April 2025 Public-Beta Test!

You’re just in time! We’ve released a new build to the public-beta branch on Steam, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to share the results of our ongoing research and field observations with you.

Since our update last April, the team has been laser-focused on refining stability, improving user-facing systems, and streamlining the experience for both new recruits and returning personnel. With this update, we’re drawing ever closer to promoting the build to the main branch for everyone to enjoy. How invigorating!

If you’ve been considering a return to Black Mesa, or if you've been waiting for just the right moment to tour the facility, now is a splendid time to enter the public-beta (see instructions below). We've optimized, debugged, and eliminated several anomalous behavior patterns that could’ve caused quite a stir in the wrong hands. https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/

This beta represents one of the most stable iterations of Black Mesa to date. While the patch notes may appear modest in scope, rest assured: the changes improve compatibility with modern hardware and enhance support across Linux systems, both native and through Proton.

Your participation is, as always, invaluable to the facility's success. So don your HEV suit, calibrate your field instruments, and join us in pushing the boundaries of scientific fidelity once more!

And, if you can believe it, next month marks the 10-year anniversary of our initial release on Steam. 10 years! Oh, how the time flies when you’re refining interdimensional teleportation and recalculating resonance cascade probabilities... But I digress! We have grand plans to celebrate this milestone with the community, and we’re quite excited to share more very soon™.

Should you encounter any issues, particularly those of the game-breaking variety, please hop over to our Discord server and let us know. The sooner we can examine the anomaly, the better!

Thank you, as always, for your continued support and for helping us ensure the game is as scientifically sound as possible.

Onward, for science! Superbus via Inscientiae!

Most Recent Fixes and Improvements

• Removed ALL false positive virus reports (according to VirusTotal)

• Refined conflict resolution logic for configuration overrides, especially when auto-configuration clashes with cloud-synced settings

• Shadow Quality Mode can now correctly be set to Ultra, without enabling unsupported features

• Updated bundled DXVK (Windows) to version 2.6

• Fixed secondary camera views rendering incorrectly on brush models

• Adjusted CSM depth bias to improve shadow precision on ToGL

• Enabled God Rays on ToGL

• Revised pickup and run mechanics for smoother player interaction

• Significantly improved ToGL binary shader cache, now enabled by default, resulting in faster load times after the first run

• Resolved Soft Particles rendering artifacts, which were especially noticeable on ToGL

• Fixed behavior of Environment Map Masks in ToGL, where all surfaces were forcibly marked as bump-mapped to reduce shader combinations and work around engine limitations

• Fixed auto-aim logic when the player is unarmed

• General auto-aim tweaks to improve accuracy and consistency

• Fixed certain 4-way blended materials appearing black in ToGL

• Completed a full validation pass to ensure all materials are well-formed and error-free within the Material System

• Reduced rendering path discrepancies between Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA for improved consistency across GPUs

• Added dismissable Rogue Point call to action at main menu

How to Opt Into the public-beta

• Right-click Black Mesa in your Steam Library

• Select "Properties"

• Navigate to "Betas"

• Select "public-beta" from the dropdown menu

Known Issues

• Switching from Fullscreen to Borderless while also changing the resolution may cause the new