, with over 65,000 votes! So come share in the celebrations with us on Discord, leave your Steam review here and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for the latest game updates and news. Look forward to hitting the next milestone! The Crowbar Collective team

Hello again, fellow scientists!

Whats New?

Fixed on the Developer Build:

Issues to Fix/Look Into:

The Next Patch Will Break Saves

Steam Summer Sale

Community Multiplayer Playdates

Soon

Big day today, Freeman. It's been quite a journey for the science team but today is the 4th and final part of our Xen Museum Mod stream!
To thank all those who have been watching, Black Mesas composer, Joel Nielsen, will be joining us to talk about the Xen soundtrack, sound design, and much more. So join us in 2 hours' time at 1:00 PM CST, on our Twitch channel, for our final playthrough. Dont forget to join us on Discord and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for the latest Black Mesa updates! Till next time, The Crowbar Collective team

Ah, there you are Freeman, You have (1) new message! You are receiving this notification because of your mandatory subscription to Black Mesas alerts. We would like to remind everyone that today, May 1st, is the final full day to acquire an official copy of Black Mesa at a mitigated cost; 50% off. Kindly take note, this anomaly will end officially on May 2nd. With our recent Xen Museum Update, our Mod Madness celebration and much more, now is the perfect time to step into the Black Mesa science labs! Dont forget to share your progress with us on the following sites: Discord: https://discord.gg/crowbarcollective Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BlackMesaDevs/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/BlackMesaDevs Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blackmesagame/ Till next time!

Looking for some more Black Mesa? Youve come to the right place. The team took some time to play a bunch of our community mods, and we were blown away by the quality of the content on the workshop, but first...

Some Reminders

• The Dreamies are Friday, April 30th. Well be doing a stream beforehand of the Xen Museum. Tune in for some of the inside details behind the maps! 1PM EST.
• Well then Twitch Raid over to the Dreamies live show.
• Sorta related to below, Chon has updated On A Rail Uncut and uploaded it to the workshop. If you want a different take on OAR, check it out!
  
• The game is still on sale for 50% off until May 2nd! https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/

Mod Madness

bm_escapade

Last Awakener

Further Data

bm_quarantine

Superbus Via Inscientiae

bm_overtime

bm_bravado

bm_uncharted_territory

Stojkeholm

Black Mesa: Blue Shift

Access Point

Azure Sheep

Hazard Course

Hello everyone! Happy Spring? Is that what season it is? We may have lost track of time, but thats only because we have been working away on a patch, and some other projects. Lots to cover, so lets go!

Steam Sale

The Dreamies!

Black Mesa Xen Museum

Patch Notes

Fixed in game Voice Over IP (VOIP) not showing icons on hud. Note: if your input device is not set correctly in windows, there will be no icons in game.
• Added ability to change multiplayer character model/skin on new UI client.
  

  Implemented translators credits page!

  
  
  
• Experimental Weapon Wheel for controller (hud_fastswitch 2).
  
• Fixed mouse wheel support in options menu.
• Fixed Reset Defaults setting select weapon to [ ] instead of mouse wheel.
• Added support for multiplayer join menu navigation.
• Fixed issue with game reloading after video settings change. Game will now save settings if you navigate to another tab.
• Updated functionality for UI navigation with controller/keyboard.
• Fixed issues related to random selection of UI items.
• Implemented support for carousel navigation (New Game menu, Load Game menu, Save Game menu).
• Improved support to change game bindings with controller/keyboard.
• Added support to change key binding in cell with "A" button (Enter) press.
• Fixed problem with option lists not appearing in UI navigation with controller/keyboard.
• Update UI navigation functionality. Now users can navigate through alert boxes with controller/keyboard.
• Fixed problem with UI navigation being enabled while dev-console is opened.
• Fixed UI soft lock issue with disconnecting from single player game.
• Fixed UI soft lock issue with disconnecting from multiplayer game.
• Disabled default keyboard navigation functionality. It causes scroll over items and prevents custom UI navigation functionality work.
• Added highlight to the menu button that has an active state to show user selection when navigating with controller/keyboard.
• Update UI navigation logic. Added logic to store selected UI items when navigating to the next level of menu depth (to be able to select it again when the user goes up one level of depth tree).

Additional Translation Files

Supported Languages Now Include:

Patch for previous beta. Fixed missing closed caption files. Fixes default key binding setting change weapon to [ ].

Hello, Mesa friends! Hope the winter has treated everyone well. We here at Crowbar Collective are excited for spring and what comes next for us. But first off, we have a beta for testing further controller support, some UI bug fixes, as well as new translations. Please let us know if you see any persisting issues using controllers or with the new UI. Well be back soon to put the patch on the mainline and announce some fun events!

Fixes Pushed to Beta

• Added ability to change multiplayer character model/skin on new UI client ( Still needs translation strings).
  
• Implemented translators credits page.
  
• Experimental Weapon Wheel for controller (hud_fastswitch 2).
  
• Fixed mouse wheel support in options menu.
• Added support for multiplayer join menu navigation.
• Fixed issue with game reloading after video settings change. Game will now save settings if you navigate to another tab.
• Updated functionality for UI navigation with controller/keyboard.
• Fixed issues related to random selection of UI items.
• Implemented support for carousel navigation (New Game menu, Load Game menu, Save Game menu).
• Improved support to change game bindings with controller/keyboard.
• Added support to change key binding in cell with "A" button (Enter) press.
• Fixed problem with option lists not appearing in UI navigation with controller/keyboard.
• Update UI navigation functionality. Now users can navigate through alert boxes with controller/keyboard.
• Fixed problem with UI navigation being enabled while dev-console is opened.
• Fixed UI soft lock issue with disconnecting from single player game.
• Fixed UI soft lock issue with disconnecting from multiplayer game.
• Disabled default keyboard navigation functionality. It causes scroll over items and prevents custom UI navigation functionality work.
• Added highlight to menu button that has active state to show user selection when navigating with controller/keyboard.
• Update UI navigation logic. Added logic to store selected UI item when navigating to next level of menu depth (to be able to select it again when the user goes up one level of depth tree ).

• Brazilian(Portuguese)
• Mexican Spanish
• Greek
• Indonesian
• Lithuanian
• Vietnamese
• Arabic
• Japanese

Supported Languages Now Include:

• Chinese Simplified
• Chinese Traditional
• Croatin
• Czech
• Danish
• Dutch
• English
• Finnish
• French
• Georgian
• German
• Hungarian
• Italian
• Korean
• Norwegian
• Polish
• Portuguese
• Romanian
• Russian
• Spanish
• Swedish
• Turkish
• Ukrainian

Good day, Scientists of Black Mesa! We have a huge deal that you dont want to miss! As part of the Steam Lunar New Year Sale, Black Mesa will be available on Steam at 50% OFF! So, come aboard the Black Mesa Transit System and get your 50% discount by clicking here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa Be sure to hop on our Discord server and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for more updates and news about Black Mesa. Dont let this Steam Lunar New Year Sale pass by, get your 50% OFF on Black Mesa right away!

Well, this is... Outstanding news! Were honored to be nominated for the Outstanding Visual Style Steam Award! We are blown away to even be in the mix with the other fantastic candidates. Thank you to all those who nominated us. If we could ask for yet another favor, please vote for Black Mesa in the Outstanding Visual Style category! Voting starts today, and ends January 3rd at 9AM PST. As a small indie developer, we are beyond floored with the amount of support we have had on Steam. The Art, Design, and Programming team worked extremely hard to make our game look great, and we are very proud of what we have accomplished. The Outstanding Visual Style award would mean a lot to all of us at Crowbar Collective. Oh, and we are 50% off for the Steam Winter Sale, too! https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/





In other news, we are releasing a patch for the sale that further improves controller support, adds new closed captions, and fixes some game crashes!

Patch Notes:

Crash Fixes

• Fixed numerous crashes and memory leaks, including a major 30+ megabyte memory leak when loading maps
• Fixed memory leak crash on multiplayer dedicated server
• Fixed crash while using Potato settings
• Added additional fixes to prevent soft lock in "Questionable Ethics"

Additional Controller Support/Options

• Added additional controller support for menu (reset key binds if needed)
• Added auto aim slider to options menu
• Most game settings now take effect without reloading the map
• Added "Mouse Acceleration" and "Raw Input" to Options menu

Closed Captions

• Croatian
• Czech
• Georgian
• Hungarian
• Chinese (simplified)
• Chinese (traditional)
• Swedish
• Polish
• Danish
• Korean
• Dutch
• Turkish
• Romanian

• Cleaned various closed captions and UI text files
• Fixed Ukrainian end credits

Bugs/Fixes

• Fixed classic irons sight bug that stuck
• Changed supply create health to break on one crowbar hit
• Fixed chapter title cut off for "Forget About Freeman" on ultra wide

Black Mesa has been hugely successful throughout the mod years, throughout the porting to Steam, throughout the development of the Xen levels, and throughout our 16 years of development, all thanks to the overwhelming support of our community. We are extremely proud of what we have built, and it bears repeating that we could not have done it without you. So we have another favor to ask. If you could vote for Black Mesa as the Labor of Love Award we would be honored. We really believe this award embodies the blood, sweat, and tears that we have poured into this game year after year after year, and we hope that being nominated, and potentially winning this award will help bring the game to a new audience.
If you agree, please vote for us, and help us spread the word on social media. Thank you for your consideration. Have a great Steam sale (and Holiday too)! https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/ Discord: https://discord.gg/crowbarcollective Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BlackMesaDevs/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/BlackMesaDevs Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blackmesagame/

We are happy to announce that we are releasing our final big update to Black Mesa as a free Definitive Edition update. Since March, we have worked to polish the game in terms of both art and design. If you have been waiting to try Black Mesa, now is a great time to dive in. Well continue to support the game to fix major bugs, and the known issues below.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/

Highlights of the Definitive Edition

• Massive polish and art updates throughout the game
• Complete lighting and gameplay pass to the chapter Power Up
• Complete redesign of second On A Rail map (map B)
• Significant optimizations across the whole game that will improve performance on low to mid range PCs
• Outdoor art passes for Weve Got Hostiles, On A Rail, Questionable Ethics, Surface Tension, and Forget About Freeman
• New shield and architectural art for Interloper
• Full workshop support
• Updated closed caption/translation files for:
  • English
  • Spanish
  • French
  • Finnish
  • German
  • Italian
  • Norwegian
  • Portuguese
  • Russian
  • Ukrainian
  • With all the languages from our Crowdin campaign on the way!

Known Issues

• Were still working on controller support for the main menu
• Still have to add multiplayer player model select for new UI
• Female scientists unintentionally do not heal player
• Still have to release map source files (we are looking at the best way to do this)
• Sometimes maps in multiplayer have their bloom blown out

Media

Changes Since Last News Post

Code

• Significant further improvements to workshop functionality. Mods should now be able to properly support a wide variety of custom content, without any need for a custom folder
• Deprecated scenes.image. This means workshop content can now ship custom scenes without overriding Black Mesas scenes too.
• Added a convar which allows users to disable all workshop loading functionality entirely. Add +workshop_disable 1 to the games launch options to try this.
• Fixed Workshop crash bug related to multi-part VPKs
• Smoothed out suit charger animations and increased update rate on players HUD, to make everything feel a bit punchier and smoother
• Fix deferred rendering bug related to gbuffer, which should fix all the rendering artifacts/bugs and potential crashes related to secondary render targets: including reflection/refraction/monitors, etc.
• Fixed soda cans from vending machines not colliding with each other
• Added little color pops when the player picks up a health kit or a battery, just to help draw attention to that fact
• Fixed a crash related to old depreciated flashlight sprites
• The Multiplayer scoreboard can show up to 24 names now
• Fixed key binding bugs related to the new UI
• Added dynamic lights to chargers, Gargs, flames, and a few other things which shouldve had lights
• Added support for justifying the closed captions to the right side of the screen, for the languages which do that
• Fixed monitor functionality on the Surface Tension mortar screen
• Fixed a bug related to newpostprocessing, where it wouldnt turn off completely when disabled
• Reduced collision/rendering volume of newSpotlights by half for better culling and faster rendering
• Fixed rotation bugs for newSpotlights and func_tracktrain, for a prettier game
• Procedural dynamic lights have been disabled on potato quality mode for better FPS
• Significantly buffed the Gluon gun in multiplayer

Art

• Improved fidelity of blood splatters
• Fixed some of the charger lights occasionally being in the wrong position
• Fixed flickering slime vines at end of Xen swamp level
• Increased water frame rate in Lambda Core
• Added additional architectural art to Interloper C1
• Fixed car windshields to render objects behind them properly and sort better
• Fixed multiple Interloper shields to display properly, including the Vort Village intro and the large circular shield in Interloper D
• Fixed excessive shine on some rocks in ST
• Fixed floating props in Xen B1
• Added electric particles to knocked over radio tower in Surface Tension
• Fixed rock collision in Surface Tension
• Fixed green plant alpha cards in Interloper to work properly with gbuffer

Audio

• Fixed multiple issues with the in-game audio sliders. Fixed the sound effect slider adjusting everything except footsteps and gunfire, resulting in poor audio mix. Now you should be able to hear everything mixed as intended, which really improves the audio experience for anyone who has adjusted their audio sliders!
• Major improvements to the in-game music entity, which fixes maps which use the more dynamic music system. Music tracks should blend more seamlessly and quickly as a result
• Adjusted Inbound tracks so they finish slightly before the level transition. No more abrupt cuts in music!
• Moved Surface Tension Dam fight song over to the new dynamic music system, so the piece properly underscores the fight now no matter how you play it
• The music in the elevator fight in Interloper D is even smoother and cooler now!
• Fixed many missing NPC sounds, such as reloads

Level Design

Game-Wide

• Autosave pass on the entire game to reduce frustrating deaths that send you back really far in the level
• Dynamic light optimization pass on the entire game to improve performance, especially on low to mid-range PCs
• As always, many many small bugfixes and tweaks based on community feedback, that might not be mentioned here
• Multiple balance adjustments game-wide to smooth out the difficulty curve and remove frustrating pain points
• Significantly improved damage output of Guards (both Glock and .357) so they are much more worthy and effective companions now
• Fixed several instances where the Guards arms would clip through his chest

Anomalous Materials

• Prevented the player from being able to use the HEV charger next to the suit pickup before the suit battery functions of the suit had initialized. This prevents an odd edge-case bug where if you did that, your HUD would disappear forever.
• Moved the toilet paper slightly closer to the edge of the sink, to make it easier for players to grab
• Improved lighting on AM lockers

Unforeseen Consequences

• Fixed player being able to prevent the tube headcrab from spawning in Map B
• Adjusted some of the logic for the Map B headbanging Zombie, to better signpost when he comes out to attack you
• Added a little hudhint for the Glock in Map B, so new players know about the alternate fire
• Clipped off a spot in Map C where players could get stuck behind a cryo tank
• Locked a door in Map C to encourage players to break things with the Crowbar, as a form of basic training

Office Complex

• Added more Zombies to the Map A post-Shotgun ambush
• Fixed Guard interactions with the turrets in Map A

Weve Got Hostiles

• Significantly adjusted the Map C (warehouse/outdoor) fight to properly draw players outside and use the space more effectively. Added some barriers and adjusted the side of the bunker the players exit is on, to force players to run around the space a bit more than before. The fight is a lot more fun now!
• Prevented the Osprey from being damageable via the mortars, which should fix instances where the Osprey is running around on fire

Blast Pit

• Fixed the missing VOX sounds that were added in the 1.5 beta
• Adjusted the dying scientist in Map B so he doesnt turn his head to face you after hes dead
• Destroyed one of the bridges in Map B as a callback to the HL1 iteration
• Adjusted the scientist that gets killed by the Tentacle, to prevent him being completely frozen in place before the scene starts. Also fixed an edge case where players could get crushed by the door closing behind them.
• Several fixes to the Guard that gets killed by the Tentacle, to prevent a weird edge case where he would sometimes become invulnerable
• Fixed player being able to break the puzzle by pressing both generator buttons in quick succession in Map D
• Fixed bad lighting on a pipe at the end of Map E

Power Up

• Clipped off some points where players could get stuck
• Added an emergency light to the bottom of the lift that the HECU come down in Map B, to draw attention to the movement
• Made the crate blocking the generator in Map B be invulnerable before the player goes down there, to prevent a scenario where the Houndeyes/explosive barrels would sometimes prematurely destroy the crate and cause the map to progress without the players intervention

On a Rail

• Substantial rework to the new silo puzzle based on community feedback from 1.5 beta. The puzzle is now properly linearized and better signposted with visuals. This should alleviate all/most of the soft locks and potential confusion during this section.
• Added an elaborate series of cool scenes that play out if you bring the Guard with you up the silo. Give it a try!
• Added corner pieces to silo platforms to help NPC with pathing and give the player more space to run around (and prevent falling between levels)
• Fixed the elevator in the new silo so that players wont get crushed/stuck in the door when it closes
• Adjusted the Marines throughout the chapter who are scripted to fire the RPG at you, so that they should now do so every single time without fail

Apprehension

• Fixed a bad decal that was showing up as a glitchy puddle in Map A
• Re-arted the skybox outside the helipad in Map C to match the new art and style
• Fixed some visible nodraw at the end of Map C

Residue Processing

• Clipped a tree that you could walk through

Questionable Ethics

• Further attempted fixes for a soft lock that was possible at the end of Map F, by running into the door before the scientist had fully played his sequence

Surface Tension

• Fixed many instances of shiny rocks from the previous beta throughout the chapter
• Removed lots of old and ugly detail foliage models throughout Surface Tension and replaced them with newer ones
• Rebalanced the Map A warehouse fight to reduce difficulty spike and improve gameplay smoothness/experience
• Rebalanced Map A Apache to reduce his accuracy to of what it was before. He wont laser beam players quite as hard anymore (though he is still pretty accurate).
• Adjusted a lot of the new art in Map A to use better/newer foliage and rock models, for consistency with the rest of the chapter
• Many small tweaks to bits and pieces in the new Map B art to fix up things like visible world seams, floating rocks, etc
• Added level fog to Map C (cliffside map) to help reduce visual noise and provide better layer separation for players, to help make the map more readable with the new art. We found a neat little trick here that allowed us to keep the existing sky fog effect while also using a different level fog effect simultaneously!
• Rebalanced Map D whack-a-Gordon fight to provide the player with more cover and reduce difficulty spike
• Fixed Guard in Map F being unresponsive past a certain point, he should now play out as he did before, with a few of his existing improvements
• Fixed broken mortar and fuel truck in Map I end scene (this bug was insane on the code front!)
• Added a trigger to Map F which deletes the Osprey gibs before you go up to the TOW Launcher, preventing a situation where sometimes the gibs would block your line of fire to the Abrams
• Fixed TOW Launcher in Map F firing hilariously slow rockets

Forget About Freeman!

• New art for snark nests throughout Map A, to make it look beautifully disgusting and to match the infestation type found in Map B

Lambda Core

• Rebalanced the Map A Assassin fight to prevent players from cheesing it by simply sprinting to the end. Prevented Assassins from being able to jump onto the upper walkways and shoot down at players through the grate. Adjusted the container maze layout slightly to encourage players to move through it and fight in there. Added many supplies to help achieve the same goal. Spaced out Assassins into multiple waves, so the player doesnt end up fighting too many at once.
• Added some signposting into the ladder the Scientist drops in Map B, so players are more likely to know where to go when the fight is over
• Fixed Map B gun-range door not opening properly
• Removed an extraneous Long Jump hudhint from Map H, as the player is already told about it so much

Xen

• Added a tumbling hat animation for when the player takes the Hat through to Xen
• Changed Houndeye alert island sound used on the Houndeye island in Map A
• Added an animation to the winch prop that pulls islands around, so that you can see something is happening even without looking at the islands
• Fixed floating ground polyps under the Tree of Truth in Map B1
• Fixed ugly areaportal when looking back into previous level while in Map C1

Interloper

• Further adjustments to the new forcefield models to boost visual quality and improve consistency
• Cubemap pass on Map A1 (Gargathon) to help boost the visual quality
• Fixed up the Gargantua lights on A1 to look better and to improve performance
• Gave the Gargantuas things to do after the player has escaped in A1, so they dont just stand around...menacingly
• Fixed visible world FarZ in Map B2
• More art passes on Map C to help boost the visual quality
• Art pass on the boxes which hold the Controller shield crystals in Map C2

Nihilanth

• Significantly improved performance in Nihilanths chamber for low/mid-range PCs

Want More? Check Out Even More Patch Notes Since 1.0

Hello everyone, and Happy Halloween! Black Mesa is a full 50% off until November 2nd for The Steam Halloween Sale. To celebrate we have released Black Mesa 1.5 to public-beta! https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/ To play the latest build, simply right click the game on Steam, click Properties, go to the Betas tab, and select public-beta from the dropdown menu.

Black Mesa Definitive Edition Features (On Beta Branch)

Power Up Powered Down

On A Rail Updates

Art Passes

Weve Got Hostiles

On A Rail

Questionable Ethics

Surface Tension

Forget About Freeman!

New Shields and Level Details For Interloper

Full Workshop Support

• Fixed needing to manually add the custom folder for mods to work, now all types of mods should work just the click of the subscribe button
• Enabled support for scripts, choreography and particles when shipped with mods, to better expand the types of content community modders can included
• Fixed sounds and music not playing properly and requiring snd_restart to work
• Added ability for mods to ship/edit skill.cfg and weapon .dmx files, allowing mods to now modify player health and damage settings
• Added logic_playerproxy entity

More Languages for Closed Captions

Full Changelist

Code

• Added dynamic lights to all health chargers and HEV chargers
• Added corpse gib sounds
• Added long jump bootup sequence
• Added Agrunt pod breaking sound effect
• Sunlight shadows (CSM) for viewmodels fixed for all quality settings. (These will not work on potato quality settings, for performance reasons)
• Fixed freezing issue that would happen when closing pause screen too soon while saving game
• Fixed Guard not being able to go from crouch to walk without going into idle pose first
• Fixed scientists not healing the player when they are low on health (still have to fix female scientists)
• Fixed crash when shooting an explosive barrel with shotgun
• Fixed Guards in player squad from standing in straight line during combat
• Fixed Vort hands glowing after attack has been completed
• Fixed long jump Landing Jets to call string for translation files
• Fixed crash with HEV bootup sequence when using translated text
• Fixed crash in Surface Tension on Linux

UI/Multiplayer

• Added No Weapon Switch setting for multiplayer
• Added disconnect button for leaving multiplayer
• Added crouch toggle
• Fixed key binds to allow keyboard and controller binds
• Fix in game voice (VOIP) bind and display icon (now displays player icon and name)
• Fixed singleplayer maps loading as multiplayer if you start a game from multiplayer
• Fixed timer and frag count not being carried over into game

Art

• We Got Hostiles outdoor updates
• On A Rail outdoor updates
• Questionable Ethics outdoor updates
• Surface Tension outdoor updates
• Forget About Freeman! outdoor updates
• All new shields and art details for Interloper
• Made eye more reflective for houndeye
• Floodlights now have off skin
• Fixed incorrect vine flow direction in the vine cave in Xen B
• Fixed clustered props in Lambda Core to light better
• Fixed duplicate lift geometry in Lambda Core map E
• Turned ladder hatch in Office Complex into a prop to fix lighting and sorting issues
• Fixed OAR tram glowing in the dark
• Added more developed skybox through all of Surface Tension Uncut maps
  
• Fixed improperly lit props in Interloper map A
• Added server props to Interloper factory columns
• Added LODs to vehicle and hero props
• Added hatch models for Interloper
• Added trim to Interloper factor
• Fixed foliage welding errors (floating props)
• Recreated old desert rock props
• Added new foliage assets
• Added new rock assets
• Added new Mesa assets
• Added welds meshes to Interloper
• Clustered props for Questionable Ethics Xen scene
• Fixed floating props in Gonarch
• Fixed props missing collision
• Added new heart room art for breaking the shields at the end of Interloper C1
  
• Fixed collision on first Interloper machine
• New art for Power Up

Level Design

Game Wide

• As always, a huge slew of fixes for bugs and softlocks found by the community, many of which are too small to mention here!
• Clipping pass across the whole game to smooth out player collision and prevent nasty bumps
• Added further clues
• Added designated supply boxes game wide so players can better find resources these will always contain health, battery, or both. Note: other items can still be found in unmarked crates just like in previous versions of BMS, these new boxes are just for health/battery pickups. \Health/battery can also still be found loose in the world too.

Unforeseen Consequences

• Moved first combat headcrab spawn to in front of the player (Map A)
• Fixed guard from standing on top of chair in scripted sequence... (Map B)
• Drew attention to dead zombie legs in lab and HEV pickup (Map B)
• Better drew attention to headcrab/monitor sequence by moving headbutting zombie elsewhere (Map B)
• Nudged battery closer to edge of shelf so that it can be picked up without parkour (Map C)
• Allowed player to pick up pistol at dead guard that was crawling toward health charger (Map C)
• Improved freezer red valve puzzle (Map C)
• Made player find red valve and bring it to socket to flood sewer to better iterate on mechanic from the freezer puzzle, and to better utilise the entire sewer space (Map C)
• Rearranged barrels in sewer to let players distract barnacles (Map C)
• Shortened vent crawl near freight elevator to reduce unnecessary downtime and improve player guidance and storytelling (Map D)
• Fool proofed the houndeye explosion sequence to prevent an edge case where sometimes the bridge wouldnt explode but players would just fall through it (Map D)
• Added suit zoom prompt during headcrab, bullsquid fight (Map E)
• Added hidden goodies to better reward exploration (Map E)
• Increased drama and number of houndeyes in final fight before Office Complex to better send
• off the chapter (Map E)

Office Complex

• Fixed soft lock that could happen if you shoot headcrabs that get electrocuted at start of chapter (Map A)
• Moved power for electrified water to light switch next to door (Map A)
• Fixed bad trim on electrified water room (Map A)
• Converted door ladder to model to fix lighting issues (Map A)
• Changed Vort ambush to a Zombie ambush, to better reward and teach the player about the weapon, and to give the big Vort office fight more power (Map A)
• Fixed metal grate that was playing wrong sound effect when hit (Map B)
• Added Xog to freezer instead of legacy fog (Map C)

Weve Got Hostiles

• New art for outdoor sections (Chapter Wide)
• Fixed chapter title having ! in it (Map A)
• Overhauled introduction scene with Guard in vent to feel more natural and be more like the original (Map A)
• Reworked Rescued At Last! scene to better show story beat and give players a clearer view (Map A)
• Improved hallway headcrab fight to be more interesting (Map A)
• Choreographed scientist at tripmines to not follow player, to help boost Gman scene (Map A)
• Blocked locked double doors to better signal to the player that is not the critical path (Map A)
• Restructured environment to frame "12 Dumbass Scientist" scene to give players better and more natural view (Map A)
• Increased volume of Im with the science team! voice line and changed one of the scientists to be a woman (Map B)
• Better placed I am the one man who knows everything! scientist to look more natural and fool proof the trigger (Map B)
• Fixed crush death in elevator to surface (Map B)
• Rearranged warehouse so that the player is drawn into the combat space and so the player initiates the fight (Map C)
• Fixed broken fog and added new style fog (Map C)
• Made HECU continue to fire at you after you crawl into collapsing vent shaft; to pressure the player to move forward (Map C)

Blast Pit

• Added old style VOX announcements throughout Blast Pit to give subtle hints to the player about the status of the rocket and whats going on around them (Chapter Wide)
• Fixed radioactive goo not triggering Geiger counter (Map A and E)
• Fixed area where player could get stuck (Map A)
• Fixed overbright barrels due to water reflection (Map A)
• Made it so player could not back out of room during tentacle attack (Map B)
• Fixed scientist reappearing after being dragged out of window in tentacle attack (Map B)
• Fixed security guard who absolutely refused to die to tentacle monster or rocket fire (Map B)
• Fixed some visible seams in the world by the Tentacles (Map B and E)
• Better highlighted which door goes where away from the Tentacles (Map B)
• Better signposted status of rocket launch and required elements (Map C and D)
• Fixed BSP seam as you descended final ladder (Map E)

Power Up

• Gargantuan update to the entire chapter. Check it out ;)
• Fixed Gargantua lurking by window, blocking your escape to transformer (Map A)
• Fixed ladder with no support structure. Everyone needs someone to lean on. (Map B)
• Reworked combat scenarios with Grunts and Houndeyes (Map B)

On A Rail

• New art for outdoor sections (Chapter Wide)
• Added better auto saves (Chapter Wide)
• Redesigned chapter progression so you take the same tram all the way through the chapter now (Chapter Wide)
• Fixed multiple visible gaps in the world (Map A)
• Completely redesigned rocket silo and map progression (Map B)
• Redid silo lighting to feel spookier (Map B)
• Added new workshop area at the beginning of the map to account for the fact that the player doesnt have trams to walk on and hide behind anymore (Map B)
• Added new security area looking into the rocket hallway to help enforce the new circular nature of the map (Map B)
• Added health before large vort/HECU hallway fight (Map B)
• Improved ladder dismounts in rocket silo (Map B)
• Relit and rotated skybox above silo to draw more attention and connect the two levels in the players mind (Map B)
• Pushed back fog to include sky elements (Map C)
• Fixed bad scale on ground blend textures (Map C)
• Fixed clipping that allowed player to skip fight at the end of chapter (Map C)
• Fixed truck headlight that was missing and fixed misaligned headlight lens flare (Map C)
• Fixed bug where the Marine on the 50 Cal would not get off it when the player got near him (Map C)
• Increased performance when rocket is raising (Map C)

Apprehension

• Added nice camouflage, asshole! scene to when Gordon falls in the water (Map A)
• Added glowy chemlights to help guide the player through hole in underwater section (Map A)
• Moved end of map door opening switch to a position where the player can properly see cause and effect to reduce player confusion (Map C)
• Added second Assassin fight once the door is opened, to give the scene more impact (Map C)
• Added some more health and environmental storytelling around the Assassin arena, to account for the increased difficulty and resulting need for exploration (Map C)
• Adjusted final route before knockout scene to have it feel more like a natural progression for the player (Map C)

Residue Processing

• Fixed super bright cube maps in some outdoor areas (Map A)
• Fixed bad red pipe coloration and join near the start of the map (Map A)
• Replaced vent texture with model to prevent flashlight render issue (Map A)
• Small bits of better environmental storytelling (Map A)
• Removed crane physics puzzle as it was not fun or interesting (Map C)

Questionable Ethics

• New art for outdoor sections (Chapter Wide)
• Added new prop and lighting to pod holding Alien Grunt (Map A)
• Fixed HECU running into their own mines (Map A)
• Choreographed HECU intro so that player now has to initiate the fight with HECU (Map F)
• Added all new environment in Xen room (Map F)
• Better lighting for scientist beyond surgery machine (Map F)
• Fixed soft lock when transitioning to next Map (Map F)
• Fixed various softlocks in Lobby (Map F)
• Fixed dev texture on column in Lobby (Map F)
• Added additional cover and tweaks to Lobby fight (Map F)

Surface Tension

• New art for outdoor sections (Chapter Wide)
• Fixed HECU shooting at you when behind security vehicle (Map A)
• Fixed wall the player and NPCs could walk through (Map D)
• Fixed doorway you could see through into sky (Map D)
• Added HOLY SHIT! reaction to Guard to help make him feel more lifelike and like a character (Map F)
• Added dynamic lights to exploded osprey (Map G)

Forget About Freeman!

• New art for outdoor sections (Chapter Wide)
• Fixed lasers not turning off when player kills turrets (Map A)
• Fixed turret not being aggressive towards player/Guard (Map A)
• Adjust Manta positioning/timing to hide the Manta pop in (Map B)
• Added better fence for player to climb over, so players wont get confused and try to climb up on the fence (Map B)
• Fixed player being able to get up onto large rock formation (Map B)
• Made hospital beds static to keep the playspace from getting cluttered (Map B)
• Fixed the manta/tank explosions from throwing health/battery pickups around the entire arena, getting them lost from where theyre supposed to be (Map B)
• Fixed HECU from getting stuck on barrier (Map B)
• Added some additional ceiling art in underground sections for higher fidelity (Map B)

Lambda Core

• Improved lightmap scales on many walls/floors for better lighting at no additional performance cost! (Chapter Wide)
• Fixed decals rendering incorrectly on walls (Map C)
• Fixed sprinkler particles that floated in mid air in one hallway (Map C)
• Simplified jumping puzzle in lower area under main core to prevent getting weirdly crushed and make the platforming easier (Map G)
• Fixed interdimensional scene to show correct FOV (Map I)
• Fixed bug where laser beams would kill the player as they jumped into the portal, occasionally not letting them progress into Xen (Map I)
• Fixed bug where the player could sometimes both win and lose at the same time if they jumped into the portal at the exact right moment.

Xen

• Fixed leafs throughout chapter (Chapter Wide)
• Fixed human skulls spawning from barnacles where they should not (Chapter Wide)
• Re-culled and clustered all foliage props to prevent weird artifacting and strangely cut off grasses (Map B)
• Swapped whiteboards to better guide player for first plug puzzle (Map B)
• Fixed floating prop at start of Xen swamp (Map B)
• Fixed floating healing pool before second leaf gate (Map B)
• Fixed healing pool that players would get stuck on sometimes (Map B)
• Added small step after second leaf gate to help the player jump up (Map B)
• Re-arted polyps in the Tree of Truth to give them higher fidelity and prevent some floating ones (Map B1)
• Fixed windows in root walls by the Tree of Truth to better show objective progression (Map B1)
• Highlighted tree trunk drop down into trip mine maze (Map B1)
• Fixed see through rock due to model culling (Map B1)
• Fixed Ichthys in last deep pool from not being able to swim (Map B1)
• Fixed second plug puzzle being able to plug two ends of the same cord into one socket (Map C1)
• Further refined last plug puzzle to be almost impossible to break (Map C1)

Gonarch

• Fixed human skulls spawning from barnacles where they should not (Chapter Wide)
• Trapped player in early cave using a rock collapse to prevent backtracking and force them to use the fumerol to progress, to help players learn it is a key gameplay element (Map B)
• Made sure player could not get to second level of crystal cave before using water crystal (Map B)

Interloper

• New art and detailing throughout the chapter to add an additional layer of polish (Chapter Wide)
• Fixed human skulls spawning from barnacles where they should not (Chapter Wide)
• Fixed players falling into void and not dying (Map A)
• Fixed hole in village the player could fall into and get stuck (Map A)
• Fixed fire at the bottom of controller fight burning out too soon (Map A)
• Gave Vorts in the Vort Village a few more things to do, and ensured they properly run and hide if the player starts trying to kill them indiscriminately (Map A)
• Fixed missing rock backfaces (Map A1)
• Clipped rocks by second jump pad in Garg chase (Map A1)
• Fixed overlit Gargs at end of chase scene (Map A1)
• Fixed player being able to clip into a green bubble vat (Map B)
• Highlighted lift that is needed to find power plug at the top room puzzle (Map B)
• Fixed brush clipping in pipe (Map B)
• Fixed giant hole in factory (Map B)
• Added water effects to Alien Grunt gestation chamber and connecting tube (Map B1)
• Added checkpoint to first machine so if you fall down during the long jump, you dont have to just stand there and wait for the sweet, sweet release of a fiery death (Map C)
• Adding revving up to 3rd machine to better telegraph to the player what is going to happen next (Map C)
• Added grunt pods at end of conveyor sprint to give the section a tenser ending and to look less barren (Map C)
• Better introduced barrels and cysts as a means of blowing stuff up (Map C)
• Added healing crystal at start of upper cage fight (Map C1)
• Significantly optimized elevator fight (Map D)
• Re-arted the fog during the elevator fight to help further with optimization and to make pop-in look better (Map D)
• Ensured that Alien Controllers are being deleted during Elevator fight once you leave their respective sections, to further improve performance (Map D)
• Added explosions and nudges to get player off elevator at midpoint (Map D)
• Fixed crush zone at top of elevator (Map D)

Endgame

• Fixed a really strange issue where the tram door in the final sequence would sometimes disappear for some players

Known Issues

• A number of world seams in ST B with new art
• Floating polyp models in Xen tree hub (Xen map B1)
• Controllers currently dont work in the menu
• Female scientists unintentionally do not heal player
• Still have to add multiplayer player model select for new UI
• If players in multiplayer have same score and are in top 3, they will both get metals
• Player rank sometimes shows wrong at the top of screen in multiplayer
• Guard in Surface Tension F will sometime refuse to follow Freeman
• Possible soft lock in 2 spots in OAR. The silo floor and the up elevator.
• We still do not ship the mapsrc VMFs - we will do this for the final release of the Definitive Edition

Attention, Scientists! We have an exciting announcement and the launch of a new community-driven project around Black Mesa! We understand that you would love to see Black Mesa translated to your languages, and we have received numerous requests from players who wish to be involved in the process. We also want to make this happen! That is why we are starting a crowd translation project to translate Black Mesa into over 30 languages, but we will need the community's help! We prepared a Black Mesa project on Crowdin, a website that lets anyone help collaborate on translations. With everyone's help, we can bring Black Mesa to brand new languages and communities to give everyone the nostalgic feeling of fighting through the tunnels of Black Mesa once more. If you would like to help with any of the languages we have set, please don't hesitate! As translations are completed, they will be added to the game. Some processes and verifications need to be made once each language is complete, which we will discuss with you more in the future. You might notice that some languages have fewer words to translate. That is because we already have their translations done, and we need your help to see them to completion. If you would like to take part go to the link here: https://crowdin.com/project/black-mesa/ From there, choose the language and start translating whatever you can and however many you wish. It will be teamwork! Our staff will work with community members to verify and fix translations and implement them soon after. More exciting news about this project will come in the future. Please share this news with your friends, and let's bring Black Mesa to your languages! If you would like to discuss and coordinate this, join our Discord server, and use the #translate-bms channel. You can ask any questions or contact us if you have any questions about this through Discord, forums, or social media, as always. We will actively coordinate with you. Thank you, everyone! We are super thrilled about this, and we hope you are too.

Joel Nielsen

Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective.

What was your first experience with Half-Life?

When did your interest in game development begin?

What was the most challenging hurdle that was overcome during development in your role?

What was the most creative method you had to use to create a sound?

How difficult was the task of reimagining Xen musically?

What about the Xen sound design?

Which piece of music from Earthbound would you most like to redo/replace but cant because it stuck too much?

Do you ever plan on releasing the stems to the soundtrack?

Did you go to school for your respective parts of the project?

So what now?

Mike Hillard

Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective.

How did you get involved with Black Mesa

What was the most challenging hurdle that was overcome during development in your role?

What software did you use for your work?

What kind of microphones & preamps were used to record your vocals?

When did your interest in game development begin?

Any favorite mods for Half-Life games?

Anything you would want to add to Black Mesa?

Do you accept pineapple on pizza or are you against it?

Ben Truman

Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective.

What do you enjoy the most about Black Mesa?

What was the most challenging hurdle that was overcome during development in your role?

How did you get involved with Black Mesa (If you joined later on?)

Did you go to school for your respective parts of the project?

What software did you use for your work?

Any recommendations for people wanting to get into game design?

Any favorite mods for Half-Life games?

When did your interest in game development begin?

Anthony Stone

Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective.

What was your first experience with Half-Life?

What was the most challenging hurdle that was overcome during development in your role?

How did you resist getting burnt out over such a long development process for Xen?

When did your interest in game development begin?

Was there ever a time you were close to giving up and quitting?

How often do you watch youtube videos/Twitch streams of Black Mesa?

Nathan Ayres

Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective.

What was the most challenging hurdle that was overcome during development in your role?

How did you get involved with Black Mesa (If you joined later on?)

How difficult was the task of reimagining Xen?

Any recommendations for people wanting to get into game design?

What do you want to improve about Black Mesa?

What was the worst part of developing Black Mesa in your role?

If you had unlimited time, money, and help, what game would you make?

Where did the purple hat come from?

Any movies or other games besides Half-Life you took inspiration from during development for your role specifically?

Having now seen Valves interpretation of Xen elements in a modern engine (HL: Alyx) are there any elements of this interpretation that you would like to have included in Black Mesa Xen?

Johnathan Welsh

Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective.

When did your interest in game development begin?

What was the most challenging hurdle that was overcome during development in your role?

What was the worst part of developing Black Mesa in your role?

Did you go to school for your respective parts of the project?

How often do you watch youtube videos/Twitch streams of Black Mesa?

Any favorite mods for Half-Life games?

Do you accept pineapple on pizza or are you against it?

Craig Mirfin

Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective.

What do you enjoy the most about Black Mesa?

What was the most challenging hurdle that was overcome during development in your role?

How did you get involved with Black Mesa (If you joined later on?)

What was your first experience with Half-Life?

Any recommendations for people wanting to get into game design?

Was there ever a time you were close to giving up and quitting?

When did your interest in game development begin?

Anything you would want to add to Black Mesa?

Any movies or other games besides Half-Life you took inspiration from during development for your role specifically?

How does the development pipeline work between the LDs, artists, and audio engineers?

Kevin Sisk

Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective.

What software did you use for your work?

Do you accept pineapple on pizza or are you against it?

How often do you watch youtube videos/Twitch streams of Black Mesa?

Any favorite mods for Half-Life games?

What kind of microphones & preamps were used to record your vocals?

Shawn Olson

Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective.

What do you enjoy the most about Black Mesa?

What was the most challenging hurdle that was overcome during development in your role? Hammer.

What software did you use for your work?

Did you go to school for your respective parts of the project?

Any recommendations for people wanting to get into game design?

How did you resist getting burnt out over such a long development process for Xen?

Brian Dale

Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective.

What do you enjoy the most about Black Mesa?

What was the most challenging hurdle that was overcome during development in your role?

What software did you use for your work?

What was your first experience with Half-Life?

Any recommendations for people wanting to get into game design?

How did you resist getting burnt out over such a long development process for Xen?

If you had unlimited time, money, and help, what game would you make?

Spencer Rose

Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective.

What do you enjoy most about Black Mesa?

What was the worst part of developing Black Mesa in your role?

Did you go to school for your respective parts of the project?

What would you be doing if you werent part of the Crowbar Collective team?

Was there ever a time you were close to giving up and quitting?

How much does using Wallworm improve workflow in the Source engine?

Any favorite mods for Half-Life games?

If you had unlimited time, money, and help, what game would you make?

Do you accept pineapple on pizza or are you against it?

Chon Kemp

Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective.

How did you get involved with Black Mesa (If you joined later on)?

Did you go to school for your respective parts of the project?

What software did you use for your work?

What do you enjoy the most about Black Mesa?

How did you resist getting burnt out over such a long development process for Xen?

How often do you watch youtube videos/Twitch streams of Black Mesa?

If you had unlimited time, money, and help, what game would you make?

What would you be doing if you werent part of the Crowbar Collective team?

Chetan Jaggi

Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective.

When did your interest in game development begin?

Did you go to school for your respective parts of the project?

Any recommendations for people wanting to get into Game Development?

How did you get involved with Black Mesa (If you joined later on)?

Do you accept pineapple on pizza or are you against it?

What was the worst part of developing Black Mesa in your role?

Any favorite mods for Half-Life games?

Would you rather fight 1 Gargantua sized Headcrab or 100 Headcrab sized Gargantua?

How difficult was the task of reimagining Xen?

Chris Horn

Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective.

How difficult was the task of reimagining Xen?

Any movies or other games besides Half-Life you took inspiration from during development for your role specifically?

How far are you planning (or have planned) to go with the ARG?

Do you accept pineapple on pizza or are you against it?

If you had unlimited time, money, and help, what game would you make?

Matt Young

Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective.

What was your first experience with Half-Life?

When did your interest in game development begin?

How did you get involved with Black Mesa (If you joined later on)?

What do you enjoy the most about Black Mesa?

What software did you use for your work?

How much does using Wallworm improve workflow in the Source engine?

What was the most difficult moment for you working on Black Mesa?

What do you want to improve about Black Mesa?

Adam Engels

• Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective. Im 35 years old and live in central New York. I started gaming on the original NES and got to grow up with the video game industry. I split my time between gaming and being active outdoors. Today I try to maintain that as a game developer and a volunteer firefighter. I started on the team as an artist, became the art lead, then project lead, and now have the honor of owning the company. These days I manage the business, help manage the team, and provide direction for the games we make!
• What do you enjoy the most about Black Mesa? Ive been really enjoying the new HECU combat we added with 1.0. During the early years of the mod, a lot of us worked in bubbles, as we had not yet quite figured out working remotely around the world. To this day I am still impressed by the level of detail put into the environments, and how the team made the Black Mesa Research Facility come to life. I am still finding new things after over 14 years of being on the project.
• What was the most challenging hurdle that was overcome during development in your role? Ive had a few roles throughout my time on Black Mesa, each with their own unique challenges. I would have to say the hardest part has been maintaining a business and an international decentralized team. There are a lot of resources for learning art, there are some good resources for learning design, but business is like a black hole of information.
• What software did you use for your work? I pretty much live in Google Docs these days...
• How did you get involved with Black Mesa (If you joined later on?) I was in college and our group heard about a remake of Half-Life being made by a mod team. We all figured it would be a great portfolio piece to get hired in the industry, so a lot of us applied. One of us got on the team as a level designer, and worked to get a bunch of us on the team!
• How did you resist getting burnt out over such a long development process for Xen? It was difficult, especially being an all-remote team. At the end of the day, it was our love for the original game, and the crazy good work in progress posts by the team that kept us all going. You may be stalled, but seeing the fantastic progress made by others could motivate you out of it!
• Do you accept pineapple on pizza or are you against it? I love pineapple on pizza. Dont @ me!
• When did your interest in game development begin? It actually started with watching how movies were made in middle school. I used to watch Movie Magic on the Discovery channel, and I loved to see how everything came together. After movies like Jurassic Park and The Matrix, I got more and more into 3D modeling, took CAD classes in high school, and started messing around with the Hammer Editor (called World Craft at the time). I applied to one college for Game Art and Design and got in.
• If you had unlimited time, money, and help, what game would you make? The game were making now ;)
• What is your favorite weapon to use in Black Mesa? The MP5 is my crutch...

A lot of you have requested for Black Mesa to be on NVIDIA GeForce NOW. Your wait is finally over! We are excited to announce that Black Mesa is now available on NVIDIA's cloud gaming service. See you in Xen, Scientists!

Greetings, Scientists! We will be starting a new series called "Meet the Devs" where you will get a chance to meet the majority (not all) of the talent behind Black Mesa. For the next two weeks, we will release a daily series of questions and answers where the developers themselves answer several sets of questionsboth personal and their experiences while they have gone through the years of development of Black Mesa. This is an opportunity for everyone to meet the team and get some behind the scene information. You can also expect answers to some frequently asked questions, answers about Hat Run discussions, and even an arg challenge embedded in the series. The following will be the order they are shared with each dev interview coming out daily: [olist]

Greetings, Scientists! Black Mesa has well over 1,000 workshop creations, with many of them being fantastic, it is tough to pick favorites. But recently we held a vote to decide on what the communitys overall most favored creations were! The winners of this vote are: 1. On a Rail - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=608116737&searchtext=On+a+rail 2. Particle Enhancement Project - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1945786736&searchtext=Particle+Enhancement+Projec 3. Azure Sheep Part One - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1905759382&searchtext=Azure+Sheep 4. Black Mesa Character Expansion - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2068862348&searchtext=Character+expansion 5. HD Pack Styled Sleeves - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=565475370&searchtext=hd+pack These are one of the many masterpieces created by fans, and we want to showcase them and others. These workshop submissions will be showcased by the developers during a live stream in the near future! Congratulations to the winners, and thank you everyone for participating!

Join in as Crowbar Collective's very own Chon Kemp aka DIGITAL SPORTS livestreams On a Rail! Chon will be streaming Half-Life's On a Rail and providing commentary on its design. He will also be streaming the Black Mesa version of On a Rail with his mod On a Rail Uncut installed and hosting giveaways in between games! Don't miss it this Sunday at 4 PM GMT only on our Twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/crowbar_collective

Greetings Scientists, There has been an amazing amount of fantastic workshop items for Black Mesa over the years, and we would like to showcase the best there is to offer! We will be showcasing the best-voted workshop items on Discord, Social Media, Steam, and possibly developer live streams! We would like the community to participate in this as well! Anyone can nominate their own or their favorite workshop items in the #workshop-nomination channel on the Discord server! After the nominations are all in we will create a vote for everyone to participate in and pick their favorites. To join the Discord server and participate follow this link: https://discord.gg/crowbarcollective

The Black Mesa team will be doing a community play session on Thursday, July 2nd! Come face off against the Devs, and try out the new multiplayer beta! The goal is to play the game and have fun, but well be tracking any bugs or issues along the way. We will also be streaming the games on the Crowbar Collective Twitch channel. https://www.twitch.tv/crowbar_collective (Note: Our gameplay tests have been super smooth, but some UI issues have not been fixed yet like character select, and the MP disconnect bug).

Happy Summer Sale! The game is 35% off for Steam Summer Sale 2020 (June 23rd - July 9th). We have a bunch of stuff going on, so lets get right into it! [previewyoutube=3N_r8WDyTYE;full][/previewyoutube]

Public Beta

Purple Hat Live Stream

Multiplayer Public Beta Playtest

Black Mesa Game Box and HEV 3D Print

One Point Five

Do you aspire to work on video games, or are you already in the video game industry? Crowbar Collective has some fantastic opportunities for those with an exceptional attitude and the skills to match it! We have put together a superb group of people throughout the years from all over the world, and now we are looking for more.

We are currently hiring for the following positions:

• Character Concept Artist: Contract - 3-6 Months
• Character Artist: Contract/Part-Time - 3-6 Months
• Environment Concept Artist: Contract
• Texture Artist: Part-Time - 10/20 Hours Per Week
• Source Programmer: Part-Time
• Business Developer: Full Time

Hope everyone is doing well during these tough times. Because we are a remote studio, work at Crowbar Collective is largely unchanged by the pandemic. Like everyone though, each of us has been personally affected by COVID-19. To help, Crowbar donated $2,000 to various charities to support people on the front lines and those in need. The company gave: $500 to Games Done Quick (who in turn raised over $400,000 for PPE!) $500 to the CNY Food Bank $500 to Meals on Wheels (North Syracuse) $500 to RIP Medical Debt We know this is a small step, and there is a lot more to be done, but we hope this will be just the first effort we can make to give back. If you find yourself in a position like us, consider donating or volunteering for the many great organizations in need! Small donations can add up to big changes. If nothing else good comes out of this crisis, hopefully we can all see we are one big community, and the good can easily outweigh the bad. Stay safe everyone, and wash... your... hands! Discord- https://discord.gg/sDdzKx

Here are some tips and tricks for new and returning players to Black Mesa!

Try lowering the difficulty

Use your good weapons

You can long jump in any direction

You can reload the rocket launcher as soon as you fire in unguided mode

Power Slide

The Hive Hand

You can sprint any direction, and while holding onto objects

Games Done Quick

Hotfix 1.1

Hello, Science Team! Launch day is finally here, complete with a brand new trailer! We are making a big push to let everyone know that Black Mesa 1.0 is OUT! Please share this great news with your friends and followers on any social media platform.

New Trailer

1.0 Patch Notes!

Overhaul

Game-Wide

Art

Artificial Intelligence

HECU

Vortigaunts

Balance

Code Fixes

Workshop Mods Warning

Level Design

General

Black Mesa Inbound

Anomalous Materials

Unforeseen Consequences

Office Complex

Weve Got Hostiles

Blast Pit

Power Up

On A Rail

Apprehension

Residue Processing

Questionable Ethics

Surface Tension

Forget About Freeman

Lambda Core

Xen

Gonarch

Interloper

Nihilanth

Endgame

Hello again, fellow scientists! I bet you werent expecting to hear from us again so soon! Weve just pushed another update to the game based on feedback from yesterdays beta. As with the previous beta, you can find the latest update on the public beta branch. We found an issue with the updates deployment which meant that certain maps werent updated when they should've been. This led to some bizarre issues (which were not present on our internal build) with rainbow/pitch black cliffs in Surface Tension map A, or Gonarch C being unbeatable. Those issues should be resolved now. We have also deployed a few major UI and AI improvements. As always, please let us know what you think! As with the previous beta, we are mostly on the look-out for game-breaking issues. Here is a small changelog specific to just this new beta only. When 1.0 goes live on March 5th, we will post the full changelog for all of 1.0!

UI

• Fixed bindings layout.
• Fixed layout for new Video Options tooltips.
• Fixed missing translations.
• Fixed Engine crash with New UI on exiting the game.
• Fixed sensitivity bug with the Invert Mouse Look" option.
• Fixed manual saves limit bug.

HECU

• Removed old Combine code responsible for spontaneous rushing and other quirks.
• Rushing now occurs less and is more dependent on distance. The HECU will tend to rush less now if theyre further away from you.
• Fixed infinite looping of melee schedule. Now rather than standing there hitting you repeatedly, there is a 50% chance of retreating after each attack.
• Added a new Cat and Mouse behavior which is used while in cover or holding assault points. This is much closer to how HL1s Marines behaved and is more engaging to fight. If you attempt to approach their cover point, the HECU will now try to suppress you with "extreme force," while still remaining in cover. They will then immediately try to hide again after being exposed.
• Fixed the LOS checks performed before firing. Now they are much less likely to accidentally shoot each other in hectic scenarios, as they will take into account their weapon LOS before each shot, rather than before bursts.
• Fixed Grenadier with RPG running around for a while instead of focusing on firing. Now he should fire as soon as he finds an adequate position, with no delay.
• Fixed rocket spawn position for Grenadier with RPG. It no longer shoots from just below his head anymore.
• Increased suppression point query radius. This causes HECU suppression behavior (where they fire at your position when they can't see you) to occur more often and have a chance of covering a bigger area.

Hello again, Black Mesa friends! We have pushed another build to public beta on Steam. This is the second revision to the 1.0 update, which will take us out of Early Access on March 5th! If you are interested in helping us test, we would greatly appreciate it. You can find instructions on how to opt into the beta here. https://steamcommunity.com/games/362890/announcements/detail/1711867920418803575

Whats in this Beta

Known Issues

Thank You!

PAX East

In March 2006, two of my college classmates got onto the Black Mesa mod team. I applied as an artist, and they more or less vouched for me. The team hired me without even completing an art test. From there I became the art lead, a partner in the new Crowbar Collective LLC, project lead, and eventually owner of the company. As I write this, I am realizing that we plan to FINISH Black Mesa exactly 14 years to the month from when I first joined the team. 14 years working on a single project, with a dedicated team, that had a vision, and saw it through. There are probably a fair number of people who if you asked them Do you want to own a video game company?, would say Yes! Absolutely. Whatever it takes!, but it is easy to commit to something when it is guaranteed. If instead in 2006 someone said to me This will be difficult. You will consider quitting multiple times, and it is going to take you at least 14 years to complete. I am not sure I would have signed up for that. Who would have blamed me if I didnt? For the majority of its development, Black Mesa was a volunteer project. Even after we got the green light to sell the game, we still did not make any money until late June of 2015. I have heard you should never work for free, and I really couldnt disagree with that more. I did multiple free side projects in college that either eventually paid off, or got me connections I otherwise would not have had. I learned communication and leadership skills in my volunteer fire department. I got my first game industry job because of my free work on Black Mesa, and then after a round of layoffs, my job BECAME Black Mesa. The thing that was supposed to be a portfolio piece to launch my career, became my career, and I would not have been in that position if I didnt commit to the work as a volunteer. The key to doing work for free is it has to be important to you AND it has to be important to other people. For Black Mesa, the quality of the source material, and the excitement of the community when we would post even the smallest amount of media is what kept us going. The fact is, all roads are long roads. If you fear that, youll shy away from choosing the one that excites you most, and has the biggest reward. Not everyone is going to have reliable friends to pull them onto projects, not everyone is going to have the opportunity to own a video game company, but if there is something you want to accomplish theres nothing left to do, but to do it. You can not win the game if you dont play. Through luck, hard work, and maybe a bit of ignorance we didnt shy away from our goal of bringing this game to completion. We are proud of what we built. We think this upcoming 1.0 release is the best, most polished, and most fun version of the game yet. The anticipation and excitement around our project is beyond flattering. Black Mesa is a video game, it is our video game, and it has its strengths, and its flaws. As Leonardo da Vinci said, Art is never finished, only abandoned and while we plan to fully support this game after 1.0 with bug fixes and more, it will never be a perfect game. This is not to downplay, or make excuses, but as the person who drafts most of these media posts, I think it is important to break away from the marketing and the hype. Before Astroneer launched, they made a blog post about managing expectations for their game, and it really resonated with me, and inspired me to someday write a post like this one. We are super excited to have Black Mesa be complete, but acknowledge it is not perfect and wont ever be perfect. I hope that everyone has something that inspires them as much as Half-Life inspired us. I hope that everyone embraces the setbacks and challenges that come, and I hope no one fears the long road in front of them. Black Mesa 1.0 will launch Thursday March 5th on Steam. Thank you, -Adam Engels -The Black Mesa team https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/

Crowbar Collective and Black Mesa will be at PAX East this year in Boston, MA, booth 24081, located on the map below (and be sure to check out the super handy app):
The expo will be from February 27th to March 1st and there are still some passes available. Come say "hi" to some of the team, check out the game, take a picture in the HEV suit, and get some free stickers (if we have any left)!
This is our first big convention, and we are excited to see everyone, and experience PAX for ourselves. We plan to have more information for everyone about the game in the next few days. Hope to see you there! Discord - https://discord.gg/PSZfh8N

Hello Black Mesa friends, We have pushed a build to public-beta on Steam. This is our candidate for our release out of Early Access! If you are interested in helping us test, we would greatly appreciate it. You can find instructions on how to opt into the beta here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/362890/announcements/detail/1724246478625804044

What We Are Looking For

Known Issues

Happy Lunar New Year from the Black Mesa team! We wanted to let everyone know we are close to having a release candidate for Black Mesa 1.0! We also wanted to give an update on what is going to be included in the full release, what our road map looks like going forward, and to mention we are 20% off for the Lunar Sale. https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/

Beta for 1.0

1.0 Preview

Road Map

1.0

1.5

Thanks Again

Happy Holidays! Did you remember to get your Steam tokens and cards today? Xen is OUT, Black Mesa is on sale for 20% off, lots of other great games are discounted, and I am sure everyone has caught up on their gaming backlog in anticipation of the Steam Holiday event, right? Yeah, neither have we...

Xen is OUT!

Road Map

0.91 and Achievements

1.0 Release

• A Multiplayer Pass. There will not be any features added to MP for 1.0, but we do need to make sure all the current features are working and work well.
• An AI Pass. The alien AI between Earthbound and Xen is completely different. We want to evaluate if it can be ported back into Earth without breaking the gameplay balance. We also want to look at the HECU Marines and make sure they are using all their features, and see about reining in some bad behaviour.
• Workshop Pass. We would love to utilize the workshop for our own experiments and to see what the community can do with our assets and tools. The first step in this will be making sure all the workshop systems are working properly and improve usability.
• Bug fixes and refinements to the entirety of the game. With Xen, Gordons adventure clocks in around 15 hours. We want to make sure there are no major sticking points, and that everyone has the best Black Mesa experience they possibly can.

Earthbound Update

0.9 Change Log

Build Changes

• Fix for static / screeching sounds - rebuilt the soundcache. Please let us know if this does not resolve issues with static / screeching sounds for you. We think this fix should resolve the issues for everyone but we need reports to know for sure.
• Fixed Interloper / Nihilanth / Endgame not unlocking correctly.
• Fixed missing song in On a Rail. This was a bug and not an intentional choice!
• Fix for the Rare Specimen achievement not triggering in Lambda Core.
• Fixed some Vort sounds. They were not being properly positioned by the engine, so now will play correct positional sound.
• Optimized sound code for Controller energy ball attack. Helps with performance, especially when lots of Controllers are attacking you.
• Fixed "Always Run" (again!)
• The player will no longer drop items if they are holding them and walk onto a bouncepad. This helps with the purple hat!
• Fixed incorrectly written / formatted names in Credits. Tidied up some elements of the credits in general.
• Fixed Sound Effect and Music volume sliders. You can now turn down or up sound effects and music independently. Also added a Master Volume slider that controls overall volume.
• Last, I am the last...

Gonarchs Lair

• Fixed map B mortar related crash. Also fixed crash related to shooting the gonarch mortar in mid air.
• Reduced Gonarchs health in the final battle. Health reduced from 3300 3000, meaning it now requires 3 less rockets to kill him.
• Fixed basalt columns in the final fight. There was a bug where the basalt columns in the Gonarch final fight would either deal far too much damage or even one-shot the player.
• Updated Gonarch death sequence for higher impact.
• Re-balanced Gonarch final fight on hard difficulty.
• Fixed incorrect web texture in map C chase. There was a breakable web texture on an unbreakable web which was causing a lot of players to die during the map C chase, because they thought they could go down a route which they actually couldnt.
• Various visual and lighting improvements throughout the chapter.
• Soundscape improvements throughout the chapter for better blending.
• Fixed RPG colliding with acid mortar fire in Gonarchs Lair final fight.

Interloper

• General optimisations throughout all Interloper maps. This should improve general performance for everyone.
• Optimized dynamic light settings throughout all Interloper maps. This should improve performance, particularly on lower end systems. In some places this has improved performance quite a lot.
• Fixed the no free edicts crash in map D.
• Split maps C and D for significant performance gains (10 - 20 fps) on CPU bottlenecked systems. No extra content has been added. Map names used to be Interloper C, C1 and Interloper D. Maps are now Interloper C, C1, C2 and Interloper D, D1.
• Fixed map A crash.
• Lighting, player guidance, and pathing improvements across all Interloper maps.
• Significantly re-balanced elevator fight throughout map D. The fight now starts much slower/easier and ramps up throughout. Controller spawns are much more spaced out, and the dynamic cover system on the elevator has been significantly tweaked to provide much more cover for the player, and variance in where the player is covered from. You now only face a full-on 360 assault of controllers during the final pull-down sequence. Otherwise youll always have cover.
• Fixed Controller telekinesis explosive barrels sometimes one-shotting or dealing massive damage to players, and significantly reduced their damage. Changed these barrels from 120 explosive damage + uncapped impact damage (physics) to 45 explosive damage with no impact damage.
• Many visual and lighting improvements throughout map D.
• Reduced panel health in elevator fight in map D. All panels should be a bit easier to break now, reducing the amount of time you spend at the final stop.
• Removed cover barriers in the middle of elevator in map D. This makes it easier to path freely around the elevator without getting stuck now.
• Fixed many spots in map D elevator fight where you could get crushed against walls, killing you for no reason. A lot of players died to this, as there were multiple causes. We have resolved most of these now.
• Fixed a bug in map D elevator fight where some Controllers could use electrocluster attack. They were not meant to, and this made the fight harder than it was supposed to be, as the electrocluster attack significantly limits your movement.
• Reduced panel playertouch damage in map D elevator fight. Previously, if one of the spinning panels touched the player, it would break and deal 20 damage. This has now been reduced to 10 damage. This makes the spinny panels more forgiving if you fall into them.
• Added sirens to closed ceiling doors in map D elevator fight. This should help make players more aware that getting crushed against the ceiling is potentially imminent.
• Fixed elevator visibly clipping through surrounding geometry.
• Fixed player clipping in/out of massive healing pool in map D1. It was very hard to climb in/out of the pool, it is now buttery smooth. And there is also now a mega HEV crystal in the middle. This replaces an old (and redundant) healing shower slightly earlier in the level.
• Fixed some floating props in map D1.
• Made the parkour pistons alternate in map D1. This makes it a bit easier to climb up if you missed one upward timing.
• Adjusted island positioning on tower top sequence in map D1. This makes it take a little bit longer to get to the tower top from the starting island (giving the sequence a bit more length and pacing), and is also easier to jump around than before.
• Many visual improvements and tweaks to the tower top sequence in map D1.
• Split map C1 (conveyor sprint) song. The song is now in 3 parts, so players cannot end up doing the 2nd half of the conveyor sprint with no music playing.
• Made the map C forcefield hearts glow. We had a bug where these did not glow, so were not attracting player attention as much as they should. This will make them easier to see and understand now.
• Made map C ledge drop down before machine 3 more clear. We noticed a lot of people got confused here so we removed the top platform.
• Reduced length of Vort Village intro sequence. Removed an unnecessary wave animation that one of the Vorts does in the introductory sequence, to reduce the amount of time the player has to stand around watching them.
• Fixed many map skips across the entire chapter. Its a bit harder now to break maps by totally skipping certain sections or doing some clever jumping.
• Removed a few illogical healing showers in certain parts of the maps.
• Fixed broken hologram screens on map B.
• Fixed lots of pod pile ups across map C. This can also help performance by preventing pods from building up (they are performance hungry).
• In map B, Vorts will now fear you and run away if you attack them unprovoked.
• Potentially fixed gibs floating above water in map B2.
• Fixed B1 first control room controllers that did not attack the player.

Nihilanth

• Fixed Nihilanth voice lines. There was a bug where in Phase 1 he would only use his lines where he tells the player to die.
• Fixed Nihilanth shield panels (phase 2) not breaking in 1 RPG hit.
• Fixed Nihilanth song. Increased its volume and stopped it from pausing mid-song.
• Fixed collision of healing crystals not recessing into ground when crystals do.
• Nihilanth now has 50% damage resistance in phase 3 scripted intro, so that players cannot cut his health down too far and shorten Phase 3.
• Disabled the radioactive trigger_hurt when the player gets pulled into Nihilanth at the end of the fight. This fixes a rare bug where players can die after killing Nihilanth.
• Sped up the final teleport out at the end of the Nihilanth fight. Should make it less likely that players will clip into Nihilanth.
• Increased effectiveness of Gluon against spinning panels for shield pylon. The Gluon was too ineffective against the shield pylon panels, which didnt play well considering we taught the player to use the Gluon against these in Interloper. The Gluon now does 1.5x damage against the panels.
• Buffed Nihilanth mortar attack. Damage is the same, but falloff is reduced significantly, so the player will feel the effect of higher damage if they are stood on the edge of the attack.
• Buffed Nihilanth energy balls attack. From 8 damage at all phases to 12 damage in phase 1 / phase 2, and 20 damage in phase 3.
• Buffed Nihilanth telekinesis attack. Doubled speed at which he throws his projectiles at you.
• Re-balanced Nihilanth fight on hard difficulty. The fight should provide much more of a challenge now on hard difficulty.
• Fixed glitched clavicle on Nihilanth death animation.

Endgame

• Fixed being able to fall out of the tram.
• Fixed a bug where the player could move around inside the invisible room and cause issues during the good ending.
• Added teeth shader to gbuffer. This fixes the issue where G-Mans teeth were rendering in black.

Known Issues

• Minor exploits and collision bugs. The community has done a great job finding exploits and collision issues. We will be fixing these with the next major update.
• Glowing pink and green props. Some PCs have a small number glowing props. We hope to have this corrected with a hotfix (requires map recompiles).
• Saving holding items is broken. If you save while holding a physics object, when you load that save the object will float in air. We also hope to address this in a hotfix soon.
• Multi colored NPC teeth. The fix above for the teeth being completely black, may cause them to be rainbow colored on some machines. We will investigate.

From Start to Finish

How to Opt Into the Beta

Beta Release Notes

Known Issues

Happy December! We've been murdering ourselves to get the Complete Black Mesa Beta out to everyone. We are really proud of what we have built, but there are still some rough edges we hope to smooth out. Like before, we wanted to mention some known issues, but first just some of the fixes weve implemented:

Notable Fixes

Known Issues

Happy Half-Life day!

Happy (almost) Halloween! I cant speak for the whole team, but this is one of my favorite times of year. I hope it has been treating everyone well. We wanted to update everyone on our progress, and mention we are discounted 40% for the Steam Halloween sale. https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/ We are dropping in art and final refinements for our LAST 5 MAPS. We cant believe we are just 5 levels away from having a completed game. While it has been quite a challenge, it is surreal to be getting down to the last bits. We want to make sure the art and design in Interloper, Nihilanth, and Endgame are as polished as they can possibly be, even for a beta. The team has a plan in place to go back and check the entirety of the game in preparation for some important upcoming dates.
Our major focus is of course making sure Interloper, Nihilanth, and Endgame are as good as they can possibly be, as well as:

• Fix crashing in the first map of Interloper
• Address bugs, performance, and refinements for Xen
• Address bugs, performance, and refinements for Gonarchs Lair
• Address bugs, performance, and refinements for released Interloper levels
• Test and fix major issues for the Earth levels

Interloper time! We have pushed 5 maps of the Interloper chapter to Steam Public Beta. Give em a play and let us know what you think! The team has been crunching hard to release the last chapters, and the game has been fighting us every step of the way. We will be releasing the last 3 maps of Interloper shortly, after a final art and polish pass. Our current plan is to release Nihilanth and Endgame with those maps, but we may stagger the next releases to better refine the last fight and to get more concentrated feedback from the community. While we've been focused on completing Interloper, we have also been making fixes to the previously released parts of the beta. Here are some fixes and known issues:

Xen and Gonarchs Lair Fixes

We wanted to have the first Interloper beta out last Friday, but we ran into two bad crashes in Interloper map A and B that were not present in earlier compiles. Weve fixed the crashes and are doing some final tests on Steam. In the meantime, here are some other known issues for the upcoming beta:

Interloper Map A

• Alien Grunt sometimes gets stuck in his animation sequence at the start of level
  
• Some models missing collision
• Dynamic lights are occasionally off map-wide

Interloper Map A1

• Sun shadows popping in at the end of the level
• Texture seams in water models
  

Interloper Map B1

• Waterfall particle early in the map ends too soon
  
• Elevator outside control room 1 sometimes shoots you into ceiling causing a cheap death.
• Bad performance in the control room 1 and 2
• Water missing refraction effect while underwater
• Seams between water models

Hello everyone, Heres a teaser for the upcoming Interloper release! (link to higher resolution). We are testing release candidates for Interloper A, A1, B, B1, B2. Well have news on Interloper C, C1, and D when we put out the first set of maps (theyre close!), as well as details for what is left on our to-do list for Nihilanth and Endgame. We also want to use this mini update to highlight some of the work we have been doing to the already released chapters based on the beta feedback (still more to implement). Well continue to update the maps as the team and community finds issues. Improved godray performance in all maps

Xen

Gonarchs Lair Map A

Gonarchs Lair Map B

Gonarchs Lair Map C

We hope you guys are enjoying the latest beta. We've been watching and listening closely to your feedback, and we have pushed our first hotfix. This is a code patch to fix bugs and beta issues with the Gonarch and the new UI. We will have additional code and level fixes in future hotfixes/updates. Thank you so much for your continued testing!

Gonarch and Bebcrab AI Changes

• Gonarch AI now behaves differently and deploys different attack patterns based on Easy/Normal/Hard difficulty.
• Fixed bug causing Gonarch to do 250 damage on melee attacks
• Fixed bug causing Gonarch to spawn 60 bebcrabs instead of 15 in lower arena battle
• Gonarch shove damage in map B chase reduced by 50%
• Gonarch shove damage in map C chase reduced by 70%
• Gonarch shove view punch and knock back amount greatly reduced
• Gonarch AI tweaks for final lair arena battle.
• Fixed a crash related to Gonarch mortars
• Fixed a loophole where Gonarch could die/gib in map A and final upper arena
• Fixed Gonarch physics throw attack not respecting cool-down system under certain conditions
• Minor Adjustments to chase AI to make it more forgiving, reduce melee attack damage, and scale based on game difficulty setting
• Bebcrab jump height reduced to 20 units high, making it much less likely they clip one of your rockets
• Bebcrab damage reduced by 50%
• Bebcrab max count in final upper arena reduced by 33%

New UI Fixes / Changes

• Fixed major performance drop when using new UI
• Singleplayer game is now paused when UI or Console is Activated
• Brought up default Qt behavior for key Auto-Repeat
• Game Console: Command Input now has history
• Game Console: Partial Autocomplete implementation (WIP, expect bugs)
• Game Console: Log Area now 1-2% faster than old UI
• Added "Enable Developer Console to the Game options screen
• Advanced Settings Menu is now fully hooked up

Known Issues

• Bebcrabs can still be tracked by RPG. We are testing changes to have them not track/collide with RPG rockets. We think the change in jump height has addressed most, if not all of the problem. Let us know what you think!
• Columns in the final fight arena still kill the player in 1 hit. This will be fixed in a future level update.
• It is still possible to get the Gonarch stuck in certain areas of the level. We are testing level fixes to address this.

Testing... Testing...

Earthbound

Soundtrack

Known Issues

Hey all, We are compiling release candidates of all 9 maps for deployment testing. Unless we find a truly game breaking bug, it will be set live on Steam public beta August 1st. Just one of our levels can take up to 20 HOURS to compile, so it can be quite the process to test final maps. Major issues found by community testing will either be fixed in a later hotfix, or with the release of the rest of the chapters. Before you are able to jump in and help us beta test this Xen thing, please take a quick look at some of our known issues (to help avoid duplicate feedback on things we are already aware of): -Linux is launching, but we are still working on getting the graphics to display properly. We apologize for this taking so long.
-You will see large black voids in the levels if you look back the way you came. These are the areaportals (a technique used for optimisation) not interacting correctly with the fog/xog. We have a simple fix for this that will go in for later patches.
-Some props have the wrong material properties. This is most noticeable in Gonarch where it sounds like you are walking on boxes instead of rocks. -We have greatly increased performance across all maps, but there is still a noticeable frame drop in the Xen swamps as you leave the door into the lower swamp. -Beneathicles (underwater barnacles) dont respond to Gluon or explosive damage. This makes them a bit of a pain to clear, but will be fixed! -Long jump sound effect sometimes plays on map load. We havent yet been able to pinpoint why this his happening or why it only happens on some computers. -Knockback Houndeyes occasionally push you into and through walls, causing the player to get stuck. -Occasional crash to desktop in Gonarch Chapter. We think it is something related to the mortar attack. -In order to fix a crash, HEV crystal chargers temporarily do not have a dynamic light.
-Bebcrabs sometimes walk on 2 legs instead of 4 its hilarious.
-Gonarch can occasionally run past you in an important chase sequence. We have tweaked the map to fix this, but it may still happen. We wanted to talk about these first, so players know what is out there before they dive in. As always, if you have any issues or crashes please go to our Discord or post them on the Steam forums (avoid questions in the news update as it is really hard to respond to them). A personal thanks to all the devs who burnt some serious midnight oil getting this together. We will post another news update when the update goes live! https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/ Discord - https://discord.gg/PSZfh8N Twitter - @BlackMesaDevs Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/BlackMesaDevs

Greetings! We are working on final polish for Xen and Gonarchs Lair, as well as dropping in the final art, lighting, and fog for Interloper. In addition to that, heres a quick update for everyone.

Sound Track

New Bloom

New UI

Hope everyone in the states had a good holiday, and everyone is having a good summer overall. We wanted to give an update on what to expect for Xen. Thank you so much to everyone that played the technical beta and reported bugs! It was extremely positive and motivating for us. We have already fixed a large number of the issues reported, including some we never would have found on our own. The amount of quality feedback from our community has prompted us to update our release plans. On August 1st we will roll out the complete Xen AND Gonarch's Lair chapters to public beta. Soon after (think weeks, not months), we will release the concluding chapters, Interloper, Nihilanth, and Endgame to public beta: The same rules apply as before: If you want to be a part of cutting edge testing and don't mind helping us squash some bugs, this beta is for you! Otherwise, we suggest you hold out a little longer. We think this staggered release will allow us to more thoroughly test all components of this massive game, and catch bugs faster. Once we can ensure a smooth launch, we'll push the whole Xen campaign out of beta for everyone to enjoy. Thanks again for the feedback and comments. We will be back shortly with an update showing off some new stuff! We are still on sale for 60% off until July 9th. As far as we know, this will be the last major sale before the release of Xen, so now is a great time to grab it for yourself or a friend! https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/ Discord - https://discord.gg/PSZfh8N Twitter - @BlackMesaDevs Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/BlackMesaDevs

HAPPY STEAM SUMMER SALE! We have some big updates for everyone, and Black Mesa is 60% off. https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/

Technical Beta

How to Opt In

Long Jump

Bug Reporting

Discord

Known Issues With the Beta

We have a couple things planned for later this month, but we wanted to give everyone a mini update, so no one thought we had disappeared for the summer. Here are just a few of the improvements/fixes we have been working on alongside Xen.

Fixed Rocket Launcher Guidance

Added Stumble Animations to Zombies

Buffed Tracers

Hello from the Black Mesa team! We have been GRINDING on this Xen thing, so lets get right into where we are at:

Xen - Final Art/Polish

Gonarch - Final Art/Polish

Interloper - Design Lock/Art

Release

Discord

Thanks Again

Hope the new year started off great for everyone. We are really happy with the progress we made this month. We wanted to show some of it off and keep the information flowing while we wrap up the last 5 chapters. Gonarch Our biggest effort went into getting the entirety of the Gonarch chapter arted. Now it is in the hands of our animators, who will take the artists hard work and destroy it! Displacement/Sculpted/Arted - By Matt Young
Cinematic Physics - By Russ Briggeman
Nihilanth No pretty pictures for this one, but we would be remiss if we didnt mention we have made huge strides with the end boss of Xen. Our lead programmer Chetan Jaggi and lead animator Nate Ayres have worked together to build out an entire feature set of attacks, defenses, AI, as well as effects for the Nihilanth. Now were balancing all these features and building the planned finale. Id normally say more to come but we probably wont have any more updates on this last fight as we want to keep it a surprise for everyone. Before and After In October we revisited some of our released media and posted some #Blocktober dev diaries. Here is the comparison of how far these shots have come since when we first posted them (You can open the image in a new tab for better viewing). Full disclosure: I did some light Photoshop work to make them read better at size and because our sun effect is just a bit too hot in its current form.

We really enjoyed putting together the #Blocktober posts, and want to do more write ups like it in the future. Again, hope the new year started off great for everyone! Well be back with more updates before launch. -Crowbar Collective

Hope everyone enjoyed last months trailer. Here are some additional updates and features we have added for the upcoming Xen release.

New Features

Screenspace Fog ("Xog")

New Alien Grunt NPC (Agrunts)

New Controller NPC (Xontrollers)

Improved Vortigaunt NPC (Xorts)

Flashlight Shadows

Soft Particles

Running With Objects

Chapter Updates

Happy Birthday Half-Life! Wed like to thank Valve for creating this masterpiece; an important part of gaming history. Nobody on this team would be where they are today if it werent for this amazing, inspirational game. We are lucky to share in a tiny bit of their legacy.

The Xen Trailer

Xen Timeline

Thank You

Happy Halloween! For our last installment of #Blocktober, we thought we would tease something weve not shown yet (aside from a small tease in a dev blog post a long time ago). The Xenian swamp!
There is a lot of lore around Half-Lifes development cycle that talks about the larger plans, cut levels, and more planned locations for Xen. Due to time or technical reasons, many of these ideas never made the final cut. One of these was the idea of the Xenian swamp. The area was actually briefly seen during Half-Lifes resonance cascade scene, but was never revisited beyond that, though it is quite likely that Valve originally intended for you to end up back there at some point during the Xen chapter.

Paper Plans

Revision, Revision, Revision

Steam Sale

Hello again, We continue #Blocktober with another section weve shown off previously, the Xen cave. This part shows up after last weeks arch island, and exists in the same badlands biome. The goal was to call back to the original Half-Life, where water and life collected more on the interior of the Xenian land formations.

Concepts

The Blockout

Feedback

Iteration

Dialing In

Happy fall from the team, We will put out some tasty updates soon, but FIRST it is #Blocktober! We wanted to not only post images, but also show how our maps have progressed and evolved.

Xen A - The Badlands

First Blockout - Houndeye Arch Island

First Blockout and Art Experimentation

Second Blockout

Second Blockout and Art Experimentation

Final Art Pass

Summer Sale

Xen

Xen - Final Polish

Gonarch’s Lair - Art

Interloper - Final Gameplay

Nihilanth - Gameplay/Art

Endgame - Final Polish

Multiplayer Playdate - 6-30-18

Celebrating 20 Years of Half-Life

Hey all, A quick mini update for everyone.

Fixes

• The tentacles in Blast Pit not responding to explosives
• Problems with CSM on lower settings and improved CSM performance
• Humvee using experimental texture that caused FPS drops
• Invalidated old saves as we forgot to set that with the first deployment. Sorry if that inconvenienced anyone.

• Flashlight not working on some machines with dedicated video cards
• Game not launching on some machines
• Black screen on Linux when launching

Multiplayer

Today's Deal: Save 60% on Black Mesa!*

Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!

*Offer ends Wednesday at 10AM Pacific Time

Xen Engine Public Release

April Patch List

Known Issues

LOOT ME$A

XEN

PUBLIC BETA

Loot Boxes

9MM Golden Gun Skin

9MM Digital Camo Skin

Loot Mesa Easter HEV Skins

Last Freeman Standing ROYALE

Happy Holidays, and happy Steam Winter Sale everyone! Black Mesa is currently $4.99, our largest discount yet. We released an update for Black Mesa (currently on public beta) that adds real-time dynamic lights, lens flares, god rays, and a host of other features to the existing earthbound sections of the game. The goal of this update is to get the released version of the game as close to our internal build as possible. This way, the final Xen release can be closer to a simple map drop; with less potential for engine and code issues affecting players on their first time playing Xen. We are hoping to test the engine and solve all feature and performance problems before the real release, so that everyone can enjoy our definitive vision of the game without issues. As promised, here is an update on where we are at with developing the Xen chapters.
We are striving to make sure Xen is fun, well thought-out, and cohesive. Each chapter has its own theme and artstyle, and we are developing them in parallel to ensure they are all at the same high standard of quality. Xen, in its current form, is made up of 14 maps across these final 5 chapters, with each map alone being significantly larger than the originals. We are putting our full effort into completing Xen in a timely manner so that everyone can have the complete Black Mesa experience!

Screenshots From the Update

Upcoming Feature

Patch Notes

New Features

Bug Fixes

Known Issues

Straight to the bad news: we are pushing back the release of Xen. We are truly sorry for getting everyone's hopes up and then delaying... again. We worked very hard to make December, but we are not yet ready. As a team, we take FULL responsibility for that. We have an internal deadline we are confident in, and we will be getting everyone more details as we get closer to that date. Thank you again to our community and Early Access supporters. The funding from Early Access has allowed us to hire many new talented developers, and has allowed older developers to put more time in the project. Simply put, Xen has proven to be an enormous undertaking, and while we are managing it to the best of our ability, it is proving to take longer than we estimated. The good news is that we will be releasing a large update in December to test all of the new features that have been developed for Xen. We have changed a number of things within the Source Engine, and we want to make sure they all work on the myriad of PCs out there. By enabling the new tech on the Earthbound section of the game, we can get the engine/code fully stabilized on Steam before we drop the final chapters. In December we will also have an update on where our Xen chapters stand, show some additional media, and deploy the engine update. Here are some features that will be in the update:

Lens Flare

Dynamic Lights

4 Way Texture Blends

Image Based Ambient Lighting

CSM and Godray Performance

Xen Concept Art

Black Mesa 60% Off

Stay Tuned

We recently became aware of an exploit that allows remote code execution via Source multiplayer. We patched the current build of the game to protect our players. More information about it here: https://oneupsecurity.com/research/remote-code-execution-in-source-games

Happy summer all! We hope that everyone is having a great start to their summer. To celebrate, we proudly present to you our first public screenshots of a Xen exterior. All running real-time, in- game, with no edits.
Unfortunately, as some of you may have already predicted, we are going to need to push back our planned release of Xen to later this year, in December. We know that this is not what anyone would want to hear, but after taking a long and hard look at what we want to achieve, we have decided that this is for the best. We do not want to compromise on Xen’s quality in any way. That said, we consider December to be a do-or-die deadline. To soften the blow of the bad news, here are some additional tidbits and updates regarding what we have done for Xen so far. Example of the Level of Detail We Are Going For
Interloper Map B Scale
New Dynamic Light System As part of our continued efforts to bring Xen’s graphics up to the best possible standard that they can be, we have upgraded Source to a new deferred rendering system that supports fully dynamic lights! These new “next-gen” lights cast real-time light, shadows and god rays. These won’t replace all the lights in the game, but we can use them in many special cases where we want the lights to be particularly gorgeous. These lights are much better optimized than other Source implementations of dynamic lights, and are more robust.
Not only will this new lighting system help crank parts of the the game up to 11 in terms of graphical fidelity, these will also be powerful tools for modders as well! Color Correction We’ve started a color correction pass for the whole game. The goal is to better unify the game’s visual style and to add full screen effects during the more intense sections. Most of these effects will be quite subtle, but here is a more noticeable example.
Weapon Holds We fixed the soldiers holding the weapons wrong. It took some serious animation trickery to retarget the bones on top of the existing Half-Life 2 animation library, but it worked well once we figured it out. No more hands clipping through the guns!
Thanks as always to you guys, our wonderful community, for your support! As always, we will continue to work at full speed on Xen, and we hope to have more updates, information and media for you guys soon.

We just may have some other guest developers swing by as well. Server: Deathmatch NYC 3

Happy Holidays! The team remains, as always, hard at work on Xen! Currently our specific focus is on gameplay: crafting a fun and cohesive experience from start to finish. We want our version of Xen to feel like it really belongs with the rest of the game in terms of mechanics, cohesion and progression. But we also want to push the boundaries and explore this unique and varied setting; to build an experience that feels both fresh and familiar to players from all walks of Half-Life veterancy. While our Xen is certainly going to be gorgeous, we are first and foremost really committed to making sure that the gameplay works on every level. To give a bit of an exciting tease into what we’re doing at the moment, and as our own little holiday gift to you lot, please enjoy our first ever publicly released screenshot of Xen!
We will have more media for the community in the coming months, as well as more detailed updates as to how we are progressing. Right now we are up against a tough deadline, but we are committed and excited to work towards it and to finally unveil the definitive Black Mesa experience for everyone to enjoy. Be kind to each other out there, and again, have a happy holiday!

We have released the first hotfix patch for the Halloween Update! Enjoy! This addresses a few short term issues with the last patch.

Patch Notes

• Displacement collision hitching: Fixed issue with collisions on displacements on Linux builds. This meant the player would hitch when walking on terrain surfaces, and also affected Linux multiplayer servers.
• ZECU crash: Fixed ZECU model from crashing the game/Hammer editor, due to duplicated vertices.
• Russian subtitle selection: Fixed Russian subtitles not showing up at all when language is selected.
• Black Mesa Publishing Tool: Publishing Tool fixed (for real real this time!). Will now launch properly and works correctly.

Coming Soon to a Hotfix 2 Near You!

• A fix for non-English characters displaying incorrectly.
• Updating the mapsrc folder to have the latest versions of our maps (including MP maps).
• Adding a VOIP icon to the HUD for multiplayer.

Happy Halloween! We wanted to use the holiday and the sale to announce our rough timeline for Xen. We are currently targeting a summer 2017 release. We will keep you up to date on our progress and we plan to show off some media as we finish developing Xen to give everyone a glimpse at what we are working on. Why so Long? We can’t overemphasize how much work it was to get the game on Steam. Most of our effort before launching was put into porting to the retail engine and getting the game to work better than it did in the mod. Since release, the team has been focused on developing Xen. We even planned our updates to have features that would help improve the earthbound levels and Xen (for example CSM). We want to do Xen the justice it deserves, and have it be the definitive climax to the Half-Life 1 story. To do this we have completely redesigned and expanded the Xen levels to what we think Valve would have done without the limitations of the time. To help illustrate this, here are some comparison shots of our levels to the original Half-Life levels in Hammer. Not only are our maps substantially bigger than the originals, there are more of them as well. Comparison of HL1 and Black Mesa's first Xen Map
Comparison of the first map of Interloper
As always we want to thank our awesome community for supporting us in Early Access and for being as passionate as us about Half-Life. We have been working really hard on Xen and we hope you are as excited as us to see the full release of Black Mesa. We’ll have more in game media to show off in the near future! Patch We also wanted to quickly mention that we have a patch coming for our latest update. This patch fixes: -The hitching on Linux multiplayer servers and on Linux single player -Russian closed captions -UI fonts being broken for people that do not have Steam set to English -Workshop publish tool not launching -ZECU torso crashing hammer and the game Thanks! -The Black Mesa Team

Highlights!

• Linux client beta!
• Added the ZECU - Zombie Marines
• Translations - Added Russian closed captions!
• Added new security Joop model
• Workshop publish tool is working again
• General workshop improvements (all workshop items must now be VPKed to work)
• VOIP works in multiplayer

Model Changes

• Added all new security Jeep models
• RPG and Tau weapon viewmodels can now have blood on them
• Fixed MP5 tracers originating from above the gun

Programming Bugfixes

• Fixed the ragdoll T-pose bug. There should be no more instances of ragdoll corpses standing up in the T-pose position when loading a save.
• Re-added the cool Tau and Gluon gib effects from the mod. Now the gibs get their fizzy electric effects, as they did before!
• Disappearing weapons bug is fixed in multiplayer. We believe we have resolved the bug related to your weapons sometimes disappearing in multiplayer when you respawn. Please report it to us again (with steps to reproduce, if possible) if you experience it.
• Fixed voice chat in multiplayer
• Fixed “double crouch” bug, aka “schrodinger’s crouch.” Fixed a hitbox bug related to rapid crouching that would make the player’s hitboxes always stay crouched, even while standing
• Reduced physical scale of player viewmodels to ⅕ their original size. This has no impact on the size of the viewmodel in game (as it’s a scaled projection), but means there will be no more weird lighting bugs on the weapons, as their scale is now accurately represented. We also rescaled all the particles and associated weapon drag cvars to match the new weapon scale
• Crossbow Bolt is now a simulated projectile with a speed of 8000 (from 2000). The old Crossbow bolt moved at the max speed allowed by the physics engine, so we switched it out for a tracer with a simulated speed. It is now far more useful as a long range sniping weapon, as intended. Cvar viewmodel_lag changed to cl_viewmodel_lag now using different scaling
• Fixed violence_hgibs and violence_agibs options
• Implemented SetPointsPerFrag for mp_gamerules
• Updated engine internals to Valve upstream
• Fixed multiple crossbow bugs
• Fixed multiple minor crashes and bugs

Language Updates/Fixes

• Added Russian closed captions
• Fixed UI not displaying translated UI prompts and chapter titles
• Updated and fixed Finnish translation files
• Updated and fixed German translation files

Singleplayer Level Design

• Fixed lighting on the helipad

• Fixed casserole explosion particle disappearing or not showing at all

• The crates during the platforming section are no longer physics objects, and are now static. This is to compensate for a physics engine bug which made jumping around here very unresponsive.

• Fixed airlock steam particle not appearing

• Added blocks on the tram lift platforms to stop the achievement hat from falling through them

• Hopeful fix for players getting stuck in the world after reaching the top of the ladder in the crusher

• Made the door at the end of the agrunt trip mine hall solid until the sequence has been triggered

• A minor foliage and rock overhaul in a few places throughout this chapter

• Added a block to stop players getting stuck behind a rock near the start of the minefield
• Fixed a houndeye spawning under the ground near the start of the level
• Fixed misaligned sprites next to the storm drain console

• Fixed pipe explosion not killing the player

Multiplayer Level Design

• A prop fade distance pass has been done which should result in a frame rate improvement in many areas of the of map for users
• Fixed visible nodraw near the middle of the map

• Fixed various texture issues due to CSM
• Fixed floating props
• Added extra details for jump pads including props and overlays

• Crossbow Zoom has weird interactions with FOV settings. This will be addressed in a later update by us overhauling how the Crossbow zoom works.
• Crossbow aims high
• Minor shadow errors on Linux.
• GUI hints for VOIP are missing

Note: This update does not contain Xen! We are hard at work on Xen. This is a small stability update aimed at lower-end users.

Programming

• Fixed a number of potential crashing issues on low-end graphics cards.
• Fixed an issue with the depth buffer that was causing the game to crash for some users.
• Fixed some instances of the "Disable CSM" option not working properly.
• CSM/depth buffer will now be disabled completely by default on low-end graphics cards that are not officially supported.
• Fixed mat_hdr_level & mat_tonemapping_occlusion_use_stencil convars not working properly. This will hopefully help to resolve a sporadic issue for some users where the game would turn dark after a few seconds. If your game turns dark after a few seconds, try setting mat_tonemapping_occlusion_use_stencil to 1 in the console.

Come play with Devs on our NYC3 DM server! Happening now!

Hope you all enjoy the Summer Sale! If you have not yet checked out Black Mesa, now is a great time. Quick Recap of Our Features

• 12 Hours of Intense FPS Gameplay!
• A Complete Reimagining of the Half-Life Experience
• 3 All New Surface Tension Levels Added last Update
• New Dynamic CSM Shadows
• Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch Multiplayer with 10 Maps

Note: This update does not contain Xen. We are working on Xen! This is a small hotfix patch to resolve some of the issues with the Surface Tension Update.

Programming

• CSM should now be functional and working correctly on AMD cards.
• French and Portugese translation/captions are added and fixed in the main menu.
• Fixed a bug where disabling CSM would cause it to set to “very low” when you next start the game.
• Potentially fixed the “CSM ghosting” bug where a weird overlay would appear on the screen if you enabled CSM.
• Fixed a bug where the godrays option would reset when the game is restarted.
• cl_autoweaponswitch cvar added to disable automatic weapon switching, if needed.

Level Design

• Fixed a bug where if you backpedal through the door that leads to the car park at the beginning of the map, it would close and could not be reopened again.
• Fixed invulnerable AGrunt at the helipad if the player tries to save the Osprey.
• Fixed alternate vent route Headcrabs from clipping with the player and being invisible if they the player jumps over the vent gap.
• Fixed various conditions that allowed the player to exit via the bomb trap room and get into the TOW courtyard that way.
• Add player clips to prevent exploitation of the map.

• Fixed a bug where the hangar Guard choreography would get broken if you went to the hangar door exit before reaching the part of the level where you actually meet the Guard.
• Corrected hanger security door to use the correct sounds like the rest of the doors in the map.
• Player clipped the dumpster by the jump pad to prevent the player from getting stuck.
• Removed the fence behind the guard shack to prevent the player getting stuck.
• Ladders on the fire escape now work in case the player decides to use the jump pad to get on them.
• Fixed 50Cal getting tank projectiles stuck in it.
• Add player clips to prevent exploitation of the map.

Multiplayer

• Fixed a bug where sv_ranked would crash servers on startup.
• Generated loading screens for dm_crossfire, dm_rail, dm_power and dm_chopper. All official maps should now have proper loading screens at all resolutions.
• Added some graphical detail to a few areas in dm_rail as well as a playerclipping pass to make projectiles get caught less on silly obstacles.
• Fixed c2a5h and c2a5i showing up on the multiplayer map list.

Miscellaneous/Notes

• Several big community mods have been broken with the last update. If you see missing textures or any strange behaviour, those are likely the cause. On a Rail Uncut is also broken and will cause texture errors in a few places in the game, particularly On a Rail. The author is working on fixing these issues.

Our latest update is now live. Check out the new an improved lighting and extended version Surface Tension!

New Features Include:
• Surface Tension: UNCUT
• High definition CSM shadows
• Faster load times
• Improved AI
• Official closed caption support for Finnish, German, Italian, Norwegian, and Spanish

Coming Soon

Cascade Shadow Maps

Why work on these instead of that other thing?

When with this be released?

Save 50% on Black Mesa during this week's Midweek Madness*!

*Offer ends Friday at 10AM Pacific Time

We've released a patch to Black Mesa main client + Fixed bouncing Bolts from the crossbow in MP + Fixed a bug in the balanced spawn system + Fixed Shotgun Collision model + Fixed various spelling errors and missing .wav files in dialouges. + Fixed the Crossbows lighting origin + RPG rocket won't clip with the rocket when reloading. + Dr. Kleiners head and hands are now properly smooth (smoooooth as jazz) + Fixed blood not splattering on the MP5 + Fixed the where placing 11 satchels crashed the MP server + Crossfire Optimization increased - will run much smoother now. + Added muzzle flash dynamic light checkbox to options menu. + Added godrays enable checkbox to the options menu + Minor optimizations made to netcode. + Fixed 'FIX IT DENIZ' skin on monitor in UC. + Fixed game_round_win Entity to actually win rounds. + Polished the workshop tool. (There are still some things that need to be fixed, and will be fixed in upcoming patches). All workshop content and addons will now be read from the SteamApps/Workshop/Content/362890 folder, instead of the previously used black_mesa/addons folder. This update may corrupt and break save files. If you're experience any issues with old loads, please restart the game at the start of that chapter. You can do that by clicking "New Game" on the main menu, and picking the latest chapter you were on. Additionally, if you are experiencing issues with missing models or textures in-game, you have a legacy error with mods. If you have subscribed to any mods since launch and are experiencing these issues please do the following steps to fix the issue. 1. Unsubscribe from all Black Mesa mods 2. Go to ***SteamAppsworkshopcontent362890 (where *** is the location to where your steam games may be) 3. Delete all folders within this folder 4. Launch Black Mesa, and you should be good to go. Once you do this, you should be able to re-subscribe to any and all mods that you want. Not sure which mod to download first? Why not try On a Rail Uncut - now officially released on the Steam Workshop.​ - ːvortː (Edit: it is known that the "Workshop Addon" button does not work in the Main Menu. It will be fixed in a subsequent patch)

See official forums for patch notes! Enjoy and Happy Holidays from the Crowbar Collective. - ːvortː

Welcome to December Update, Part 2. You can read Part 1 of our reveal about the December Update here. Important Point: This update WILL NOT contain Xen. We are hard at work on Xen and are preparing media to show to you guys. But there will not be a release of Xen soon and we still do not have a timeframe for it. Here are some more interesting details for what's to come in December's Content Update 2. This list is not exhaustive. The update is huge and there's going to be A LOT of stuff.

Godrays

Shell Ejection

AI Tweaks

Multiplayer Tweaks and Changes

• Fixed prediction/lag compensation on the Crossbow. Zoomed fire should now be extremely responsive and reliable.
• Added subtle spawn effects/sounds for weapon and player spawns.
• Added a "walk" function.
• Unlocked all movement related cvars to allow us to better tweak movement and feel to match HL1.
• Removed some Taus and ammo from most maps, to better match the fact that the Tau is really, really powerful now.
• Better colours on the scoreboard/coloured killfeed and coloured chat for better clarity.

Bugfixes

• Fixed .357 Guard being unable to fire.
• Fixed Hivehand falling through the elevator on C2A5E.
• Headcrabs now properly inherit momentum when shot off Zombies instead of just falling to the ground.
• Crossbow's lowered sensitivity when zoomed in now works properly. No more weird feeling.

Crossfire, and a Singleplayer Update

You may have previously seen the Crossbow Update which we posted on our forums. We figure it's time to give you a bit more than that, as we've been quiet for a while on the communication front. We are very hard at work on the massive Content Update 2 (note: the update will not contain Xen, it's not ready yet) which we are going to release as a big update in December. We originally had two patches planned, but we decided to merge them together into a big one! We historically have been all about surprise updates, but now we want to be more open to show people that we are making progress, and to hopefully build some excitement for the December update. So throughout this month we will be posting previews of the coming features. You will be able to find these regularly on the Steam forums and on our public forums, though we will post major snippets here too. What you are about to see is just a very small taste of what's to come!

New Crossbow Model

Weapon Drag

New Gluon Model

G-Man Arms

Some Bug Fixes!

• Fixed Steam Cloud
• Flashlight is now brighter and has a wider radius!
• Fixed satchel detonation to be faster and not switch mouse buttons on last satchel
• Fixed the MP5 grenade spawning from then center of the screen when fired
• Score persist on leaving and rejoining a MP match

Hello Scientists! Today we introduce a small patch that resolves some of the recently reported issues. Please find the patch notes below: Patch Notes: * Fixed wrong texture being displayed on _mp glock. * Fixed glock idle animation pop. * Replaced $basealphaenvmapmask with $normalmapalphaenvmapmask. * Removed autoaim settings from options. * Fixed zombie hands in singleplayer. * Fixed chargers not working with some savegames. * Disabled autorun by default. * added Single Player Source files in bms/mapsrc. * added bm_mp_environments.vmf in bms/mapsrc. ... we're not joking. Thats all the .vmf's for Black Mesa Single Player. Enjoy :)

We just released our first major content update for Black Mesa. You can read the details here! If you are having strange issues with the latest content update, it is most likely to do with using old save games from before the update. It appears the issues do not happen if you start a new game. If you are experiencing weird bugs (such as having zombie hands in SP, health chargers not working, sprint being stuck always on), try starting a new game from whatever chapter you were on. You will lose your progress in the chapter, but the bugs will be resolved. You may still find sprint is stuck permanently on. If that is the case, you just need to untick "always run" in the Black Mesa tab of the options menu. We apologise for the inconvenience, but the way Source handles saves with updates is unfortunately something we have very little control over. Thanks for playing, we hope that aside form this minor blip that you guys love the patch!

Happy summer everyone! We are very excited to introduce our first content update to you, 0.1.0. This update contains new features, a new deathmatch map, and bug fixes that will enhance your experience with our product. Please find the changelist below:

UPDATE HIGHLIGHTS

DETAILED UPDATES

SINGLE PLAYER CHANGES

• Fixed some music tracks not being affected by the music volume slider in the audio options (Office Complex, Blast Pit, Surface Tension & Lambda Core)

• Fixed blocking the crashing elevator with physics objects.

• Fixed z-fighting pipe model.

• Fixed canal bullsquid scene triggering late if the player took the lower pathway.

• Fixed various prop shadows.

• Fixed player getting pushed under the lift and out of the map when falling.

• Made freezer entrance scientist a non-critical npc once the door has been opened to prevent a save loop if killed by the player after entering the freezer.

• Removed glock that was left in accidentally for testing purposes.

• Various miscellaneous console error fixes.
• Fixed Barney being unresponsive if the player saves him from death.

• Various miscellaneous console error fixes.

• Various miscellaneous console error fixes.

• Fixed broken soundscape.

• Various miscellaneous console error fixes.

• Various miscellaneous console error fixes.
• Fixed several broken overlays.

• Fixed car model having the incorrect orientation.
• Fixed some brushwork that had been moved accidentally.

• Added in bounce jump pad decal.
• Fixed floating pipes near the water tower.
• Fixed floating debris from destroyed wall.

• Added in bounce jump pad decal.
• Fixed a visible nodraw area near water.

• Fixed an issue with the sounds at the end of the final teleporter sequence, where you sometimes would not hear the scientist telling you to “jump now!”. You should be able to hear him all the time now.

MULTIPLAYER CHANGES

• Added dm_stack! dm_stack is a brand new, outdoor, fun map designed for smaller player counts.

• Adjusted weapon placements in quite a few places:
  • Gluon Gun has been moved slightly (though is still on the same tower), to a position up high. It is now perched on top of a pipe on the same tower, and can now only be reached by hopping up to it from the railings, so requires 2 (simple) jumps.
  • Both uranium packs removed from Gluon spawn.
  • Removed one uranium pack from the hole Tau Cannon spawn.
  • One of the batteries on the tower bridge replaced with a uranium pack.
  • Added a clip of Crossbow ammunition on the red tower.
  • Removed a clip of Crossbow ammunition from the middle building.
  • Added 2 frag grenades in the top middle shack on the surface.
  • Replaced the MP5 by the forklift with a Shotgun with one ammo pack.
  • Adjusted the positioning of the RPG Fort’s pickup so the RPG no longer appears to be floating.
  • Removed both batteries from the ibeam on top of the elevator shaft. Removed one uranium pack from there too.
  • Added 2 frag grenades by the planks in the control room (which form a ramp to drop out the control room window).
  • Removed one ammo pickup from the Shotgun on the upper catwalks in the underground cavern.
  • Added a second MP5 grenade to the MP5 pickup on the underground tower.
• Tweaked lighting and player direction in a few areas:
  • In the underwater swimming routes (01 and 02), added caution stripes surrounding the entrances to make them much more obvious to players.
  • Brightened up the lighting surrounding the swimming routes to make them stand out more.
  • Added a large spotlight shining onto swimming route 02, to make it stand out better as a major route.
  • In the underwater part of the elevator shaft, added a fill light so the underwater section is no longer dark.
  • Added a red light at the base of the elevator ladder, to make the route more apparent.
  • Significantly brightened up the light from the elevator shaft teleporter, to make that part more obvious at a first glance.
  • Next to the conveyor drop down, turned on a light next to the double doorway, to make that major route area less dark from outside, and improve player visibility.

• Reverted the tram back to the original 1-car style. The DREADNAUGHT is no longer ingame, we felt that while it was fun, it was too buggy to be reliable or useful.

MODEL CHANGES

• Added first person zombie hands model for zombie scientists
• Added first person zombie hands model for zombie guards
• Added first person guard hands model
• Updated first person scientist hands
• Added G-Man as a playable multiplayer character.
• You can now get blood on the MP5.

PROGRAMMING CHANGES

• Fixed the ragdoll bug where occasionally the Vortigaunts/Marines corpses would spawn in a T-pose/be behaving extremely oddly after loading a save game or level transition.

• Adjusted RPG reloading mechanics to be more in line with HL1. Now, if you fire your RPG with the laser on, you cannot reload it until the rocket has detonated. If you fire with the laser off, and press reload, you are able to reload it even while the rocket is still in the air.
• Adjusted Shotgun reload so you can interrupt the reload properly by firing, and it will fire instantly, instead of waiting for the current shell to be loaded first.
• Tau Cannon adjustments:
  • Tau Cannon full charge time in MP is reduced from 1.5 seconds to 1.25 seconds, to better match the original Half-Life.
  • Tau Cannon full charge ammo usage reduced from 12 uranium to 10 uranium, to better match the original Half-Life.
  • Tau Cannon jump velocity reduced from 1100 to 850, to bring it closer to HL1 and to make it a bit less ridiculous and easier to control.
  • Tau Cannon hitreg fix - fixed a bug in the Tau Cannon’s hit registration that was making it register unreliably.
  • Tau overcharge volume reduced from SNDLVL_100dB to SNDLVL_norm.
• Crossbow adjustments:
  • Zooming in with the Crossbow is now instant in MP. Welcome back, quickbow!
  • The Crossbow’s zoomed shot is now properly lag compensated, so should now register more reliably.
• Voice chat is now enabled in MP and is bindable via the options menu!

Reminder:

This hotfix contains a critical fix that affects dedicated servers. Please find the changelist below:

Changelog:

• Resolved a fault preventing "steamclient.so" from executing which prevents the Linux dedicated server build from being public.

Reminder:

This hotfix contains a critical fix that affects dedicated servers. Please find the changelist below:

Changelog:

• Resolved an interface issue in "engine_srv.so" that prevents the Linux dedicated server build from launching.

Reminder:

The new patch is released! Introducing Black Mesa 0.0.2. This is a much larger patch than the last one. We hope that this patch has resolved most of the serious performance issues and stuttering in multiplayer. Please find the full changelist below:

PROGRAMMING CHANGES

• Performance fixes: Dynamic lights removed from muzzle flashes and explosions. These were causing stuttering and performance issues in MP, which should now be fixed. Dynamic light options removed from menu as they no longer do anything.
• Loading screens: Our flashy loading screen system now works properly for MP on secured servers (the majority of servers). Previously they only worked on unsecured and listen servers. Also made some updates to the loading screens' appearance to make them a bit nicer.
• Spawn system: Fixed all players penetrating each other to death over a single spawn point during round resets.
• Chat box exploit: Fixed a recently discovered bug which affects all Source games and allows players to execute commands on all players using the chat box, potentially crashing the server.
• Tripmine hitbox: Doubled the size of the Tripmine hitbox to make it easier to shoot.

BALANCE CHANGES

• Crowbar range reduced from 76 to 40.
• Crowbar force reduced from 20 to 13.
• Crowbar attack speed on hit (singleplayer) reduced from 0.2 to 0.25 (is now 4 hits per second instead of 5 - is now the same as 2012 mod release).
• Fixed weird recoil issue where if hitting the same spot repeatedly, the player's view would drift to the right.

• Glock singleplayer damage reduced from 9 to 8 (to maintain 9mm parity with MP5).

• MP5 spread (cone of fire) increased from 1 1 0 to 1.75 1.75 0.
• MP5 horizontal recoil increased by factor of 1.75.
• MP5 singleplayer damage reduced from 9 to 8.

• Shotgun singleplayer damage per shot increased from 6 (48 total) to 7 (56 total).
• NPC Shotgun damage increased from 15 to 20.

• Enemy damage multiplier for hard difficulty increased from 1.5 to 1.75. Hard difficulty just got harder!

• Agrunt health increased from 96 to 120.
• Agrunt Hivehand minimum range decreased from 256 to 128 (they are more inclined to use their Hivehand in close range, now).
• Agrunt Hivehand max range increased from 2048 to 4096 (they are more inclined to use their Hivehand at long range, now).
• Agrunt Hivehand usage increased and strengthened significantly:
  • Hivehand minimum burst size (minimum random number of bees fired per burst) increased from 3 to 5.
  • Hivehand maximum burst size (maximum random number of bees fired per burst) increased from 5 to 8.
  • Hivehand minimum rest interval (minimum random time between bursts) decreased from 2 to 1.
  • Hivehand maximum rest interval (maximum random time between bursts) decreased from 6 to 3.

• Aslave health increased from 60 to 70.
• Aslave zap damage increased from 20 to 30.
• Aslave zap cone increased from 0.6 (roughly 50 degrees) to -0.70710677928 (135 degrees). They are now significantly more accurate when firing at you now.

• Apache rest time (rest time between bursts) increased from 2 to 3.
• Apache charge time (how long it takes to charge a burst) increased from 2 to 3.
• Apache max burst count (maximum random number of shots fired per burst) decreased from 40 to 30.
• Apache min burst count (minimum random number of shots fired per burst) decreased from 30 to 20.
• Apache burst hit max (how many times maximum he will hit you before he stops his burst) decreased from 5 to 4.

• Assassin damage bug fixed. Damage is now 5 (used to be 12!)

• Ichtyosaur health increased from 260 to 310.

• LAV damage increased from 5 to 8.

• All Hgrunt healths increased by 10.
  • Commanders: Health from 60 to 70.
  • Grenadiers: Health from 50 to 60.
  • Grunts: Health from 50 to 60.
  • Medics: Health from 40 to 50.
• The amount a medic can heal a fellow marine was increased from 25 to 30.
• Increased Marine accuracy very slightly by reducing their spread from 6 6 0 to 5 5 0.

MAP CHANGES

• Many changes have been made to the singleplayer maps. See full changelog for more details.

MULTIPLAYER TWEAKS

• Weapon canisters dropped by players now use their HL1 behaviour - they drop the weapon + ammo that the player was using when they died. Previously they just gave you all the ammo the dead player was carrying.
• Respawn time for all suit battery pickups increased from 15 to 30.
• Respawn time for all chargers (health and suit) increased from 15 to 30.
• Capacity of suit chargers reduced from 75 to 50.
• Many changes have been made to the multiplayer maps. See full changelog for more details.

MODEL CHANGES

• Changed the world models for the RPG and Tau to reflect their new viewmodels.
• Updated the Hummvee to use proper specular and normal maps. Fixed lighting errors on it and improved its look significantly.
• Fixed bad collision on some M35 (truck) variants, where players would get stuck inside them.
• Updated the blast door model used in Surface Tension.
• Fixed some of the pipe corner props so they are properly made of metal, insead of plastic.
• Fixed the model properties on the Lambda Door to make it metal instead of plastic.
• New models for the MP5 grenade and RPG ammo. Both should be more visible and unique looking now.

SDK CHANGES

• Updated the modelviewer images for the new weapons (the old ones were extremely out of date).

Reminder: