We have patched the latest version of the Xen Engine and released it to everyone. Please let us know on the Steam forums if you run into any game breaking issues. As we have mentioned before, this is important to test our new features so that the Xen release can be as flawless as possible. We will probably do one more “Engine” release just before we drop Xen, in order to make sure that everything is running smoothly on everyone's machines. We want the Xen release to be as close to a simple content release as possible! Here is what is in the latest patch:

Fixed screen freezes / crashes on Radeon RX 3XX 4XX 5xx cards!

Fixed most dynamic shadows flickering and improved the overall quality and performance

Fixed most dynamic lights flickering on lower quality levels Nvidia GPUs (and some AMD GPUs)

CSM quality and perf improvements

Fixed CSM not working on some AMD cards

Fixed decals flickering in some maps

Fixed full screen blur when using dynamic light godrays

Fixed zombie headshots with the crossbow. Now when you headshot a zombie using the crossbow, they will no longer spawn a live headcrab.

Fixed assault points for Houndeyes

Added texture scrolling for dynamic light cookie textures

Fixed tilemap animation bug in light cookie textures.

Fixed rim lighting not working with old light entities

Fixed Phong/skin shader specular not working on static props

Flashlight intensity and range increased

Settings optimization for new deferred lighting and shadows

December Patch Notes

Flashlight Doesn’t Have Shadows
We have a more advanced plan for the flashlight in the works. This will be deployed at a later date.

Haloing Around Props/Object
MSAA is causing outlines around certain objects. MSSA is a performance killer and we hope to have a better solution for anti-aliasing with the Xen release. To remove the haloing/outline, simply turn off MSAA.

Dynamic Shadows Flickering On Moving Dynamic Lights
These should be completely fixed, but if you DO get them try:
Try running the game in windowed borderless mode.
Try turning off Vsync, lowering your overall settings, or turning off dynamic shadows entirely.

Stencil Shadows
We have removed the old Source stencil shadows. This helps performance and fixes the double shadows that happen in outside environments where CSM is used. We plan on using new dynamic lights to get more realistic shadows in key interior sections.

Always Run
Always run has an issue where after every map load you have to press “shift” for it to work. We will be fixing this for Xen.

Outlines Around Weapons
If you move the screen fast in areas using dynamic lights, you may see small outlines around your weapon. This is very minimal and is something we will look into fixing.

Here’s some more info on the upcoming LOOT ME$A!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BJ7drbyLZY&feature=youtu.be

Of course we are kidding. We wanted to take the time to inform everybody about our REAL game updates.

We’ve made a lot of progress since December. With the exception of a few places (mainly loading between chapters), Xen is playable from start to finish. The levels have had multiple gameplay passes to get them to where we want them in terms of fun and challenge. While we worked on these iterations, we built art in parallel so we can implement the art as soon as the gameplay gets completely locked down.

We’ve put a lot of effort into some levels to get them ready for outside testing. We look forward to getting feedback and see what we can do to support Xen and Black Mesa, even after we leave Early Access. We want to continue to make the best game for our community, old veterans and new players alike.

In that spirit, here are our latest updates:

There have been a few major issues with our new renderer. The bugs fought tooth and nail, but we think we have solved most if not all of the major issues. We are preparing a patch for the Public Beta that we will switch to mainline as soon as possible. Here are just a FEW of the big ticket items we fixed for the Public Beta:

-Game crashes on certain Radeon graphics cards
-Shadows and lights not rendering properly on certain Radeon graphics cards
-Fixed full screen blur that was associated with dynamic lights using god rays
-Fixed dynamic shadows flickering as the light cast onto perpendicular surfaces
-Fixed decals flickering in maps

We have a lot of work left to do, and we have decided not to give timelines so that we do not let our community down again; however in the grand scheme of Black Mesa we are VERY close, and we are super excited about delivering our version of Xen!

We hope everyone has a good week, and we will have more info on our beta patch soon.

Here’s some more info on the upcoming LOOT ME$A!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BJ7drbyLZY&feature=youtu.be

Of course we are kidding. We wanted to take the time to inform everybody about our REAL game updates.

We’ve made a lot of progress since December. With the exception of a few places (mainly loading between chapters), Xen is playable from start to finish. The levels have had multiple gameplay passes to get them to where we want them in terms of fun and challenge. While we worked on these iterations, we built art in parallel so we can implement the art as soon as the gameplay gets completely locked down.

We’ve put a lot of effort into some levels to get them ready for outside testing. We look forward to getting feedback and see what we can do to support Xen and Black Mesa, even after we leave Early Access. We want to continue to make the best game for our community, old veterans and new players alike.

In that spirit, here are our latest updates:

There have been a few major issues with our new renderer. The bugs fought tooth and nail, but we think we have solved most if not all of the major issues. We are preparing a patch for the Public Beta that we will switch to mainline as soon as possible. Here are just a FEW of the big ticket items we fixed for the Public Beta:

-Game crashes on certain Radeon graphics cards
-Shadows and lights not rendering properly on certain Radeon graphics cards
-Fixed full screen blur that was associated with dynamic lights using god rays
-Fixed dynamic shadows flickering as the light cast onto perpendicular surfaces
-Fixed decals flickering in maps

We have a lot of work left to do, and we have decided not to give timelines so that we do not let our community down again; however in the grand scheme of Black Mesa we are VERY close, and we are super excited about delivering our version of Xen!

We hope everyone has a good week, and we will have more info on our beta patch soon.

Black Mesa is introducing some exciting changes to encourage player creativity with new character and weapon skins. These skins are cosmetic only and are designed to increase player choice in our game. These skins can be used in single player or online to show off each player's individual personality.

Skins can be found in Black Mesa’s new loot crate supply drop system. As players play the game, they will occasionally be rewarded with a loot crate supply drop. Players can then buy key badges to gain access to a random skin within the supply drop.

We spent a lot of time creating and balancing this system so that players could express their creativity, and because it was such a requested feature before we released out of Early Access.

Here’s a look at some of the Season 1 skins:







We have also added a new game mode, Last Freeman Standing battle royale! Players can now run, shoot, and think in an ever shrinking arena, to fight to be the last Freeman, in this fresh and exciting new game mode.



Happy Holiday from the Black Mesa team!

Black Mesa is introducing some exciting changes to encourage player creativity with new character and weapon skins. These skins are cosmetic only and are designed to increase player choice in our game. These skins can be used in single player or online to show off each player's individual personality.

Skins can be found in Black Mesa’s new loot crate supply drop system. As players play the game, they will occasionally be rewarded with a loot crate supply drop. Players can then buy key badges to gain access to a random skin within the supply drop.

We spent a lot of time creating and balancing this system so that players could express their creativity, and because it was such a requested feature before we released out of Early Access.

Here’s a look at some of the Season 1 skins:







We have also added a new game mode, Last Freeman Standing battle royale! Players can now run, shoot, and think in an ever shrinking arena, to fight to be the last Freeman, in this fresh and exciting new game mode.



Happy Holiday from the Black Mesa team!

Happy Holidays, and happy Steam Winter Sale everyone! Black Mesa is currently $4.99, our largest discount yet.

We released an update for Black Mesa (currently on public beta) that adds real-time dynamic lights, lens flares, god rays, and a host of other features to the existing earthbound sections of the game. The goal of this update is to get the released version of the game as close to our internal build as possible. This way, the final Xen release can be closer to a simple map drop; with less potential for engine and code issues affecting players on their first time playing Xen. We are hoping to test the engine and solve all feature and performance problems before the real release, so that everyone can enjoy our definitive vision of the game without issues.

As promised, here is an update on where we are at with developing the Xen chapters.


We are striving to make sure Xen is fun, well thought-out, and cohesive. Each chapter has its own theme and artstyle, and we are developing them in parallel to ensure they are all at the same high standard of quality. Xen, in its current form, is made up of 14 maps across these final 5 chapters, with each map alone being significantly larger than the originals. We are putting our full effort into completing Xen in a timely manner so that everyone can have the complete Black Mesa experience!












Improved Prop Lighting
While developing Xen, we realized the existing Source lighting just wasn't accurate enough. In the original Source, up to 4 lights are allowed per object and there is no self-shadowing. This works fine for small or medium sized objects, but for something like a massive, detailed rock archway, the limitations appear. In the screenshot, the vines hanging under the arch do not appear properly in shadow, and the arch looks strangely flat because only 4 light samples are being taken.

Our new static lighting supports all the nearby lights in the scene, self-shadows correctly, and also works seamlessly with both our new skydome lighting and our new dynamic lights. This makes a big difference "merging" the objects with their environment.

Left is the old style of prop lighting, Right is the new:




The new lighting is much less flat overall, displays colours which are truer to the scene’s real tone, and shadows in a much more appealing and realistic manner.


Dynamic Lights - Full featured dynamic lights that are able to cast real time shadows, project textures, and emit volumetric light (godrays). These have been implemented across earthbound to help amp up the visual fidelity and “nextgen-ness”.

Lens Flares - New entity that creates a lens flare with customizable colors, styles, and effects. These have been implemented across earthbound too; only on lights we deemed very bright or important enough to warrant a lens flare.

Overhauled CSM and Godrays - Cascade Shadow Maps (CSM) have been totally rewritten and now run better than before. Godrays are completely overhauled to run smoother and operate off of a new entity that automatically gets the sun angle from the environment light.

New Crossbow Scope - Crossbow scope no longer uses an in game camera to zoom in. This makes the scope easier to aim and increases performance by removing a second rendering pass. It also fixes a number of visual bugs with using the scope throughout the game.

Image Based Ambient Lighting - Lighting can now be generated based off of the skybox image. This allows mappers to have significantly more accurate environmental lighting, which automatically takes into account the nuances and difference colours of the sky. This is unlike any other version of Source, where environment lighting is simply one flat colour picked by the mapper.

4 Way Texture Support - 4 way texture blends are now supported in engine, each with their own bump map, specular map, and procedural blending options. This allows for much more variety in texturing natural landscapes, as most older versions of Source only support 2 way texture blends.

Color Correction - All existing earthbound maps now utilize color correction.

Better Hammer Compiles - Hammer now uses current windows themes and the compiler does not block you from continuing to use Hammer; running in a separate batch window (similar to CSGO).

Added Support for $treesway - Props can now move in the wind using tree sway. This creates more much more dynamic looking natural environments, with a very small performance cost.

Implemented Hammer Instance Support - Hammer can now instance other VMFs to support modular level design.

Improved Blood Particles - Updated and improved blood particle effects for NPCs, to not look as blocky and unrealistic.

New Long Jump Mechanics - Modified long jump mechanics to be more similar to modern day games (press “jump” twice to long jump). Added a long jump recharge meter and “mana” mechanic to keep people from spamming long jump in both single and multiplayer (the long jump has a limited charge, with a medium base recharge rate, and the jumps consume this charge). Added a small “pop jump” mechanic to allow course corrects while player is mid air.

Dynamic Light Implementation - Moved all existing old Source dynamic lights over to our new dynamic lights system. This should improve visuals and reduce hitching when a dynamic light is activated (such as explosions, flashlight, Xen portal, muzzle flash, etc).

Doubled Source Displacement Limit - Max number of displacements allowed per map from 2048 to 4096. This allows the creation of more detailed and expansive natural outdoor environments.

Fixed Hammer Shaded Textured View - No more horrendous fullbright mapping!


NPCs
Fixed HECU not holding weapons correctly

Fixed scientist ties jiggling out of control when FPS is low

Fixed instances where Vort would not react to player

Fixed ragdoll errors after loading a saved game

Fixed rappelling HECU sometimes getting stuck in Osprey

Fixed helicopter rockets getting stuck underwater

Fixed grenade throw mechanics, grenades should be much easier to throw now

Fixed crash from blowing up zombie HECU

Fixed HECU turrets not shooting at zombie HECU

Added IK (Inverse Kinematics) setup on Houndeye/Bullsquid

Fixed Houndeye hitboxes, ragdoll, and gibs

Added glow back to Houndeye’s blue stripes

Fixed skinning on Houndeye

Fixed player being able to pick up assassin’s pistol

Fixed and improved Alien Controller AI and combat

Fixed Agrunt hornet tracking to be more fair, making the Agunts more fun to fight

Updated Vort eyes

Fixed Vorts getting stuck after loading a save game

Multiplayer
Added HUD icon for players using voice chat in multiplayer

Added hit indicators in multiplayer

Fixed UI spectate bugs in multiplayer

Increased crossbow zoom sensitivity in multiplayer

Fixed satchel being able to be thrown through the ground

Fixed TOW launchers in Crossfire breaking if you moved them too much

Fix fast weapon switch getting turned off in multiplayer

Fixed ent_create not respecting sv_cheats

Fixed filter_damage being able to crash servers

Miscellaneous
Temporarily removed blood on weapons and hands, to fix the engine hitching when the effect is first applied

Fixed Tau firing with limited ammo. The Tau will not longer auto fire if you do not have enough ammo for a full charge.

Fixed Tau overcharge not hurting the player

Fixed soundscapes not playing underwater

Fixed maps crashing if there were no lights in VMF

Fixed UI errors with certain translation files (Russian, Chinese)

Fixed shotgun shells disappearing during reload animation

Fixed missing translations in Italian closed captions

Split last map of Lambda Core into two maps, for better performance

Fixed VRAD to always pay attention to “Disable Vertex Lighting” in Hammer

Fixed crossbow aiming too high when zoomed in

Fixed various crashes and bugs when using the workshop tools

Dynamic light shadows sometimes flicker

Wall decals sometimes flicker

Props sometimes “pop” with different lighting values

Shadows from dynamic lights sometimes flicker on surfaces tangent to light, or when light is moving very fast

When using dynamic light godrays, the game is slightly blurred

Player occasionally gets stuck in Inbound tram when turning corner; issue fixes itself

Cameras in game are off angle

Gman gibs are wrong in multiplayer

Crossbow will force you to descope after firing a shot in multiplayer

Thanks!
-The Black Mesa Team

Happy Holidays, and happy Steam Winter Sale everyone! Black Mesa is currently $4.99, our largest discount yet.

We released an update for Black Mesa (currently on public beta) that adds real-time dynamic lights, lens flares, god rays, and a host of other features to the existing earthbound sections of the game. The goal of this update is to get the released version of the game as close to our internal build as possible. This way, the final Xen release can be closer to a simple map drop; with less potential for engine and code issues affecting players on their first time playing Xen. We are hoping to test the engine and solve all feature and performance problems before the real release, so that everyone can enjoy our definitive vision of the game without issues.

As promised, here is an update on where we are at with developing the Xen chapters.


We are striving to make sure Xen is fun, well thought-out, and cohesive. Each chapter has its own theme and artstyle, and we are developing them in parallel to ensure they are all at the same high standard of quality. Xen, in its current form, is made up of 14 maps across these final 5 chapters, with each map alone being significantly larger than the originals. We are putting our full effort into completing Xen in a timely manner so that everyone can have the complete Black Mesa experience!












Improved Prop Lighting
While developing Xen, we realized the existing Source lighting just wasn't accurate enough. In the original Source, up to 4 lights are allowed per object and there is no self-shadowing. This works fine for small or medium sized objects, but for something like a massive, detailed rock archway, the limitations appear. In the screenshot, the vines hanging under the arch do not appear properly in shadow, and the arch looks strangely flat because only 4 light samples are being taken.

Our new static lighting supports all the nearby lights in the scene, self-shadows correctly, and also works seamlessly with both our new skydome lighting and our new dynamic lights. This makes a big difference "merging" the objects with their environment.

Left is the old style of prop lighting, Right is the new:




The new lighting is much less flat overall, displays colours which are truer to the scene’s real tone, and shadows in a much more appealing and realistic manner.


Dynamic Lights - Full featured dynamic lights that are able to cast real time shadows, project textures, and emit volumetric light (godrays). These have been implemented across earthbound to help amp up the visual fidelity and “nextgen-ness”.

Lens Flares - New entity that creates a lens flare with customizable colors, styles, and effects. These have been implemented across earthbound too; only on lights we deemed very bright or important enough to warrant a lens flare.

Overhauled CSM and Godrays - Cascade Shadow Maps (CSM) have been totally rewritten and now run better than before. Godrays are completely overhauled to run smoother and operate off of a new entity that automatically gets the sun angle from the environment light.

New Crossbow Scope - Crossbow scope no longer uses an in game camera to zoom in. This makes the scope easier to aim and increases performance by removing a second rendering pass. It also fixes a number of visual bugs with using the scope throughout the game.

Image Based Ambient Lighting - Lighting can now be generated based off of the skybox image. This allows mappers to have significantly more accurate environmental lighting, which automatically takes into account the nuances and difference colours of the sky. This is unlike any other version of Source, where environment lighting is simply one flat colour picked by the mapper.

4 Way Texture Support - 4 way texture blends are now supported in engine, each with their own bump map, specular map, and procedural blending options. This allows for much more variety in texturing natural landscapes, as most older versions of Source only support 2 way texture blends.

Color Correction - All existing earthbound maps now utilize color correction.

Better Hammer Compiles - Hammer now uses current windows themes and the compiler does not block you from continuing to use Hammer; running in a separate batch window (similar to CSGO).

Added Support for $treesway - Props can now move in the wind using tree sway. This creates more much more dynamic looking natural environments, with a very small performance cost.

Implemented Hammer Instance Support - Hammer can now instance other VMFs to support modular level design.

Improved Blood Particles - Updated and improved blood particle effects for NPCs, to not look as blocky and unrealistic.

New Long Jump Mechanics - Modified long jump mechanics to be more similar to modern day games (press “jump” twice to long jump). Added a long jump recharge meter and “mana” mechanic to keep people from spamming long jump in both single and multiplayer (the long jump has a limited charge, with a medium base recharge rate, and the jumps consume this charge). Added a small “pop jump” mechanic to allow course corrects while player is mid air.

Dynamic Light Implementation - Moved all existing old Source dynamic lights over to our new dynamic lights system. This should improve visuals and reduce hitching when a dynamic light is activated (such as explosions, flashlight, Xen portal, muzzle flash, etc).

Doubled Source Displacement Limit - Max number of displacements allowed per map from 2048 to 4096. This allows the creation of more detailed and expansive natural outdoor environments.

Fixed Hammer Shaded Textured View - No more horrendous fullbright mapping!


NPCs
Fixed HECU not holding weapons correctly

Fixed scientist ties jiggling out of control when FPS is low

Fixed instances where Vort would not react to player

Fixed ragdoll errors after loading a saved game

Fixed rappelling HECU sometimes getting stuck in Osprey

Fixed helicopter rockets getting stuck underwater

Fixed grenade throw mechanics, grenades should be much easier to throw now

Fixed crash from blowing up zombie HECU

Fixed HECU turrets not shooting at zombie HECU

Added IK (Inverse Kinematics) setup on Houndeye/Bullsquid

Fixed Houndeye hitboxes, ragdoll, and gibs

Added glow back to Houndeye’s blue stripes

Fixed skinning on Houndeye

Fixed player being able to pick up assassin’s pistol

Fixed and improved Alien Controller AI and combat

Fixed Agrunt hornet tracking to be more fair, making the Agunts more fun to fight

Updated Vort eyes

Fixed Vorts getting stuck after loading a save game

Multiplayer
Added HUD icon for players using voice chat in multiplayer

Added hit indicators in multiplayer

Fixed UI spectate bugs in multiplayer

Increased crossbow zoom sensitivity in multiplayer

Fixed satchel being able to be thrown through the ground

Fixed TOW launchers in Crossfire breaking if you moved them too much

Fix fast weapon switch getting turned off in multiplayer

Fixed ent_create not respecting sv_cheats

Fixed filter_damage being able to crash servers

Miscellaneous
Temporarily removed blood on weapons and hands, to fix the engine hitching when the effect is first applied

Fixed Tau firing with limited ammo. The Tau will not longer auto fire if you do not have enough ammo for a full charge.

Fixed Tau overcharge not hurting the player

Fixed soundscapes not playing underwater

Fixed maps crashing if there were no lights in VMF

Fixed UI errors with certain translation files (Russian, Chinese)

Fixed shotgun shells disappearing during reload animation

Fixed missing translations in Italian closed captions

Split last map of Lambda Core into two maps, for better performance

Fixed VRAD to always pay attention to “Disable Vertex Lighting” in Hammer

Fixed crossbow aiming too high when zoomed in

Fixed various crashes and bugs when using the workshop tools

Dynamic light shadows sometimes flicker

Wall decals sometimes flicker

Props sometimes “pop” with different lighting values

Shadows from dynamic lights sometimes flicker on surfaces tangent to light, or when light is moving very fast

When using dynamic light godrays, the game is slightly blurred

Player occasionally gets stuck in Inbound tram when turning corner; issue fixes itself

Cameras in game are off angle

Gman gibs are wrong in multiplayer

Crossbow will force you to descope after firing a shot in multiplayer

Thanks!
-The Black Mesa Team

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