Black Mesa News

Xen Museum/Dreamies/Sale!

Hello everyone! Happy… Spring? Is that what season it is?

We may have lost track of time, but that’s only because we have been working away on a patch, and some other projects. Lots to cover, so let’s go!

Steam Sale

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

The Dreamies!

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

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

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

Black Mesa Xen Museum

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

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

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

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

Patch Notes

Last but not least, we have put out a patch to fix up a number of UI/Game issues and add translation files. Here are the detailed notes:

Note: if your input device is not set correctly in windows, there will be no icons in game.

Added ability to change multiplayer character model/skin on new UI client.

[h3]Implemented translators credits page![/h3]
Experimental Weapon Wheel for controller (hud_fastswitch 2).
Fixed mouse wheel support in options menu.
Fixed “Reset Defaults” setting select weapon to [ ] instead of mouse wheel.
Added support for multiplayer join menu navigation.
Fixed issue with game reloading after video settings change. Game will now save settings if you navigate to another tab.
Updated functionality for UI navigation with controller/keyboard.
Fixed issues related to random selection of UI items.
Implemented support for carousel navigation (New Game menu, Load Game menu, Save Game menu).
Improved support to change game bindings with controller/keyboard.
Added support to change key binding in cell with "A" button (Enter) press.
Fixed problem with option lists not appearing in UI navigation with controller/keyboard.
Update UI navigation functionality. Now users can navigate through alert boxes with controller/keyboard.
Fixed problem with UI navigation being enabled while dev-console is opened.
Fixed UI soft lock issue with disconnecting from single player game.
Fixed UI soft lock issue with disconnecting from multiplayer game.
Disabled default keyboard navigation functionality. It causes scroll over items and prevents custom UI navigation functionality work.
Added highlight to the menu button that has an active state to show user selection when navigating with controller/keyboard.
Update UI navigation logic. Added logic to store selected UI items when navigating to the next level of menu depth (to be able to select it again when the user goes up one level of depth tree).

Additional Translation Files

Arabic
Portuguese (Brazilian)
Greek
Indonesian
Japanese
Lithuanian
Spanish (Mexican)
Vietnamese

Supported Languages Now Include:

Arabic
Chinese Simplified
Chinese Traditional
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
English
Finnish
French
Georgian
German
Greek
Hungarian
Indonesian
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Norwegian
Lithuanian
Polish
Portuguese
Portuguese (Brazilian)
Romanian
Russian
Spanish
Spanish (Mexican)
Swedish
Turkish
Ukrainian
Vietnamese

More to come soon! Thanks!

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

UI/Translation Patch

Patch for previous beta. Fixed missing closed caption files. Fixes default key binding setting change weapon to [ ].

The new Half-Life: Blue Shift mod for Black Mesa now has a playable intro

We were excited last month to see that a new group of modders is taking up the project of recreating Half-Life: Blue Shift in the lovingly modernised Black Mesa, and now the introduction is available to play. Black Mesa: Blue Shift's first chapter, which involves another long tram ride deep into the heart of the Black Mesa Research Facility, is now accepting passengers.

HECU Collective, the group of modders building the mod, says it will be releasing Black Mesa: Blue Shift chapter by chapter as they're completed. The first, Living Quarters Outbound, is downloadable from ModDB now, and it's a nice peek at the enhancements coming to the original expansion.

Admittedly, Blue Shift starts out in much the same way that Half-Life did, and there's not a lot to do on the ride from the living quarters area to Barney Calhoun's unassuming little Security Station 3 desk other than to gawp at the shiny new textures and lighting. But there's plenty to look at: pipes shine, the headlights on other tram cars create realistic glows and coronas, and there are re-recorded voice lines to overhear as you head in for what's meant to be a normal day at work.

Read the rest of the story...

Translation and UI Patch

Hello, Mesa friends!

Hope the winter has treated everyone well. We here at Crowbar Collective are excited for spring and what comes next for us. But first off, we have a beta for testing further controller support, some UI bug fixes, as well as new translations. Please let us know if you see any persisting issues using controllers or with the new UI.

We’ll be back soon to put the patch on the mainline and announce some fun events!

Fixes Pushed to Beta

Added ability to change multiplayer character model/skin on new UI client ( Still needs translation strings).
Implemented translators credits page.
Experimental Weapon Wheel for controller (hud_fastswitch 2).
Fixed mouse wheel support in options menu.
Added support for multiplayer join menu navigation.
Fixed issue with game reloading after video settings change. Game will now save settings if you navigate to another tab.
Updated functionality for UI navigation with controller/keyboard.
Fixed issues related to random selection of UI items.
Implemented support for carousel navigation (New Game menu, Load Game menu, Save Game menu).
Improved support to change game bindings with controller/keyboard.
Added support to change key binding in cell with "A" button (Enter) press.
Fixed problem with option lists not appearing in UI navigation with controller/keyboard.
Update UI navigation functionality. Now users can navigate through alert boxes with controller/keyboard.
Fixed problem with UI navigation being enabled while dev-console is opened.
Fixed UI soft lock issue with disconnecting from single player game.
Fixed UI soft lock issue with disconnecting from multiplayer game.
Disabled default keyboard navigation functionality. It causes scroll over items and prevents custom UI navigation functionality work.
Added highlight to menu button that has active state to show user selection when navigating with controller/keyboard.
Update UI navigation logic. Added logic to store selected UI item when navigating to next level of menu depth (to be able to select it again when the user goes up one level of depth tree ).

Additional Translation Files

Brazilian(Portuguese)
Mexican Spanish
Greek
Indonesian
Lithuanian
Vietnamese
Arabic
Japanese

[h2]Supported Languages Now Include:[/h2]

Chinese Simplified
Chinese Traditional
Croatin
Czech
Danish
Dutch
English
Finnish
French
Georgian
German
Hungarian
Italian
Korean
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese
Romanian
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Ukrainian

Thanks!

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

A new Half-Life: Blue Shift mod is in the works for Black Mesa

Gearbox Software is most commonly associated with the Borderlands series nowadays, but decades ago it was also responsible for developing Half-Life: Blue Shift. This was a 2001 add-on to Valve's original Half-Life, which told the story of that fateful day at the Black Mesa Research Facility from the perspective of Gordon's security guard pal, Barney Calhoun. Now that FPS game is making the jump into Black Mesa, thanks to a group of modders called the HECU Collective.

The HECU Collective means for Black Mesa: Blue Shift to be exactly what you'd expect: an update of Half-Life: Blue Shift featuring all the enhancements and new features found in the modernised Black Mesa. The original Blue Shift, released several years after Half-Life, added an 'HD texture pack' that gave Half-Life a crisper look, and the leap should be all the more noticeable now, 20 years later.

Blue Shift isn't a long game - in fact, it can be finished in a single sitting - and it's the rare game told from the perspective of a low-level mook. You get to see a lot of the stuff going on behind the scenes in Gordon Freeman's story, and eventually even make a trip to Xen.

Read the rest of the story...