Black Mesa News

Greetings scientists!

HECU Collective’s Blue Shift mod is receiving a new chapter! Chapter 4: Captive Freight will be out on December 10th! The new chapter comes with tons of new content along with bug fixes and additional features for previous chapters!

Fixes and added features:

• Critical bug fixes (No more softlocks and invisible cables!)
  
• Gameplay improvements (Better Guidance throughout Chapter 3)
  
• Visual improvements throughout all chapters (Better lighting and models)
  
• Animations improvements
  
• Performance optimizations
  
• Addition of interactable telephones (Who leaves them all hanging?)
  
• Support for more languages (Ukrainian, German, Czech, Korean, Traditional Chinese, Vietnamese and French)
  
• Updated UI and its navigation
  
• Barney's finally got his package delivered!
  

Previous chapters will be updated as well, so be sure to check them out before you play the 4th chapter!

You can download the mods here after the 10th!

[h3]ModDB Mod of the Year 2022[/h3]

The ModDB Mod of the year returns for the 21st time. As is the case every year, now's the time to look back and give talented mod makers the recognition they deserve for their creativity throughout 2022.

This is a department-wide effort! Let us all support and vote Black Mesa: Blue Shift as our Mod of the Year for 2022!

Cast your votes here!

Attention, Black Mesa personnel,

The Autumn Sale is about to go critical!

Black Mesa is now 50% off during the Steam Autumn Sale.
Suit up, and step into the Test Chamber before November 29th here:


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

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for the latest news and announcements, and join our Discord server for game tips and tricks.

Attention scientists!

24 years ago today, Half Life was released! We owe a lot to the Half-Life franchise, and it will always hold a special place as the series that Black Mesa came from. We are happy to have been a part of the source engine community all these years, and so today, join us in celebrating the 24th Anniversary of Half-Life! Are you feeling old yet?

Let’s hope not! Happy birthday Half-Life from the Crowbar Collective team!!



Join us on Discord, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for the latest developer updates and news.

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Greetings Scientists,

At long last, we are doing a final update on the Black Mesa X Intruder mapmaking competition now that the judging process is complete. Due to unforeseen scheduling issues, we have prepared a wrap up video showcasing the winning maps and honorable mentions instead of the planned developer livestream.

[h2]The Winners[/h2]

First off, we wanted to thank all the participants of the mapmaking collaboration between Black Mesa and Intruder for all their excellent submissions. We were very impressed with the amount of work that our community members put in, and thoroughly enjoyed getting to try them all out. While it was very difficult to pick from all the entries we received, the following 3 were our favorites:

[h3]Third Place: Black Mesa South[/h3]

In third place, we have BlackMesa South submitted by Xixo. A map that is true to form, we could clearly see inspiration drawn from both games with an authentic atmosphere and sneaky routes to steal the package. We very much enjoyed getting the opportunity to play this map, and want to congratulate Xixo on making the top-3.

[h3]Second Place: Foreseen Sequences[/h3]

In the runner-up position, we have Foreseen Sequences submitted by DoubleOSpanky. With interactive environment features like keycards, deadly lasers, and collectible tapes this entry spices up gameplay with a well designed and extremely detailed experience. This was an excellent map, and we were very impressed with what we saw! Thank you for creating such an interesting and creative map for us to play.

[h3]First Place: Potential Energy[/h3]

Finally, the winner of the Black Mesa X Intruder mapmaking competition is Potential Energy submitted by ActionMan! This entry truly pushed the limit of Intruder Map Maker with a campaign style mission that has custom objectives, multi-round objectives, and moving vehicles it almost seems like this could be its own game! While there were many strong candidates for top prize, ActionMan’s was a cut above the rest. This was a fantastic map, and we want to thoroughly congratulate them for getting 1st place!

[h2]Developer Wrap up Showcase Video[/h2]

To celebrate the hard work of our competition winners, we are releasing a showcase video to wrap up the map creation contest. Tune in to get the teams’ thoughts on what they enjoyed about each map!

The final Black Mesa X Intruder wrap up video can be found here

That’s everything that we have for you today. We enjoyed the opportunity to bring our two communities together, and are extremely impressed by all the maps that were entered. Thank you all for making this an amazing event. See you all later, scientists!


-The Crowbar Collective Team

Greetings, scientists!

At long last, we are finally ready to unveil the winners of our recent “LambdaBuilds: Escape From Black Mesa” mapmaking competition! We were blown away by all the entries that we have received and, despite how hard it was to pick out 3 winners, have finally determined the top-3 for this excellent event. Below are our top-3 from third place, to the grand prize winner:

• Third Place: Taking 3rd place is Little Red Star by Midlou! Congratulations on a job well done!
  
• Second Place: In 2nd, we have The Xenian by SNW! We were impressed by your work and appreciate your submission!
  
• First Place: The grand prize winner of “LambdaBuilds: Escape From Black Mesa '' is Biotech by BeefBacon! While it was difficult to pick a winner from all our great submissions, this one was the one that captured our imagination most. Excellent work, and enjoy your hard-earned prizes!
  

[h2]Honorable Mentions [/h2]

It was really difficult picking these three maps out of all the ones that we received. Because of this, we also want to give an honorable mention to two of the maps that came oh so close to winning, but ultimately just lost out by a slim margin. These two maps are:

4th Place - Imposter, by Dolmo
5th Place - Shadows, by OnTheMatter

Both of your maps were a ton of fun to play, and we appreciate you taking the time to create them!
Full details and results can be found here.

Again, we want to thank everyone who participated in the competition, and want to offer a hearty congratulations to our winners!

[h2]Where to play the maps: [/h2]

If you’re interested in playing the maps from the competition, we have just released an official collection of them on the Steam workshop. Additionally, you can go and download the maps from the ModDB web portal if you prefer. Go and give these excellent maps a try!

• Official Steam Workshop Collection
• ModDB Portal Download
  

That’s all for now, scientists!

- The Crowbar Collective Team