Black Mesa Public Beta Patch- Jan 13th 2016

Black Mesa Archive Patches
#1

Hey everybody!

This isn’t actually a new patch, it’s been out for a little while now. I’m comfortable with what we have now though to kind of publically say “we have issues fixed and we need help checking!” A reminder though is that this is a BETA patch. Which means that the fixes are intended to work, but may not work as intended. (buggy bug fixes!).

If you’re interested in trying things out, or if there is a fix for something that you’re interested in, you can opt-into the public beta right now! (if you own the steam version of the game). To participate: right click on in your steam browser, click “Properties.” Go to the Beta Tab. Select “Public Beta.” You’re now in the Public Beta! If you no longer want to be part of the public beta branch, you can go back to the Beta’s tab under properties, and set your beta to “none - Opt out of all betas.” When you opt in, you’ll see a download happening, that’s perfectly normal.

As of Jan 13th, 2016 the Public Beta changes from the Crossfire Update are as followed:

  • Added muzzle flash dynamic light checkbox to options menu.
  • Added godrays enable checkbox to the options menu
  • Minor optimizations made to netcode.
  • Crossfire performance optimizations.
  • Fixed ‘FIX IT DENIZ’ skin on monitor in UC.
  • Polished the workshop tool. (like, it works now, and you can upload thumbnails).*

[list][]ingame UI for the “workshop addons’” button in the menu is a much larger bug, so it has not been fixed. the rest of the uploader is working better now.
[/:m][/list:u]

*The workshop tool now places mods in the SteamApps/Workshop/Content/362890 folder. When you subscribe to a mod, it will add a folder with the mods ID, to that folder. The uploader will recognize .vpk mods and non-.vpk mods. It is preferred and considered good practice if you make a .vpk mod. (I will provide instructions on how to do that, later). I will be creating a full ‘how to upload a mod’ guide here soon.

There may be more things that are fixed that I have missed.

Please keep this thread to JUST the public beta fixes. This is not the place to discuss what needs to be fixed, or bugs that haven’t been fixed yet and/or ‘why haven’t you fixed XYZ bug?’ discussions. If I see that the discussion is moving off-topic, I will move or remove posts as necessary. Thanks!

Known issue:
Loading times for Black Mesa for launching the first time during a computer session is longer than it should be.

#2

Hmm, something about this tells me the Workshop Tool is still broken.

While trying to submit a second one it just crashed, so yeah.
Though now for some reason Black Mesa has a 1.3 GB update, so I guess I’ll wait for that and see what happens. Haven’t had a chance to check out the options menu additions because updating again.

#3

Yea, if you have a blank submission, I suggest deleting it. (If I understand your issue correctly)

#4

Enable HUD Post Process
Enable God Rays

Zoom mouse sensitivity

Will revert to default when the game is restarted.

Edit: Another important thing to mention about the beta, game takes around 1 minute to start.

#5

58.6MB is the size here of the update!

#6

So this I have definitely noticed… I have no idea what it is. Can anyone tell me if the public beta is giving them the same issue? TF2, recently, has been doing something similiar, so it may be a steam thing, not an us thing… but I personally don’t know for sure.

EDIT: has anyone else noticed it too. If so, toss me some system specs.

#7

I don´t get the point of why there is a beta branch for a beta early access game.

#8

I have the same problems with the launch of Black Mesa. Starting takes around 1 minute.
System specs:
Intel Core i5 3330 3.0 GHz
RAM: 8 GB 1600 MHz
AMD Radeon HD7850 2 GB 256 bit

#9

Just because we’re in EA doesn’t mean that we should release patches that are totally and uttery buggy. We’re in EA not just to test and make things better, but because we’re incomplete (I’m looking at you, Xen!). So we’re treating Black Mesa as a normal game, and we don’t want to be releasing horribly buggy patches to the main game. Additionally, there are some things that we, the devs, will miss during our internal testing. The save corruption issue that came with the Crossfire update for instance. I tested the saves personally, and nothing was amiss. Clearly though, there was something wrong. The developers computer environment must’ve had something with it that prevented the save corruption bug. There’s no way for us to know unless we do these public-beta’s to have a muuuuch wider range of computers to test.

Basically, while we are using EA to test things and get things out, we don’t want to have a broken product when people buy it. We’re not really a ‘beta’ game, we’re a bit past that. Good question, but a discussion for another thread.

On topic:
EDIT: If you’re having the long-load-time issue. Can you tell me about it a bit? Is it long the first time you launch it (from a fresh restart of your computer? or of steam?) Does the time it takes to launch get shorter the second time you launch it? The third time? These things help up isolate what the issue may be.

#10

I have load game about 2-3 min. After restart steam, nothing has changed

#11

Sorry for not being clear.
The issue is that the Workshop tool simply submits two blank items. It appears to speed through the upload process ( can’t upload 80MB in 5 secs, much as I’d like to), says it’s completed/uploaded, then I get the "Changes made, discard changes?"dialogue. No matter what I click the tool kind of just chills there and I get a new blank entry, both in my Workshop as well as in the tool.

Notice the two blank spaces. This is having tried both a VPK and non-VPK upload.

Anyway, I was gonna try letting this update go through and then try again and report back, buuuuut evidently I’m stuck in a perpetual update loop it seems (one huge update finishes, another huge one comes to take its place, repeat), so I guess I can’t really do any troubleshooting until I get this sorted.

#12

Since yesterday the public beta does not work for me. The game won’t start at all, but steam recognizes it as running, so it blocks steam itself, nothing can be done to ‘close’ the game. Even restarting the computer does not fix this, as soon you login into steam the game is still recognized as running. Tried deleting the appcache folder but the problem persists. I had to reinstall steam and opt out of the public beta.

#13

Everyone who i know that has updated to the beta has this problem (6 people, 7 with me).

#14

I’ve been having the long load time issue as well, 3 or 4 minutes in most cases. I just assumed that it was because my computer is nearing the end of its operational life, but one thing I noticed when I opened up Task Manager to kill the “stuck” game was that during that several-minute period the game uses a lot of hard disk activity- indeed, running other programs that hog the disk drive appears to further prolong the delay (hard to say definitively since it is time-consuming to test and delay times are quite random).

Samsumg Series 5, Intel i7 2.40GHz CPU
8.00 GB RAM
855GB Magnetic Disk Drive

I’d be very curious to see if people using solid-state drives also experience this slowdown.

I’m also having a problem where a lot of NPC textures are replaced with the texture-missing plaid, but since I have a lot of Workshop mods that mess with NPC appearances this problem is probably not on your end.

#15

Those blank ones should appear in your workshop items list on your profile. Check that out, if they are there, delete them.

This… I have no idea whats up. This is a brand new one for me.

Okay. I’ve talked to a programmer and they’re aware of the situation. We’ve already tested a couple things that could cause it, but can’t figure out what just yet. Will report back. Thanks everyone so far!

#16

I am not sure if this might be related to the game, BUT:
Tyler McVicker recently made a video on his channel Valve News Network that a Source engine exploit was found recently on every version of the engine.
He said that the exploit allowed other people to install .dll extension files on your PC if you are playing online.
I would love to put the link to the video, but for some reason, i cannot find it anymore.
I swear i’m not making this up.

#17

…

#18
  1. That exploit you posted was months ago.The one i am talking about was discovered few days ago.
  2. My post subject is off-topic, but let me rephrase the reason of my first comment.I posted that because it was in my best
    interest to ask if this exploit might be relevant to the Beta fix.
#19

I’m unsure, I’ll run it by the folks who would know more than I about this.

In the future, if you find something like this, it’s best to direct myself, or TEXTFAMGUY1 and we’ll relay the info.

#20

Are we talking about? https://steamcommunity.com/groups/WeAreUnitedGamers#announcements/detail/43137590289947320

Edit: I’ve read better, thought we were talking about the exploit from a few months ago also.

I’ll look into it maybe something can be done to protect clients or block this on the server, depending how it works, feel free to message me any info about this or about similar stuff in general if you’re aware of exploits, we can usually block this type of stuff one way or another and keep players safe while they play on UG servers.

Edit2: I’ve been looking into this, it seems that the exploit can be performed only by servers, not by connected users or other ways.

The advice from the link i’ve initially posted is still valid;

I would recommend only connecting to; trusted, old & well established servers for the time being, make sure the servers you connect to are the ones you think they are ,check their IP to make sure they are not cloned by someone to have the same name or similar.

Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.