Black Mesa, the fan-made recreation of Half-Life has a fresh brew available for Linux gamers that should make it a better experience.
The new public beta version for owners of the game aimed to address these issues:
- Mesa drivers with OpenGL 3.0 showing black screen
- Black props and NPCs on closed driver for NVIDIA
- Inadequate memory usage on big maps and/or long playthrough
They've also pushed a couple of updates to the new beta since it went live, which they say adds in full support for Shader Model 3.0 in OpenGL mode, reduced memory consumption, libtcmalloc_minimal was added for supporting distros other than Ubuntu and other bug fixes.
To access it, you need to opt into the "public-beta" branch on Steam. To do so, right click on the game and go to properties, from there select the beta tab and pick it from the drop-down menu. They're asking for feedback in this Steam forum post.
Find Black Mesa on Steam.
Have tip to x_wing.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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13 comments
I have never played Half-Life (yeah, I'm the one).
Maybe I'll do when they have finished.
Sometime in the late 20s...
Last edited by Eike on 18 December 2018 at 9:58 am UTC
Maybe I'll do when they have finished.
Sometime in the late 20s...
Last edited by Eike on 18 December 2018 at 9:58 am UTC
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Will this fix the sudden, terrible frame drops that make the game unplayable?
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Quoting: ChiKinWill this fix the sudden, terrible frame drops that make the game unplayable?Possibly, if that was related to memory use then it might help quite a bit. Can't really test myself, as my main unit is NVIDIA and my laptop is Intel but a bit too low powered for such testing. I really need to get my hands on a nice AMD GPU next year...
1 Likes, Who?
Dammit I uninstalled the game just last week because of a recurring crash... Guess I need to try again, hooray for broadband!
1 Likes, Who?
Did they fix the crash that required moving the bodies around a chopper before blowing up the tank truck? This was quite annoying, although I didn't test in a long time...
The only other bug I can think of was a weird thing with shadows, but that probably has been fixed by now :) Oh, and vortigaunt's terrible aim.
Nevertheless, I am glad to see them working to polish it on Linux! Very much appreciated!
The only other bug I can think of was a weird thing with shadows, but that probably has been fixed by now :) Oh, and vortigaunt's terrible aim.
Nevertheless, I am glad to see them working to polish it on Linux! Very much appreciated!
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: poke86Dammit I uninstalled the game just last week because of a recurring crash... Guess I need to try again, hooray for broadband!
Quoting: MayeulCDid they fix the crash that required moving the bodies around a chopper before blowing up the tank truck? This was quite annoying, although I didn't test in a long time...
Test chamber and chopper crash have already been solved in public-beta branch. You need to restart the map FYI.
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: rea987Test chamber and chopper crash have already been solved in public-beta branch. You need to restart the map FYI.
Thanks for the tip, I was restarting from a quicksave maybe that was it.
0 Likes
Quoting: liamdaweI really need to get my hands on a nice AMD GPU next year...I've heard they'll announce new GPUs soon (I think there are even new IDs in Linux 4.21).
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Quoting: ChiKinWill this fix the sudden, terrible frame drops that make the game unplayable?
I detected some drops, but nothing that affected a lot the game (never less than 30 fps). Anyway, I just played a little bit the start of the game, I'll try to play a little more during weekend and will let you know if there is something else to be worried about.
P.S: enabling AA will crash the game, no matter your settings. So, keep it off for now :P
Last edited by x_wing on 18 December 2018 at 2:46 pm UTC
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Quoting: poke86Thanks for the tip, I was restarting from a quicksave maybe that was it.
As far as I understand, public-beta branch pushes tweaked versions of those 2 problematic maps. Loading a quicksave most probably loads the old version of the map. I can confirm loading chopper section from a quicksave reproduces the crash while restarting the map with following command loads the new map which works just fine.
map bm_c2a5g
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: EikeI have never played Half-Life (yeah, I'm the one).
Maybe I'll do when they have finished.
Sometime in the late 20s...
Crowbar Collective just announced the final chapters of the game (Xen) just a few weeks ago on Half-Life's 20th Anniversary, which is set to release in Q2 2019, so not even in the 20's.
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: DemezCrowbar Collective just announced the final chapters of the game (Xen) just a few weeks ago on Half-Life's 20th Anniversary, which is set to release in Q2 2019, so not even in the 20's.
[X] I want to believe. ;)
No, seriously: It seems to be a big project with continous progress and I wish them (and me, that is) best of luck with it.
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Quoting: liamdaweQuoting: ChiKinWill this fix the sudden, terrible frame drops that make the game unplayable?Possibly, if that was related to memory use then it might help quite a bit. Can't really test myself, as my main unit is NVIDIA and my laptop is Intel but a bit too low powered for such testing. I really need to get my hands on a nice AMD GPU next year...
I noticed the same issue. It's a Source engine game running on my 1060 6GB and it's dropping framerates down into what has to be the 20s or teens. Granted I'm running a TV as a monitor so I'm limited to 60FPS, but I quite literally never experienced this issue with DOOM(2016) on this exact rig running via SteamPlay, but a game running a ten year old engine is having this issue in a native build?
And no, the dev team stopped getting a pass the minute they started charging money. I'm all for them charging money, because this was a massive endeavor, after all, Valve itself couldn't be bothered, but the minute you switch over to being paid you become professionals and have to be judged accordingly.
Last edited by jarhead_h on 19 December 2018 at 6:30 pm UTC
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