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/

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.

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.

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.

We jokingly call this Black Mesa: Definitive Edition, but don’t 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. We’d 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 don’t 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.

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 don’t 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...

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.

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.

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.

We will do a thorough review of the game’s 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, Gordon’s 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.

After the game leaves EA, we would like to go through and touch up Earthbound to make sure we are using all our new graphical features, improve gameplay, and try and make the whole game feel cohesive. We jokingly call this the “Black Mesa: Definitive Edition” but the scope will be fairly small. We want to add a couple of gameplay improvements based on what we have learned over the years, and add a couple of visual improvements now that we have a lot more experience making natural structures using Wallworm. A major goal of this update would be to add these changes without drastically affecting performance.

We took in A LOT of feedback from the last beta, and worked hard to get some major improvements to performance in Interloper and other chapters. Here is a comprehensive list of what we have changed and improved in this update.

Thanks as always! The betas have been more valuable they we ever thought possible!

• 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 Gonarch’s 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 couldn’t.
  
• Various visual and lighting improvements throughout the chapter.
  
• Soundscape improvements throughout the chapter for better blending.
  
• Fixed RPG colliding with acid mortar fire in Gonarch’s 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 you’ll 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. It’s 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 didn’t 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-Man’s 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.

Hope you enjoy!
-Crowbar Collective

Discord - https://discord.gg/PSZfh8N

The whole of Black Mesa, from beginning to end, is available on “public-beta”. Check out the known issues below, and give it a go! We are so pumped to have this out. We appreciate the feedback from the community; as we said before, it has proved invaluable.

-Select “Black Mesa” in your library
-Right click and go to properties

-Select the “BETAS” tab at the top right
-Click the drop down and select “public-beta”


-Added Interloper C, Interloper C1, Interloper D, Nihilath boss battle, Endgame
-Changed grenade aim point to be center screen for easier aiming
-Fixed sprint animation playing while swimming
-Fixed shotgun misfire after reloading
-Fixed RPG unguided mode in Earth levels
-Fixed having to press “shift” after each level load with “Always Run” enabled

-Tons of small changes and fixes to the “Xen chapter”
-Fixed Nihilanth intro model
-Fixed most area portals rendering black
-Fixed leaf sounds, and ability of certain objects to fall through them
-Fixed cave long jump in Xen B to be more forgiving
-Fixed houndeye path kill brush in Xen B1
-Key lit bullsquids on bullsquid path
-Minor improvements to art and guidance at end of Xen B1
-Fixed missing sun lens flare in Xen C
-Fixed missing sun lens flare in Xen C1
-Fixed players being able to skip puzzle in Xen C1
-Fixed third plug puzzle so that short cord can not be used in long cords place

-Tons of small changes and fixes to the “Gonarch’s Lair” chapter
-Fixed some lids not blowing off in Gonarch A
-Fixed crashes when player jumps on physics objects (like the rock columns in Gonarch)
-Fixed hard transition from Gonarch A to Gonarch B
-Improved player guidance
-Added red lights to all fumers to better highlight them
-Added “gate” on second ledge before crystal cave so that player can not back track, and soft lock the game
-Increased frame rate in crystal cave
-Improved fire trap
-Put explosive barrels next to each crystal in water cave to better explain gameplay element
-Removed fire from Gonarch final fight
-Lowered Gonarch green fire damage and screen shake

-Tons of small changes and fixes to the already released Interloper maps
-Remove first tentacle that could easily block player path
-Fixed model darkening at start of Interloper A
-Improved player guidance
-Removed phys objects that were on player path
-Small art fixes
-Made long jump path clearer and easier at end of Interloper A
-FIXED CRASH IN INTERLOPER A!
-Better key lighting for player path in Interloper A1
-Fixed most of the water seams in Interloper A1
-Minor art and bug fixes in Interloper B
-Better player guidance in Interloper B
-Fixed players skipping mechanic intro and breaking area portals at start of Interloper B1
-Improved player guidance in Interloper B1
-Minor art and collision fixes to B2
-Interloper B2 no longer fades to black at the end of the level ;)

Overall Difficulty. We suspect some parts might be too hard or too easy. We’ll be watching play throughs and taking feedback to find these issues and fix them.

Performance. We have improved performance across the game, and targeted specific areas to increase the frame rate on all machines. Even with these fixes, there are still some areas we want to improve. For now, don't be afraid to lower your settings if you are getting low frames.

Factory Breaks. We are guessing players will be able to find creative ways to break the factory maps. We don’t expect any of them to be full blockers, but we are anxious to see what players can do to these complex setups, and how we can mitigate issues.


So it is finally out, on beta, for everyone to play. We hope you enjoy it. We will be watching.

Thank you!

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

Discord - https://discord.gg/PSZfh8N

Happy December!

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

-Full pass on Xen and Gonarch levels for bugs and player guidance
-Fixed crash when player jumps on physics objects
-Fixed most crashes in the first map of Interloper
-Changed grenade aim point to be center screen for easier aiming
-Fixed sprint animation playing while swimming
-Fixed shotgun misfire after reloading
-Fixed RPG unguided mode in Earth levels
-Fixed having to press “shift” after each level load with “Always Run” enabled

Achievements. There has not yet been a second achievement pass. The team has a list to implement, and we would like to open it up to the community to crowd source ideas that we might not have otherwise thought of.

Performance. We have improved performance across the game, and targeted specific areas to increase the frame rate on all machines. Even with these fixes, there are still some areas we want to improve. For now, don't be afraid to lower your settings if you are getting low frames.

Floating Ragdoll Bodies. The NPCs still float in the air after dying in some sections. We’ve implemented some fixes, but they can still float from time to time.

Options Menu. Some options are being stored incorrectly. We will continue to make sure the settings work correctly on the new UI. The new UI will now be a focus for a post-beta update.

Factory Breaks. We are guessing players will be able to find creative ways to break the factory maps. We don’t expect any of them to be full blockers, but we are anxious to see what players can do to these complex setups, and how we can mitigate issues.

These are some of the fixes and known issues we have in the upcoming beta. Get ready to play the finale to Black Mesa. It’s been a long road, but we are so close. We’ll be back very soon™ with a release post!

Thank you to our community. Your support and testing has proved invaluable.

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

Discord - https://discord.gg/PSZfh8N

We worked hard to have a full beta ready for today, but we are still grinding on a few things. Here’s where we are at:

Interloper
-Fixing crash in first map of Interloper (Interloper A)
-Fixing performance in Interloper control rooms (Interloper B1)
-Fixing performance in factory maps and polish tasks (Interloper C and C1)
-Final art for Interloper D

Nihilanth is COMPLETE and we are reviewing it for release
Endgame is COMPLETE and we are reviewing it for release

We have a short internal timeline to address the list above. We are anxious and excited to get this last section of the game out, and see what the community thinks of it all.

In addition to the work we have completed on Interloper, Nihilanth, and Endgame, we have also completed revisions on all released maps based on feedback (mostly Xen and Gonarch’s Lair, but Earthbound as well). We hope this will be the most polished version of the game yet released, and will continue to implement feedback as we watch you guys play Xen!

Get ready for Endgame.


Discord - https://discord.gg/PSZfh8N

Happy (almost) Halloween! I can’t speak for the whole team, but this is one of my favorite times of year. I hope it has been treating everyone well.

We wanted to update everyone on our progress, and mention we are discounted 40% for the Steam Halloween sale.

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

We are dropping in art and final refinements for our LAST 5 MAPS. We can’t believe we are just 5 levels away from having a completed game. While it has been quite a challenge, it is surreal to be getting down to the last bits. We want to make sure the art and design in Interloper, Nihilanth, and Endgame are as polished as they can possibly be, even for a beta.

The team has a plan in place to go back and check the entirety of the game in preparation for some important upcoming dates.



Our major focus is of course making sure Interloper, Nihilanth, and Endgame are as good as they can possibly be, as well as:

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

Hope everyone enjoys the season. We’ll have some more spooky Interloper for you soon.

Discord - https://discord.gg/PSZfh8N

Interloper time!

We have pushed 5 maps of the Interloper chapter to Steam Public Beta. Give ‘em a play and let us know what you think!

The team has been crunching hard to release the last chapters, and the game has been fighting us every step of the way. We will be releasing the last 3 maps of Interloper shortly, after a final art and polish pass. Our current plan is to release Nihilanth and Endgame with those maps, but we may stagger the next releases to better refine the last fight and to get more concentrated feedback from the community.

While we've been focused on completing Interloper, we have also been making fixes to the previously released parts of the beta. Here are some fixes and known issues:

-Improved godray performance in all maps

Xen
-Increased performance in Xen B lower swamps (as you exit the door)
-Fixed zombie HEV flashlight sprite when turned on by I/O
-Model collision and material type fixes
-LOD fixes

Gonarch’s Lair Map A
-Fixed RPG not tracking Gonarch hitbox
-Slightly increased Gonarch hitbox
-Fixed black area portal
-Updated healing island particles
-Removed dynamic light god rays for performance
-Fixed a crash involving the Gonarch mortar

Gonarch’s Lair Map B
-Fixed flashlight and other dynamic lights not displaying in starting cave
-Tinted burnable webs so that the player can tell the difference between webs they can break and webs that need to be burned
-Fixed material types on textures and models so it no longer sounds like you are walking on solid glass
-Blocked web window that looked like the player could pass through
-Added lights and wires to better guide player on the critical path
-Player clipping pass
-NPC clipping pass (It should be much harder to get the Gonarch stuck or floating off cliffs)
-New and updated model collisions
-Lighting fixes for guidance and better Gonarch visibility
-Minor art fixes

Gonarch’s Lair Map C
-Fixed all breakable webs to break in ONE hit
-Fixed breakable web hitbox collision detect (it was too thin)
-Lighting and prop improvements for player guidance
-Fixed oil that was not slippery, allowing player to break start of final chase
-NPC clipping pass
-Player clipping pass
-Better highlighted player path in first chase
-Fixed columns in final fight being able to kill you in one hit
-Updated and fixed model collisions (still some objects missing collisions, like the crystals)
-Removed some player obstacles to make the first chase feel smoother
-Fixed players being able to long jump into start cinephys and get stuck
-Removed collision from certain ceiling props to make sure they do not stop the player
-Removed fire fumerol from final boss section
-Reduced screen shake caused by fire damage
-Lowered damage from Gonarch fire

Interloper Known Issues

Interloper Map A
-Occasional crashes in village
-Alien Grunt sometimes gets stuck in his animation sequence at the start of level

-Some models missing collision
-Dynamic lights are occasionally off map-wide

Interloper Map A1
-Sun shadows popping in at the end of the level
-Texture seams in water models


Interloper Map B1
-Waterfall particle early in the map ends too soon

-Elevator outside control room 1 sometimes shoots you into the death ceiling, causing a cheap death.
-Player occasionally gets stuck in "sucky vent"
-Bad performance in the control room 1 and 2
-Water missing refraction effect while underwater
-Seams between water models

We’re really looking forward to watching everyone play these levels. We will continue to polish and improve performance, as well as implement any feedback from the beta.

Thank you everyone for you patience and feedback!

https://discord.gg/PSZfh8N