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I loved the first Half-Life, so the chance to revisit it in Black Mesa [Steam, Official Site] was too enticing to pass up, sadly though you may want to hold off for now.

Note: Black Mesa isn’t yet finished and it’s in Early Access, as it’s missing the final chapter “Xen” of the Half-Life experience. People are quite torn on that part of the game as it is, so you may still enjoy it without it.

When you first dive in, you will be struck by how well they have managed to capture the feel of the original Half-Life, a lot of it is the same, but it looks so much better.

With better textures and better lighting, it is a much better looking game that could get people interested in Half-Life that may be put off by the ageing original Valve-built version. Sadly, for us, that’s where the fun stops right now.

It is a very unstable! It has crashed multiple times for me making actually playing and testing it a real pain. It crashes every single time in the same spot, which is at the very start when you’re going to enter the test chamber.

I’ve looked over the Steam forum for it, and it appears quite a number of people are also having issues with the Linux version. Some people have managed to get past that section, but there’s other crashes, texture issues and lighting issues.

If you want to skip that section, you can enable the developer console in the options, and then press "`" to bring up the console and enter in this command:
sv_unlockedchapters 5
That will essentially skip that entire part, but where's the fun in that?

If you’re wanting to pick it up, I would advise waiting a while until the Linux version is not only more stable, but to also wait for the game's main story to be complete for the full experience.

I will keep an eye on it, and let you know when the issues are solved. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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31 comments
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miro Nov 9, 2016
I have all settings maxed to their highest possible values, no crashes so far ...I am somewehere where the first contact with the millitary is made.
Crystal Dagger Nov 9, 2016
Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: Crystal DaggerI played all the episodes they've released twice without a crash or any other problem. Guess I'm lucky?
This is not Valve's Half-Life or episodes, this is Black Mesa.

Yes, I was talking about Black Mesa, I meant all the -> CHAPTERS <- not episodes. Meh, my bad translation to English... Sorry about that.

The only problem that I encountered during the gameplay was that I got stuck on a pipeline on the "residue processing" chapter and needed to use "noclip" in the console to get past that point, reloading the game to a previous save before that pipeline didn't seem to work, neither restarting the chapter, altho the second full run worked just fine in that very same spot... Maybe my first Gordon Freeman was a bit more chubby ;).


Last edited by Crystal Dagger on 9 November 2016 at 9:57 pm UTC
ElectricPrism Nov 9, 2016
I do about 280 FPS on average in Black Mesa.

AMD RX 480
i7-6700k
MESA-Git + Gallium
Arch Linux

I played all the way to chapter 2 with next to 0 glitches. Here's the video of me playing chapter 1 showing off Black Mesa on MESA-Git Performance @ 1080p.

I've opened a YouTube Channel for RX 480 on MESA Performance Previews including OpenGL vs Vulkan, etc...

Subscribe here if you wanna be in the loop: https://www.youtube.com/user/ElectricPrism

View video on youtube.com
Nasra Nov 10, 2016
Quoting: liamdaweGood to know not everyone is affected :), lots of reports of it on Steam sadly.
Seems to be Unity's affected I think... no ?
ProfessorKaos64 Nov 10, 2016
Hmmm i'll have to see how well it runs on SteamOS soon. Have to finish Victor Vran.
HalfBaked Nov 10, 2016
Has any else had issues with the frame rate randomly dropping to about 1 FPS and having to save, reopen and reload the game to fix it?

First time I played it I had constant crashes in the test chamber, starting the game again fixed that but now I'm getting the same problem in a later part of the game.
camoceltic Nov 10, 2016
QuoteIt is a very unstable!
Not sure if you missed a word or added one too many, Liam :P
Jajcus Nov 10, 2016
It doesn't crash for me. It used to have some visual glitches with neck-ties of the staff at the beginning, though and now I have brightness problems.

I have just changed my laptop (Intel HD4600 replaced with Intel Iris 550, so OpenGL 3.3 with OpenGL 4.5) and now the game is much too dark in some areas. Practically unplayable without using the 'mat_fullbright 1' hack. The brightness setting in the options window does not work at all.
rea987 Nov 10, 2016
Quoting: liamdaweIf you want to skip that section, you can enable the developer console in the options, and then press "`" to bring up the console and enter in this command:

sv_unlockedchapters 5

That will essentially skip that entire part, but where's the fun in that?

Actually, in that case, it would be better to skip the map instead of entire chapter.

map mapname

is the command.

https://wiki.sourceruns.org/wiki/Black_Mesa_Maps

I am still not sure but I had no crashes after removing libstdc++.so.6 library from the game directory. I even tried to hang out in and out of "Test Chamber" to reproduce the crash, nothing happened after deleting the file.

Edit: As it seems, the game is more unstable than I thought. The game crashes when vortigaunts blow a landed aircraft in bm_c2a5g map of Surface Tension chapter. I simply keep on hold until crashes will be fixed. Moreover, vortigaunts usually miss the targets and some HECU Marines wear disco gas masks. ^^


Last edited by rea987 on 11 November 2016 at 5:22 pm UTC
Grimfist Nov 13, 2016
Well I got it fixed. Deleting libstdc++6.so is working, one just has to start a new game, cause old savegames won't work. Now all works fine. But I will wait until more fixes come in and play some other games. Not that there are enough unplayed games in my library ;)
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