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[COLOR=‘Cyan’]Q1: What are the real minimal system requirements for Black Mesa (from here on would be referred as BM) to get almost lag-free gameplay experience?
A1: You would need a videocard with a decent peak fillrate and a fast enough CPU with at least two cores. Memory requirements are at least 512MB of video card onboard memory (preferably of a GDDR5 kind; or at least of GDDRx kind and not an ordinary DDRx one) and about 1GB of free system memory available for game engine to use. Low frequency quad core CPU would perform worse than high frequency dual-core or triple core CPU.
Aim for 3GHz+ Intel Core i3/i5/i7 or 3.5GHz+ Athlon II/Phenom II or 3.8GHz+ AMD FX or AMD Socket FM1/FM2 AXX CPUs to be on a safe side. With Core i5/i7 and AMD FX CPUs SMT had been reported to cause performance regressions sometimes. You might wish to disable HyperThreding of your Intel CPU in motherboard system BIOS setup utility or set your AMD FX CPU to advertise one core per module if you happen to experience CPU-related performance issues in BM.
As for recommended GPUs: so far I have tested how does the game perform with nVIDIA chips I had on hand. Basing on my personal experience and of a reports on forums from other people GTX480 or GTX580 or GTX670/680 would work well. SLI configurations had also been reported to work well – i.e. it’s OK to use 2xGTX460 or 2xGTX560, and dual-chip cards like GTX490/590 would also work well. Expect some micro-stutter and worse minimal FPS with SLI – this is a typical problem for this technology.
[COLOR=‘Cyan’]Q2: I’ve got a slower GPU/CPU than listed in the answer to the previous question. Would I still be able to play BM?
A2: Yes, but you would hit FPS dropdown problems at some places throughout the game. There are some workarounds though that could allow you to play the game moderately well in case you had been able to play HL2:EP2 or Portal II with a good enough frame rate on your rig. This workarounds would be listed later on in this FAQ.
[COLOR=‘Cyan’]Q3: I’ve downloaded the game and now don’t know how to install it. All I’ve got is a ~3GB file with 7z extension. What should I do?
A3: Your download is incomplete. Complete game installation package consists of the three files, one being 7z archive with the game itself, another being an md5 checksum which allows game installer to verify the integrity of the installation package and this is the executable allowing you to install the game. It is possible to manually unpack 7z archive but it is “kind of advanced” topic which would not be covered in this FAQ. Also you should have Steam and Source 2007 SDK installed to play this game (both are free). If you don’t know what the Steam is or how to install Source 2007 SDK – google for it, there are a lot of information about these topics all over the internet.
[COLOR=‘Cyan’]Q4: I had installed the game using its installer and now can’t find it anywhere – there’s no desktop icon for it, there are no entries in Windows Start Menu, e.t.c. How do I start up the game?
A4: This game is a modification (mod) to be played with Source 2007 SDK. To play mods like you should start up Steam client application, navigate into “Game Library” tab and there you’d find “Black Mesa” waiting for you to start playing. If you happen to have Steam running at the moment when you install BM and you can’t locate BM in the Steam’s game library - try restarting Steam client and it should appear in the library games list.
[COLOR=‘Cyan’]Q5: I’m having troubles with starting up the game: it either immediately crashes at start with a “hl2.exe stopped working…” message (Windows 7/8 or Vista) or with a “The program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down.” (Windows XP) or displays some error message like “Failed to create D3D Device”. What to do?
A5: First of all, check that you’re using latest version of the GPU drivers for your videocard. Next, you could try adding “-window” to the BM command line parameters in steam (right click on the “Black Mesa” entry in Steam games library, select “Properties” and then press the “Set launch options…” and paste “-window” to the edit box. It it hadn’t helped – try using “-fullscreen -width -height < your monitor native resolution height>” there. Still no luck? Try puting “-dxlevel 90 -window” there. If nothing helps – check (if you could) if other Source-based games like original Half-Life 2, HL2: EP1, HL2: EP2, HL: Source, CS: Source, Portal, Portal II, Team Fortress II do not suffer from the same problem. If they are – report a bug to a Valve’s support. If not – read instructions here and report your problem to these forums: https://forums.blackmesasource.com/showthread.php?t=12513
[COLOR=‘Cyan’]Q6a: I’ve got some strange visual glitches in game like pink checkerboard-like textures on some objects (NPC eyes, Freeman’s hands) or a white line crossing the screen diagonally from one corner to another. What’s wrong?
[COLOR=‘Cyan’]Q6b: I want to use switch the engine into using another DirectX version, what should I do?
A6: For a some reason you have the game running in a DirectX 8.0 or 8.1 mode. It is a legacy renderpath that is supported by the Source 2007 SDK engine but is not properly supported by BM. You have either to switch the game into using DirectX 9.0+ mode or to get used to play with visual artefacts as they are. You could workaround diagonal white line crossing the screen by disabling HUD post processing in the “Black Mesa” tab of the game settings menu. Be sure to also disable chromatic aberration post processing filter while you’re there if you intend to continue playing in DX8 mode (or you would get the entire screen temporarily go black when something hits you).
To check what renderpath does the game engine use go to the “Settings”->”Video”->”Advanced…” from the main game menu and check the contents of the “Hardware DirectX level” text box. It should state DirectX v.9.0 or 9.5 or 9.8 for the game to work as was intended by developers.
In order to switch the engine into using another dxlevel you should quit the game and then edit BM startup command line by specifying “-dxlevel XX” there. XX should be one of: 80, 81, 90, 95 or 98. You really shouldn’t use 80 or 81 unless you have really good reasons to do it and you really know what are you doing. You’re on your own with dxlevel 80/81, bug reports for this renderpath are not welcome and seems to be considered invalid. On Windows XP you should use either mode 90 or 95. There shouldn’t be much difference between those modes really but you might have slightly better performance with dxlevel 90 in case your GPU is pretty old one (like GTX 8800/9800 or GTS 250). DirectX level 98 is intended to be used with DirectX 10 compatible videocards under Windows Vista and up accessed through compatibility D3D9 layer. There shouldn’t really be any difference between dxlevel 95 and 98 on Vista+ so you’re free to chose and use any of these. But in case you’re on Vista/Seven or Windows 8 and experience some troubles with dxlevel95 – try switching to dxlevel98. Chances are it might help (but I doubt it).
After you start up the game with the dxlevel specified on the command line be sure to check that the game had actually switched into using specified dxlevel by checking the contents of the “Hardware DirectX level” box in the advanced video settings dialog. In case you’ve got the engine switched to the level you want – make sure to quit the game and remove “-dxlevel XX” from the BM command line. Forgetting to do so would result in game resetting most of the video settings to the default values each time you restert the game – which is not convenient at all.
[COLOR=‘Cyan’]Q7: The game micro-stutters like mad as soon as I try to move. I have vsync turned on.
A7: This problem had been reported to be caused by trying to use multithreaded materials rendering which is in theory supported by the Source 2007 SDK engine but de-facto is pretty broken. Open up in-game console and execute (i.e. type in and press enter):
mat_queue_mode 0Also you could try disabling vsync and check if that helps.
[COLOR=‘Cyan’]Q8: I’ve got a lot of “freezes” in game: sound starts to stutter and game does not reacts on keyboard/mouse input. After a second or two the game unfreezes continues on normally. What’s wrong?
A8: There are several known causes for this problem. First of all, make sure to update the soundcard drivers to the latest available version. Then, configure your default sound output device to use “Stereo speakers” or “Headphones” mode and make sure you have the same setting chosen in the game audio settings dialog. If this don’t help – time to start experimenting. Try adding “-nosound” to the BM command line parameters and check if the game freezes the same way without sound. If it don’t – try specifying “-primarysound” in the command line parameters instead of “-nosound” and check if that helps. If not – try “-wavonly”.
If the game freezes the same way with the sound turned off – try moving your Steam installation to another storage (preferably to a fast SSD) and try defragmenting your hard drive (in case you use HDD and not SSD).
If nothing helps – try playing with downgrading GPU drivers to an earlier stable release or try using bleeding edge beta GPU drivers. Also make sure you don’t have any of the system components overheating (CPU, GPU, motherboard chipset hub). If you’re overclocking your CPU and/or GPU – revert them back to a fabric-default settings and check if it helps. If you’re on Windows Vista, 7 or 8 – try disabling Auro desktop theme.
If you had tried everything and nothing helped – bad luck for you. If you happen to find a way to fix you problem that was not mentioned here – please, report it so I could include it in the FAQ. Thanks.
[COLOR=‘Cyan’]Q9: I’m playing the game and it works fine in general but sometimes FPS drops down really low. What to do?
A9: BM happen to be really tasking both on the CPU (physics, dynamic lighting, particle systems simulation, geometry processing) and on the GPU (fillrate, dynamic lighting, triangle setup). Most frequently encountered tasking situations are fillrate-constrained effects like smoke clouds in the test chamber right after the cascade resonance and dynamic light calculations that are being done when marines or sentry guns shoot at you or when you set zombie on fire. Less common troubles are water reflection coupled with a lot of highly detailed geometry rendering or physics-related CPU tasks (tentacle in the blast pit known to cause it). While the general answer on how to remedy this problems would be “get a better CPU/GPU” it is not something that you want to hear, aren’t you? Well, you could get by using the following command added to the end of autoexec.cfg of your BM installation:
[code]
texture_budget_panel_x 550
texture_budget_panel_y 112
texture_budget_panel_height 450
texture_budget_panel_width 512
budget_panel_x 0
budget_panel_y 50
budget_panel_height 900
budget_panel_width 512
alias BudgetShow “sv_cheats 1; +showbudget; showbudget_texture 1; alias BudgetToggle BudgetHide;”
alias BudgetHide “-showbudget; sv_cheats 0; showbudget_texture 0; alias BudgetToggle BudgetShow;”
alias BudgetToggle “BudgetShow;”
bind b BudgetToggle
bind n “incrementvar texture_budget_panel_global 0 1 1”
alias DynamicOn “r_dynamic 1; r_dynamiclighting 1; alias DynamicToggle DynamicOff;”
alias DynamicOff “r_dynamic 0; r_dynamiclighting 0; alias DynamicToggle DynamicOn;”
alias DynamicToggle “DynamicOff”
bind “u” “DynamicToggle;”
bind “j” “incrementvar r_WaterDrawReflection 0 1 1;”
bind “m” “incrementvar r_drawparticles 0 1 1;”[/code]
With these commands in place as soon as you hit FPS dropdown you (a) should press “B” and take a screenshot, then press “N” and take yet another screenshot and then check what bar had the most length on the graph you’re presented with. Most of the times you would have the longest bar displayed against “Dynamic_Light_rendering” - and to remedy this you should press “U” on your keyboard. As soon as you do it you this bar should shrink to a minimum. If the longest bar is next to “Swap_Buffers” label and there are a lot of smoke/sparkles effects displayed on screen – press “M” and check if that helps. If the longest bars are next to “Static_Prop_Rendering”, “Other_Model_Rendering” and there’s a bar of a noticeable length next to “CViewRender::Render” - try pressing “J” and see if that helps.
To hide the budget panel (red thingy with a bar graphs) press “B” once again and continue playing. As soon as you think you had passed by the FPS problematic area – press “U”, “J” or “M” once again to turn related effects back on. Be sure to only press “U”, “J” or “M” second time in case you had pressed it before to “fix” FPS drop. This keys act like switches: when you press them for a first time they disable related effect and when you press them for the second time they enable the effect back and so on. “U” controls dynamic lighting, “J” - water reflections, “M” - particle effects.
When you finish your play session – make sure to collect all the screenshots you had captured for problematic FPS areas and post them to these forums among with the detailed info on your hardware and software configuration. It would allow developers to pinpoint the most problematic places in game from the performance PoV and hopefully fix it somehow in future updates.
[COLOR=‘Cyan’]Q10: I’ve got a multicore CPU and experience a low FPS and/or a lot of stutters in BM despite my system being way higher than the requirements posted in the answer to the Q1 of this FAQ. Is there a way to fix it?
A10: You might wish to try changing CPU affinity for the hl2.exe process in the Windows task manager. Some people report that setting affinity to use 3 out of 4 cores on quad core CPU had “fixed” stutters problems for them. Some other report that limiting hl2.exe to only use one CPU core works better for their case. Latter one has some ground with last generation of Core i5/i7, AMD Phenom II x6 and AMD FX CPUs – ensuring that OS won’t endlessly move the execution of the main game thread from one CPU core to another might allow Turbo Boost/Turbo Core technology to do it magic effectively reducing in-game CPU pressure. You could find more detailed info on how to set CPU affinity at this sticky thread:
https://forums.blackmesasource.com/showthread.php?t=12660
[COLOR=‘Cyan’]Q11: I’ve heard that one could use tweaked configuration file for BM to get it perform way better than with default settings. Is that true?
A11: Well, yes an no. There are some things that could be tweaked but don’t expect to get “huge performance increase” as a result. Here is the config I use to play the game on GTX 550 Ti with 1GB VRAM coupled with AMD FX 8120 CPU and 16Gb DDR3 system RAM:
[code]cl_showfps 2
fps_max 62
mem_max_heapsize 3000
mat_alphacoverage 1
mat_compressedtextures 1
mat_specular 1
mat_bumpmap 1
mat_parallaxmap 1
mat_queue_mode 0
r_threaded_particles 1
r_threaded_renderables 1
snd_async_fullyasync “1”
snd_mix_async 1
dsp_slow_cpu 1
cl_predict 1
cl_smooth 1
cl_forcepreload 1
sv_forcepreload 1
fog_enable_water_fog 1
r_dynamic 1
r_dynamiclighting 1
r_maxdlights 16
m_filter 0
hud_quickinfo 1
r_flashlightdepthtexture 0
rope_smooth 1
texture_budget_panel_x 550
texture_budget_panel_y 112
texture_budget_panel_height 450
texture_budget_panel_width 512
budget_panel_x 0
budget_panel_y 50
budget_panel_height 900
budget_panel_width 512
alias BudgetShow “sv_cheats 1; +showbudget; showbudget_texture 1; alias BudgetToggle BudgetHide;”
alias BudgetHide “-showbudget; sv_cheats 0; showbudget_texture 0; alias BudgetToggle BudgetShow;”
alias BudgetToggle “BudgetShow;”
bind b BudgetToggle
bind n “incrementvar texture_budget_panel_global 0 1 1”
alias DynamicOn “r_dynamic 1; r_dynamiclighting 1; alias DynamicToggle DynamicOff;”
alias DynamicOff “r_dynamic 0; r_dynamiclighting 0; alias DynamicToggle DynamicOn;”
alias DynamicToggle “DynamicOff”
bind “u” “DynamicToggle;”
bind “j” “incrementvar r_WaterDrawReflection 0 1 1;”
bind “m” “incrementvar r_drawparticles 0 1 1;”
alias +walk “sv_maxspeed 120;”
alias -walk “sv_maxspeed 320;”[/code]
You should adjust at least mem_max_heapsize to match the amount of the memory available on your system: in case you have less than 8Gb you should really lower this value to something like 1500 or 2048. If you have 2Gb – set it to 1024 or even to 768. You might have to experiment a bit with it. Or simply comment out this line and let the engine use default value.
Also you might with to include “-preload” in BM startup command line parameters – it isn’t required and is expected to force the same engine precacheing behavior as “cl_forcepreload/sv_forcepreload” do but it won’t hurt having it there either.
[COLOR=‘Cyan’]Q12: Where could I find autoexec.cfg and config.cfg that are used by BM?
A12: They are located at: \steamapps\sourcemods\BMS\cfg
[COLOR=‘Cyan’]Q13: Jumping height seems to be too low and don’t match what it were in original game. Could it be fixed?
A13: Navigate into BM configuration files folder and edit skill.cfg file. Find a line stating “bms_normal_jump_vertical_speed” and set the value you want there. Repeat the same for “ bms_normal_crouch_vertical_speed”. Many people all over the internet seems to use these values as their preferred defaults:
bms_normal_jump_vertical_speed "200"
bms_normal_jump_crouch_vertical_speed "200"
You should really tweak this ones in order to match your personal preferences. But I advice not to change these as you would have to use the default once if and when the deathmatch version of BM would be released.
[COLOR=‘Cyan’]Q14: Slow walking toggle seems not to work at all. Is there any way to fix it?
A14: Include the following hack in your BM’s autoexec.cfg:
alias +walk "sv_maxspeed 120;"
alias -walk "sv_maxspeed 320;"
Be warned that it won’t help you to safely crouch/walk near the tentacle in the blast pit level – game engine seems not to match the original tentacle behaviour of the HL. So you still would have to use grenades or other explosives to distract tentacle in order to pass that area of the map.
[COLOR=‘Cyan’]Q15: Game difficulty seems to be a bit too hard on normal, is it?
A15: Well, it is a matter of a personal preference. IMO monsters reaction time is a bit too fast and accuracy and LoS range seems to be way longer than it should (at least for marines) but there are a lot of games out in the wild who think that monsters are too easy as they currently are. I’d suggest switching to the easy skill level if you feel that the game is too punishing for you and makes you into a “save/reload whore” behaviour. Alternatively you could tweak some thinks in skill.cfg a bit, like damage coefficients for headshot or arm/legs. In the original game headshot was dealing triple damage compared to the normal corpse shot and arms/legs shots had been dealing the same level of damage as corpse shots. In BM by default head shots deal twice the damage of the corpse shot and arm/leg shot deals 80% damage of the corpse shot. You could change it to make in line with the original like this:
sk_npc_head "3"
sk_npc_chest "1"
sk_npc_stomach "1"
sk_npc_arm "1"
sk_npc_leg "1"It would made the game a little bit easy to play.
[COLOR=‘Cyan’]Q16: I get some strange visual glitches or sudden game crashes. How to fix it?
A16: It depends. First of all, BM seems to be extremely picky to a way you change render-related settings. If you want to change texture detail level or to disable HDR rendering – make sure to save the game first, then execute the “disconnect” command in the in-game console, then do the desired changes and then quit and restart the game. If you simply change the setting in the middle of the play session and continue to play on – expect the game to crash in the near future.
There are no definite answer on how to fix it really – so simply get used to quit and restart the game as soon as you change some sound or video related setting.
You could also hit some sporadic crashes not related to settings change. There shouldn’t be a lot of such kind though so simply restart the game and continue playing. Make sure to upload crash minidumps to these forums after you finish playing so devs could investigate the problem and hopefully fix it in future patches.
[COLOR=‘Cyan’]Q17: I’ve got a lower-end videocard (like GTX 450/550/550 Ti) and can’t afford enabling MSAA due to severe performance drop. Is it possible to use postprocessing based antialiasing techniques with BM?
A17: Yes, you could use SMAA/MLAA/FXAA injectors with BM. Place injector d3d9.dll into \steamapps<your steam username>\source sdk base 2007\bin, all other files like “injector.ini” or “SMAA.fx”/“SMAA.h” should go to \steamapps<your steam username>\source sdk base 2007. It seems that some keys can’t be used to control injectors. For injectSMAA I use the following injector.ini config:
[code][injector]
;toggle shader keycode
key_toggle = 44
;make screenshot keycode
key_screenshot = 122
;reload shader files keycode
key_reload = 19
[smaa]
;smaa preset one of {SMAA_PRESET_LOW, SMAA_PRESET_MEDIUM, SMAA_PRESET_HIGH, SMAA_PRESET_ULTRA}
preset = SMAA_PRESET_ULTRA
[misc]
;set to 1 to improve steam overlay compatibility
weird_steam_hack = 1[/code]
It allows to turn SMAA on/off by pressing Pause/Break button and to take BMP screenshots through injector using Print Screen. Screenshots are not that important though as Source 2007 SDK engine is perfectly capable of capturing screenshots on its own.
Note: make sure you don’t use D3Doverrider to force vsync/triple-buffering for hl2.exe. It won’t work with SMAA injector. What you’d get would either no triple-buffering forced by D3Doverrider or no SMAA injected by SMAA injector.
Note 2: Set “Antialiasing” to “None” in the game advanced video preferences dialog and do not force MSAA though GPU driver control panel. If you would try to use SMAA having “Antialiasing” set to anything but “None” in game you would end up with SMAA producing no visual results but eating up your GPU fillrate. If you try to force AA in game using GPU driver control panel while have antialiasing disabled in game you would end up with broken in-game reflection and refraction effects.
[COLOR=‘Cyan’]Q18: When I start a new game, the mouse starts out acting normal. If I press any key on the keyboard, the mouse goes into a mode where it acts like a joystick. That is, when the invisible pointer is to the left of center, the player turns left constantly. Same for up, down and right. The movement gets faster the more the pointer is off center. Centering mouse stops movement. What’s wrong and how to fix it?
A18: Do you have a mouse/keyboard sharing between several different computers program named “Synergy” installed on your PC? If so - it’s most probably is the cause of the problem. Report a bug to “Synergy” developers and disable/deactivate it prior to starting the game. Thanks to nex for reporting this problem and thanks to physco827 for sharing this solution.
[COLOR=‘DeepSkyBlue’]… FAQ Continued HERE …[/SIZE]
[COLOR=‘Cyan’]P.S. Sorry for grammar and spelling errors: English is not my native language. Comments and suggestions are welcome.
Have a lovely rest of the week everyone and enjoy the game!