The game runs fine for me and I have no other isssues expect for black box under charactors and other objects in game its like a black box not sure if its a lighting glitch or some other setting that may be messed up
Im trying to figure out if maybe a driver issue or not
Thank GOD I’m not the only one experiencing this issue! Are you running an older Nvidia card, by any chance? Incidentally, it’s not just Black Mesa for me - the issue occurs when I run any Source game.
After experimenting with some alternate configurations, I noticed that the issue is resolved when running in DirectX 8.1 mode, but this in turn introduces several other issues - such as the eyes of NPCs showing up as the pink/white checkerboard “Missing Texture” pattern.
Is there any way to simply disable character shadows altogether? I’ve tried lowering the settings in the options menu, but I’m still getting those damn boxes!
Yeah I am running on a old clunker nvidia card a 7800 GT agp, but only source game to do this for me is this one, all the other source games run perfect so not sure if its the new drivers Nvidia put out or if there is something in game I can turn off to get rid of it
Same problem here, on 7900 GTX.
I also thought that I’m the only one with this problem 
Instead of shadows all objects and characters cast black boxes. However, when I use flashlight on them, normal shadows DO show up behind them, but black boxes are still visible on the floor.
nVidia released new drivers yesterday (306.23), I updated them just before installing Black Mesa so maybe it’s something to do with that. Most people didn’t update the drivers yet, so maybe that’s why no one reports the shadow problem.
Only other thing I can think of is to try to roll back to an older driver and see if it helps.
@retorrent
Do you also have the latest nVidia drivers?
I’m also attaching screenshot, maybe that’ll help to solve the problem.
//EDIT
Reverting to previous drivers (301.42) [COLOR=‘SeaGreen’]SOLVES THE PROBLEM! Now I see normal shadows everywhere, i can also confirm overall performance increase, especially in rooms with lots of smoke or fire. nVidia seriously messed up with the latest drivers 
However now I have another problem - the flashlight doesn’t work well - I can see it only on some part of surfaces (light 5% of them) and I don’t see dynamic shadows cast by the flashlight - see second attached screenshot. It appears it’s the same problem as in THIS TOPIC
LOL crazy because I was just going to come post and tell you that rolling back to the old driver fixed it, but I now have the flashlight issue also.
Sorry to say, but the game without the flashlight is unplayable - I can’t turn it on in dark areas, for example airducts 
So now I can play games without flashlight and with good shadows or with flashlight but also with enormous black square boxes shadows which looks totally bad. This way includes also decreased performance… guess we need to wait for new nVidia drivers to properly play Black Mesa
Or maybe the Devs will come up with something earlier
Any command to turn off the shadows? Maybe, it’s the solution.
I experienced the same problem as the original poster, and I was able to solve it by running the game with the parameter -dxversion 82.
Other solution threads on this topic suggest using -dxversion 81, but I found that eliminated my lighting effects completely. Version 82, seems to retain lighting effects while eliminating the “black rectangle” problem.
yeah i seem to be having the same problem on every half-life 2 game my graphics card is a nvidia geforce 7800gs and when i loaded up half-life 2 after changing video drivers i noticed that the shadows of the npc’s are black squares i wonder if there’s a way to fix this problem cause seems like whatever i do to try to fix it nothing happens
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.
