Straight to the bad news: we are pushing back the release of Xen. We are truly sorry for getting everyone's hopes up and then delaying... again. We worked very hard to make December, but we are not yet ready. As a team, we take FULL responsibility for that. We have an internal deadline we are confident in, and we will be getting everyone more details as we get closer to that date.

Thank you again to our community and Early Access supporters. The funding from Early Access has allowed us to hire many new talented developers, and has allowed older developers to put more time in the project. Simply put, Xen has proven to be an enormous undertaking, and while we are managing it to the best of our ability, it is proving to take longer than we estimated.

The good news is that we will be releasing a large update in December to test all of the new features that have been developed for Xen. We have changed a number of things within the Source Engine, and we want to make sure they all work on the myriad of PCs out there. By enabling the new tech on the Earthbound section of the game, we can get the engine/code fully stabilized on Steam before we drop the final chapters.

In December we will also have an update on where our Xen chapters stand, show some additional media, and deploy the engine update.

Here are some features that will be in the update:

We've created a custom lens flare entity, and have added lens flares to important light sources in the game. Don’t worry, we will spare your eyes and not go overboard with our new lens flare tech. We think it adds a nice layer of polish to the Earthbound lighting and we hope to use it to really sell the alien feel of Xen... and add endless frustration to the debate about whether or not Gordon wears a helmet.





We’ve shown some dynamic lights in the last update. Here are a few other sections that got the dynamic light treatment. Lights can simply cast light, cast shadows, and even cast volumetric godrays.

Security Joop with Dynamic Lights and Lens Flares


OAR Rocket Launch with Dynamic Shadows, Light Rays, and a Lens Flare


We incorporated a 4 way texture blending system like the one seen in Counter Strike: Global Offensive, and improved upon it. Our level designers have 4 texture layers to blend, each with its own bump map and environment map (SSBM OR Normal Bump). Like other versions of the shader, level designers and artists can blend between the 4 layers procedurally using light and dark values of the diffuse textures.


Lighting can now be generated from the image of the skybox texture. This gives level designers a very quick and accurate base lighting for outdoor maps. The example below has just a light_env in the scene, with no colors. All colored lighting is created automatically from the skybox image.


We’ve improved the performance on Cascade Shadow Maps and Godrays and made them both more straightforward to implement on the Hammer side. Godrays are now placed with our newLight_Dir entity and automatically get ray angles from the light_env. Rays not only run better, but look smoother as well.

Environment Light Godrays


Rays From New Dynamic Lights


Concepts as seen in PCGamer. In addition to the Xen screenshots we have released, these Interloper concepts highlight the difference in environment types we have.





We are also on sale until November 28th for the Steam Thanksgiving sale!


We will have a bunch more information next month!

(Old SFM Test By James McVinnie)

Straight to the bad news: we are pushing back the release of Xen. We are truly sorry for getting everyone's hopes up and then delaying... again. We worked very hard to make December, but we are not yet ready. As a team, we take FULL responsibility for that. We have an internal deadline we are confident in, and we will be getting everyone more details as we get closer to that date.

Thank you again to our community and Early Access supporters. The funding from Early Access has allowed us to hire many new talented developers, and has allowed older developers to put more time in the project. Simply put, Xen has proven to be an enormous undertaking, and while we are managing it to the best of our ability, it is proving to take longer than we estimated.

The good news is that we will be releasing a large update in December to test all of the new features that have been developed for Xen. We have changed a number of things within the Source Engine, and we want to make sure they all work on the myriad of PCs out there. By enabling the new tech on the Earthbound section of the game, we can get the engine/code fully stabilized on Steam before we drop the final chapters.

In December we will also have an update on where our Xen chapters stand, show some additional media, and deploy the engine update.

Here are some features that will be in the update:

We've created a custom lens flare entity, and have added lens flares to important light sources in the game. Don’t worry, we will spare your eyes and not go overboard with our new lens flare tech. We think it adds a nice layer of polish to the Earthbound lighting and we hope to use it to really sell the alien feel of Xen... and add endless frustration to the debate about whether or not Gordon wears a helmet.





We’ve shown some dynamic lights in the last update. Here are a few other sections that got the dynamic light treatment. Lights can simply cast light, cast shadows, and even cast volumetric godrays.

Security Joop with Dynamic Lights and Lens Flares


OAR Rocket Launch with Dynamic Shadows, Light Rays, and a Lens Flare


We incorporated a 4 way texture blending system like the one seen in Counter Strike: Global Offensive, and improved upon it. Our level designers have 4 texture layers to blend, each with its own bump map and environment map (SSBM OR Normal Bump). Like other versions of the shader, level designers and artists can blend between the 4 layers procedurally using light and dark values of the diffuse textures.


Lighting can now be generated from the image of the skybox texture. This gives level designers a very quick and accurate base lighting for outdoor maps. The example below has just a light_env in the scene, with no colors. All colored lighting is created automatically from the skybox image.


We’ve improved the performance on Cascade Shadow Maps and Godrays and made them both more straightforward to implement on the Hammer side. Godrays are now placed with our newLight_Dir entity and automatically get ray angles from the light_env. Rays not only run better, but look smoother as well.

Environment Light Godrays


Rays From New Dynamic Lights


Concepts as seen in PCGamer. In addition to the Xen screenshots we have released, these Interloper concepts highlight the difference in environment types we have.





We are also on sale until November 28th for the Steam Thanksgiving sale!


We will have a bunch more information next month!

(Old SFM Test By James McVinnie)

We recently became aware of an exploit that allows remote code execution via Source multiplayer. We patched the current build of the game to protect our players. More information about it here:

https://oneupsecurity.com/research/remote-code-execution-in-source-games

We recently became aware of an exploit that allows remote code execution via Source multiplayer. We patched the current build of the game to protect our players. More information about it here:

https://oneupsecurity.com/research/remote-code-execution-in-source-games

Happy summer all! We hope that everyone is having a great start to their summer. To celebrate, we proudly present to you our first public screenshots of a Xen exterior. All running real-time, in- game, with no edits.



Unfortunately, as some of you may have already predicted, we are going to need to push back our planned release of Xen to later this year, in December. We know that this is not what anyone would want to hear, but after taking a long and hard look at what we want to achieve, we have decided that this is for the best. We do not want to compromise on Xen’s quality in any way. That said, we consider December to be a do-or-die deadline.

To soften the blow of the bad news, here are some additional tidbits and updates regarding what we have done for Xen so far.

Example of the Level of Detail We Are Going For


Interloper Map B Scale


New Dynamic Light System
As part of our continued efforts to bring Xen’s graphics up to the best possible standard that they can be, we have upgraded Source to a new deferred rendering system that supports fully dynamic lights! These new “next-gen” lights cast real-time light, shadows and god rays. These won’t replace all the lights in the game, but we can use them in many special cases where we want the lights to be particularly gorgeous. These lights are much better optimized than other Source implementations of dynamic lights, and are more robust.

Not only will this new lighting system help crank parts of the the game up to 11 in terms of graphical fidelity, these will also be powerful tools for modders as well!

Color Correction
We’ve started a color correction pass for the whole game. The goal is to better unify the game’s visual style and to add full screen effects during the more intense sections. Most of these effects will be quite subtle, but here is a more noticeable example.


Weapon Holds
We fixed the soldiers holding the weapons wrong. It took some serious animation trickery to retarget the bones on top of the existing Half-Life 2 animation library, but it worked well once we figured it out. No more hands clipping through the guns!


Thanks as always to you guys, our wonderful community, for your support! As always, we will continue to work at full speed on Xen, and we hope to have more updates, information and media for you guys soon.

Happy summer all! We hope that everyone is having a great start to their summer. To celebrate, we proudly present to you our first public screenshots of a Xen exterior. All running real-time, in- game, with no edits.



Unfortunately, as some of you may have already predicted, we are going to need to push back our planned release of Xen to later this year, in December. We know that this is not what anyone would want to hear, but after taking a long and hard look at what we want to achieve, we have decided that this is for the best. We do not want to compromise on Xen’s quality in any way. That said, we consider December to be a do-or-die deadline.

To soften the blow of the bad news, here are some additional tidbits and updates regarding what we have done for Xen so far.

Example of the Level of Detail We Are Going For


Interloper Map B Scale


New Dynamic Light System
As part of our continued efforts to bring Xen’s graphics up to the best possible standard that they can be, we have upgraded Source to a new deferred rendering system that supports fully dynamic lights! These new “next-gen” lights cast real-time light, shadows and god rays. These won’t replace all the lights in the game, but we can use them in many special cases where we want the lights to be particularly gorgeous. These lights are much better optimized than other Source implementations of dynamic lights, and are more robust.

Not only will this new lighting system help crank parts of the the game up to 11 in terms of graphical fidelity, these will also be powerful tools for modders as well!

Color Correction
We’ve started a color correction pass for the whole game. The goal is to better unify the game’s visual style and to add full screen effects during the more intense sections. Most of these effects will be quite subtle, but here is a more noticeable example.


Weapon Holds
We fixed the soldiers holding the weapons wrong. It took some serious animation trickery to retarget the bones on top of the existing Half-Life 2 animation library, but it worked well once we figured it out. No more hands clipping through the guns!


Thanks as always to you guys, our wonderful community, for your support! As always, we will continue to work at full speed on Xen, and we hope to have more updates, information and media for you guys soon.

Happy Holidays!

The team remains, as always, hard at work on Xen! Currently our specific focus is on gameplay: crafting a fun and cohesive experience from start to finish. We want our version of Xen to feel like it really belongs with the rest of the game in terms of mechanics, cohesion and progression. But we also want to push the boundaries and explore this unique and varied setting; to build an experience that feels both fresh and familiar to players from all walks of Half-Life veterancy. While our Xen is certainly going to be gorgeous, we are first and foremost really committed to making sure that the gameplay works on every level.

To give a bit of an exciting tease into what we’re doing at the moment, and as our own little holiday gift to you lot, please enjoy our first ever publicly released screenshot of Xen!



We will have more media for the community in the coming months, as well as more detailed updates as to how we are progressing. Right now we are up against a tough deadline, but we are committed and excited to work towards it and to finally unveil the definitive Black Mesa experience for everyone to enjoy.

Be kind to each other out there, and again, have a happy holiday!

Happy Holidays!

The team remains, as always, hard at work on Xen! Currently our specific focus is on gameplay: crafting a fun and cohesive experience from start to finish. We want our version of Xen to feel like it really belongs with the rest of the game in terms of mechanics, cohesion and progression. But we also want to push the boundaries and explore this unique and varied setting; to build an experience that feels both fresh and familiar to players from all walks of Half-Life veterancy. While our Xen is certainly going to be gorgeous, we are first and foremost really committed to making sure that the gameplay works on every level.

To give a bit of an exciting tease into what we’re doing at the moment, and as our own little holiday gift to you lot, please enjoy our first ever publicly released screenshot of Xen!



We will have more media for the community in the coming months, as well as more detailed updates as to how we are progressing. Right now we are up against a tough deadline, but we are committed and excited to work towards it and to finally unveil the definitive Black Mesa experience for everyone to enjoy.

Be kind to each other out there, and again, have a happy holiday!

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

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

A second hotfix patch is in the works, and we hope to have that one out relatively soon too. The next patch has these things currently planned (but not set in stone):

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

Edit: Additional small patch fixed .ain issue in the first map of Unforeseen Consequences.

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

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

A second hotfix patch is in the works, and we hope to have that one out relatively soon too. The next patch has these things currently planned (but not set in stone):

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

Edit: Additional small patch fixed .ain issue in the first map of Unforeseen Consequences.