Major Stuttering & Audio Looping in fullscreen

Black Mesa Archive Help!
#1

Black Mesa used to run on my system very well without any issues. Now whenever I start BM up the main menu and in game stutters extremely (along with annoying audio looping) making it unplayable. Between the game running fine and when it started stuttering nothing on my system has changed to my knowledge.

What’s odd is that it only stutters when fullscreen; while windowed it works just fine (however I’d much rather play in fullscreen).

I have tried changing the affinity to one core, two cores, and three cores to no avail. I have also tried setting the max fps to 66 in the steam command line. Are there any other possible fixes?

I’m considering doing a fresh re-install. I have stored my save files off to the side but is there also a way to save achievement progress? I don’t believe that steam saves achievements for BM (at least the achievements that I earned on my home PC didn’t transfer to my laptop which I now play on.).

#2

Here’s a solution that’s worked well for me:

  1. Right-click on the desktop and choose “Screen resolution” (if you have Windows 7).
  2. If you use more than one monitor, disable one of them (If you only have one monitor, then lower the resolution instead) and then choose revert when it asks you if you want to keep the changes.
  3. Launch the game and see if it starts running more smoothly.

If this doesn’t work, then go ahead and do a reinstall. The achievement progress file is called gamestate.txt.

#3

I would try PCGameCrazy’s solution first and see if that works for you.

Source games can be finicky for a lot of people, but the problem that you describe can usually be solved with just a few things.

First, because this is the easiest, download the latest version of DirectX for your operating system, even if you have it already installed, then test your install again.

https://support.microsoft.com/kb/179113

Second, you should update your video and audio drivers to the latest stable release from the manufacturer. Yeah…stereotypical ‘update your driver’ response, I know, but it’s quite often people’s issue.

Lastly you could wipe any trace of Black Mesa and it’s source base from your computer and reinstall to be sure that the game cache isn’t fragmented.

Hope you get your problem resolved.

#4

PCGameCrazy’s fix didn’t work, neither did reinstalling the game. However I found a work-around. Since the game runs fine in windowed mode I have set the command prompt in the launcher options to run the game windowed with no border so the game plays as fullscreen without actually being fullscreen. I’m hesitant when it comes to updating my sound and video drivers as I have had frustrating issues with my drivers not working after updating and not reverting back properly.

#5

At least your workaround is working.

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.