Laggy performance with Steam

Black Mesa Archive In-game Issues (Mod)
#1

Before I say anything else: You guys (the Black Mesa Team) are probably lucky that I’m not physically near any of you, because you would be in danger of being tackled and bear hugged within an inch of your life.

Alright, that’s settled. On to business. I booted up the game last night, and played for a considerable span of time until my eyelids felt like bricks and I retired for the night.

Now, this morning, I went to boot it up, and realized i had to restart steam (because Black Mesa originally starts in a different fashion, somehow). When I restarted steam and launched the “Black Mesa” shortcut, it was very choppy and laggy. (Mind you, I own a machine that can run HL2 on max graphics with a 50+ framerate)

The simplified version of this is that when it was running from the initial post-setup launch, it ran beautifully, and Steam was telling friends i was running “Source SDK 2007”. Now, when I boot up from the Black Mesa shortcut, it’s choppy and laggy. And much to the frustration of multiple users, there’s no .exe file in the BMS folder. How do we boot it up the non-laggy way? :smiley:

#2

There should be no performance difference, it’s called “Source SDK Base” on 1st run because the installer manually opens hl2.exe -game BMS

#3

Well, regardless of what should be, there IS a performance difference in here, and a massive one at that. I tried reinstalling BM so that it would boot through the launcher, and it’s laggy this time as well, but it also did not label me as playing the SDK this time either.

So you tell me, how can I encorporate the -game BMS command to run it manually like that? I’m familiar with target lines and launch parameters but I don’t know where I would input them. I’m 90% certain if I could invoke that method of launching I wouldn’t have the lag.

#4

I am not sure myself, you’ll have to wait for an answer from a developer. I tried adding -game BMS to Source SDK Base 2007 but I get an error (file not found) on launch.

#5

Argh! But I want to play it NAOWH!!! Out of curiosity, how did you know that it launches it in that fashion to begin with?

#6

One thing you can try is unplugging your network connection and run the game in offline mode to see if maybe it’s something going on with Steam while it’s online. I don’t really think that should have any affect on the game, but it’s worth a try.

On a related note, mine runs fine launching from Steam. I also placed a shortcut on my desktop.

#7

I figured it out for you, in Steam go to Tools, then right click on SDK 2007 and in Launch Options put

-game c:\Steam\Steamapps\sourcemods\BMS

This worked because I have steam in C:\Steam\ if you have it in Program Files you have to type the full path.

#8

Well, that’s a strange sentence. Steam detected it, obviously, but something in the launch method was different, since the game it said i was playing switched. I had Steam’s in-game overlay when it was running fine, so that isn’t the problem.

#9

Source SDK Base is kind of locked to Steam, to my knowledge. Otherwise people could distribute mods as games without Valve’s knowledge. I’m not sure what the cause of your performance issues is, but I’m highly doubting that it’s related to Steam running.

#10

I’m very confident that this will work…but i won’t know for a bit because i poked the files a little too hard (moved stuff) and need to re-extract BMS. :facepalm:

#11

Steam hadn’t detected it until it was restarted. The only way to launch BM without Steam detecting it is with this method. But as Katana said above I doubt it will solve your issues.

#12

I was having similar problems and running it through Source SDK 2007 with -game X:\[...]\BMS solved it!

Thanks!

#13

Ahem. Are you going to share you secrets with the less fortunate?

#14

All I did was run Source SDK 2007 through steam with the -game switch mentioned above.

#15

So I’m still tinkering with it. It’s not liking the parameters I gave it. First off, the first thing it looks for is the file gameinfo.txt. And that file is just chilling in the \BMS folder, as it should be. So when it keeps giving me the error that it can’t find it, I know something’s wrong with the target line somehow.

I tried what you gave me, “-game c:\Steam\Steamapps\sourcemods\BMS”, but it says that gameinfo.txt isn’t there, even though that exact file is in the exact folder. :meh: When I went and checked the file path, I realized you skipped over Program Files. so character for character I put in my own full path:

“-game C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\sourcemods\BMS”

Unfortunately, Steam doesn’t like the spaces in Program Files. Here’s what the full error looks like:

“Setup file ‘gameinfo.txt’ doesn’t exist in subdirectory ‘C:\Program’.
Check your -game parameter or VCONFIG setting.”

So obviously it gave me the finger when i added the spaces > :frowning: , but that’s what my filepath is. I’ll google it and see if i can’t figure out how to fix it. (For the record, replacing the spaces with underscores does diddly squat.)

#16

You probably need to quote the path, like so:

-game "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\sourcemods\BMS"

Make sure you have the quotes there. Try single quotes as well if it doesn’t work. I can’t test because my mod is installed in a path without spaces. If all else fails, move the BMS directory to C:\ or something and then change your path accordingly.

#17

i would like to point out that you cant call this thread “Laggy performance with Steam” because you can only play this on steam

#18

Awesome. The quotes fixed it. The framerate is better, but not like it was before. This is really beginning to puzzle me. I’ve gone from ‘unplayable’, to ‘crappy’. When I should be getting ‘perfect’. :[

#19

Alright. So after a system reboot, and tinkering with the graphics a little more, it’s running normally again. We (mostly me) forgot the golden rule of tech support…“turn it off and on again.”

#20

Hi, I’m having this problem as well. I’ve been playing the game on full everything since it was launched and I’m up to the assassin part. I boot the game up this morning and, all of a sudden, it’s choppy as hell.

I’ve tried everything in this thread but still can’t get the problem sorted Anyone got any other suggestions?

Love the game, thanks for your efforts

-Australia

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.