We believe the latest patch has resolved the issue where the game will launch in fullbright, meaning it has no lighting. This should be resolved for any more first time players. However, if you have previously had fullbright, it is possible that you may still have the problem. Here is the fix.
If you are not sure what “fullbright” means, this is how the game is supposed to look:
This is how fullbright looks:
This issue can be resolved by entering in the following commands into the console (tilde key ¬, normally to the left of 1) at the Black Mesa main menu. If the console does not work, you can enable it from the advanced keyboard settings.
mat_hdr_level 2
mat_fullbright 0
However, it is possible that after this, when you get in game, the game is still fullbright. If the game is still fullbright while playing it, you must open the console while in game, and enter the same commands:
mat_hdr_level 2
mat_fullbright 0
Once that is done, this should permanently resolve the issue. If it does not, try starting a new game on any chapter of your choosing - we have noticed that fullbright saves often have problems with the game reverting to fullbright.
If you are STILL experiencing issues with fullbright, following all of this, please follow the debugging steps we detailed in this thread. This will help us gather more information on the problem.
Thanks guys!