Half-Life: Blue Shift remake mod Black Mesa: Blue Shift - Chapter 5: Focal Point released

Black Mesa: Blue Shift is a remake of the classic Half-Life: Blue Shift, made as a mod for the Half-Life remake Black Mesa. A big new update just landed for Black Mesa: Blue Shift that includes the new Chapter 5 of the story.

A lengthier explanation of what it is:

Initially developed and released by Gearbox Software in 2001, second Half-Life add-on, Half-Life: Blue Shift is a return to the Black Mesa Research Facility and another look at the Incident's consequences from the eyes of Gordon Freeman's best friend - Barney Calhoun. In 2012, Crowbar Collective has delighted Half-Life fans with release of the magnificent Half-Life remake, but there are still no released remakes for add-ons. This is when we are coming in - HECU Collective are developing the Black Mesa: Blue Shift - a free remake with use of Black Mesa resources and style. We will try to stay as close to the original Blue Shift and Black Mesa as possible. Our mod will be releasing partially, chapter by chapter, so those who are not patient for the full release will finally have something to play!

Trailer below:

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For people who have played it before, here's what's new in the latest release:

• New and improved scenes for Living Quarters Outbound and Insecurity chapters;
• Improved skybox textures, lighting and Post Processing in all earthbound surface maps;
• Added responsive surface sounds to some environments that will be played with nearby explosions;
• Improved all explosions SFX and added distance attenuation to them;
• Added completely new surface properties for certain props with unique physics sounds. (E.g. barrels, tarps, monitors, crates);
• Updated many BM and BM:BS textures/materials;
• Updated previously supported localizations;
• Added UI and captions support for Italian, Mexican Spanish, Portuguese (Portugal) and Romanian;*
• Added UI support for Indonesian*;
• Various other visual improvements.

More info on the Steam Workshop and Mod DB. You do need to read the install instructions carefully, as there's some manual work required.

Running the mod with the Native Linux version of Black Mesa seems like a mess. But with Proton 9.0-3 I was able to get into the mod. On Linux the simplest way would be subscribing to the Steam Workshop item, then copying over all the files as per their instructions:

1. Go to "*/Steam/steamapps/workshop/content/362890/2424633574";
2. Copy the "bshift" folder and the .bat files into your Black Mesa root directory ("*/Steam/steamapps/Common/Black Mesa");

After that, set it as a launch option on Black Mesa (right click -> properties):

-game bshift