Black Mesa

Black Mesa

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Miscellaneous Black Mesa Gameplay Tweaks
   
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41.025 MB
26 Dec, 2024 @ 4:43pm
11 Jan @ 2:13pm
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Miscellaneous Black Mesa Gameplay Tweaks

Description
Welcome to the Miscellaneous Black Mesa Gameplay Tweaks mod! The aim is to make Black Mesa more balanced in difficulty by rewarding exploration, improving the feel of the vanilla weapons, increasing the leniency of hit-scan enemy combat encounters, and making the difficulty of the game smoother and more consistent. Overall, aliens are tankier, humans are squishier, and difficulty spikes have been ironed out a little.

Most of the mod's features should work by simply subscribing to it, but to get the best experience, follow the instructions below:

Installation
0.Make sure you have your custom folder set up. If you have not done so, follow this guide: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=502670746
1.Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\workshop\content\362890\3392846162 and move its contents into the custom folder at Black Mesa\bms\custom.
2.(Optional) This mod also comes with an extras folder for additional customization, quality-of-life features, and to revert some changes made by the mod. Instructions are in the README file.

The mod also uses the commands from @White and Birdy™'s mod to edit ammo pickups. If you have it installed, this mod will fix the ammo drops from the crossbow (already present in their base mod) and magnum to give out 5 bolts and 6 bullets respectively. I highly recommend it for a more balanced experience:
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2454684652

If you find the game to be too easy after the balance changes, I've also made a complimentary addon for the mod here:
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3399089717

That's all, enjoy!

Features
Gameplay Changes
Health and Resources:
-Restored the protection from the original Half-Life's HEV suit. Its power no longer depletes immediately after every fight, giving Gordon a higher potential maximum health and more time to think. To compensate for this, battery and health pickups have been nerfed.
-Increased the weapon ammo limits to a mix between Half-Life 1 and Black Mesa. You can now carry more of everything.
-Ammo dropped form weapons (only the guns themselves) has been reduced to roughly 60% of their original amount. Ammo boxes remain unchanged for the most part.

Enemy Changes:
-HECU grunts are less tanky and are easier to take out, having the same health as they did in the original mod release on normal difficulty. A lot more weapons are now viable to use against them without taking excessive damage.
-Black Ops assassins are more fragile, deal less melee damage, fire less shots, and take more time between bursts. They no longer take all the player's health in 3 seconds and can be taken out in more diverse ways.
-Increased health for armored vehicles, such as the Apache helicopter, Abrams tank, and LAV APC , Furthermore, their turrets were tweaked to deal a more reasonable amount of damage and/or have more breaks between bursts.
-Headcrabs take an extra shot from the mp5.
-The basic zombies have more health and deal slightly less damage. The security, HECU, and especially HEV zombies are now more progressively tankier and slightly harder to take out.
-Increased the bullsquid's health (same as hard in Half-Life 1). It now takes an extra shot from the revolver, but it also is easier to take out by other weapons.
-Normal houndeyes deal more damage and have slightly more health. The knockback variant also has more health, but still deals no damage due to limitations.
-Vortigaunts deal slightly less lightning damage and are less tanky (same health as the original mod release and in Half-Life 1). Controlled Xen vortigaunts also deal less damage, slightly less than earth vortigaunts, which should make certain late-game sections less of a headache.
-Decreased the absurdly high damage from alien grunts' hornets. This was mainly due to the player's headshot damage multiplier. Having taken this into account, their attack was reverted back to what it was in the original mod release and Half-Life 1. They now also behave more similar between earth and Xen. Normal grunts are more aggressive and Xen grunts don't fire as many insane bursts.
-Increased damage from the alien controller's energy orbs and standardized their health between earth and Xen (same as in Half-Life 1 on hard). They no longer die to a single magnum shot, but have less health overall and can be taken out more easily by other weapons.
-Increased the ichthyosaur's health slightly. It now takes an extra crossbow bolt to take out.

Enemies Misc:
-Reduced and adjusted melee damage across the board for ranged enemies. Larger, melee-oriented enemies deal more damage than smaller and ranged enemies.

Weapons Changes:
-Decreased the time it takes to attack with the crowbar after switching to it, standardized its hit speed, and removed the swing camera shake.
-Increased the glock's fire rate for both modes and increased their accuracy. Weapon switching and holstering speed was also improved drastically. It now serves as a more reliable damage source at all ranges.
-Increased the fire rate of the python revolver slightly and improved its zoom speed to be consistent with its iron sights animation to no longer feel mismatched. A small amount of spread was also added to improve crosshair visibility.
-Reduced the mp5's recoil and improved its fire rate very slightly at the cost of a damage decrease and minor spread increase. It now takes out faster if aimed properly and is less disorienting to use.
-Made the crossbow's damage consistent with its .dmx value across all difficulties and increased the scope zoom and animation speed. It now deals slightly less damage, but it still hits all the critical thresholds for most common enemies.
-Decreased the shotgun spread, removed significant delay after using its altfire, made its reload animation smoother, and increased its firing responsiveness after finishing a reload. You can now take out enemies more reliably at ranges other than point-blank, even without abusing its altfire.
-Significantly improved the hive hand's tracking for the player, tweaked the hornet regeneration speed, and fixed an issue where it did less damage than other weapons on the harder difficulties. It now is extremely effective at taking out squishier, hard to hit targets.
-Increased the primary firing rate for the tau cannon and the maximum damage for its secondary fire. Primary fire damage was decreased to compensate for the fire rate increase, but it hits damage thresholds faster for most enemies despite of this. Also, don't let it overcharge.
-Slightly decreased damage for the gluon gun for consistency's sake.
-Improved the RPG's rocket flight speed and standardized its damage to what it was on the hard difficulty.
-Improved the grenade's throwing arc (similar to what the anniversary update did for Half-Life 1) and improved their throwing responsiveness. The animations are faster and should no longer cancel as often when entering/leaving sprint.
-Satchels, similar to the grenades, have also had their animations tweaked to improve throwing speed and prevent the throw from being cancelled.

Weapons Misc:
-Standardized weapon damages across all difficulties due to these being applied inconsistently to some weapons, which made some of them weaker than intended on harder difficulties. These include the crossbow, hive hand, mounted guns, and all explosives.
-Changed weapon frame data to be more accurate to when the weapon is ready to fire again.

Miscellaneous
-Added a keybind to walk, which uses the ALT key by default.
-Improved the flashlight for better enemy visibility in large and foggy areas.
-Added an extras sub-addon with optional additional gameplay options, quality-of-life features, and dedicated keybinds.
36 Comments
2.5 Bobux  [author] 16 Jul @ 11:15pm 
For example, the numbers (0,0) represent the coordinates of the crowbar in the weapon selection menu.
-"Bucket: is the Column of the gun and goes from 0 to 4 (Note how starts at 0, resulting in 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 for selections 1-5).
-"Bucket_position" is the Row of the gun, starting at 0 just like the column and increasing as you go down the weapon selection.

Another example is the MP5, which is in the Column 3 and Row 1 (2,0):
"bucket" "int" "2"
"bucket_position" "int" "0"
Essentially, make sure to subtract 1 from your desired position when you input the values since they start at 0 rather than 1.

4) Edit the numbers to swap weapon positions.
5) Make sure that no weapons overlap; otherwise, you will not be able to select them.
6) Copy and paste the weapons folder into the gameplay folder.

Hope this helps!
2.5 Bobux  [author] 16 Jul @ 11:15pm 
@Arson Hole It's the weapon .dmx files located in script\gameplay\weapons.

1) Go to the weapons folder
2) Open the desired weapon .dmx file.
3) In the first section of the code, you should see something like this:
"bucket" "int" "0"
"bucket_position" "int" "0"
2.5 Bobux  [author] 16 Jul @ 11:12pm 
@Dolphin The issue is that a lot of the weapon improvements are tied to their animation and weapon script files. I mean, you can always delete the animations in models\weapons and the damage changes in scripts\weapons to use whatever you want. If you are getting some issues still, you can unsubscribe from the mod and just leave the instance in the custom folder.
anyD 28 Jun @ 10:12pm 
Great mod! it fixed most gameplay related issues that I had with vanilla
Dolphin 18 Mar @ 1:09pm 
Yeah, no... this is absolutely unacceptable in it's current state.
Split every change into a seperate mod, THEN I'll use what fits for me.
Dolphin 18 Mar @ 1:01pm 
I wish I could fully customize this. Like, remove the weapon animation changes so my remastered weapon animations still work with this mod's tweaks...
I've got a problem with shotgun, it just won't appear in 4th weapon slot
Arson Hole 22 Feb @ 9:33pm 
Mostly great changes here, seriously. The improved flashlight, nerfed Assassins, and especially the improved grenade throws are especially welcomed changes

Just one question tho: What files change the weapon select order on the HUD? I kinda want to move the Shotgun and Hivehand selections
BOON: SPIRAL LOLLIPOP 11 Jan @ 7:08pm 
I tried and it's not working:
alias RunON "+cl_always_run; alias RunToggle RunOFF"
alias RunOFF "-cl_always_run; alias RunToggle RunON"
alias RunToggle RunON
bind capslock "RunToggle"
What am I doing wrong?
2.5 Bobux  [author] 11 Jan @ 2:31pm 
Use this resource, this is what helped me learn about commands and such, and I think it has what you are looking for:
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Alias