Crowbar Collective has released the Necro Patch for its amazing Half-Life Remake, Black Mesa. According to the team, this update improves the game’s performance, UI, controller support and overall stability.
Going into more details, the Necro Update packs optimizations for the Vulkan API and UI. Enhancements have been also implemented for the New Renderer and New Post-Process systems, particularly noticeable in scenes featuring water. Therefore, the game will now run faster on more PC systems. Plus, the update unlocks the even higher graphics setting in options menu.
The sun and local lights will also now cast God Rays. Not only that but the blending quality of normal maps within 4-way blending is better than before. Additionally, the team has disabled CPU-based backface culling for Func_Brush models, as well as CSM for viewmodels for secondary cameras.
As said, Black Mesa will now be more stable than before. The Necro patch fixes cases where the game would crash on startup. It also fixes a crash in the first map of Interloper.
Another major improvement is regarding the game’s UI. Crowbar Collective was able to finally fix the UI flickering and artifacting. As such, you’ll now get a more stable image.
Like always, Steam will download this update the next time you launch its client. Below you can also find its complete changelog.
Black Mesa Necro Patch Notes
Key Updates
- Improved performance of the game (Vulkan, UI optimization, New Renderer/New Post Post Process Optimization)
- Fixed cases where game would crash on startup
- Fixed UI flickering and artifacting
- Fixed crash in the first map of Interloper that players were experiencing
- Improved controller support using Steam Input
- Fixed hitch when weapon decals are first applied to gun
- Re-enabled weapon decals by default
Rendering/Performance
- Ported the game to DXVK 2.3.1 (first launch option)
- Performance enhancements have been implemented for the New Renderer and New Post-Process systems, particularly noticeable in scenes featuring water
- Fixed moss shaders and direction control for both vertex lit shader and skin shader (for props with/without phong)
- Fixed halflambert/warp/specwarp related problems across all the shaders
- Unlocked the even higher graphics setting in options menu
- The lighting quality settings in the New UI have been updated to reflect recent changes.
- Monitors and refract views can now leverage the New Renderer features
- God Rays support has been added for the sun and local lights
- -Note: God Rays are intentionally turned off for monitors and reflection views
- Improved the blending quality of normal maps within 4-way blending
- SpotLight cookies should now work on any orientation. Cookie sprite sheet no longer needs to be square.
- Black Mesa now requests high-performance power management on Windows, which should reduce power throttling impacting performance
- Implemented the ability to dump environment variables (-dumpenvironment launch option), assisting in resolving potential issues
- Lots of misc graphics fixes
- Disabled CPU-based backface culling for Func_Brush models
- Disabled CSM for viewmodels for secondary cameras
- Fixed flicker near Light Volume edges
- Fixed Xog artifacts with cheaper water
Controller SupportController support for Black Mesa has now been given the love and attention it has been seeking. Black Mesa now fully supports and integrates with Steam Input, allowing both us as developers and you as the community to create your own custom controller bindings and share them!
With Steam Input now implemented, we now have partial support the following devices:
- Xbox Controllers
- Playstation Controllers
- Nintendo Switch Pro Controllers
- We have also implemented proper Gyro support for Steam Deck!
To get started, simply navigate to the Steam Controller Layout configurator and select one of our official layouts and hit ‘Apply Layout’.
User Interface
- Modified the Game/UI rendering synchronization, aiming for stable UI presentation across all three available modes
- Updated the UI frame limiter logic to enhance the smoothness of frame pacing, which was particularly noticeable when vertical synchronization was active
- Improved performance by optimizing the texture lock implementation within the UI
- Resolved the issue where the UI occasionally failed to render at full size after resolution adjustments
- Fixed alpha blending of UI with background map
- Added a number of missing translators, including the 2012 mod translators (need to track down a list of who did what language)
Bug Fixes
- Interloper A crash fix
- Resolved the issue where the Tau Canon would crash upon the owner’s demise
- Addressed a potential hang issue upon exiting the game
- A reflection bug involving Xen fog at extreme angles has been fixed
- Transparency issues in fake water have been resolved, and it now supports New Renderer, New Post-Process, and CSM
- Resolved outline artifacts present in alpha-tested materials
- Resolved an issue where view models were improperly identified within one shader, leading to lighting and shadow inconsistencies
- Fixed a bug related to the Diffuse Warp when using more than eight slots in the atlas
- Fixed a Workshop Client issue related to double initialization, which had the potential to cause crashes
Known Issues
- Alt-Tabbing while using Vulkan can sometimes crash the game
- Anti-virus can sometimes flag the game as malicious even though it is not (we’ll see what we can do about this)
- Minor UI overlap errors on some ultra wide monitors
- Some UI elements need localization
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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I remember waiting for this game to hit it’s 1.0 version and was so happy when it did back in early 2020. The only issue I had with it was when they rebuilt Zen, it felt like it dragged on forever. It seems like it was around 15 times longer than it needed to be, and it’s what delayed the release for years too.
But other than that, it’s a fantastic way to experience Half-Life 1 and it would be awesome if Valve hired them to remake the other Half-Life games like Opposing Force or Blue Shift… or I don’t know, maybe actually make Half-Life 3, since Valve refuses to do it.
Yeah the Zen part was a slog to get through. It seems like they padded it out unnecessarily.
Eeexactlyyy that f*cking Xen chapter was so f*cking increeedibly infuriatingly and annoyingly overdone and stretched out that it completely killed the whole Half Life experience enjoyment that had come before, and made me grind like a mad man for hours through a bore/bizarre fest in seemingly another game just to see the game’s conclusion. Most incredibly stupid decision ever since no publisher forced them to anything, much less doing all that ridiculous extra amount of work. One of the harshest buzzkillers and turn offs ever in gaming.
Original Xen was garbage
Black Mesa Xen is still garbage.
The graphics tho.
I played through the Xen levels the first time but I skip those levels on replaying HL.
imo it was an abrupt shift in the game’s focus much like the shift in the first Crysis from fighting the North Koreans to fighting the aliens.
I miss the old Crytek though. Such squandered potential for greatness after the first Far Cry and the first Crysis.
I think they had to develop with the Console First philosophy starting Crysis 2, because they grew too fast and console market was HUGE back then.
Fair warning: there is a graphical issue with Vulkan:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2201e5e8ffdc81f4bdd4d828c55bc47914908d74e7741afd5a7cc2ec17959839.jpg
Thankfully, it looks fine with DirectX:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/22f49d97453c4c3ad1ad2b3eb67c87ac999f0b87592d428979ba47ecc9c94968.jpg
Are you using the newest driver for your GPU?
Also, AMD or NVIDIA?
Yes.
nVidia
The game is on sale for $4, if you somehow don’t have it already you owe it to yourself. Half Life is one of the best single player FPS ever made, and Black Mesa gets rid of the jank and datedness of the original. I like how 90’s FPS look, but its art style doesn’t hold up well against a game like Quake, so the remake treatment really does it justice.
I don’t have Black Mesa and never will. There are only a very few games that I want, just for me, to stay the way they were when I first played them and have continued to replay them over the years and Half Life, Unreal and Fallout 2 are among those games from 1998. Those 3 were incredible jewels and the year was also incredible for classics.
Those 3, Thief, Grim Fandango, Baldur’s Gate, Starcraft. What a great time to be a PC gamer. Younger gamers today just have no idea how great those days were. They mostly get fed sh*t on a shiny platter and believe that visuals are the most important thing above all else. Will there be many games that they will look back on 25 years from now and say they were classics?
Black Mesa is faithful and Xen levels are actually an upgrade. Remember they ran out of time with the original HL, so original Xen is pretty much an afterthought.
Black Mesa’s Xen levels are awesome.
“Will there be many games that they will look back on 25 years from now and say they were classics?”
No, because late 90s early 00s was the golden age. Everything turn into sh*t when its mass marketed and mainstream (With some exceptions).
There has been a shift between the middle to late 00s were consoles got really big and the PC devs were forced to work on it. Before PC and Consoles were their own ecosystem and it was better for everyone.
It’s not the only reason of the decline of video games but it’s a huge one.
Sure but Black Mesa is still a faithful remake outside of the Xen levels, which I get aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but the original Xen was hardly a masterpiece to begin with. Overall it’s a labor of love the original game that makes a few changes but is 90% the same as the original in most key ways. Not sure why it’s so hard for some people to enjoy the original and the remake.
Oh, and if my avatar didn’t give it away, I’m a huge Thief fan. Beat the first 2 games and The Black Parade mod that came out in November, currently doing my first playthrough of Deadly Shadows. It’s no where near as good as the first 2, but I want to see the story of the original trilogy play out to the end.
I do that too. I forced myself to play through FEAR3 just to bring conclusion to the series. From the first FEAR (a great classic) to FEAR3 (a turd game) was a sad mess. I try to tell myself that FEAR3 never happened.
Im a big fan of the original myself and still host a HLDM server, one of the only games Ive pre-bought in all my years. But Black Mesa is an incredibly well thought out remake which also adds a little originality into the maps without breaking nostalgia or the game itself. I highly recommend trying it, and definitely won’t ruin what you remember about the game.
I enjoyed Black Mesa more than HL.
Enjoy your six hour elevator fight at the end of xen, dude. Black Mesa is an uneven egomaniac modder clownshow and not near the level of a valve game. They did some cool stuff with earlier chapters but I’d still take the original any day.
Half Life will always be a beautiful game you f*king heathen.
“Necro Patch”, sounds like it brings in necrosis, or at best like they’re patching a cadaver/dead game. Terribly stupid name.
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