Black Mesa

Summer, Summer, Science Time!🌞 Time to celebrate good weather, good times, and great deals! Black Mesa is currently 80% off for Summer Sale!Updating...🚧As mentioned previously, we have some new tech in Black Mesa that both our team and HECU Collective (the team behind the Black Mesa: Blue Shift mod) are utilizing. We've been testing these features and doing some initial work on the first 5 chapters. Our goal is to roll out these updates in stages on the public-beta branch. Once testing is complete, we will move the update to the mainline for everyone to check out!Please note: Existing save files will break when this update is moved to the main branch.As always, you'll still be able to restart from the chapter you were on (or from a specific map using console commands).Peer Review 📝To recap, this update will:Fix minor bugs, visual errors, and improve asset optimizations where possible Add improved parallax-corrected cubemap reflectionsImprove outdoor baked lighting and leverage new image-based sky lightingImprove indoor baked lighting (better static prop lighting and bounce lighting overall)Improve real-time Cascaded Shadow Map (CSM) lightingDeliver significantly better pe

Update: "Low quality, obvious AI-created slop is going to be a growing problem in every creative outlet," Facepunch founder Garry Newman said in response on RPS' reachout about S&box being plagued by such things out of the gate. "We don't encourage using AI to be creative. We don't encourage using AI to create games for you. But we do acknowledge that it's a good learning tool and it's a good productivity tool. We'll be taking action to promote human creativity and push obviously AI-created slop off the main page." Original story follows: S&box, the open source game development platform/game about vaguely minion-looking cartoon blokes messing about with objects that's serving as spiritual successor to Garry's Mod , has released today, April 28th. Sadly, it seems to be heavy on AI-filled user-created games early doors, with developers Facepunch having already admitted they'll "have to deal with people using AI in obvious, low quality ways". Thankfully, in the meantime the original's still very much kicking, with an update arriving on April 29th set to see fan-made Half-Life remake Black Mesa graf

Congrats to HECU Collective! 🎊🎉It’s been 5 years since HECU Collective released the first chapter of their Black Mesa: Blue Shift mod. Watching their project (and team) grow over that time has been genuinely awesome, and the passion they’ve poured into bringing Barney Calhoun’s story to life continues to blow us away.They’re celebrating the anniversary with two new videos, and you should absolutely give them a watch:What we’re working on for Black Mesa 🛠️On our side, we’ve also been heads-down on an upcoming Black Mesa update. Without turning this into a full patch breakdown just yet, here's what we’re actively working on:New Lighting FeaturesFixed CSM lighting on static propsFixed baked lighting orientation on static propsImproved bounce lightingImplemented outdoor lighting from HDR cubemaps (image based lighting)(From Blue Shift)Parallax Cube MapsAll cube maps can now be corrected for parallaxInstead of them floating in place, the appear to be grounded like a real reflection(From Blue Shift)Optimization UpdatesAdded more robust culling of assets not in view of the playerThis improves the performance of the engine, without having to re-compile maps or optimize are (though we

1. Black Mesa: Blue Shift – “Caretaking Update” by HECU Collective 👮 Our friends over at HECU Collective have dropped a big “Caretaking Update” for their Black Mesa: Blue Shift mod, and it’s absolutely worth your time if you haven’t checked it out yet.Some of the standout improvements in this update include:A new scene at the end of Focal Point that smoothly transitions into Power Struggle (coming Soon™)A major Focal Point overhaul with improved lighting, performance, combat, and atmosphereUpgraded visuals, models, and textures across the board, plus lots of small details that make the world feel more aliveOn top of that, they’ve packed in new voice lines, refined audio, extra fauna and interactive objects, more autosaves, and a ton of bug fixes and polish. Read more about it at the link: ModDBIf you’re a fan of Black Mesa and haven’t tried Black Mesa: Blue Shift yet, this is a great time to jump in and show HECU Collective some love.2. Our “Drive to 135k” Overwhelmingly Positive Reviews for Black Mesa❤️We’re incredibly grateful for the support Black Mesa has received over the years. Right now, we’re pushing toward a new milestone:135,000+ Steam user reviews with an “Overwhelmingly