Surface Tension Uncut and Cascade Shadow Maps!

I can only imagine how much of a pain in the ass that was Brian. Thanks for your guys’ dedication to adding the features.

This is so exciting! I finally bought BM around the holidays, but I’ve been waiting for the Surface Tension update to play through it. It looks awesome, especially the CSM!

… Can not wait for more news on the update.

Seriously cannot wait for this to be released. This will be glorious.

This announcement has to be the best birthday present ever!

Looks awesome guys!

…It just launched somehow? I have updated shadows and extra maps in my build.

I want to say thanks to whoever removed the sprint lower weapon animation because as nice as it was, it really messed up gameplay sometimes especially if you had always sprint on, it totally bugged out satchel mines for me too. When I get time I’ll check out what else was included in the 1 gig update

I’m going to lock this thread if you guys can’t stay on topic. This isn’t a Q&A thread or a thanks thread.

The patch is on public beta. We’re testing it there before we roll it out for realsies.

Aaaaaaah. Gotcha. I was wondering if there was some sorta mistake. I’ll be sure to give it a run within the next day and post any issues.

I can’t wait to play the Surface Tension chapter uncut.

I also like the CSMs in the screenshots. Quick question about the CSMs, where in the settings could I change them?

Edit: Never mind about that question. I have a new one regarding the beta update. When changing the CSM setting from High to Very High, performance is cut in half. Is that normal?

On that beta, got some bugs. spoiler tagged for obvious reasons.

Spoiler tagging for the people that don’t want to do the Open beta.

  1. IF you try to save the osprey your reward is an invencible A-grunt that proceeds to kill all the ground units, then you. Doesn’t blow the osprey and just sits there firing at you untill you die.


    Really want to save the Osprey, just to do something good for a change when it comes to soldier interactions. cause a few seconds before this you learn how many wounded are on that thing.

  2. on the next map, some soldiers are sequence broke by an A-grunt on the roof as a result they run around not shooting but unkillible, the big thing about this is the fact that they can man the .50 cal making it impossible to beat the map as it takes out the guard in 3 or 4 hits.

  3. the gaurd that spawns in the location of bellow image is now impossible to save as he freezes while talking and takes the rounds instead of running like before. even with cheats I can not get to him fast enough.

  4. the light that falls and breaks the snark nests leaves behind some bugged snarks.

And that is it for bugs I have noticed, out side of the usual both marines and aliens prioritize you if they see you bit. Is funny to open that door and all the sudden both the aliens and marines are shooting at you instead of each other.

Also oh my god I love that sniper fight, just running to the rpg is oh my god. Also the other changes to surface tension make it feel more alive for some reason, even though many of them are barely noticeable though there are some really big ones.

I have found some bags :

Invisible wall here


Hole in the ground

Flying headcrab

Wrong skin ( map with Osprey )

Dat minigun which is turned to the side

Bugged snarks

Really great work guys, had a blast playing through STU. No real bugs to report at the moment aside from [spoiler]the bugged snarks as reported above (Two of the nests didn’t even break open for me, the snarks just spawned above them stuck inside one another)

EDIT: During the sniper battle, I managed to distract and kill both snipers without them being able to shoot out the boards that open the door with the zombies. I was still able to jump from the main roof to the area with the RPG ammo box, and go through the unlocked doors there into the hallway, where I bumped into the (still ‘asleep’ and invisible) zombies and a locked door. I’m not entirely sure if being able to jump into the RPG ammo area is intentional, since it’s a somewhat difficult leap, but if it is, maybe the boards on the door and subsequent zombie release should be triggered when you do so? Either that or the doors onto that section of the roof from the blocked hallway need to be locked until approached from inside.

EDIT2: I’ll preface this with an acknowledgement that I had been using cheats prior to finding this one, so perhaps I noclipped past a pre-requisit trigger_once or something, but in one of my runthroughs I had the guard in the hangar refuse to follow me through the door to the outside once he opened it. I was able to reproduce this by loading the autosave and redoing the sequence from there, both loud and stealth, and I was also unable to find any errors (or trigger calls after the door opened, but perhaps those got buried in the looping IO messages) in the console with developer 2.
[/spoiler]

Will let you know continue updating this post if I discover anything else. (Current edit: 2)

maybe im crazy, but i dont see any csm’s in the public beta

i tried disabling and reenabling them, but all that did was make the map a bit darker

You have to have shadows turned on high. Verify your cache and make sure your drivers are up to date. Oh and run it in fullscreen mode.

did everything you told me, and im still seeing no csm shadows, just the RT shadows and map shadows

What are your specs?

amd fx-6300 3.5GHz, hd7770 2gb, 8gb ram, 500gb hdd

Another bug found.

in the area with the osprey I keep trying to save, when the APC comes out it is attacked by vorts, one Think I thought was odd was the fact that once they start attacking its turret rotates backwards and starts shooting at nothing. At first I thought this was the vorts electric damage messing up the mechanics of the turret, nope it is this guy.

Though I have to admit this one vort makes a great effect if you are from the tower, you see these 2 or 3 vorts hit the APC with energy and suddenly its turret rotates backwards and fires at nothing while green sparks fly from it.

Is a cool effect to bad it is a bug.

IF it was up to me I would keep the effect but remove this vort and make the APC force target the ground behind it. I would also make the APC explode shortly after it starts firing at nothing. to show hey these attacks may be minor to you in the HEV suit but they can take out the electronics in a freaking tank.

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