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

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

You can check out the full patch notes here:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/362890/discussions/0/364041776188597284/

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

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

You can check out the full patch notes here:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/362890/discussions/0/364041776188597284/

Here’s a quick glimpse of what we are polishing for our next update. You’ve hopefully already seen our preview of Surface Tension: Uncut over at Lambda Generation. We are very excited to see how the community likes the uncut levels. We’ve done a ton of work since we’ve shown those screen shots, and even improved our AI for the Alien Grunts and Vortigaunts to help make this chapter be as fun and engaging as possible.



Our BIG announcement though, is that we have implemented Cascaded Shadow Mapping, or CSM into the Black Mesa engine. CSM brings the visual quality of the game to a whole new level. It’s hard to describe in words what CSM does to the game, so we’ve added a few screenshots below to give you a better idea. Notice the crisp shadows on the world and weapons, that originally weren’t there.







First, there were a lot of community members asking for this addition. One of our developers, Chon Kemp, added these levels into the mod version of the game, and people wanted to see it in the official version. To show we hear what the community is asking for, and as a small thanks for the people who have already bought the game we completely rebuilt the last three maps of Surface Tension based off of Half-Life (side note you can play Chon’s On A Rail: Uncut on the workshop).

Second, Surface Tension did not feel complete without its later levels. The end of ST is the part where the H.E.C.U start to lose, and it sets up the events for Half-Life 2. It’s a very important part of the Half-Life story.

Third, CSM was an absolute must for us to reach our vision for bringing Xen to life. We've brought CSM to you in this update as a little tiny taste of what is to come. We hope this excites you as much as it excites our team! Surface Tension: UNCUT was the perfect opportunity for us to test CSM and get it functioning on our already completed earthbound levels, as well as a number of other techniques to be used in completing Xen.

You can expect the Surface Tension Update to launch later this month. The new update will also include a large number of bug fixes and other improvements to many parts of the game.

Here’s a quick glimpse of what we are polishing for our next update. You’ve hopefully already seen our preview of Surface Tension: Uncut over at Lambda Generation. We are very excited to see how the community likes the uncut levels. We’ve done a ton of work since we’ve shown those screen shots, and even improved our AI for the Alien Grunts and Vortigaunts to help make this chapter be as fun and engaging as possible.



Our BIG announcement though, is that we have implemented Cascaded Shadow Mapping, or CSM into the Black Mesa engine. CSM brings the visual quality of the game to a whole new level. It’s hard to describe in words what CSM does to the game, so we’ve added a few screenshots below to give you a better idea. Notice the crisp shadows on the world and weapons, that originally weren’t there.







First, there were a lot of community members asking for this addition. One of our developers, Chon Kemp, added these levels into the mod version of the game, and people wanted to see it in the official version. To show we hear what the community is asking for, and as a small thanks for the people who have already bought the game we completely rebuilt the last three maps of Surface Tension based off of Half-Life (side note you can play Chon’s On A Rail: Uncut on the workshop).

Second, Surface Tension did not feel complete without its later levels. The end of ST is the part where the H.E.C.U start to lose, and it sets up the events for Half-Life 2. It’s a very important part of the Half-Life story.

Third, CSM was an absolute must for us to reach our vision for bringing Xen to life. We've brought CSM to you in this update as a little tiny taste of what is to come. We hope this excites you as much as it excites our team! Surface Tension: UNCUT was the perfect opportunity for us to test CSM and get it functioning on our already completed earthbound levels, as well as a number of other techniques to be used in completing Xen.

You can expect the Surface Tension Update to launch later this month. The new update will also include a large number of bug fixes and other improvements to many parts of the game.

We've released a patch to Black Mesa main client

+ Fixed bouncing Bolts from the crossbow in MP
+ Fixed a bug in the balanced spawn system
+ Fixed Shotgun Collision model
+ Fixed various spelling errors and missing .wav files in dialouges.
+ Fixed the Crossbows lighting origin
+ RPG rocket won't clip with the rocket when reloading.
+ Dr. Kleiners head and hands are now properly smooth (smoooooth as jazz)
+ Fixed blood not splattering on the MP5
+ Fixed the where placing 11 satchels crashed the MP server
+ Crossfire Optimization increased - will run much smoother now.
+ Added muzzle flash dynamic light checkbox to options menu.
+ Added godrays enable checkbox to the options menu
+ Minor optimizations made to netcode.
+ Fixed 'FIX IT DENIZ' skin on monitor in UC.
+ Fixed game_round_win Entity to actually win rounds.
+ Polished the workshop tool. (There are still some things that need to be fixed, and will be fixed in upcoming patches). All workshop content and addons will now be read from the SteamApps/Workshop/Content/362890 folder, instead of the previously used black_mesa/addons folder.

This update may corrupt and break save files. If you're experience any issues with old loads, please restart the game at the start of that chapter. You can do that by clicking "New Game" on the main menu, and picking the latest chapter you were on.

Additionally, if you are experiencing issues with missing models or textures in-game, you have a legacy error with mods. If you have subscribed to any mods since launch and are experiencing these issues please do the following steps to fix the issue.
1. Unsubscribe from all Black Mesa mods
2. Go to ***\SteamApps\workshop\content\362890 (where *** is the location to where your steam games may be)
3. Delete all folders within this folder
4. Launch Black Mesa, and you should be good to go.
Once you do this, you should be able to re-subscribe to any and all mods that you want.

Not sure which mod to download first? Why not try On a Rail Uncut - now officially released on the Steam Workshop.​

- ːvortː

(Edit: it is known that the "Workshop Addon" button does not work in the Main Menu. It will be fixed in a subsequent patch)

We've released a patch to Black Mesa main client

+ Fixed bouncing Bolts from the crossbow in MP
+ Fixed a bug in the balanced spawn system
+ Fixed Shotgun Collision model
+ Fixed various spelling errors and missing .wav files in dialouges.
+ Fixed the Crossbows lighting origin
+ RPG rocket won't clip with the rocket when reloading.
+ Dr. Kleiners head and hands are now properly smooth (smoooooth as jazz)
+ Fixed blood not splattering on the MP5
+ Fixed the where placing 11 satchels crashed the MP server
+ Crossfire Optimization increased - will run much smoother now.
+ Added muzzle flash dynamic light checkbox to options menu.
+ Added godrays enable checkbox to the options menu
+ Minor optimizations made to netcode.
+ Fixed 'FIX IT DENIZ' skin on monitor in UC.
+ Fixed game_round_win Entity to actually win rounds.
+ Polished the workshop tool. (There are still some things that need to be fixed, and will be fixed in upcoming patches). All workshop content and addons will now be read from the SteamApps/Workshop/Content/362890 folder, instead of the previously used black_mesa/addons folder.

This update may corrupt and break save files. If you're experience any issues with old loads, please restart the game at the start of that chapter. You can do that by clicking "New Game" on the main menu, and picking the latest chapter you were on.

Additionally, if you are experiencing issues with missing models or textures in-game, you have a legacy error with mods. If you have subscribed to any mods since launch and are experiencing these issues please do the following steps to fix the issue.
1. Unsubscribe from all Black Mesa mods
2. Go to ***\SteamApps\workshop\content\362890 (where *** is the location to where your steam games may be)
3. Delete all folders within this folder
4. Launch Black Mesa, and you should be good to go.
Once you do this, you should be able to re-subscribe to any and all mods that you want.

Not sure which mod to download first? Why not try On a Rail Uncut - now officially released on the Steam Workshop.​

- :vort:

(Edit: it is known that the "Workshop Addon" button does not work in the Main Menu. It will be fixed in a subsequent patch)

See official forums for patch notes!

Enjoy and Happy Holidays from the Crowbar Collective.

- ːvortː

See official forums for patch notes!

Enjoy and Happy Holidays from the Crowbar Collective.

- :vort:

Welcome to December Update, Part 2. You can read Part 1 of our reveal about the December Update here.

Important Point: This update WILL NOT contain Xen. We are hard at work on Xen and are preparing media to show to you guys. But there will not be a release of Xen soon and we still do not have a timeframe for it.

Here are some more interesting details for what's to come in December's Content Update 2. This list is not exhaustive. The update is huge and there's going to be A LOT of stuff.

Godrays (also known as Crepuscular Rays if you want to be more scientific) are the first of the new graphical features we have written with Xen in mind. We're testing them by deploying them publicly on our existing singleplayer and multiplayer maps. Very pretty, and highly customisable per level - useful for modders and level designers.





Marines and other players in multiplayer now eject weapon brass when firing. Seems like a small touch, but in a big firefight with multiple Marines it can actually add quite a lot to the atmosphere!

We've started our first round of AI tweaks. There will be more to come. One big one was tweaking the way Marines react to Alien Grunts. They used to use grenade avoidance behaviours to try and escape the Alien Grunt's Hornets, which led to some very odd behaviours in fights between them. They now no longer do that. They would also try and avoid their own grenades which led to some odd behaviour too. They don't do that anymore, either.

Multiplayer has seen quite a bit of love for this update, though there's plenty to come for you singleplayers too!

Firstly, all of the base multiplayer code was completely rewritten from scratch. This is HUGE. MP should now be far more responsive, better performing, and less buggy/crashy.

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

And many more! We may reveal more later!

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

And many more! We may reveal more later here too!

Next part, we will talk about the main MP focus of the update: Crossfire! That's right, Crossfire is coming in the December Update, better than ever! And we also have a Singleplayer Update lined up for Content Update 2, which we suspect a lot of you have been anticipating and excited for (reiteration: it is NOT Xen!)


Work in Progress. Map is still being polished!

Join us soon for the next part!