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!
Weve implemented a temporary fix to stop antivirus programs flagging bms.exe as a false positive. We have a permanent fix in the works, so that this issue will not happen again.

Downloading the update is all you need to do to have the game NOT get reported by your antivirus or Windows Defender (sometimes you have to restart Steam).

Temporary Removal of DXVK
As a result of our antivirus hotfix, we had to temporarily disable DXVK as a launch option. We plan to bring this back online as soon as possible in a future patch.

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

• 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

• 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

Virus Detection False Positive
Were investigating why some antivirus software and Windows Defender pick up the game or one of the tools as malicious. Weve had tools flagged by different antivirus programs in the past, but never the .exe of the game itself. Needless to say, there are NO viruses within Black Mesa. Were a little worried that this false positive is due to new detection methods beyond our control, but as we said, we keep looking into the issue!

(As of writing this we may have a lead as to what is tripping antivirus. We may have a workaround to fix it)

We apologize if this spooked anyone. The last thing you want to see after buying a game is that type of alert.

Updated Launch Options
We updated the launch options to default to the game running in DirectX 9 and the UI running in DirectX 11. This helps ensure maximum compatibility across various target hardware.

There is still the option to run the game using Vulkan DXVK. If your computer is having trouble running the game in certain spots, this is a good option to try. It does have drawbacks: it does not like alt-tabbing from the game, and it cannot do borderless fullscreen correctly (the game will run fine, but it will act like regular fullscreen).

Finally, there is the DirectX 9 fallback, which runs both the game and UI on DirectX 9, in case your hardware setup requires it.

So now when launching the game you will see:
-Play Default
-Play Performance Option (DXVK)
-Play DirectX 9 (Legacy)

If you have already set the launch option and want to change, simply right-click the game, go to properties, General, and click the drop-down under Launch Options.

Incoming Patches
Soon, we will release a patch with the following fixes:

[h2]Steam Input[/h2]

• 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

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

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

• 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

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

• 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)

• 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

• 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

GREETINGS!

Weve pushed a patch to public beta. In this beta we are looking to confirm that:

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
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:

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.

[h2]3rd Birthday Giveaway[/h2]

In order to celebrate our 3rd birthday, we will be holding a giveaway! If youd like a chance to win a Crowbar Collective Stainless Tumbler, check out our Twitter post! To participate:

- Follow us on Twitter
- Like and retweet the 3rd Birthday Giveaway post on our twitter
- Tag 2 of your scientist friends

Winners will be chosen on Friday, March 10th!

As we celebrate this milestone, we want to take a moment to thank everyone who has supported us along the way. From our team of dedicated developers, to the fans who have cheered us on, we couldn't have done it without you.

Thank you for being a part of our journey, and we can't wait to see what the future holds!

- The Crowbar Collective Team

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

[h3]How to Join[/h3]

You may submit your entries until the 17th of February, after which submissions will close and the week-long voting period will start. The winners will be announced on February 24th.

[h3]Rules:[/h3]

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!

[h2]How to Join[/h2]

You may submit your hat entries in the Crowbar Collective Discord until the 27th of January, after which submissions will close and the week-long voting period will start. The winners will be announced on February 3rd.

[h3]Rules:[/h3]

• 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

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!
  

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.

[h2]The Winners[/h2]

First off, we wanted to thank all the participants of the mapmaking collaboration between Black Mesa and Intruder for all their excellent submissions. We were very impressed with the amount of work that our community members put in, and thoroughly enjoyed getting to try them all out. While it was very difficult to pick from all the entries we received, the following 3 were our favorites:

[h3]Third Place: Black Mesa South[/h3]

In third place, we have BlackMesa South submitted by Xixo. A map that is true to form, we could clearly see inspiration drawn from both games with an authentic atmosphere and sneaky routes to steal the package. We very much enjoyed getting the opportunity to play this map, and want to congratulate Xixo on making the top-3.

[h3]Second Place: Foreseen Sequences[/h3]

In the runner-up position, we have Foreseen Sequences submitted by DoubleOSpanky. With interactive environment features like keycards, deadly lasers, and collectible tapes this entry spices up gameplay with a well designed and extremely detailed experience. This was an excellent map, and we were very impressed with what we saw! Thank you for creating such an interesting and creative map for us to play.

[h3]First Place: Potential Energy[/h3]

Finally, the winner of the Black Mesa X Intruder mapmaking competition is Potential Energy submitted by ActionMan! This entry truly pushed the limit of Intruder Map Maker with a campaign style mission that has custom objectives, multi-round objectives, and moving vehicles it almost seems like this could be its own game! While there were many strong candidates for top prize, ActionMans was a cut above the rest. This was a fantastic map, and we want to thoroughly congratulate them for getting 1st place!

[h2]Developer Wrap up Showcase Video[/h2]

To celebrate the hard work of our competition winners, we are releasing a showcase video to wrap up the map creation contest. Tune in to get the teams thoughts on what they enjoyed about each map!

The final Black Mesa X Intruder wrap up video can be found here

Thats everything that we have for you today. We enjoyed the opportunity to bring our two communities together, and are extremely impressed by all the maps that were entered. Thank you all for making this an amazing event. See you all later, scientists!


-The Crowbar Collective Team

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!
  

• Official Steam Workshop Collection
  
• ModDB Portal Download
  

Hello, fellow zombie scientists!

YOU are Challenged to Escape!
Head over to the workshop to check out the new and spooky community map submissions from our recent LamdaBuilds: Escape From Black Mesa level design competition! Do you have the brains and the brawn to make it out alive?
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2877017092



Thanks to Our Partners
Thank you to all the designers who submitted an entry to the competition, and a special thanks to our partners at LambdaGeneration and ModDB, for hosting the event as a part of their series of LambdaBuilds competitions! We love community events, and we are grateful to have been able to run one with these two fantastic organizations.



The turn out, and the quality of submissions, has blown us away. Winners for the competition will be announced soon, but we hope you will check out ALL the spooky submissions, and give them a play through in the meantime. Thanks to everyone that participated!

Steam Scream Fest
To celebrate this community event, Halloween, and the Steam Scream Fest Black Mesa will be available for 75% off until November 1 at 10:00 AM PDT.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/

Have a happy Halloween! Thanks again, scientists!

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.

[h2]Next Steps:[/h2]

[h3]Announcement of the winners:[/h3]

Now that submissions are officially closed, our panel of judges are hard at work reviewing all the excellent maps that you submitted over the past few weeks. Given the volume of entries, we cant give an exact date for when the winners will be announced, but you can expect to get an announcement regarding the winning entries no later than October 31st.

[h3]Official Map Collection Release: [/h3]

We also plan to release an official collection of Escape From Black Mesa maps on the workshop. While all maps are currently available for download, this collection will provide a quick and convenient way for you to see the hard work of your fellow scientists for yourself. The collection will be released by October 31st alongside the results.

[h3]Post-event live stream: [/h3]

We want to be sure that the hard work of our community gets its chance to shine in the desert sun. Therefore, there will be a LambdaBuilds live stream showcasing some of the top maps that were submitted by our community members! The live stream will be hosted by the LambdaGeneration team on their YouTube channel, with the date and time to be announced later.

[h2]Have you joined the official Black Mesa fan page?[/h2]

In case you missed it the first time, our friends at LambdaGeneration launched the official Black Mesa fan page last month. Here, you can keep up with news about the game, see awesome fan and community content, discuss and share your modding work, and more! Be sure to join your fellow scientists today on the LambdaGeneration website.

Thats everything that we have to debrief you on today. Again, we appreciate LambdaGeneration and ModDB for hosting the competition, and are extremely thankful for all our wonderful community members who participated. For now, this is where we get off.

- The Crowbar Collective Team

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.

[h2]Where to find help:[/h2]

If you are needing assistance with getting started on your map, need some tips or tricks, or are needing to reference the rules for the competition, the LambdaGeneration Discord channel is the place to be!

The LambdaGeneration Discord can be found here.

[h2]Uploading your submission:[/h2]

While we have your attention, scientists, we also wanted to provide you with some resources to assist you with uploading your submission to the Black Mesa workshop on Steam. The first link below will take you to a guide on uploading your submission to the workshop, while the second one will take you to a download for Crowbar, which is a Source Engine modding tool. This should help ensure that your submission to the competition will be successfully uploaded for consideration by the judges.

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

Attention all science personnel!

Today we are announcing that the Black Mesa X Intruder mapmaking competition has finally ended after two months of awesome work from both of our communities.

While we are sad to see it go, we are also extremely impressed by all the hard work youve done, and are very excited to test each and every one of the maps that have been submitted to us.

With that being said, here are the next steps for this event:

[h2]Judging and Announcement of Winners[/h2]

The first order of business will be for both the Crowbar Collective and Superboss Games teams to look at and judge each of the maps that was submitted. From these, the developers will select a winner, as well as a 2nd and 3rd place submission.

Given the time required to properly test and judge each map, we cant give an exact date that the winners will be announced. Rest assured, scientists, we will be working diligently through all the submissions, and expect to announce the winners in the near future.

Stay tuned on our Discord and social media pages for the announcement of the winning maps!

[h2]Final Developer Livestream[/h2]

Shortly after the announcement of the winners, both development teams will conclude their epic crossover event by playing with and against each other on the top 3 maps. You have all put a lot of hard work and creativity into your submissions, and we want to give our winners a chance to let their work shine!

Given that the judging process could take some time, stay tuned for the date, time, and location of this livestream event. The announcement of the livestream should be shortly after we have announced our competition winners.

Thats everything that we have for you today! We appreciate everyone in the Black Mesa and Intruder communities who participated, and hope you had as much fun making the maps as we will have playing them. In the meantime, its time for us to put on our HEV suit and get to work.

The Crowbar Collective team

Make sure to follow Crowbar Collective and Superboss Games!

• 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/

[h2]Theming: Eerie Escape Room:[/h2]

We want contestants to come up with their best design for a Black Mesa themed Escape Room. Maybe you are trapped in a science lab with horrifying Xenian creatures? Maybe you are stuck in the rubble after the resonance cascade? Maybe Gordon finds himself in the middle of a cactus maze and has to escape?

Dont be afraid of sticking to the classic Black Mesa style, but dont be afraid to be creative either!

While the theme of your map should be eerie, it's not necessarily horror. You dont need gallons of blood or terrifying creatures to score points, We are looking more for a creepy, unnerving, or foreboding atmosphere. Can you creep us out with just the level elements? Can you make us uncomfortable without resorting to combat against various creatures?

While the focus is on the feel of the map, neither blood, combat, or other horror elements are against the rules!

[h2]Scope:[/h2]

We here at Crowbar Collective love to see creativity through constraint. It is where some of our best ideas came from. You may have an idea for a really large, sprawling escape room but, given the scope of this contest, it may not be your best interest to try and tackle the whole thing. Pick a simple and compact idea and find creative ways to elevate it to the next level.

Scope is one of the most difficult aspects of design to manage, and it is way better to keep it simple and build things up instead of having to pair stuff down at the last minute (ask us how we know).

So, all that is to say, we appreciate simple designs, reuse of space, and finding clever ways to reuse what is already in the game.

[h2]Prizes:[/h2]



[h3]1st Prize:[/h3]

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

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

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

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:

[h3]The Map Making Contest Has Begun![/h3]

The Black Mesa x Intruder map making contest has officially begun! Use Black Mesa assets to create the best looking Intruder map possible! Submit your creations by August 28th on the official Intruder Discord server and Workshop. Please make sure to read all the rules here.

[h3]Bundle Information[/h3]

To celebrate the launch of this epic crossover event, Crowbar Collective and Superboss Games have teamed up to release a bundle offering 50% off whichever of the two titles you dont currently own. The bundle is available until August 4th, so zip up that HEV suit and grab all your gear!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/27270/

[h3]Stream Announcement[/h3]

Remember, Scientists!

Grab those snacks from the cafeteria, and watch the Crowbar Collective and SuperBoss Games Devs play Intruder together on Twitch!

Make sure to follow Crowbar Collective and 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

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:

[h2]Andrew Y[/h2]

We mustnt forget the Runners-Up too, who each walk from the facility with a $50 Steam Gift Card and a Steam key:

Ari Josu Gonzlez H
Jaydel T
Iddo K
Miguel N

Again, congratulations to all the winners and we look forward to seeing Black Mesa being played on this custom PC soon! See you soon, on future giveaways!

Note: Origin will be contacting these winners directly via the contact information given during the giveaway.

Dont forget to join in the celebrations on:

Discord: https://discord.gg/crowbarcollective
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BlackMesaDevs/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BlackMesaDevs
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blackmesagame/
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/crowbar_collective

Stay safe out there, and be good to each other!

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 , 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?

Weve been working on a number of small fixes to polish the game and prevent rare bugs. Here is a list of what we have been working on:

[h3]Fixed on the Developer Build:[/h3]
Possible fix for huge FPS drop during the rocket raise in On A Rail
Fixed missing wall stripe near control room in Unforeseen Consequences
Fixed scientist falling speed in Office complex
Fixed a small visual issue with the Taus sprint animation
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 the HEV chargers giving you the wrong charge amount
Fixed female scientists not healing you
Fixed text size during HEV bootup sequence on various resolutions
Added separate label for gamepad options in menu
Added an option to invert the Y axis on controllers
Added sensitivity sliders for X and Y axis on controllers
Added enable/disable for vibration on controllers
Fixed bug with video options when setting presets for quality
Implemented a possible fix for the new UI not working on Linux
Fixed hangs on Linux when pressing Escape button
Updated/fixed translation files based on community feedback

[h3]Issues to Fix/Look Into:[/h3]
Try and replicated the crash in Interloper A
Looking into fixing the No Free Edicts issue in Interloper
Looking into fixing rare softlocks in On A Rail (for the tram elevator by the rocket)
Fixing smoke clipping through distant blue haze on Surface Tension cliffside
Fixing some values where RPG crates dont instantly refill the players ammo
Fix missing props in multiplayer maps
Look into fixing the workshop on Linux

The Next Patch Will Break Saves

The Next Patch Will Break Saves. Players caught mid campaign can start a new game at the chapter they left off on, or load a map using the console. Sorry for any future inconvenience! We will warn everyone on our socials before the patch is released!

Steam Summer Sale

Till July 8th at 1pm EST
You can grab Black Mesa at 60% off in the Steam Summer Sale! Please share this memo and help us reach as many scientists as we can.

Community Multiplayer Playdates

Sunday, June 27th at 12 PM EST
The team will be playing multiplayer Sunday, June 27th at 12PM EST. Come join us for some fun.

Saturday, July 3rd at 2 PM EST
We are also planning a playdate for Saturday, July 3rd at 2PM EST (might change due to the U.S. holiday)

Soon

We have some other Streams and events we would like to do soon, and well be sending out the new patch in the next few months. Other than that, we may be quiet for a while until we can talk about what is next for Crowbar Collective.

Until then, come hang out on our Discord and check out our Twitch to stay in touch!

Discord: https://discord.gg/crowbarcollective
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BlackMesaDevs/
Twitter: @BlackMesaDevs
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blackmesagame/
https://www.twitch.tv/crowbar_collective

Thanks! And have a great Summer!

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/
  

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
We are 50% off from now until May 2nd!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/

The Dreamies!
We also want to share how humbled we are to be a part of Dreamhack's Dreamies!

Black Mesa appears in two categories: Wait Worthy and Refreshing Revive. It is an honor to be nominated, and we will be watching with excitement!



You can watch the award show with us on Friday, April 30th on Twitch. We'll be doing a live stream to kick off the event!
Twitch.tv/DreamHack

Black Mesa Xen Museum

We have an exciting, home-grown addition to the Steam Workshop. As you might have guessed, the Xen chapters went through a lot of iteration. We created a Xen museum so that players can explore many of the early, Work In Progress (WIP) versions of the levels. We also included an art gallery and some unreleased maps that have never before been seen!

You can download the mod through the steam workshop. Simply click the link below, subscribe to the mod, and then launch it via the workshop tab in the game main menu.
Click Here to Subscribe to the Mod

Please Note that some of the WIP levels have a lot of issues, as they were unfinished AND the game code has changed a lot since they were made. Expect lots of junk in the WIP maps.

The museum is divided into 3 different hubs: Xen, Gonarch, and Interloper. You can check out different versions of a ton of our maps, using the Intra-dimensional Portals within (Over 56 maps in all!).









Patch Notes
Last but not least, we have put out a patch to fix up a number of UI/Game issues and add translation files. Here are the detailed 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.
  
  
  [h3]Implemented translators credits page![/h3]
  
  
  
• 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).
  

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

• 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:
[h2]Crash Fixes[/h2]

• 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"
  

• 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
  

• 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
  

• 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!
    
  
  

• 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
  

• 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
  

• 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
  

• 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
  

• 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
  

• 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
  

• 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
  

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

• 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
  

• 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
  

• 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
  

• 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
  

• 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
  

• Clipped a tree that you could walk through
  

• 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
  

• 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
  

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

• 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
  

• 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
  

• 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
  

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

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)

[h3]Power Up Powered Down[/h3]

We changed the chapter to have more cause and effect gameplay, and to better highlight the players overall goal for the chapter. You now have to fight your way through a darkened facility to get the lights back on, kill the Gargantua, and Power Up the tram. We also took the chance to really let our new dynamic light system shine, with some cool mood lighting!





[h3]On A Rail Updates[/h3]

We have made large scale changes to the On A Rail rocket silo to better show the objective and subsequent solution. The rocket now gets the respect it deserves, and the chapter is a lot more nicely tied together now. We also completely relit the section to help guide the player, and to tell a better story. These changes are in addition to the revisions we made in the summer beta.




[h2]Art Passes[/h2]

Weve continued our art passes to get all of the Earthbound natural environments on par with Xen. The artists and level designers implemented brand new art for all the outdoor environments, and refined the art previously seen in the Summer Beta.

[h3]Weve Got Hostiles[/h3]



[h3]On A Rail[/h3]




[h3]Questionable Ethics[/h3]



[h3]Surface Tension[/h3]







[h3]Forget About Freeman![/h3]



[h3]New Shields and Level Details For Interloper[/h3]



Full Workshop Support

Weve improved the workshop so that it is easier for players to check out everything community mods have to offer. Changes include:

• 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
  

• 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
  

• 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
  

• 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
  

• 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.
  

• 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)
  

• 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)
  

• 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)
  

• 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)
  

• 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)
  

• 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)
  

• 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)
  

• 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)
  

• 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)
  

• 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)
  

• 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)
  

• 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.
  

• 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)
  

• 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)
  

• 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)
  

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

• 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

[h3]Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective.[/h3]
My name is Joel Nielsen, and I am the music composer and audio lead on Black Mesa. I joined the team in June of 2005, and am one of the few original members that made it through the entire development cycle.

[h3]What was your first experience with Half-Life?[/h3]
I played a 'tram-demo' that was given out prior to Half-Life 1's release. I couldn't believe what I was seeing was an actual video game. How could computer graphics possibly look so real!? That was enough to seal my fate as a Half-Life-For-Life-r.

[h3]When did your interest in game development begin?[/h3]
Most notably from the release of WorldCraft in my early teens. I loved creating replicas of buildings around my town that had interesting gameplay layouts and had an odd fascination with trying to create a working waterslide map. I would also end up placing large boxes around the entire levels to 'fill all the leaks', then wait days for it to compile. (and now you know why Chris Horn never let me touch a map on Black Mesa)

[h3]What was the most challenging hurdle that was overcome during development in your role?[/h3]
Cowbell... Well that and simply learning how to work with audio and music in general. I jumped into Black Mesa with no prior experience. I began with more of a, "how hard could it be" mentality. Suffice it to say I quickly learned otherwise. Acquiring the skills required of good sound and music production has been one of the most convoluted rabbit holes I've ever been down. And because of that I also love it. Theres always something more to learn and improve upon.

[h3]What was the most creative method you had to use to create a sound?[/h3]
I used a central-vacuum and some super-sized un-inflated balloons to make the suction sound for the vents in Xen. Also, and even more interestingly, the footstep sound for the flesh surfaces contains the light open-handed slap of a wet ass cheek. I'll let your imaginations fill in the rest of the blanks, but will add a hearty 'thank you' to my wife Kala, who has helped with so many aspects of this project.

[h3]How difficult was the task of reimagining Xen musically?[/h3]
Quite honestly, it was a lot more enjoyable than difficult. I love being set free from a creative perspective and Xen gave me that opportunity. Musically it allowed me to breathe something fresh and unique into the world. And as you can tell I embraced that in full force. Adding a vocal track to every song. (oh yes, every single song has at least one female vocal track within it) I may have gone a little overboard in retrospect but I wouldnt change it if I could. A huge shout-out again to my lovely wife for all her work!

[h3]What about the Xen sound design?[/h3]
Again, great fun. Taking a fairly regular sounding animal or environment, and then absolutely sonically mangling it beyond recognition was a welcomed change of pace from the very 'standard' sounds of the Earthbound portion. Unfortunately, some of the depth/detail is lost in-game, but if you crank the volume and listen close, there are many layers of complexity to a lot of them.

[h3]Which piece of music from Earthbound would you most like to redo/replace but cant because it stuck too much?[/h3]
Definitely the Lobby shoot-out in QE. Many people seem to love it, which is great, but it also isnt very Half-Life-esque in flavor, in my opinion. Being that it would likely spark a small insurrection, I wont be making any modifications.

[h3]Do you ever plan on releasing the stems to the soundtrack?[/h3]
Somewhat unlikely considering the time required to do such a thing. That, and I want to put out my own remixes every few years, so I never have to work ever again.

[h3]Did you go to school for your respective parts of the project?[/h3]
Musically, I am classically trained and took lessons from age 3+. As for formal education? Yeah, definitely not. I barely have a high school diploma, if you count how little I paid attention in class or the grades... My method has always been; if you want to know how to do something, go learn it. Get your hands dirty, trying, and failing until you succeed. Don't let anyone or anything hold you back, and don't use your current reality as an excuse for why you can't. All success originates from an attitude of perseverance.

[h3]So what now?[/h3]
Ill of course be helping with the next CC project. Outside of that, I have started my own game company where my small team and I are working on a unique indie MMO. Throw me a follow on twitter if any of that would be of interest. Love you all, you are an incredible community, and thanks for sticking with us to the end!

Mike Hillard

[h3]Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective.[/h3]
Im Mike Hillard, My handle is CornetTheory because Ive been a trumpet player for most of my life. In terms of games and mods, Ive been a level designer, musician, and digital artist since 2004. I am currently composing or covering chip/game adjacent music over here: https://soundcloud.com/michael-hillard

I started down the path of voice acting because my Unreal Tournament 2004 level design friends needed voice samples for a mod. This directly led me to getting the role in Penumbra: Overture, and getting hired at a local radio station. Since then Ive acted in at least 8 commercial indie games, and many many mod projects.

For Crowbar Collective I am primarily an actor, but over the years I have made tiny contributions in other areas, such as customizing vrad, programming the tau cannons wallshot particle effect, making small tweaks to the lighting on some earthbound maps, and manually editing the 2015 Multiplayer trailer on real VCRs.

[h3]How did you get involved with Black Mesa[/h3]
By 2006 my local friends and I were obsessed with HLDM and making silly custom maps and player models. The Black Mesa team put out a general casting call for voice actors, so I decided to give it a shot.

At this time, I did not start out sounding similar to Hal Robbins, but Im told they were not looking for a dead-on impression because they wanted several kinds of scientists. Eventually, after I was given the first script for the general chatter, I recorded the whole thing in one night out of excitement, and I started figuring out how to get the voice very close. I think it took about a year or two of practice before the similarity got to the point of fooling people with A/B comparisons; Just in time for the 2008 trailer.

[h3]What was the most challenging hurdle that was overcome during development in your role?[/h3]
As soon as I joined the team, I moved away to college. So I had two options after that: Drive 6 hours one way to my house on weekends to use my own studio to record, or find out how to treat whatever dorm room I was in. I found that a lot of walls are too smooth to stick on foam, or too hard to hang up hooks for blankets.

Kevin and I did a lot of skype calls, testing solutions. Some of which are pretty funny, but effective. For example, Buying a golf umbrella big enough to fit my mic and computer monitors, and covering the entire thing with a comforter. Eventually I built a 7ft^3 room within a room, and treated it with deadening moving blankets.

When it came to driving home, I would have to disassemble my PC and lug it back and forth.
After a few years I had assembled two sets of PCs and equipment, one for home and one for college. This also helped out when we started needing the female scientist lines, It made scheduling my mother [Lurana Hillard] easier, and we could act scenes together.

The challenge wasnt only to get a good environment, but also to make my space and mic placements, etc. match Kevins setup. We were pretty strict about the sessions and I would always send test lines to compare before starting.

I recorded all of the Scientists general chatter at least 3 times over the years. As more scripted scenes were created and added to the game, we needed to make it match how my voice and recording environment had changed.

[h3]What software did you use for your work?[/h3]
Adobe Audition. When I worked in radio I had learned how to edit audio to make commercials. Back then it was Cool Edit Pro.

[h3]What kind of microphones & preamps were used to record your vocals?[/h3]
Starting in 2007 through 2012, Kevin and I maintained using the MXL 990 condenser and M-Audio Delta 1010-LT for consistency. Windows updates and driver support ended the Delta card, plus it was a PCI only board. After that, I began using the Shure Super 55 and the Scarlett 6i6 also, shoutouts to the Cloudlifter for dynamic mics.

[h3]When did your interest in game development begin?[/h3]
It began at a very young age, wondering how cartridges worked. But a real turning point was my older brother playing with WADED.EXE for doom. It was mind-blowing that you could make your own levels. I was hooked from then on. From Duke3d to Half-Life, and then to UT2004 where the majority of my released deathmatch maps are.

[h3]Any favorite mods for Half-Life games?[/h3]
Half-Quake is one of the most unique mods out there, and it really shows off what Goldsrc can do. Sven co-op, for consistently adding crazy features to the engine itself. Earths Special Forces (The Dragon Ball Z mod) was fun to fly around in. SMOD for HL2 because of the shovel and bullet time.

But, Rocket Crowbar will always be the gold standard.

[h3]Anything you would want to add to Black Mesa?[/h3]
I wish we could pack-in the awesome Hazard Course remake mod by PSR Digital for Black Mesa.

[h3]Do you accept pineapple on pizza or are you against it?[/h3]
Everyone is allowed to have their own preferences, but folks should just let people enjoy things. Personally I think pineapple on pizza is tasty.




#TEAM RED SHIRT

Ben Truman

[h3]Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective.[/h3]
Benjamin Truman, Design, and Narrative Lead.
Comic author and teacher living in Tucson, AZ.

[h3]What do you enjoy the most about Black Mesa?[/h3]
Half-Life was such a resonant work of art for me. I really enjoy seeing my passion for the game connect with other people. It means a lot when I hear that our game recaptured or enhanced a memorable experience from a players past. Its also wonderful to hear that our game has been an entry point to Valves franchise for so many people.
I also do a fair bit of work on our Twitter (@BlackMesaDevs) searching for fan-made Half-Life content. One of my favorite things to do is drop a couple hundred likes on an unsuspecting artists houndeye doodle.

[h3]What was the most challenging hurdle that was overcome during development in your role?[/h3]
Once Xen began, my writing job consisted of working against the idea that we needed dialog in Xen. When a design was struggling, it was only a matter of time before somebody would suggest audio diaries or a radio transmission from Earth to explain the objective. I wanted to preserve that sense of alone in the unknown once you reached Xen. That commitment meant we had to take special care when communicating our intention to the player.


[h3]How did you get involved with Black Mesa (If you joined later on?)[/h3]
I became involved while attending the Art Institute of Pittsburgh for Game Art & Design. Some of my friends asked if I wanted to join as a 3D modeler. I declined and pitched myself as their writer instead.

[h3]Did you go to school for your respective parts of the project?[/h3]
Despite attending the Art Institute of Pittsburgh for Game Art & Design, there were hardly any classes that dealt with design. The emphasis was on modeling/texturing/animating in 3D. Im lucky that I got involved with the team when I did because I was quickly losing interest in school.
Black Mesa let me breakdown my favorite game and analyze the entire design. I also got to adapt the existing script, write new dialog, direct voice actors, choreograph big scenes in 3D, and design gameplay sequences. This project gave me the chance to pursue the exact education I was seeking.

I also had a lot of support for all my creative endeavors from both of my parents. I would say my real education came from my Dad, a comic author, and an illustrator. I was introduced to a lot of comics and movies from all over the world while I was growing up. I learned a lot about visual storytelling and narrative by hanging at his side.

[h3]What software did you use for your work?[/h3]
I used Faceposer for all the choreography work.

[h3]Any recommendations for people wanting to get into game design?[/h3]
I usually point towards this Gamasutra article about Shigeru Miyamotos influence while creating the original Mario (Im especially partial to that one because it says sequential illustration is the foundation of game design).
I like to think of that article as a point-of-no-return for beginner designers. Once you understand the basic game structure in that article, you see it everywhere.

[h3]Any favorite mods for Half-Life games?[/h3]
I have fond memories of some Half-Life multiplayer mods, like Action Half-Life, Firearms, Science and Industry, Counter-Strike, TFC, but the most important Half-Life mods were always the singleplayer experiences.
The biggest ones for me were the Neil Manke/Black Widow Games U.S.S. Darkstar and They Hunger series that came on PC Gamer CDs. I also liked a short mod called Deliverance. I dont know if Gunman Chronicles counts as a mod, but that also sticks out in my mind.

[h3]When did your interest in game development begin?[/h3]
My love of games began early on. I would fill up notebooks with game ideas. These were usually just little pencil or marker screenshots of imaginary games. I would draw up character rosters for fighting games and side-scrolling beat em ups, with lists of detailed stats. When my family got a PC at home, I started making games with a program called Klik & Play that I received as a holiday gift. I eventually got into 3D level design after playing Duke Nukem 3D. I dont think I knew the Build Engine existed until I stumbled across a How-To book for the software at a bookstore.

After that, I purchased a Quake level editor from Electronics Boutique in the mall but quickly returned it. I struggled and failed to understand the Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight editor. I was frustrated that nobody in my life knew how to work this stuff.

But, Half-Life really compelled me to learn Worldcraft on my own. Once I figured out the basics, I was hooked. I searched all over this new frontier, the internet, to find info on the program. I would print out tutorials from Handy Vandals Almanac and read them over and over again, trying to make sense of them. This all came in handy when I had to start developing in Source on Hammer.

Anthony Stone

[h3]Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective.[/h3]
My name is Anthony Stone and I am one of the long-standing level designers for Black Mesa. I have worked on much of the AI encounters and logic events across the game as well as building a few of the maps from scratch. I am the teams encyclopedia of how everything works.

[h3]What was your first experience with Half-Life?[/h3]
My first experience with Half-Life almost didnt happen. I had no idea what I was getting when I first Installed the game and only installed it because I wanted to play Counter-Strike which was a mod back then. I began the game just to see how the graphics looked on my new PC of the time. I started playing it and was confused at first a 10 min tram ride and then I arrive at Anomalous Materials and walked around offices with no real gameplay insight. This was very unusual. I put the game down at that point with no real intent to go back to it, but Im glad I did. The next day I booted it up to show my brother the game I was dubbing the work sim when I got to the residence cascade. I was blown away and finished the game over the next day or so.

[h3]What was the most challenging hurdle that was overcome during development in your role?[/h3]
Not the most difficult thing for me personally, but a difficult thing to watch was the differences in opinion on art and style across a group of very talented people. Everyone on the team is super good at what they do and everyone has an opinion of what works and what does not. This tends to do areas over and over again in order to really master the idea the team is going for and can cause a considerable headache if you dont check your ego at the door. You are going to have to have many hands-on your work and you may see things you really slaved over get ripped out or changed. It could be a hard pill to swallow for some. It can lead to bitter feelings or discontent but in the end, we all just want the best product that flows well in the end.

[h3]How did you resist getting burnt out over such a long development process for Xen?[/h3]
MUSIC!!! LOTS AND LOTS OF NEW MUSIC! Seriously, I can keep working for hours with music I have not heard before. It makes the hours fly by. Just no country music please and for my wifes sake keep me away from dubstep.

[h3]When did your interest in game development begin?[/h3]
I originally started making maps for the HL2 leak way back when and then moved into making Counter-Strike Source maps. There was something super satisfying about creating content and seeing how people enjoy it and the way they play it. It also was a great creative outlet for my mind. I always loved to build stuff and this was a great way to take things in my mind and get them into a 3d world I could actually visit.

[h3]Was there ever a time you were close to giving up and quitting?[/h3]
Yes and no. There was a point where we had to choose to release the Earthbound section of the game or keep fighting on to get XEN done as one major release of the game. I was very on the side of we should put out what we have rather than take the additional years to finish the full game with no end in sight. I set an ultimatum for myself. So while it was not giving up I felt very strongly that we needed to give our fans something. It never came down to it because we did release. Truth be told it probably would not have left anyways

[h3]How often do you watch youtube videos/Twitch streams of Black Mesa?[/h3]
I am so guilty of this. I love to watch streamers play my work. When it first came out, I would watch a few hours a night. Nowadays I check it once or so a week if I am super bored. Ill never get tired of seeing people blow themselves up calling the lift up in the trip mine puzzle in Surface Tension.

Nathan Ayres

[h3]Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective.[/h3]
Im Nate! Lead Animator, VFX, Simulations at Crowbar.

[h3]What was the most challenging hurdle that was overcome during development in your role?[/h3]
The limitations of trying to make a good looking game in 2020 on an engine that first came out in 2004.

[h3]How did you get involved with Black Mesa (If you joined later on?)[/h3]
I was one of the first 5 people on the team, in early 2005. Back then they had no animators at all so my mere application meant I got accepted immediately haha.

[h3]How difficult was the task of reimagining Xen?[/h3]
The planning did not fall primarily on me, but it was incredibly challenging for all involved. Much of the difficulty was the immovable pillars of the original Xen campaign itself. Jumping puzzles have aged very poorly in FPS games, but weve got this long jump module that we have to use. We have to brainstorm emergent gameplay with only like 3 enemies (headcrab, bullsquid, houndeye) that were all early-game enemies that stopped being challenging 10 campaign hours ago. We have to make non-linear and alien-feeling levels without the aid of objective markers, tooltips, cutscenes, or any of the other crutches that modern gamers are used to.

[h3]Any recommendations for people wanting to get into game design?[/h3]
Join a mod project for a game youre passionate about. Theyre full of like-minded people just trying to have fun and make something cool. Theyll let you make mistakes and learn the skills you need while on the job.

[h3]What do you want to improve about Black Mesa?[/h3]
Im very proud of the end product we shipped and dont think there are that many areas it could have been better. But parts of the campaign could have been shortened so the whole experience was a little tighter in places. Its not really an issue compared to so many modern games that pad their campaigns with pointless stuff, but just in further pursuit of a perfect FPS, there are sections of Black Mesa where youre kinda thinking how much longer until this part is done?

[h3]What was the worst part of developing Black Mesa in your role?[/h3]
The Source engine had several limitations that made it very difficult to get the types of animations the Xen campaign demanded. In any game engine, most movement is controlled by bones. Thats easy to visualize with a character like a human that anatomically has a skeleton, but bones are also controlling the pieces of a building as it blows up, or the pulsing of a protozoa membrane in Xen. With regards to bones, Source does not support bone scaling, it has a 128 bone limit per model, and each vertex in the model is only allowed to be influenced by 3 bones. These are all limitations that modern game engines do not have and it caused a lot of headaches. Many of the bigger destruction models were split into 5-10 parts and reassembled back together in Hammer to get around that 128 bone limit. When youre dealing with something like a barrel cactus swelling up to a huge balloon and bursting, that should be just a couple of bones being scaled up. But Source cant do that, which means you need point clouds of bones all over the model moving outwards to achieve the same effect. Only 3 influences per bone also meant those bone clouds had to be pretty dense or else you would get jagged deformations instead of smooth. I had to develop all sorts of strange pipelines to work around these limits.

[h3]If you had unlimited time, money, and help, what game would you make?[/h3]
Id love to see a game with the crazy weapons and enemy types of Painkiller combined with the intricate level design of Half-Life. I also think technology is at the point where, with a little engine resource re-allocation and gated level design, we dont need to have disappearing corpses, we can use bodies and gore as part of the gameplay loop.

[h3]Where did the purple hat come from?[/h3]
That was the result of several inside jokes. There was an application we got early on in development that was over-the-top ridiculous (we later found out it was submitted as a joke). And we started imagining how this applicant might dress himself, and one of the artists whipped up this purple hat. Our Level Designers love to cram their maps full of easter eggs, and then Half-Life 2 Episode 2 with the gnome run gave them the idea to do a hat run.

[h3]Any movies or other games besides Half-Life you took inspiration from during development for your role specifically?[/h3]
Oh, lots. Anytime a good FPS game came out in the last 10 years wed be like oh we need X, Y, and Z in Black Mesa! For the Xen campaign, probably DOOM 2016 was the strongest influence in terms of how to craft cool boss encounters, and lots of sprawling vertical levels with minimal navigation hints (though they did have objective markers like everybody else these days).

[h3]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?[/h3]
We knew that our Xen was going to be dramatically different from Valves, and in turn both of our versions dramatically different from what Laidlaw originally envisioned. Comparing Half-Life Alyx and Half-Life 1, you can pretty much see how thats the same artistic vision, despite a 20-year graphics jump. But Half-Life 1 to Black Mesa Xen, absent the iconic Half-Life fauna, you wouldnt peg those to be the same universe. And we knew that. It was part of our core strategy to break from the original Xen campaign and forge our own path. We didnt want 6 hours of green-grey levels, we wanted to experiment with distinct biomes and different color palettes, so it was an intentional choice for us.

Johnathan Welsh

[h3]Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective.[/h3]
Ive been a level designer at Crowbar Collective since around 2007. My first task after joining was to rework Undertow and bring it up to the standards of other multiplayer maps we had at the time, although that version was never released and was subsequently redone again; it was still a great learning experience. Following after Undertow I started work on the later parts of Unforeseen Consequences (the coolant labs & lower canals sections) & then onto assisting with detailing and level design work on a few parts of Questionable Ethics.

Following the mod release in 2012 I & others set about working through the large number of bug reports we had received and endeavored to resolve all possible combined with making level design & visual improvements where possible. A few old blog posts I wrote regarding the fixing endeavors can be found here & here if you are interested in reading more. I also assisted in detailing & optimization work on the multiplayer map Crossfire.

My primary focus for Xen development was assisting in extra detail work that was needed on the Xen chapter followed by early blockout work and assisting in arting sections of the Gonarch chapter; in particular the headcrab canyon and water cave & assisting in detailing sections of Interloper chapter both interior and exterior.

[h3]When did your interest in game development begin?[/h3]
Id always enjoyed tinkering with map editors that came with games I played like the Age of Empire series & Red Faction, but I think my interest in modding and then subsequently game development stems from being introduced to Half-Life modding by an old secondary school friend of mine. He was part of a modding community called TWHL (The Whole Half-Life) from there I started to experiment & make levels for various competitions they ran and then onto joining various Half-Life and Half-Life 2 mods before joining Black Mesa.

[h3]What was the most challenging hurdle that was overcome during development in your role?[/h3]
I dont think I could point to one specific thing but trying to figure out creative ways to overcome hurdles that are thrown your way due to engine limitations and such has been the general gist of working as a level designer while on Black Mesa.

[h3]What was the worst part of developing Black Mesa in your role?[/h3]
When the Hammer model viewer would break constantly requiring it to be restarted. But then realizing that I could fix it by simply closing the browser and moving the mouse cursor between the 3D & 2D views to resolve the issue instead of restarting the entire program: that was definitely a boost to my productivity when it came to arting levels and in particular the various parts of Xen.

[h3]Did you go to school for your respective parts of the project?[/h3]
While I didnt directly study game design, I did however for Graphic Design & Communication which indirectly helped in regards to composition, lighting & detailing among others for my role as a level designer & environmental arting.

[h3]How often do you watch youtube videos/Twitch streams of Black Mesa?[/h3]
I try to watch streams of Black Mesa when I have the chance, usually lurking, however. Theyre a great source of seeing a wide spectrum of people playing your game and seeing if something does or doesn't work to perhaps try and improve it. My particular favorite thing to do is watch people's reactions to seeing parts of Black Mesa for the first time, the reveals of Xen & Gonarch and its subsequent chapter-long battle never get old to see.

[h3]Any favorite mods for Half-Life games?[/h3]
Poke 646 is usually one that springs to mind whenever I think of old Half-Life mods that I had a lot of fun playing, But I think special mention should be given to the many multiplayer based mods that I have sunk many hours in to like Day of Defeat, The specialists and in particular Natural Selection which was a personal favorite with its interesting gameplay & setting. In recent years Half-life: Echoes has been a standout, along with Caged, Year Long Alarm & Azure sheep among others.

[h3]Do you accept pineapple on pizza or are you against it?[/h3]
I will always accept pineapple placed atop a delicious pizza, especially on a sourdough base.

Craig Mirfin

[h3]Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective.[/h3]
Hi, my name is Craig Mirfin and in my spare time, I am a Level Designer on Black Mesa. I joined the team over 5 years ago mainly to work on the Multiplayer map Bounce and then moved from multiplayer to start on the daunting task of creating the Xen Levels.

My day job is as a Senior Level Designer at Studio Gobo working on AAA games like For Honor and the recently released Hyperscape. I really do owe this position to working on Black Mesa, not only giving me the chance to work with a great team of people but to prove to myself that I could do level design as a career. It's been a hell of a ride these last 10 years but so worth it. Crowbar Collective. About That Beer I Owe You! :)

[h3]What do you enjoy the most about Black Mesa?[/h3]
It allows me to relive Half-Life with a new coat of paint :) Hopefully playing Blackmesa feels like you are playing the old Half-Life with those rose-tinted glasses off, yet still getting the same buzz from the game. It's a testament to the talent in the team to ship what a lot of people thought wasn't doable.

[h3]What was the most challenging hurdle that was overcome during development in your role?[/h3]
When I first started fleshing out the first few Xen maps it was extremely time-consuming with how displacements work and how to smooth subdivide them. As Xen is mainly organic, you couldn't really rely on the traditional BSP method of creating environments. We were really just trying to find how far we could push displacements. After the first year of Xen development we doubled the number of displacements we could have, which not only allowed us more flexibility but also kept us away from hitting displacement limits on a daily basis. Also, a huge hurdle jumped was with subdividing displacements. At the start a Xen map would still take 10 hours to subdivide until we began working with Wormwall which reduced this to minutes, resulting in a huge increase in productivity.

[h3]How did you get involved with Black Mesa (If you joined later on?)[/h3]
I had spent 3 long years prior creating a 5 map L4D2 campaign and after a little break after releasing this I wanted to get back on the Hammer horse and luckily Crowbar were looking for Level Designers, I applied as I love creating maps. It was only after I got the gig that I was told the team had been greenlit to go commercial. I soon moved from multiplayer to Xen.

[h3]What was your first experience with Half-Life?[/h3]
I had just been given a 486 PC from work and the IT guy gave me a copy of this game called Half-Life... I was hooked. Little did I know that would be my route into Game Dev as a career years later.

[h3]Any recommendations for people wanting to get into game design?[/h3]
I think if you feel it's too late to get into game design then think again. I got into game dev very late in life (I was about 44 :E) If you're passionate about game design then do something off your own back, be it a game jam, modding project, or be actively testing a project. Doors open, you make great contacts and things happen. The key thing is to enjoy what you do and never give up. If someone is better than you... so what.. try and learn, don't be afraid to ask questions and aim to get better. Never let that put you off. Always leave your ego at the door and your passion for what you do will shine through. All the above is still true if you're just starting out What are you waiting for? They're waiting for you in the Test Chamberrrrr.

[h3]Was there ever a time you were close to giving up and quitting?[/h3]
Yes. Working full time and then in your spare time, takes its toll on your mental health, family, and friends. It's a huge commitment but I hope this has paid off with what the team has achieved.

[h3]When did your interest in game development begin?[/h3]
A very very long time ago. As a kid I was hooked playing games, it was a way to let my imagination go wild. I used to write small games on a ZX81 and then later ZX Spectrum. Got into modding Duke Nukem on the build engine in my early 20s, then got into the Hammer Editor and never looked back.

[h3]Anything you would want to add to Black Mesa?[/h3]
When designing the temporary science base in Xen map 1, I always wanted to add a tiny glimpse of human life via some kind of transmission from Kleiner on a screen. Just to add a little human narrative in what is a chapter devoid of human contact. Nothing that would outstay its welcome but I felt by the time you got to the polytunnels it would have been a nice call back to the science team on earth. Maybe Ill add this as a Mod at some point that could lead onto a small side narrative to flesh out the base a little more.

[h3]Any movies or other games besides Half-Life you took inspiration from during development for your role specifically?[/h3]
The science polytunnels were inspired by watching the Martian. I wanted them to have this vulnerability as the film had. It was a simple design that worked well with what shapes I was trying to create. I worked closely with Spencer and luckily we were on the same page with the design. I did intend it to be bigger but it was easy to get distracted from the main star which is Xen. Fun fact, I designed the little white Xen creature containers based on the scene in the film Evolution. That underground cave in the film always reminded me of what Xen should look like and they had cool science gear that fitted well with the black mesa style. Also, the tripods and theodolites are a call back to when I used to be a Civil Engineer as I did a lot of surveying and thought it was the kind of low tech that the science team would have.

[h3]How does the development pipeline work between the LDs, artists, and audio engineers?[/h3]
I think the Level design on Black Mesa is a little different from a normal industry studios approach. Most Level Designers (LD) would only really block out and then pass to Level Artists (LA) but with Black Mesa, there's enough art already in-game that the designers can set dress a level to a very high standard. This is more of a modding mentality that I personally think helps bridge the LD/LA gap. Its something Ive really pushed for in my daytime LD work which has proven to be a very positive thing.

Kevin Sisk

[h3]Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective.[/h3]
Hello, my name is Kevin Sisk, and I was initially brought onto in late January 2007 to voice the security guard NPCs in Black Mesa.
Over time, I slowly branched out into other departments and lent a helping hand. Departments such as:

- Audio Editing for the Character(s) Dialog,
- Sound Design here and there for things like the overhead vox systems, the retinal scanner (one of my favs), etc
- Recorded some alien voices/SFX, etc.
- Worked bunch on the in-game scenes /choreography,
- Even have done a bit of 3d modeling for a few things.
Oh yeah, I also voiced the Gman...tee hee.

[h3]What software did you use for your work?[/h3]
For straight-up voiceover editing, I typically used Adobe Audition 3.0, and FLStudio for some of the more electronic-based sound design bits I did on the project.

[h3]Do you accept pineapple on pizza or are you against it?[/h3]
All I know is my gut says "maybe"

[h3]How often do you watch youtube videos/Twitch streams of Black Mesa?[/h3]
Pretty often. I always look for YouTubers who have never experienced the Half-Life saga in any shape or form. Im always surprised to see when someone decides to play "Black Mesa" first instead of Half-Life then goes straight into Half-Life 2 afterward.

I suppose this is a testament to the good word-of-mouth that Black Mesa gets for being a respectful recreation of the original even though we put our spin on things in quite a few places.

That said, I would encourage ppl to play the original HL at some point, so as to better understand and appreciate the historical significance it brings to the first person shooter genre, and how far the HL series has come since that first outing.

[h3]Any favorite mods for Half-Life games?[/h3]
The Hunger" was a favorite of mine back in the day. Good zany zombie-killing fun.

[h3]What kind of microphones & preamps were used to record your vocals?[/h3]
For Microphones, I used an MXL 990 condenser which currently interfaces with a Focusrite 2I2 USB Preamp.

In the earlier days, the 990 would have instead plugged into a Behringer Eurorack 1202 analog mixer and then that mixers output went into an M-Audio Delta 1010LT sound card.

It was good for the regular conversation type vo and shouting loudnesses, but the noise floor on the mixer made the more whispery stuff a little tough to handle in post. Once I got the Focusrite though, the newer recordings had like 15+ dB less noise overall and made my life a lot easier.



BOOM. HEADSHOT.
NOW - ISH (2018)



THEN (2009)

Shawn Olson

[h3]Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective.[/h3]
I got into Half-Life and Counter-Strike when they first came out. I immediately got into level design in Worldcraft and modeling in 3ds Max. I made several CS maps for my local gaming group over the years and moved to Hammer when Source came out. My desire to make some more artistic levels was hindered by the unfriendly tools in Source. Fixing what I felt to be a broken pipeline turned into a decade-long adventure of creating Wall Worm, becoming the technical artist on Black Mesa and Product Owner at Autodesk for 3ds Max.

Im a family man who doesnt really watch much TV or even play many different games. I have been playing the same set of multiplayer games for decades now (CS and Battlefield mostly, though recently Pubg too). The way I see it is that a game doesnt get boring just because its old--just like basketball never gets old for me. I play CS with my family and close friends; if Im not playing with people I actually know, my interest wanes quickly. When it comes to single-player games, I get more enjoyment from creating games than from playing them.

At Black Mesa, my role ranges from building pipeline tools between 3ds Max and Source to making some assets here and there, assisting other artists to complete their tasks and teaching teammates how to use various functions and workflows.



[h3]What do you enjoy the most about Black Mesa?[/h3]
There are many things that I love about Black Mesa. For me, as cool as Black Mesa is, the game itself pales in comparison to the opportunities it gave me. Most importantly, Ive made some great friends. Professionally, Black Mesa helped add a higher level of legitimacy to my work with Wall Worm in the eyes of a wider audience. Black Mesa gave me the opportunity to learn to work with others in a way I had not really done before; facing the challenges of working with a remote group of talented but wildly diverse personalities was a valuable experience for me.

[h3]What was the most challenging hurdle that was overcome during development in your role?
Hammer.[/h3]

One of the things I hoped to accomplish when I was hired in 2015 was to move the whole team to a 3ds Max pipeline that did not use Hammer. While I was well acquainted with the Source communitys deep attachment to Hammer, I naively expected it would be different on our team. As it turned out, I was never able to get our level designers to embrace 3ds Max. They saw the value in what the artists were doing with Max by sculpting the landscapes, but for one reason or another, the level designers did not want to make the leap.

So we settled on a hybrid pipeline of Hammer to Max to Hammer. The challenge for me was that I knew the file formats, capabilities, and limitations of both Hammer and Max better than anyone else--so knowing that the hybrid method of constantly round-tripping exported data was not ideal weighed on me all the time. Iteration was severely hampered because of this, in my opinion. This was probably the greatest frustration I had.

Eventually, I gave in to the reality that the setup we had was not going to change. It worked well enough for the rest of the team to be satisfied, and some of the conventions we developed did make it a little more smooth over time. Learning to accept that was a valuable lesson for me--you may believe you have the right way to do something, but there are always many ways to skin a cat. In the end, we were able to make a game that we all get to share pride in.

[h3]What software did you use for your work?[/h3]
3ds Max.

[h3]Did you go to school for your respective parts of the project?[/h3]
No. I actually dropped out of high school. There are many paths to education. I dont recommend that path for all people, but the only thing you really need for most fields is a willingness to learn and make yourself better. If you really want to learn and you set goals for yourself, you can learn what you need to succeed. Education should be seen as a lifelong journey.

[h3]Any recommendations for people wanting to get into game design?[/h3]
Just do it. It seems cliche, but thats my view on a great many things. You learn by doing things. Thats how Ive always approached everything. Its also what Ive tried to instill in all of my children. My son wanted to be a fitness trainer Im glad he just decided to do it! The same principle certainly applies to games.


[h3]How did you resist getting burnt out over such a long development process for Xen?[/h3]
I started in 2015, so I didnt have to wait as long as most of the other members. For the most part, I didnt have to resist burnout. Even with a few frustrations, I felt lucky to be part of the Black Mesa adventure. Working with creative people invigorates me. And the guys became my friends. Below is a picture of Brian Dale and I visiting the Wright Patterson Airforce Museum together.

Brian Dale

[h3]Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective.[/h3]
Ive been with the team from the beginning. Im the 2nd oldest (was the oldest until Craig joined). I originally started as a concept artist and that role changed many times over the years. I eventually moved to a 3d artist/ environmental artist.

[h3]What do you enjoy the most about Black Mesa?[/h3]
Learning how to do new things and meeting a bunch of cool artists over the years.

[h3]What was the most challenging hurdle that was overcome during development in your role?[/h3]
My lack of personal time to work on things usually around the holidays due to my real job and having to shoehorn things into an outdated engine.

[h3]What software did you use for your work?[/h3]
Photoshop, Substance Painter, Quixel suite, 3DS max, silo3d, World Machine, and blender.

[h3]What was your first experience with Half-Life?[/h3]
The original game that came out in 1997.
Did you go to school for your respective parts of the project? No, I am in the medical field. I started working on the mod as a hobby.

[h3]Any recommendations for people wanting to get into game design?[/h3]
Start using a 3d modeling program and practice, practice, practice. You should also learn to use a substance painter. Start small and work your way up to more complex things. Do your own mods of things and dont expect to get paid or have success. Expect to fail a bunch and learn how to do something better because you learned what NOT to do. Also, learn to take CONSTRUCTIVE criticism and change your work.

[h3]How did you resist getting burnt out over such a long development process for Xen?[/h3]
I had to treat it like a job sometimes which was difficult when it was just a free mod. When it became a commercial project, I really had to treat it like a job (even though I have a full time plus job). I worked most of my vacations to get my stuff done. Sometimes you have to just walk away from the computer for a week or 2 and then go back and keep plugging away.

[h3]If you had unlimited time, money, and help, what game would you make?[/h3]
A game similar to BF 2142 and something along the lines of X-wing series. Would love to remake wing commander in the style of the box art from the original.

Spencer Rose

[h3]Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective.[/h3]
Hey, I'm Spence! I have been working off and on with the team since 2005 when the project was in its very early days as a Half-Life 2 mod. I had a small amount of experience making maps for Half-Life and initially joined the team as a level designer. My earlier work is found in Black Mesa Inbound, Surface Tension, and On A Rail where I built level geometry and re-imagined a few puzzles and gameplay spaces. In more recent years I've worked as an artist, supporting the team for the Surface Tension Uncut and Xen updates. Now, I continue to contribute as a principal artist for experimental and upcoming projects.

Outside of Black Mesa, I've contributed to two other games built on the Source engine, and as an independent developer, I've contributed to a handful of other game-related projects and teams. If you want to know more about my work or my contributions to Black Mesa you can check out my portfolio website at commonspence.com.

Aside from games and digital art, some of my other biggest interests and hobbies are photography, model-building, and traveling. I love new foods, different languages, and meeting all types of people from all over the world!

[h3]What do you enjoy most about Black Mesa?[/h3]
Working with the team over the years has been rewarding. Everyone has an infectious enthusiasm and Im constantly able to learn new things and grow as a developer, which is one of the best aspects.
Also, all of the feedback from players and fans is incredibly motivating! So much work on Black Mesa was borne out of genuine love for Half-Life, and its an honor to have contributed in some small ways.

[h3]What was the worst part of developing Black Mesa in your role?[/h3]
The pure volunteer nature of the project was a help and a hindrance at some points. In the early days, we were all working in our spare time and for the fun of it. That's not always sustainable, especially when it comes to fixing bugs, design revisions, or things that might not be as fun.

In more recent years, as an artist, it was difficult working with the Source engine while concurrently working on other projects in Unreal 4 or Unity. You become very conscious of the limitations and workflow differences between the engines and find yourself wishing for something that combines the best of all of them.

[h3]Did you go to school for your respective parts of the project?[/h3]
I've attended four different schools throughout my time working on Black Mesa - and only graduated from one of them, well after I began working on the project ;)
I never expected to go into a career doing creative things with computers, and the ways I spent my time and efforts in school reflect this.

After years of working on games and studying other things, I returned to university and graduated in 2016 with a BSc in Creative Technologies. It's only loosely related to the work I contributed to Black Mesa, but the course did better prepare me to take on other roles and think across different disciplines as an independent developer.

[h3]What would you be doing if you werent part of the Crowbar Collective team?[/h3]
It's anyone's guess, but most likely working on other games or content for them. If I had pursued my earlier career ambitions, then I'd probably be flying or driving some kind of vehicle - or, alternatively, building physical things instead of digital things.

[h3]Was there ever a time you were close to giving up and quitting?[/h3]
I have come and gone from the team on multiple occasions - I think anyone that works on a project over the course of ~15 years will feel like giving up or quitting at some point, especially considering the volunteer nature of the team for many years.

Leaving the team to work on other projects or develop new skills has allowed me to take on new challenges and roles on each return. While I think it's been beneficial (and necessary) from a personal perspective, I think that it's allowed me to make better contributions to the team as well.

[h3]How much does using Wallworm improve workflow in the Source engine?[/h3]
It's safe to say that the art process for Xen would have been impossible if it wasn't for these tools. The Source engine is not particularly artist-friendly as it is - before switching over to the Wallworm tools, I was using a series of batch files and scripts to compile models and materials. There were a lot of points of failure and a lot of manual effort required to create art assets - not to mention an entire scene.
While the tools don't (and can't) solve all of the workflow issues with Source, they do offer a much smoother "pipeline" to work with. What used to be a lengthy process of preparing and compiling assets can now be done in a few clicks, greatly accelerating things - and also reducing frustration for artists, an important consideration :)

Creating and compiling models is only part of the process - one of the other strengths of the tools is the ability to work directly with map geometry and create entire levels through the modeling program. In this case, we did a lot of terrain sculpting and object placement in 3dsmax, which is far easier than it would have been in Hammer editor.

We were also able to take clusters of props, merge them, and perform boolean operations to remove the parts that would be occluded by geometry or otherwise hidden in-game. These kinds of workflow improvements allowed us to create levels that were more detailed (and performant) than anything that we could have created with Hammer alone.

All of this allowed us to spend more time with the "fun" (or at least, more creative) parts of starting up the level, and I think that's the most important workflow improvement.

[h3]Any favorite mods for Half-Life games?[/h3]
Are all the classics (Counter-Strike, Team Fortress Classic, and Day of Defeat) still counted as "mods" these days? :)
I've played a lot of single-player mods for Half-Life...Azure Sheep, They Hunger, Point of View, Poke646 were some of my all-time favorites. I played the heck out of Natural Selection and Science and Industry, too!

[h3]If you had unlimited time, money, and help, what game would you make?[/h3]
Probably some type of simulation/construction/management game. I've always wanted to make something like Sim Tower (or more recently, Project Highrise) but in an isometric style, like The Sims. Of course, I don't have unlimited time, money, or help, but I still work on this project from time to time as a way to improve and expand my programming knowledge. There are a lot of challenges to solve when it comes to things like pathfinding and AI, and I still have a lot to learn and many prototypes to build...
More recently, I've been developing some ideas for simulation games based on the industrial revolution, or exploring the lifecycle of coal over 100 or 200 years, through periods of increasing industrialization before an extensive decline. I don't think I'm a particularly skilled designer, but it is fun to build out game ideas drawing on history or the world(s) around us.

[h3]Do you accept pineapple on pizza or are you against it?[/h3]
- Yes, I accept it. Especially if there is bacon or ham on this pizza ^^

Chon Kemp

[h3]Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective.[/h3]
My name's Chon, I'm 28 years old and I'm from London. Im the Lead Level Designer at Crowbar Collective. I mostly make sure all the Level Designers (LDs) cages are stocked with enough food and water to keep them alive and mapping!

Jokes aside, my role at Black Mesa is really split into two prongs here: the Level Designer aspect and the Lead aspect. My attention has been split roughly 50/50 between the two areas across my time in the role.

The first prong of my role is the Level Design side of things. All the LDs have contributed to our game in two overarching capacities. Firstly, each LD has their own set of maps that they realized the majority of the work on, making those maps their babies in a sense. My babies so-to-speak are Surface Tension maps G, H and I, Xen B1 (the Descent-inspired tree), the final map of Gonarchs Lair, map A1 (Gargathon) and all 3 B maps in Interloper. Secondly, every LD has worked on every map in some meaningful way or another; be it design reworks, environment art and polish, scripting, bug fixes, feedback, etc. There wasnt a map in all of Xen that I havent had some influence in or done some work on, and this is true for every LD on the project. I also played a very heavy hand in all the rebalancing and overhauls we did for the 1.0 release of Earthbound. Because of all these things together, us LDs are basically the everymen of the team.



The second prong of my role is the Lead side of things. In this capacity, my role is about defining specific tasks and milestones for the LDs/maps, and also making sure that every LD has what they need to get their current set of tasks done. Game development is a highly collaborative process, and Level Design is probably the most collaborative field within it. This is because we bring together everything made by all the other talented and amazing departments, while simultaneously designing the maps core gameplay and layouts. Thus, a lot of the time I wind up coordinating with the other department Leads (art, sound, animation, etc) or individuals within those departments, to make sure things get done properly based around whats currently needed; simultaneously making sure that anything we do add serves our gameplay and design purposes.

Feedback and direction plays a huge role in this. Literally anyone can give feedback, but giving good, relevant, actionable feedback in a concise and easy to understand way is a significant obstacle, particularly across an online team. A major part of my role is ensuring that I give LDs good, clear feedback on their work that continues to advance the game and get it closer to being finished. I also wind up giving other departments lots of feedback too, as we work together so much. As part of that same process, its also my job to decide what feedback we choose to take from the community. You guys are absolutely chock full of brilliant suggestions and are constantly finding creative (or depressingly simple!) ways to completely break our game, and I serve as the LDs way of sifting through it.



But thats not to imply that LDs have no say in the matter! One of my great prides as the Lead LD on Black Mesa is that I think weve struck a perfect balance between direction/management and autonomy/freedom. Our LDs are free to alter the maps in any way that they see fit outside of the Leads feedback/directives as well, and we are always open to new and interesting ideas from anyone. But at the same time, I feel that I am able to provide a solid sense of direction and purpose to LDs, which helps keep the ball rolling. Im really proud of it!



[h3]How did you get involved with Black Mesa (If you joined later on)?[/h3]
I started out among the modding community for Black Mesa all the way back in 2012, when Black Mesa itself was a mod. I ended up making 2 mods for it called Surface Tension Uncut and On a Rail Uncut, which aimed to restore map sections that the Black Mesa Team had cut out of their interpretations of those respective chapters.

At the time, I was an absolute mega-fan of Black Mesa. I must have played it all the way through AT LEAST 10 times or more, and evangelized it to ALL my friends! This stemmed from me being a huge fan of Half-Life in general and also of the Source modding community in general. My only previous experience in Level Design had been making crappy Counter-Strike maps to play with my friends, as well as some maps for another Source mod called The Hidden. Being such a huge fan of Black Mesa and having played it so much with the original for comparison, I had come to appreciate the brilliance of its Level Design and was fascinated by how they had re-interpreted this very basic old world!

I remember the idea of Surface Tension Uncut came to me one day when playing through Surface Tension in Half-Life. I got to a section that wasnt in Black Mesas interpretation. It was an extremely blank and open section with no detail or real thought put into it, and it had a bounce pad going to the upper floor of this giant concrete structure. And I suddenly thought hey, this bit would look really cool in Black Mesa as a destroyed car park. As I continued to play through, I realized that none of these Surface Tension maps had made the cut and that their humans vs aliens scripted combat was something that Black Mesa had sorely been missing. I just couldnt get the idea of that destroyed car park out of my head, so I just...fired up Hammer and started trying to make it.



I managed to put together the car park and some of its surrounding areas. Ive always been very reserved (shocking for a game developer, Im sure!), but at that moment I felt proud enough of myself to want to share what Id done with others. So I just whacked together a thread on the Black Mesa Forums showcasing a couple of crappy Hammer screenshots of it, saying that it was part of my idea to bring back cut parts. The response was amazing and supportive! The people who replied had loads of interesting things to say, and I started to engage with the conversation, and I found myself getting totally sucked into it!

The rest is history! The community was vastly supportive and offered me so much fantastic feedback and conversation throughout development. I will always be appreciative of everything they did for me. Thats something which has continued to this day, as you guys have continued to support our entire team through thick and thin.

When I finished On a Rail Uncut towards the middle of 2013, I was approached by the Black Mesa team and asked to hop on board to help develop some maps for an upcoming multiplayer component. How could I ever have turned that down?! For a fanboy such as myself, there was no greater honor, and I remember feeling at the time as if they must have overlooked hundreds of far more talented Level Designers in favor of me, something which humbled me and made me strive to do the best I possibly could. After I joined the team, I was told that Black Mesa was actually now going to be sold as a retail product and that the team had some big plans in store. It was all just...so surreal and incredible. I dont know where I got my immense luck from, but Im thankful for it all!



I became the Lead Level Designer towards the end of 2018, in the thick of our insanely challenging Xen development. I helped see Xen through to the end, through what was a very tough time for the team. It remains (and likely always will) the single proudest achievement of my entire life. Its not perfect, but its ours. And its wonderful.

[h3]Did you go to school for your respective parts of the project?[/h3]
I learned how to do Level Design by simply opening Hammer one day at the age of 15 and trying to make a map of my house for Counter-Strike: Source (which I was borderline addicted to at the time). As I hit obstacles that I couldnt figure out myself, I consulted internet tutorials for my specific problems, often in the form of random YouTube videos or forum threads on Source modding forums. I thoroughly enjoyed the process of making the map, so I just kept trying to make better and better maps, and that was how I got into Level Design for real eventually, modding for Black Mesa.

Game design (like most forms of art) has so many different ways that you can approach it from a learning perspective. It really does come down entirely to who you are as a person and how best you learn. For me, learning by doing was the most effective approach, and is one I would wholeheartedly recommend to anyone who is capable of learning in this manner. I loved being able to take things at my own pace, not having to listen to long-winded explanations of basic things that I was able to puzzle out just by mucking around in the editor. I made my own mistakes and took my own lessons from them, forcing myself to stay honest along the way. Sometimes they might have been the wrong lessons, but thats how life works sometimes!

There were some downsides to this approach, however. In the past, I mostly mapped by feel and by the seat of my pants, and I think it showed in a lot of my early work. Across my time in development, I learned to think a lot more like a proper designer: puzzling and planning things out better and with the bigger gameplay picture in mind. Being able to hone in better on the player direction and encounter design, knowing what works and doesnt work. I think if Id gone to a school to learn about the process of Level Design, I might have been able to get a head start on learning some of these basic principles a lot sooner. Theres an absolute ton of merit to learning Game Design in a school too, but that wasnt the way that worked best for me, and Im glad I took the route I did!

[h3]What software did you use for your work?[/h3]
I almost exclusively use Hammer, which is typical for the Source engine, as its the only Level Design tool. As such, it is also pretty much the final vanguard of the old-school Level Design tools. Its a vastly different workflow and toolset to what any modern game uses, such as those on the Unreal Engine or Unity. Hammer is heavily designer-driven compared to more modern workflows, which I would say are often more artist-driven now.



In an attempt to bridge the gap between the Absolutely Ancient Software and modern tools, most of the LDs (myself included) dabbled in a bit of 3DS Max and Wallworm. Wallworm is an amazing tool developed by our resident superstar Shawn Olson that allows 3DS Max to read and write to Hammers VMF format, among a million other amazing things. This allows us to use 3DS Max for Level Design and Environment Art, giving us the benefits of many different kinds of modern workflow despite our ancient engine.

Truth be told, I didnt use Wallworm anything like as much as I should have. I mostly used it to import and subdivide displacements (the natural-looking geometry from which outdoor environments are built-in Source). It would take 18+ hours to run the subdivision process for an entire map in Hammer, but ~30 seconds in 3DS Max! The subdivision process was something we often had to re-run any time we made some kind of meaningful layout change, so this saved us vast amounts of time across the whole of development. Im not exaggerating when I say we would not have finished Xen without this tool. Our artists made far, far greater use of it than the LDs did, too!



As a Lead, I also made pretty extensive use of Google Docs and Paint 3D to provide feedback and art/design direction to the Level Designers and other departments too. My drawing skills are absolutely horrendous, but luckily, Ive always been able to make do with very ugly scribbles over screenshots, coupled with a lot of text. As this Q+A has probably already shown, Im no stranger to writing a lot!

[h3]What do you enjoy the most about Black Mesa?[/h3]
Please allow me to gush for a minute here. I think Black Mesa is the most fascinating and interesting remake of any video game ever, period. I felt this before I had even joined the team myself!

There arent many remakes that have the balls to drastically change things from the original and put their own spin on it. Thats because, typically, thats not really what remakes are meant to do, and not why fans would play them. And theres nothing wrong with that at all, either! But, Black Mesa is so unique because it is a fan reinterpretation of an absolutely beloved classic; one of the greatest shooters of all time, one which changed the genre forever. It would have been so much easier to play it safe(r) and just stick with a graphical remastering. Instead, it became its own beast, with its own identity and strengths and weaknesses, but still the distinct flavor of the original.

Sometimes we go quite close to the original. Sometimes we go completely wild and do something totally different (case in point: Xen). Sometimes it works, and perhaps sometimes it doesnt. Everyones going to have a different opinion on that particular aspect! And thats whats so fun about it. I think anyone who plays our game has a list of things they preferred in our game over the original, and a list of things they preferred from the original. That facilitates some really interesting discussion. We dont really aim to replace the original or one-up it. I view us as a companion piece to the original. They elevate each other. And thats really awesome, in my view.



And the best part is, regardless of what you liked or didnt like, theres really no denying that this game is the truly ultimate fan labor of love. The team worked for free on this for more than 8 years before the prospect of money even became a discussion. It was never even on the cards until Valve approached us. Then, when the product actually did go retail, we poured our hearts and souls into making Xen this epic, huge experience; attempting to build an awesome, original piece of new Half-Life content. A real swan song to the Half-Life universe. At the time, we were not aware that Valve was going to make Half-Life: Alyx. We were trying to use Xen to honor that universe in our own special way.

On top of that, we even went back and revisited numerous parts of Earthbound, making continuous tweaks and bugfixes, ending up with a version of the game which is vastly improved over the mod version in so many ways that I think fans werent really expecting or even asking for. In an alternate world, we probably could have just made our own version of Xen relatively close to the original, released the mod version as-is coupled with Xen as the retail product on Steam, and still have been fine overall. But we didnt do that. We chose the harder path. We worked on the game for 7 years after we had gone Early Access. And it was because we loved our game and we loved the Half-Life universe and wanted to do something special with this amazing opportunity we were given.

All games have had blood, sweat and tears poured into them by a developer team who loves what theyre doing. That isnt something unique to Black Mesa, really. But I do think that Black Mesa is a particularly special and beautiful example of that!

[h3]How did you resist getting burnt out over such a long development process for Xen?[/h3]
When a project has gone on this long and been this challenging, burnout is really just an inevitability. We have all been through it, a lot. That is doubly true for those of us on the team who work full-time jobs in addition to Black Mesa, such as myself. Throughout the majority of Xen development, my daily routine on the team was to work 9 - 5 at my full-time job, and then come home and work on Black Mesa until ~1am, then repeat across the week, often with one day on the weekend thrown in too. I worked like this for literally years. It was even tougher during the crunch periods (leading up to releases), where Id normally work the whole weekend too. It was really tough!

I think theres one key factor that kept everyone on the team going despite these kinds of schedules. We have always loved what we are doing and believed in our game and believed in us as a team. I think anyone on the team will tell you the same thing. We are all driven by passion. Thats why Black Mesa even existed in the first place. Passion, and determination. Its helped pull us out of some of those dark tunnels when the going has gotten tough. Which it has done on many occasions!

When even that passion wasnt enough, my solution was usually to just take some time off until I felt I had the creative juices flowing well enough again to come back to it. This typically would happen when someone on the team shared something cool or asked for input, or a new task emerged that needed some help, which was never that far around the corner. Working on some of those new things would help ease me back into the flow again, and would help me overcome whatever I might have been stuck on.

The other massive thing which has always helped was the incredible support and response from the community. There have always been naysayers and mean/negative voices out there (and I have read them more than most on the team!), but they are mostly drowned out by those who have loved what weve done, and believed in us and our game. We cant thank them enough.

[h3]How often do you watch youtube videos/Twitch streams of Black Mesa?[/h3]
All the time! Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes its a beautiful experience. But its always necessary and important for us to learn as designers!

Often a player will get hopelessly stuck on a section of the game, and then Ill watch them go down the wrong path, press use repeatedly on everything in sight except the thing they can actually use, completely miss the answer thats right in front of them, and just entirely not understand something that we poured loads and loads of effort into carefully designing and refining. Without meaning to, sometimes Ill even feel annoyed about it as I watch! But I always end up reminding myself: we made this game for the players. Half-Life style design is unique in that almost every single element of the gameplay is exclusively communicated through the environment. If a player struggles with something, thats almost always on us. Room to improve!

On the flip side, there are also many times where Im watching streams or videos of our game and a moment or section of the map just lands perfectly. The stars will line up, and a scene will unfold exactly as we designed it, to the letter. Or the player will give off a wonderful reaction of excitement or enjoyment, or just stop to marvel at the visuals, or will comment on something we spent ages working on; even really small obscure details. Its seeing those moments play out for others and provide them with enjoyment/a good experience that makes me feel proud to be a game designer, and proud to have worked on this project. Ultimately, we just want others to have a fun and memorable experience!



Its that mixed bag that makes this art! It is really valuable to have the ability to see which things worked and didnt work for players, across such a wide spectrum of people. And this is only a relatively recent tool that has become available to us, I would say even within the last 10 years. So its a tool that we appreciate and use across the whole team. On the team, we are often sharing playthroughs and streams of our game, and discussing them among ourselves. Why someone got stuck here, what didnt work here and why, and what we can do about it in a future update. This was particularly valuable for us during the early betas throughout Xens development. It helped make us better and helped us make a better game.

[h3]If you had unlimited time, money, and help, what game would you make?[/h3]
You know those escape rooms where you have to solve puzzles to get out of a room youre trapped in, before the timer expires? Id make one of those, but with the entire Black Mesa Research Facility. Id pay thousands of skilled actors to portray the entire resonance cascade, and wed build an entire Black Mesa experience in real life. The facility is just so bloody cool and Gordons journey across it is honestly my favorite of any video game ever. Id love to just walk the length of it. We probably couldnt do Xen, though, unfortunately...

Funny story thats sort of tangentially related to this. Back when I first started working on Black Mesa, I needed to set up a business bank account so I could keep the money separate from my other income sources. I, therefore, had to do an interview with a business representative at the bank. She was really nice to me, but she seemed to know very little about computers in general and even less about video games. I really struggled to explain to her what Level Design was, as I couldnt even get her to understand what 3D assets were! She interpreted my explanation (which Im sure probably wasnt very good!) to mean that I actually built locations from video games out into the real world. I showed her a picture of dm_gasworks, and she asked me how long it took to build that in real life! Im sure it was no fault of hers, but that misinterpretation always stuck with me as being really funny! And thus, that was what inspired my stupid idea above.



[h3]What would you be doing if you werent part of the Crowbar Collective team?[/h3]
Crying myself to sleep every night over how hollow and meaningless my life really is.

Actually, I guess it would be the same!

Chetan Jaggi


[h3]Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective.[/h3]
My name is Chetan Jaggi. I am the Lead Programmer. I am from India. I joined the team in 2015. I love video games & anime. In the last couple of years, I have developed a new hobby of killing myself in the gym & I love it very much.

[h3]When did your interest in game development begin?[/h3]
12th Grade.
I used to be an outdoor person. I used to play a lot of cricket, (& little bit soccer) and yea video games in the arcades.
During that time in India most of the science students would either pick a doctor or an engineering degree after school. I was always fascinated by physics. I used to watch all those afternoon shows about space and time on the Discovery Channel after school.
I liked programming as well, I enjoyed making small webpages in HTML and programs in c++. I was making small games in c++ like hangman, tic tac toe (it eventually evolved into a 10K+ lines monster), etc.

Before 12th grade in school, I always thought games like Street Fighter, Doom, Mario, etc were alien tech, aliens come in their little ships and drop them off on this planet for us to enjoy.
Even the internet was new for us in those times. I used to update Windows XP sp1/2/3 on a dialup connection (fun times). Eventually, in that year I came to know about Hammer/Steam and the fact that Half-Life 2 has been made in c++ and something called Directx9. Only then I realized the full potential of C++ or programming in general. I was already pretty comfortable with C++ and Half-life 2 sealed my fate.

I have already developed a fairly big text-based tic tac toe game in dos based turbo c++ 3.0 with an option to play against AI or 2nd player on the same pc. It was 10K + lines code written on pieces of paper and then typed into turbo c++ during many cybercafe sessions backed up over 10 times in 2 floppy disks. This was before my parents bought me a PC. It was exciting throughout the development and when I showed it to others & teachers my excitement was off the charts. So I had a little bit of experience of what I am getting myself into and seemed like the best option moving forward.

Although my initial interest and learning efforts were spent more in learning hammer making maps, etc but I was good at programming and there were almost 0 jobs for a level designer or game designer during those times so I focused more on programming later in the college.

[h3]Did you go to school for your respective parts of the project?[/h3]
I have a bachelors degree in computer science but I learned absolutely nothing in college that helped me either on Black Mesa or any other job/project.

During my early 20s, it was sorta necessary to have a degree to get a job at any decent company so like millions of other teenagers I also prepared for entrance exams for engineering college and enrolled in one of them. But by the end of 1st year, I came to a realization that I would be learning absolutely nothing that would help me with game development or becoming a better programmer in general. The Education system was not that great and I was a little bit selfish about how I wanted to spend my time.

So I bunked a lot of classes, spent some of that time trying to learn about game development and the rest of it playing CS/TF2, etc & calling everyone on the server noobs.

I tried to learn about game development as much as possible, whether making small maps in Half-Life 1 hammer or making small games in turbo c++ (dos based c++). I made sure my grades/marks were decent in both internal and external exams to secure a decent degree and keep teachers happy. Some of my teachers including the head of our dept were supportive/helpful even with bad attendance so that helped a lot as well.

I was initially more interested in level design and hammer things, I spent countless hours experimenting with maps, making face masks for HL NPC, photoshop, 3ds max, etc, but there was no job other there for a level designer or a game designer back then, there were very limited options even for a game programmer. So I focused more on programming later in college.

[h3]Any recommendations for people wanting to get into Game Development?[/h3]
First of all, play a lot of games of different types and genres. Spend enough time in each game to understand why it's good or bad. You should be able to explain in detail why you like or dislike a game. Try check reviews/general feedback of some of those games and try to understand what others like or dislike about it etc.


Learn at least one technical skill whether its programming, concepts in Photoshop, animation in a 3d software like max/Maya, etc Try to be as good as in it as possible. At the end of the day everyone on the development team will contribute as a designer but most of the time you will be hired based on your technical skills. So pick at least one and master it. It will take some time and a lot of hard work but you will get there eventually.
Try to get into modding, many games have a developer or modding SDKs. Pickup the SDK for your favorite game and start experimenting with it both for learning game design and developing technical skills. If you are interested in game design try modifying gameplay in some way whether its changing damage of guns in a competitive shooter or spells in Dota, just make changes as you see fit and share it with people. Gather feedback and earn what works & what does not.
Just make something whether it's a small game as programmer, concept arts, some animations, etc, whatever make something, put it up on a website, forums and maintain a blog or portfolio website. And with each project try to aim a little bit higher than the previous one to incrementally increase your skills and experience.
Also, don't be afraid to send out resumes or apply for job positions. Maybe follow some of the industry people in your field on Twitter/Linkedin many of them have open DMs sometimes for questions.

[h3]How did you get involved with Black Mesa (If you joined later on)?[/h3]
I was looking for the next job/project in 2015 so I sent a lot of emails including one to crowbar collective since they were looking for people. I got a reply back from the crowbar collective for a Skype interview and I got hired shortly after that.
I always wanted to work on something Half-Life since Half-Life/Doom/StreetFighter was one of the games that inspired me to get into game development. I have tried to get involved with black mesa at least once (if not twice) before and I am happy it all worked out this time. It will take some time and practice but you will learn it eventually. Don't be afraid to reach out but at the same time don't spam anyone either.

[h3]Do you accept pineapple on pizza or are you against it?[/h3]
I think pineapple/chocolate or any sweet/fruit on a pizza is the most sinful sin you can ever commit.

[h3]What was the worst part of developing Black Mesa in your role?[/h3]
Being limited by DirectX9 technology. Theres so much we could have done both in terms of visual quality and performance if we had DirectX 11 support.
We have an amazing art team. You give them 10% improvements in the technology and they would convert it into a 100% improvement in Game quality. There are a lot of small things that have become normal in any current-gen game but we couldn't do it because we were limited by DirectX 9 but in terms of visual quality and performance.

[h3]Any favorite mods for Half-Life games?[/h3]
Ricochet. YES, I LIKED RICOCHET for all of 10 hrs or so I played it.
I played many mods for halflife 2 and I dont even remember most of their names. One of the story based ones was Coastline to Atmosphere that I thought was pretty interesting.
There was one more mod called Synergy that allowed us to play HL2 in coop, it was janky but I played a couple of maps and it was enjoyable.

[h3]Would you rather fight 1 Gargantua sized Headcrab or 100 Headcrab sized Gargantua?[/h3]
I hate bullet sponge bosses so I would say 100 headcrab sized Gargantua.
But if the question was IRL then I would select 1 Gargantua sized headcrab and just hide under the bed all the time ezpz.

[h3]How difficult was the task of reimagining Xen?[/h3]
In terms of technical challenges again we were limited by Dx9 and the engine itself. There were a lot of limitations & old tech, we tried to raise the limits and upgrade a few parts wherever we can but still, it was nowhere near current gen engines or tech.

In terms of game design, I was in charge of both the boss fights with animation lead Nate and we faced a lot of challenges with both Gonarch and Nihilanth.

Gonarch was the first boss battle we worked on and one of the first things we did was revamp the Long Jump mechanics. Ctrl + jump for a long jump only in the forward direction wasnt that fun and it was very limiting in Gonarch. We wanted the player to always keep eyes on the Gonarch while moving around so we would know what he is doing next and the player can react accordingly. Even before Gonarch, we always wanted to improve long jump anyways and it felt like a good time to finally do it during the early phases of Gonarch development.

We changed it so that we have two different boosting mechanics one for horizontal long jump on double tap, in the direction of movement( in any direction), and second to act as a mini air break of sorts to either stop during horizontal long jump or prevent falling damage. Each consumes a certain amount of mana/charge from LongJump(LJ) meter which changes over time at a specific rate.

One of our main goals of the fights was to encourage movement as much as possible. During gonarch battle in both the arenas GonarchA & the final battle in the Lair, it was crucial to use long jump to dodge his attacks or reposition yourself. It was challenging to convey or remind players about the fact that they can Long jump in any direction. Even during our internal testing a lot of times people would forget about that when playing for the first few times. We tried to solve this by adding a long jump puzzle/tutorial in earlier xen levels (although it was a simple straight jump) , added hints on the loading screen and we added a reminder popup in gonarch A. We don't really like to spam cards or text/images on players face but this was one of those moments where it felt necessary.

Another challenge was to encourage players to use RPGs for more damage on gonarch so we spammed RPG ammo crates all over the place as a hint to the player or a subconscious scream USE RPG.

Nihilanth had its own challenges. In HL1 it was a big bullet sponge blob in the center of a room, you spam all your weapons and done. His attacks were very limited as well.
I think the only aspect of Nihilanth that everyone quickly agreed upon was skipping teleportation to different rooms attached or behavior, no one wanted to do that in our version of Nihilanth.

Otherwise, the team was so divided on this boss battle. We did a lot of experimentation and prototyped around 15+ attacks/variants, ranging from spawning waves of minions, 1000 different variations of energy balls, beams, etc Our goal was to make it feel a bit less bullet spongy, encourage movement and teach the player as the fight progresses. We also wanted to keep it a little bit towards the easier side for most of it. Well, it gets all sorts of crazy in phase 4 but it lasts for only 5-10 secs.

One of the biggest concerns was that we are adding a lot of new attacks or behaviors which have never been used in the game before this battle, so players had no idea what is going on whenever they see these new attacks for the first time. Eventually, after a lot of experimentation, we decided to limit the number of different attacks, we added a lot of visual/audio telegraphing and we kept the same attacks for all the phases, we just made them harder to dodge in later phases.

Another thing that took me few attempts to figure out was portals, I wanted to use variations of portals tech for Spawning minion ( so they would walk inside the area through portals instead of usual appearing out of thin air), for spawning those props that are thrown at the player and yea i was considering dropping the moon. But there were a lot of technical challenges and not a lot of time since Nihilanth was one of the last things we worked on before release. But I am happy that after a few prototypes I was on the right path. I got portals for spawning props working without much instability or impact on perf so we shipped that. Also a shoutout to Oleksandr Palamar who did some physics magic during the final hours to polish the actual projectiles logic to make them feel so great.
In the end, it all worked after 1000+ rounds of testing & iterations and we are pretty happy with what we shipped.

Chris Horn

[h3]Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective.[/h3]
Ive been a level designer for Crowbar Collective since the very early days, first starting as an early tester for a friend on the project in late 2005 before joining the team in the middle of 2006 just after the Alpha 5 leak, about 6 months or so into development. Originally it was to add a helping hand in remaking everything again from scratch post leak, but also as I had some interesting tech I thought could be useful for skybox development, and my old modification was winding down at the time. I delayed joining earlier as I was at the time working on a Christmas release Counter Strike Source map CS Xmas. My primary task was to plan and build Questionable Ethics from scratch as it was one of the few chapters that had no development at all on it bar a single concept drawing and some early textures. This later grew into work on Blast Pit, Surface Tension, and various small bits here and there. In mid 2012 to late 2018 I took over as Lead Level Designer in order to design the primary development plans and layouts for Xen, based on earlier prototypes Id been working on, and focused primarily on Gonarchs Lair, Xen and Nihilanth and also drive Multiplayer forward, with Crossfire as my primary DM map. Im currently Xen lead and Senior Developer with a specialization in planning and environmental storytelling. I also designed one of the largest in-game easter eggs I think exists, with the Pizza Code Mystery ARG.

[h3]How difficult was the task of reimagining Xen?[/h3]
Development started on the initial prototyping of Xen way back in 2008, where a few of the team, myself included, started to create some baseline prototypes and map concepts, using my earlier work in Questionable Ethics as a basis. The earliest works included a test map and various prototype props that made it into the mod version of the game.


(the earliest map of Xen c2008 - by me :3)

The planning process for Xen took approx 6 months, which I completed whilst we started to convert the game into a retail project, and took on the task of starting Multiplayer maps and gameplay. The Process for which was a complicated comparison look at the original, beta Xen maps from Valves perforce server and collated old references and original concepts from various wikis and fan sites. I then designed each and every area of Xen to Nihilanth with a focus on progression, links to the original in key areas; maintaining a flow of gameplay towards an end goal, providing an ideo locator in the form of the great tower (a mirror to the Citadel in the Half Life 2 game) and including some of the original cut content, but in a more logical and story driven way (the swamps). The full process and all the reasoning behind every plan detail is far too long to include here, but I will provide a collated plan from my originals to show that the entire section was designed to not overlap and lead linearly from start to finish.

Eventually, we moved on to blocking out the chapters, which at first was a direct overlay conversion from my original drawings, using the numerical notes as a guide.

This was then refined over the next few years as we tested gameplay, cut and redesigned areas based on feedback, before pushing into a full art pass and polish phase at the end.



[h3]Any movies or other games besides Half-Life you took inspiration from during development for your role specifically?[/h3]
The primary games over the years Ive taken inspiration from include titles like Farcry (the original 2006 game), Stalker Shadow of Chernobyl and Call of Pripyat (for Blast Pit), Rainbow 6 Vegas for the ST Dam map and various mixes of labs for Questionable Ethics from games like Quake 2 and 4, Farcry. I have a very large collection of films, but oddly didnt really use any for reference (Apart from Indiana Jones and the Last Cruscade to complete an easter egg a friend came up with in the pub one night). Other references for things came from Kew Gardens and The Eden Project for plant references and my own urban exploration adventures for alot of the early Blast Pit style guides (Tunnels 300ft under the cliffs of Dover and lost napoleonic forts)


(Southforeland Deep Shelter - by Me)

[h3]How far are you planning (or have planned) to go with the ARG?[/h3]
ARGs are interesting things when they spread out from the original intent, originally the ARG was set to be in 3 component parts, the initial beginner puzzles to ease people into it, followed by a single harder puzzle that would unlock an interactive and far harder section, which in turn would then complement the release of Xen with an even harder and more complex section of puzzles. However work constraints and timings as well as the non-continuation of the storyline tie into Multiplayer (which was originally planned to have a storyline built into the environments - you can see the only real public part of that storyline in the multiplayer trailer mock commercial we did).

The ARG itself is now gigantic and very multilayered, as to how far it goes is entirely secret, the complexity may increase or decrease depending on the participants and the future is not entirely set, whilst being both complete and not. It is important to remember that not every mystery can be entirely solved and nor should it, or it ceases to be a mystery. I can say that I already started to plan the final phases of the ARG storyline and that of the Dr Horn character, and it may or may not lead to something big (or even small with big ears). Is there a conclusion - probably. Have we reached it yet - not yet. Is it solvable - for that people will need to construct more than just where Dr Horn has gone, what he has become and how pizzas tie into it, the conclusion will not be the solution but the beginning of an end that starts a new chapter. Its just not that linear and probably full of bugs...

:3*58[-(1.3065321(*50]-9)1(]8;.3[5-5($41538360];32(2?9[608[638255[:904::0[8279-68$]1$10(-9*)60$353$8-*96.87]35)

[h3]Do you accept pineapple on pizza or are you against it?[/h3]
As the world's leading and only authority on Pizza I can confidently answer this question in detail, the conclusion you should all in future refer to as fact. (this is not a democracy, proof is not needed)

Firstly, Pineapple rated in the top 10 pizza toppings according to Huffington Post, now admittedly it was 9th just above Spinach but I digress. More importantly, we have to take into account the use of Pineapple as a foil to flavour, combinations of raw pineapple with cheap ham squares is usually the reason people hate pineapple on pizza. Should you, however, roast the chunks and lightly smash them in order to glaze and release more juices, whilst dulling the acidic edge it can really work well with pulled pork or even pepperoni, as it cuts through the fat without being overwhelming. In short, most of you havent had Pineapple on pizza done well. (This is also an argument that can be made with Marmite, but that is beyond the scope of this factoid).

Many argue from the position of authenticity, claiming that it's not Italian. This is clearly nonsense, as Pineapple existed in Italian cuisine before Pepperoni ever did, and things like Corn and Ranch dressings are hardly traditional. Also I had a delicious Ham and Pineapple pizza in a pizzeria restaurant at 1AM on a hot summer night in the port town of Salerno, stonebaked properly by an authentic Italian pizzaiolo, it was great. (I also had a pizza alla fiorentina, which has the spinach and egg but now I'm starting to reminisce about food... )

In short, it's not only fully acceptable, it's one of the more popular toppings that has sadly become a meme. If you dont like it, dont eat it, all the more for me.

[h3]If you had unlimited time, money, and help, what game would you make?[/h3]
Im a big fan of role playing games like The Elder Scrolls or Zelda. Having played Breath of the Wild recently, and plenty of Skyrim I would love to combine the two gameplay styles with that of a puzzle game like Myst but potentially with a cute style and open quest design system. Im also a big fan of the Silent Hill games, so a horror puzzle game mixed with the Amnesia style system perhaps in VR would be fun.

My biggest problem is scope, when I plan something I tend to plan very big and work down from there rather than expanding into feature creep, but with unlimited time and money the game would have everything, detailed character arcs for every NPC, every book would be readable and have relevance to quests and puzzle solving, there would be an entire library dedicated to helping the player solve some of the puzzles and a little professor living in his observatory to get advice about books and puzzles from. Immersion being the key focus, whilst combat wouldnt be very important at all outside of specific stealth and or story components. The difficulty would be in how hard the puzzles were, and there would be multiple levels of this to choose from.

As with all vast highly detailed story worlds, a trilogy would likely be needed.

Who knows, perhaps this will one day be a thing.


Dr Horn ~ Out.

Matt Young

[h3]Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective.[/h3]
Hi! Im Matt, and Im a 23 year old Environment Artist. I've been contracting with Crowbar Collective since 2017, but I recently came on as a full-time artist in 2020! I was one of the handfuls of people that helped create environment art for the Xen chapters. Recently, Ive been touching up the outdoor environment art for Black Mesa's earth levels, as well as other things Im not allowed to talk about yet!

If youd like to follow me on my art journey, my Twitter is @Matt_in_3D.



[h3]What was your first experience with Half-Life?[/h3]
I found Half-Life before I even hit 10 I was lucky to get my own PC at such an early age. It was from a local universitys surplus exchange where they would liquidate old computers and other electronics, we got it for maybe $20. My family made a habit of going to this surplus every week to dig around for random cheap parts to collect, and one day I ran across a Soundblaster card still in its original box. I opened it to find the driver CD alongside a few demos, one being a Half-Life: Day One disc, so I took it home and tried them all out. Considering I dont recall what the other demos were, Id imagine you can guess which game stuck with me. I still have it!



[h3]When did your interest in game development begin?[/h3]
Ive definitely always had an interest in design. Looking back, I feel like it was accelerated by the games that shipped level editors alongside them. Younger me was so infatuated by these customized toolboxes that I could use to make my own stuff, just like the real developers. With existing assets and endless amounts of time, it was so easy to create new designs or rip apart and study the levels that the developers made. I spent as much time just experimenting in the editors for Starcraft, Trackmania, Pro Skater, Marble Blast, and Age of Empires just as much as I did playing the actual games.

Eventually, I dipped into the larger editors like UE3 and Radiant, so it was only a matter of time before I stumbled across Half-Life 2 and Source SDK. I taught myself Hammer in middle school as my main hobby and eventually started making levels for Garrys Mod in early highschool, which is what led me to meeting and joining the team at PixelTail Games to work on GMod Tower, a social party game for Garrys Mod.

After a few more years of working on GMod Tower designing levels, around the time I finished high school, I realized that I was drawn more towards environment art over level design, and the only way forward was to learn how to model and texture assets for games. Towards the end of GMod Tower and starting development on its spiritual successor Tower Unite, I solidified my modeling skills and created levels inside Unreal 4 (including lots of minigolf courses).

[h3]How did you get involved with Black Mesa (If you joined later on)?[/h3]
I joined at 19, so Im the youngest on the team by a far mile. Before applying, I had played the mod as a fan just like everyone else and was totally blown away at what they had pulled off. I officially came on board at Crowbar Collective as an artist in 2017, but a few years prior, I actually tried to apply as a level designer in 2013 while I was still in high school. Although the team liked my designs, since I was 16, I was turned away because I legally couldnt sign the non-disclosure agreements. However, they encouraged me to apply again later!

After Black Mesas early access launch, Crowbar put out a call for artists to help work on Xen, and I knew it was the right time to apply again Im happy I did! The young puns never stop rolling, but the team has been extremely supportive of my environment art journey over the last few years. I cant thank them enough for the opportunity I was given.

[h3] What do you enjoy the most about Black Mesa?[/h3]
Around the time I joined, I started doing playtests for the Xen and Gonarch levels, which were still in Blockout and disconnected from one another. Youd load up the individual map in the console, play the design experiments, and at the end, you typically got met with a cat texture that shipped with HL2 to signal the ending.



Even though I ran through the game a tiring amount of times, it was such a cool thing to watch the level design come together over time and see those rough concepts get developed into the final overarching flow. I definitely thrive on the energy of a team coming together to create something bigger than any one of us could create alone.

[h3]What software did you use for your work?[/h3]
For Black Mesa, I work exclusively inside 3ds Max using Wallworm Model Tools. Rarely do I ever actually open up Hammer anymore! Most of our materials were authored in Substance Designer / Painter.

[h3]How much does using Wallworm improve workflow in the Source engine?[/h3]
The difference is staggering! Its so easy to sculpt displacements, place foliage, paint blends, and I can create brush systems in a fraction of the time in comparison to Hammer. It sets you up to embrace iteration and get your ideas flowing, rather than getting worked into a corner with complicated brushwork! You can create entire level designs just by plotting down some splines and letting the walls construct themselves. Plus, Wallworm Pro is totally free to download now! Shawn has worked closely with us to make the Source art pipeline faster than it ever has been before.



[h3] What was the most difficult moment for you working on Black Mesa?[/h3]
Even though Wallworm vastly improves how you can approach environment art, working in Source in the modern day when objectively better tech exists requires a special level of patience. At certain points, it can feel like getting things in-game is more difficult than creating the actual art itself. After 10+ years, I can confidently say I equally love and hate Source. Breaking free from Hammer and transitioning into 3ds Max was tough, as I had to throw out deep-rooted habits from my level design years that only really were pertinent for creating BSP, but in the long run was invaluable to developing better mentalities and approaches for creating art.

In terms of the art itself, I think that each chapter of Xen presented its own unique challenges to tackle, but Interloper certainly was a larger one due to the demands of this otherworldly organic art inside an engine thats tailored for the exact opposite circumstances. A lot of it combined fleshy, alien material and bones that were fused to metal parts that level designers created with BSP, so figuring out how to handle the transitions between the hard and fleshy shapes was a challenge for sure. It took a lot of good effort from everyone on the team.

[h3]What do you want to improve about Black Mesa?[/h3]
Ive enjoyed updating up the older outdoor earth sections with new art, so Ill continue to do that until they cut me off! :)

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:

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
We have pushed a build to public beta to test the changes we have made so far for the next update. We have fixed or improved a TON of things in the game, but here is a quick overview:

-New art throughout earthbound to get the natural environment art more on par with Xen

-Full clipping pass to the entirety of the game to prevent getting caught on random environmental obstacles and to allow more smooth navigation
-Fixed weapons not playing animations correctly in multiplayer (pistol, shotgun, tau)
-Improved combat encounters (including fixes to HECU shooting through walls and getting stuck)
-Various improvements to environmental storytelling and scripted sequences
-Lots of fixes to small visual bugs like floating props, missing faces, and holes in map


The game should feel much smoother and more polished.

How to opt into the public beta

Purple Hat Live Stream
Friday, June 26th at 6PM the Black Mesa project lead, Adam Engels, will be running through the game and attempting to get the The Rarest Specimen achievement.

Well be giving away keys to multiple games, including Black Mesa, during the playthrough. Check out Crowbar Collectives Twitch channel for the scheduled stream times!


Multiplayer Public Beta Playtest
The team will be doing a community play session on Thursday, July 2nd at 3PM EST! The goal is to play the game and have fun, but well be tracking any bugs or issues along the way (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).


Black Mesa Game Box and HEV 3D Print
Weve hosted the Black Mesa game box file so that anyone can download it and print one for themselves. Its a large print size, but we are interested in seeing mini versions of the big box :P

We've also host the files for the 3D print of the HEV suit.


Link to Box Print

Link to HEV 3D Print

One Point Five
We have even more for the future 1.5 patch, including:

-A big change to one chapter we are really excited about, but dont want to spoil yet
-UI enhancements and improvements
-Full controller support
-Additional art improvements for chapters, including Interloper
-Continued bug fixes and polish

Well have more updates and reminders soon. If you wanna stay up to date with all things Half-Life, check out our social media links below. If you have technical issues, or just want to chat with the Black Mesa developers and our community, check out our official Discord!



Thanks all! Stay safe and be good to each other.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/

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!

[h3]Try lowering the difficulty[/h3]
Getting frustrated? Just lower the difficulty. No one worth listening to will judge you. We think Black Mesa is probably a bit harder than most games released today. You can always notch it back up if things get too easy. We want people to experience the whole game, not hit a difficulty spike and decide to move onto other things. We tried to address this as much as possible in the design of the game, but if you hit a wall, just go around it!



[h3]Use your good weapons[/h3]
Dont be afraid to use your good weapons. We built the game to make sure you would have what you need to progress. Maybe dont go nuking headcrabs with your Gluon Gun, but dont be afraid to start with the big guns for the bigger fights.



[h3]You can long jump in any direction[/h3]
The long-jump is not just for forward travel. You can jump in any direction. This is super important in fighting the bosses and gives you a great way to dodge all enemy attacks.



[h3]You can reload the rocket launcher as soon as you fire in unguided mode[/h3]
No need to wait for the rocket to hit when you are in unguided mode. Just hit reload as soon as it is clear of the tube, and Gordon will load a new round!



[h3]Power Slide[/h3]
We added a slide if you crouch while running. This is really handy for getting into tight spaces quickly, getting into cover, or lowering your profile as you emerge from cover.



[h3]The Hive Hand[/h3]
The Hive Hand is often put aside as a useless weapon, but it is excellent for taking out headcrabs, barnacles, hoteyes, and breaking objects/objectives. Using it in smaller fights is a great way to save ammo.



[h3]You can sprint any direction, and while holding onto objects[/h3]
A feature we added was the ability to sprint in any direction. This is super important in the later boss battles. You can also now hold onto objects and sprint, which makes life (and certain achievements) a lot easier.



also,

Games Done Quick
GDQ is running Corona Relief Done Quick to raise money to fight COVID-19 through the end of Sunday (UTC).
https://gamesdonequick.com/

This is a great cause. Check it out on Twitch, and if you can, consider giving them a donation. Even small amounts can add up quick. We know a lot of people are having a hard time during this pandemic, so lets all pull together and help each other as much as possible.

Hotfix 1.1
We have tested a patch extensively on public beta and have switched it over to the mainline for everyone to use. This fix should not affect saves, but please let us know on the Steam forums or Discord if you have any issues.

Patch Notes
- Fixed a bug related to the engine not detecting controllers
- Fixed HECU bullet spread distribution not changing based on difficulty
- Decreased HECU reaction time
- Balanced damage of frag grenades used by NPCs (higher damage radius)
- Added an option in new UI to toggle classic iron sights ON/OFF
- Fixed Xbow classic iron sights not rendering crosshair
- Fixed a crash related to marionettist
- ToGL/Linux: Changed/tweaked internal texture formats and video options to avoid visual issues on different dynamic lighting quality levels

Hope everyone is doing well. Good luck and stay safe!

Discord - https://discord.gg/qgBU3a

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
[previewyoutube=YkBrNGeFwoU;full][/previewyoutube]

1.0 Patch Notes!
We have been working exceedingly hard to bring you Black Mesa. Since the full release of Xen (0.9) we have done a complete overhaul pass on the combat design and guidance for all the earthbound levels, redesigned the HECU marine AI, upgraded the Vortigaunts AI, and built a new, modern user interface.

At launch, well be right here to fix bugs and add quality of life improvements. After that, we will be taking a break before starting up on any big updates.

So, without further delay, here is a detailed change list for Black Mesa 1.0!

Overhaul


[h2]Game-Wide[/h2]
Our time in Early Access gave us lots of opportunities to beta test new content and talk with our community. We took what we learned during the development of Xen, and applied it to the Earthbound Chapters.

- Improvements to every major combat arena in the game
- Redesigned puzzles for clarity and intention
- Enhance environments to highlight objectives

[h2]Art[/h2]
We took a number of sections throughout the game and updated them visually to help the game feel more cohesive. We also made better use of the dynamic lights that we created for Xen.




Artificial Intelligence
[h2]HECU[/h2]


-Better utilize cover and movement in general
-Put suppressing fire on players last known location and where they expect you to be
-Use grenades more strategically and more often
-New environmental analysis lets them track, flank, and move in for the kill
-Use weapons and abilities depending on their class
-Occasionally use RPGs (grenadiers)
-Use under barrel MP5 grenade launcher (commanders)
-Drop med kits properly (medics)
-Marines wearing a gas-mask will now use alternate, radio-filtered, deepened voice lines, which sound much more like the original HECU!
-Use more voice lines and communication



[h2]Vortigaunts[/h2]

The Vorts got an upgrade too, with features from their Interloper counterparts and new features to make them more fun to fight!

-Dodge on spawn or dodge when player aims at Vort
-Better navigate to the player
-Use close-range charge attack (Dispel)
-Use dynamic lights when attaching
-Vorts AI now behave differently depending on how brave or scared they are feeling, which is based on damage taken / done to the enemy.

[h2]Balance[/h2]
-Slightly nerfed assassins to have lower health and accuracy
-Nerfed Abrams 50 cal damage to make it less murderous
-Buffed Apache 30mm damage slightly

Code Fixes
-Optimized sun shadows
-Optimized dynamic lights
-Fixed bug with popping sun shadows
-Removed view punch from smaller caliber weapons
-Fixed trip mine hitbox
-Added dynamic lights to portal effects
-Fixed NPC teeth being black or bright colors
-Made sure all tripod and ceiling turrets use tracers
-Fixed gravity in Earthbound
-Fixed HECU calling wrong SMG animation
-All new, modern user interface
-Expanded options with descriptions and performance cost

-Fixed HEV chargers giving you 76 charge instead of 75
-Fixed slide sound effect playing each time the player crouched
-Changed tank machine gun accuracy for better game play



Workshop Mods Warning
Lots of mods have not been updated to work with the new version of the game. Until they are updated, they may (and probably will) cause all kinds of strange and seemingly unrelated bugs. If you want the best Black Mesa experience, make sure that you do not have any mods installed. If you have had mods in the past, it may be worth uninstalling the game, deleting all local files in Black Mesa, then reinstalling the game.

Level Design
[h2]General[/h2]
-The entire game has been subject to a huge number of bug fixes and improvements throughout. The following notes wont mention every single fix, but will detail the most important ones! We scoured the community for things to fix.
-Removed all old dynamic lightstyle VRAD lights and replaced them with new gbuffer dynamic lights. These will look better and perform better.
-Full dynamic light pass across the whole game. Lighting should be much moodier and dynamic throughout.
-Updated lightmap scales across many chapters, so baked lights will be more defined and have nicer shadows. This will result in generally nicer looking lighting.
-Implemented CSM volumes across every outdoor map, which should substantially improve performance at no visual cost

[h2]Black Mesa Inbound[/h2]
-Updated title card to take up more of the screen
-Fixed various dynamic light errors
-Totally re-arted outdoor/cave sections
-Fixed tram not casting sun shadows

[h2]Anomalous Materials[/h2]
-Updated lighting for HEV suit holder room
-Updated down lights to have crisp shadows
-Went through light maps and increased resolution (now that we are no longer using light styles)
-Updated Vortigaunt Xen scene with newer environment visuals
-Removed light style lights and replaced them with new dynamic lights

[h2]Unforeseen Consequences[/h2]
-Fixed headcrabs on platform elevator from spinning around 180 degrees as they landed
-Fixed various console errors that may have been affecting performance
-Fixed houndeyes spawning in and facing wall away from player
-Updated coolant/valve puzzle to better teach core valve mechanics and for better player guidance in general
-Improved design of AM machine control room to force the player into the space
-Improved player guidance throughout the chapter and added player drop downs and closed doors to prevent confusing backtracking, or breaking danger sequences
-Improved box jumping puzzle
-Improved lighting for the Lamarr jar
-Changed ladder skins to red to help them stand out from similarly colored walls
-Improved sewer water section to show the player the ladder exit before they find the valve to raise the water level, allowing you to know where your end objective is before activating the flood
-Improved platforming/jumping on the crane boxes section
-Improved Crowbar pickup by highlighting it with door movement
-Added rewards for exploration
-Added guidance light to first retinal scanner to help new players

[h2]Office Complex[/h2]
-Fixed bad autosaves throughout
-Added cover to first ceiling turret section
-Added new dynamic lights to elevator
-Added clip ramped steps for better player and NPC navigation
-Added more dramatic lighting for the help my buddy scene where you can first get the shotgun. In addition
-...moved the Shotgun back to its rightful place with the Guard in this chapter!
-Updated map C freezer puzzle, to better illustrate cause / effect and utilize the entire space
-Improved all shortcut doors given consistent signposting (use wooden boards)
-Improved changed ladder skins to red to help them stand out from similarly colored walls
-Removed end valve/fire hazard, to streamline the end of the chapter.

[h2]Weve Got Hostiles[/h2]
-Fixed consistent crash that occurred when using closed captions at lower resolutions
-The HECU overhaul really shines in this chapter!
-Re-timed music start cue and added an explosion before it so it transitions in less abruptly
-Replaced dynamic lights and shadows in the transitioning elevator between map B and C

[h2]Blast Pit[/h2]
-Fixed janky dying scientist so he doesnt just pop when he dies
-Substantial improvements to Tentacle AI
-Added art to map E to make it feel more like youre heading down the shaft where a giant tentacle monster just lived.
-Moved the first .357 here, to match HL1!
-Added xog volumes to areas with radiation liquid

[h2]Power Up[/h2]
-Multiple fixes to the Gargantua to make him behave better throughout
-Added xog volumes to bottom of water section in map B

[h2]On A Rail[/h2]
-Removed redundant console in Map A opening puzzle to streamline progression
-Added alternate route in Map B office fight vs 50 cal, to allow flanking. Also changed approach path to provide more cover to the player.
-Fixed bug in map B where battery light would show through the world
-Overhauled launch pad fight in Map C so that the player must use the entire space and a variety of different angles and tactics.

[h2]Apprehension[/h2]
-Overhauled opening barrel puzzle for map A to remove redundancy, better signpost the various stages of the puzzle, and encourage more exploration of the initial arena.
-Overhauled lighting around the shark cage to better signpost objective.
-Mood lighting across the entire chapter to enhance the ambiance and also better direct the player in multiple places.
-Removed soft lock where players could put barrels in the crushers and lock progression.

[h2]Residue Processing[/h2]
-Reworked navigation around the trash compactor to stall the player a bit more (gives the doors more time to open so theres less of an awkward pause), and better direct the player.
-Entirely re-arted Map A opening section.
-Significant streamlining across the entire chapter to reduce length of backtracking and make the path clearer and easier to discern for players.
-Substantially improved performance throughout the chapter

[h2]Questionable Ethics[/h2]
-Improved signposting in the lobby fight to make the origins of each wave clearer to players

[h2]Surface Tension[/h2]
-Several major performance fixes and optimization tweaks throughout the chapter.
-Completely redesigned and re-arted Map A (dam map). Every combat encounter on the map was redesigned and the Apache fight was improved.
-Added structure to the end of map B to help guide the player better and highlight the exit
-Replaced all old HL2 rock models with new, beautiful models
-Foliage pass in many places across the chapter
-Moved around some cover and rocks in map C to help the player
-Fixed the Apache fight in map C to use proper health values and move between phases
-Implemented cinematic physics rocks at the end of the Apache fight in map C
-Reduced difficulty in the whack a Gordon section (removed some I/O logic that makes it so the Marines always know where you are) and improved player guidance
-Fixed bug in the whack a Gordon section where the tank would blow up a wall randomly for no reason, even after it had died
-Art pass on transition from map D map E.
-Added a system to eject high velocity gibs when you kill the snipers
-Art pass on map Es trip mine warehouse. Now with 200% more explosives!
-Reworked map Fs intro sequence so its more like you are coming into the middle of a conflict, rather than some Alien Grunts randomly standing around waiting to die
-Lighting / guidance improvements in map Fs bombed out building
-Door to the bathroom in map H will now close behind you so you cant escape the Snark sequence just by backtracking

[h2]Forget About Freeman[/h2]
-Redesigned map B big finale fight. Now features considerably more aerial action and a big bang for an opener!
-Re-arted the snarks devouring HECU scene to better reflect the prominence of the alien infestation throughout.
-Redesigned map B underground garage fight to more prominently highlight the aliens vs HECU aspect.

[h2]Lambda Core[/h2]
-Substantially improved player signposting and direction across the 3 hub-like maps (C, D and E).
-Several guidance and path improvements to map C, particularly the main path by the huge turbine, to let player flow through easier.
-Significant optimizations across all Maps C, D, E, F and G. Performance should be drastically improved for all users.
-Several lighting improvements between maps D (orange map) and E (blue map), to better visually differentiate them and reduce player confusion.
-Simplified several paths around Map D and E to make navigating to your destination easier, and also massively simplify backtracking to map C.
-Multiple new dynamic lights across maps D and E to help guide the player better.
-Improved signposting on the Map G teleporter puzzle to make it feel less like trial-and-error. Burns now appear around each teleporter youve gone through, so you know which ones youve tried. The right answer teleporters gain a new sparkly particle effect once youve used them a first time, so its easier to remember.
-Overhauled Map I finale sequence before the teleport to Xen. You now no longer take falling damage (as previously intended), the combat is now centered entirely around controllers, and the core navigation of the arena has been rebuilt to facilitate better flow around the arena and serve as a light bit of long jump training.

[h2]Xen[/h2]
-Added missing collisions to many props

[h2]Gonarch[/h2]
-Fixed crash when you shoot Gonarchs mortars (again)
-Fixed some logic in map B where the Gonarch could randomly be missing during the crystal cave sequence
-Fixed bug in map C where Gonarch wouldnt show up for the final chase
-Added missing collisions to many props
-Re-balanced Gonarch AI for all the difficulty modes

[h2]Interloper[/h2]
-Fixed bounce pads during chase in Map A1 to always put the player where theyre meant to go
-Fixed map D glass at the end of the elevator section sometimes not shattering
-Fixed transition bug at the end of map D so players will always transition at the end
-Fixed sucky vent in map D1 to fix a rare case where players could fall through it out of the world
-Added another layer of lasers to the bottom of D1 to prevent rare bug where players could fall out of the world

[h2]Nihilanth[/h2]
-This was already perfect so we did not need to fix even a single thing on this ;)

[h2]Endgame[/h2]
-Fixed tram door occasionally going missing for some players

Thanks. Hope everyone enjoys Black Mesa!


Discord - https://discord.gg/PSZfh8N

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.
  

• 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
Since the last beta, we have tackled any important issues that were raised by the community, along with eliminating the previously known issues list. Moving forward, we are most importantly looking for any major game-breakers or issues with the UI.

We also believe that all the achievements should now be fully working for everybody. Those of you who struggled to earn some achievements in the previous beta, please attempt to do so again. If you experience any further issues with them, let us know!

Known Issues
At this point, we have addressed most of the issues (if not all of them) with the game that we intend on fixing for 1.0. The goal of this beta is mostly to check that the game is fully functional and ready for the final release, start to finish. Please let us know if you run into anything major.

Thank You!
Most importantly, a big thank you to everyone who helped us test this beta, and all the betas thus far. Your feedback was invaluable and we have absolutely loved pouring through your notes and thoughts!

The previously mentioned MASSIVE 1.0 changelog will be shared with you all once we have set 1.0 to the main branch on Steam, so those of you who would love to devour every little detail will be able to do so.

PAX East
Finally, we are currently at PAX East! In case you didnt see our last update on this, please check it out here:

https://steamcommunity.com/games/362890/announcements/detail/1716372156954041181
If youre at the convention, please stop by Booth 24081 and check us out, have a chat, and play our demo! Were having an absolute blast so far!



Thank you, and have a very safe and productive day. See you all for the 1.0 RELEASE on March 5th!

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
Most importantly, game breakers. We obviously want the 1.0 experience to be as smooth and enjoyable as possible, so if you find any crashes or progression blockers, please let us know so we can fix it. The game has been very stable during our internal testing, but we need to test on a wider set of players and machines.

We are also looking for difficulty spikes. Throughout all of earthbound we rebuilt combat spaces and upgraded the AI of the HECU and Vortigaunts. We think this dramatically improves the combat in the game. Let us know what you think, and let us know if there is a section that feels too hard.

In addition to redesigning the combat spaces, we took time to make sure the player path is as clear as possible. Let us know if you find any part of the game unclear. We still have some sections of the game that make you stop and think, but we made a huge effort to keep the players momentum up throughout the game.

Lastly, we need help testing the achievements. We now have 50 total achievements, so if you have trouble completing one, let us know on the Steam forums or Discord.



Known Issues
As youd expect with any 1.0 release, we worked to have the most stable and complete game possible. We think the main game is solid, but we do have another patch on the way to fix what is found in the beta, and to finish off the new game user interface. Here are some quick notes on what you might find broken in the game:

User Interface
-The new UI cant launch MP listen servers
-Workshop section of new UI is not working
-The Xen maps do not display the correct chapter title for save files
-The godray setting will not save in the settings menu
-The new UI occasionally flickers
-Manual saves show a screenshot of the UI, not the game
-The developer console needs some polish
-Searching for games online takes too long
-Other misc UI errors

If you need to use the old UI for any reason, launch the game with -oldgameui.

Besides that, we dont expect much wrong with the game. As always, we want to hear about everything you find, but we will be focusing on the issues listed in the section above for 1.0.

We will be back soon with a MASSIVE change list that details the entirety of the 1.0 update!

Thank you, and have a very safe and productive day.



Discord - https://discord.gg/PSZfh8N

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
As soon as it is ready, we will push the build to public beta like we have in the past. After lots of internal and external testing, we will patch the build as needed, and finally, FINALLY (FINALLY!!!) release Black Mesa out of Early Access!

This is a huge deal for us. The team has put in a ton of effort to improve the game in ways big and small.

1.0 Preview
The biggest change we have made is a complete overhaul of the HECU AI. Soldiers will now lay down suppressing fire, flank your position, communicate more, throw grenades more effectively, use their MP5 grenade launchers, and more.

We have also evaluated and changed a number of the combat spaces to better utilize the AI and to reflect what we have learned since we first built Earthbound. It has been a lot of fun redesigning areas of the game to work better, and to use creativity through constraint to make the most of our levels without completely rebuilding them.

The team watched a number of playthroughs and identified sections in the game where the pace came to a grinding halt. We redesigned or fixed these sections so that players can keep up their momentum.

In addition to the design, we evaluated the art as well. We took what we learned in Xen and updated A FEW sections of Earthbound to better match Xen and current graphics standards.





We will fully support the game after our launch, and plan to expand upon this process to give the whole game an upgrade while keeping the performance the same.

Road Map
[h2]1.0[/h2]
As mentioned above, we are close to a release candidate for Black Mesa 1.0. We will test the whole game internally, push the build to public-beta for even more testing, patch the build if necessary, then release the game in full.

[h2]1.5[/h2]
We jokingly call this Black Mesa: Definitive Edition, but dont worry, it will not be any type of re-release or paid content. After 1.0 we will take a few months to go through the game, identify rough spots, and polish the art on Earth and Xen. Wed also like to continue to improve the workshop and organize team and community events to document as much as we can about the Source engine and how to best use it. We dont have a scope for these events yet, but after years of loving/hating/fixing/breaking the Source engine, we would love to help others get information and solve problems.

Thanks Again
We like to sign off these updates by thanking the community, but know they are not canned lines or something we tack on to look grateful. We are really proud to have been able to finish this game, and it would not have been possible without our patient and helpful community. I dont think it has fully set in that we are almost done with Black Mesa. We REALLY look forward to some low-pressure fun updates for this game, as well as starting in on new projects.

Thank you for the support, thank you for the constructive criticism, and thank you for all the time spent in our game. We will be back soon with release notes and a beta!

-The Black Mesa Team

Discord - https://discord.gg/PSZfh8N

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!
We have pushed a major patch to the Xen levels and released the full game on Steam mainline. This means you can play a polished and tested version of all Black Mesa without having to switch into public-beta. If you have been holding out for Xen, this is what you have been waiting for!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/

With this update, we not only bring the beta over to mainline, but also implement feedback to refine the difficulty, increase player guidance, fix bugs, as well as increase performance throughout the Interloper chapter. See the detailed change list below.

The game is still in Early Access (EA), so that we can get even more data and bug reports from a wider set of players and machines. We will be watching people play the game and listening to how we can further improve the game for the next big update to take us out of Early Access. In addition to polishing the levels, we want to look at the game as a whole before switching out of Early Access.

Note: It is extremely likely that workshop mods will currently break the game in strange and unexpected ways. During the beta we noticed odd issues caused by seemingly unrelated mods, such as players long jump modules not jumping them far enough. If you are experiencing strange issues with your game, try unsubscribing from all your workshop mods. This may resolve some issues. In the future this will hopefully be less of a problem, as workshop modders update their mods to work properly with the latest version of our engine/game.

Road Map
With the Xen levels complete, we have got a lot of questions about what is next for Mesa. Here are our current plans. Keep in mind these are our plans; they can change based on new priorities and new data.

[h2]0.91 and Achievements[/h2]
There may be more bugs found as the game gets played by a wider audience. We will fix any major bugs as they come up, and also implement any small quality of life changes for the levels. We have a new set of achievements that are ready to be implemented for the Xen levels. We would like to release both of these as soon as possible, but if no major issues are found right away, we may roll these fixes and achievements into the 1.0 release.

[h2]1.0 Release[/h2]
We will do a thorough review of the games systems and levels to work out any bugs and broken bits for our release out of EA. This includes:

• 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.

• 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...

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.