Black Mesa

Black Mesa

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Interloper AMD Crash Fix (Vort Village Crash)
   
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595.389 MB
7 Aug, 2022 @ 2:46pm
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Interloper AMD Crash Fix (Vort Village Crash)

Description
So. There's a bug in Black Mesa that supposedly only manifests on AMD processors, wherein the Xen Vortigaunt (or "Xort") NPC being hostile will cause the game to crash... for whatever reason. Just a straight crash-to-desktop, no error message or anything.

Whatever is causing this issue got significantly worse with the release of 1.5. In my case, I didn't encounter the bug at all before, but as of 1.5, getting past the first map of Interloper has become next to impossible. There's no way to avoid the Xorts being possessed by the Controllers and becoming hostile, and there's very little time to kill the Controllers before the game crashes.

This is an unacceptable issue, in my opinion - but it's not getting fixed. I've spent the past two years pushing for it to be addressed, doing my own investigating to try and track down the cause of the issue, and offering to provide debugging information, since CC apparently can't reproduce it. Communication has been sparse and unhelpful, until it was recently confirmed that the issue wouldn't be getting any more attention.

After keenly following Black Mesa and supporting CC for around 13 years, I was more than a little disappointed with this outcome. I actually like BM Interloper, unlike a lot of people. So I started working on this.

This mod provides (what should be) a functional workaround for the Xort crash on AMD processors. Instead of using the Xort NPC by default, they have been replaced with regular Vortigaunts (as seen throughout the Earthbound chapters), with scripted effects to recreate the Controllers' mind control attack. It also fixes a few small bugs here and there (e.g. the areaportal pop-in on map A and the missing control panel in map B).

However, it's not perfect - whereas the Xort mind control effect could be handled automatically, everything in this mod has to be carefully scripted (hence the different Vort/Controller fight setup in C2). I've tested it and gone over the setups myself, but it's entirely possible I've missed some edge cases that can result in Vorts remaining hostile when they shouldn't be, for example. Additionally, the Vort-related achievements in Interloper don't work properly - Anti-Matter Over Mind cannot be achieved with this mod. I don't think there's anything I can do about this, I'm afraid. On the other hand, PHD in Pacifism is functional, but slightly bugged - some Vorts may be killed without counting against the achievement. Other than that, as far as I can tell, it works.

If you encounter any bugs with this mod, please provide me with the map name and a description. I'll do what I can to fix them.
33 Comments
Moai 8 Jul @ 6:30am 
is this still a thing in 2025?
Mr Scruffles 22 Apr, 2024 @ 9:53am 
I think the latest patch fixed it
Vassago Rain 20 Oct, 2022 @ 6:23am 
He's saying he wants the game to be fixed, or you to magically fix CC's code.
White and Birdy™  [author] 16 Oct, 2022 @ 6:19pm 
@pink.noise.chick; Are you saying that this mod crashes on you? If so, where and how?
pink.noise.chick 16 Oct, 2022 @ 5:44pm 
MAKE A FIXED VERSION WITHOUT CRASH
White and Birdy™  [author] 3 Oct, 2022 @ 12:33pm 
@Paynamia; It's not a visual effect, no. I've been in contact with someone on ModDB who actually managed to debug the issue, and it's a code problem.

On that note, anyone who needs this mod to play the game: I'd appreciate it if you could contribute to this thread. Getting a list of the hardware afflicted by this issue would be useful. Cheers!
Paynamia 1 Oct, 2022 @ 9:11pm 
Interesting, I'm on an AMD GPU and and CPU and never had this issue. Is it possible a visual effect, like maybe the shackle glow or something, is causing the crash?
Migz - DH 1 Oct, 2022 @ 6:50am 
@ Vassago Rain
Huh, that's obviously quite the range.
Vassago Rain 1 Oct, 2022 @ 6:41am 
@Migz - DH
I've had it crash on everything from budget intel atom netbooks to xeon workstations. It's definitely an issue, and their insistence that they can't replicate it makes me sad.