Fair warning: the next Black Mesa update is going to brick your saves. Crowbar Collective says this is an unfortunate side effect of needing to make changes to levels in order to implement some of the upcoming update's fixes and bug squashes.
Why will the new Black Mesa update break save files?
As per an announcement via the official Black Mesa Steam community, the upcoming Black Mesa update will apply a ton of fixes for different issues. In order to implement some of these fixes, Crowbar Collective had to make fundamental edits to various levels. This means the developer had to "invalidate old saves" in order to ensure the update didn't break Black Mesa as a whole. If you want to make up your progress, you'll have to either restart the chapter you were on or load in the map via the in-game console.
If you've never used Black Mesa console commands before, it's easy to activate this feature. There are two methods: either add the "-console" command to the Steam executable's launch properties (right-click in library, then Properties, then Set Launch Options) or go to the in-game Advanced Keyboard options and click "enable console". From there, you'll need a list of the in-game map IDs, which you can find right here.
What fixes is this new Black Mesa update bringing?
There are a whole bunch of Black Mesa fixes and changes on the way as part of this new update. They range from code fixes (HEV chargers giving incorrect charges, female scientists not healing the player) through new controller sensitivity options and fixes for the visuals and design of the game. You can find a complete list of all the fixes that are being implemented in the upcoming Black Mesa update over on the Steam announcement.
Crowbar Collective says it's aware of a few issues it hasn't yet fixed in the upcoming update. For example, when looting RPG crates, you may not receive the full amount of rocket launcher ammo. A couple of multiplayer maps might be missing some minor detail elements, and if you're playing on higher resolutions, you may notice incorrectly formatted chapter titles. There's a good chance these issues will be fixed in the next Black Mesa update, but we'll have to wait and see. In the meantime, you can grab this fan-made Half-Life remake on Steam right now.
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