Welcome to the Black Mesa Gaming Guide! If you’re a fan of first-person shooter games, you’ve probably heard of Black Mesa – a remake of the popular Half-Life game that took 16 years to complete. While the original version from 2012 is still playable today, it often crashes and can be frustrating to navigate. But fear not, because in this guide, we’ll be focusing on optimizing Black Mesa with the Necro Patch. We’ll provide you with four different optimized settings to improve your gaming experience. Before we dive in, we highly recommend installing the UI Improvement and Fixes mod, which can be found in the link provided below. This mod has been praised for its great job in enhancing gameplay, so give it a try! Let’s get started.
Basic Settings
when the player sees light and/or sun they get lens effect. heres a comprasson of how lens flare look like
now on black mesa theres nothing wrong when you turn off, but on vulkan the lens flare will look like it was made from JPEG. some secne requires to enable lens flare such has blue shift example
fps dont drop. my recommedation is to sick with on
when the player gets damage they see chromatic abberration effect on their screen. fps dont drop so its your choice but if you’re colorbilnd then maybe you should try turn it off
here is comprasson (if it hurts your eyes then turn it off)
i dont need to make comprasson because you know how it looks like. if you want to disable it then there is way without installing any mod. its simple go to developer console and type cl_mdldetailfx_enable 0 if you want to enable it then type cl_mdldetailfx_enable 1
What it does, it will bloom the HUD making it much easier to see compared to off
Montior Blur – we’re will skip it since we know what montior blur is and how it looks like
Advanced Settings (Part 1)
im not very good at comparing FXAA so here is image from unity and yes its recommend to enable since FXAA only take 1-2 fps
Model Detail is basicly LOD that refers to the complexity of a 3D model representation, now there are 3 options. low, medium and high. however some props dont decrase while of them do. seting model details to low cause issue from truss while medium and high doesnt have that issue.
here is surface tension view on high, medium and low
HIGH
MEDIUM
LOW
almost no comprasson and i didnt get any fps boost so thats leaves to high but if you have weaker CPU and/or GPU then go on medium
Texture Details affect on your VRAM, not on your fps. you need to know how much VRAM do you have. if you have 2GB VRAM or less, set it to medium or low and use peformance or ultra peformance. if you have 3GB VRAM set it to medium. low setting on texture quality has small issue
here is comprasson VRAM on mininum settings
low = 1.0GB
medium = 1.2GB
high = 2.0GB
ultra = 2.3GB
now heres with the maxinum settings
low = 2.3GB
medium = 2.5GB
high = 3.5GB
ultra = 3.8GB
here are some comprason
(left on up is low, right on up is medium, left on down is high and right on down is ultra)
im not expert at texture filiter but here is image example of it
note! i skipped triliner and 2x because im too lazy to compared, has you can see the fps almost doesnt drop. i recommend to pick 16x for ultra peformance pick 8x
(left on up is bilinear, right on up is 4x, left on down is 8x and right on down is 16x)
Source has real time water reflection since it was created in 2004. and yes the game uses DX9, they used cubemap to make water reflection look good and in real-time. surface tension has issue where you get can peformance problem due to how water reflection you set. high sets to reflect all, medium set reflection world and low set to simple reflection, medium and high are set to expensive water effect while low set to cheap. if your fps doesnt drop at high but later they are thats because some maps doesnt have cubemaps. if you have dont have good fps then go on medium or low. but if you want realisitc reflection then make sure you have high-end gpu. here are some comparrson settings
HIGH
HIGH
HIGH
(sorry if i say something that you dont understrand) okay you know what shadow is, but there is more into than just the shadow. sunshadow quality controls base on CSM. ridicluious adds shadow on your gun and on your hand while ultra justs disables it
i noticed high incrased shadow distance while ultra and ridcluious are just using low distance.
im not going give more into about it so here is comprasson on near and on far
RIDICLUIOUS
HIGH
LOW
POTATO
OFF
——————————————————————————————————-
RIDICLUIOUS
ULTRA
HIGH
LOW
POTATO
OFF
Advanced Settings (Part 2)
To test this settings, choose any setting you want. then restart the game to see how much memory does the game take. if you wanna know how much memory usage do the game takes then open task manager heres my recommmend settings for shadow memory usage. if you have 6-10GB RAM then choose low, if you have 12GB RAM choose medium for 16GB or Higher choose high
im lazy to explain but i can give you only one info, dyamic shadow quality has one issue that even high has it, when you turn on flashlight you see some weird props lighting. this can be seen at potato, low, medium and high. off just disables it
(left half on up is off, right half on up is potato and full on down is high)
Here is Comprasson of Dyanmic Shadow Quality with FPS
HIGH
this is the same thing has for “Sunshadow Memory Usage” but with dyanmic shadow instead, so if you have 6GB RAM use very low, for 8-10GB use low, for 12GB use medium, for 16GB or higher use high. when changing you dont see change even on task manager, thats because you need to restart the game
What it does it sets softness shadow base on the dyamic light. high looks realistic, medium makes it unrealistic, low doesnt have any difference
here is comprasson that i took
HIGH
MEDIUM
LOW
too lazy to explain but here is what it comprasson, when firing the light wont show, when setting it to low to shows a light just like in real life
(left is potato and right is low. note this comparsson shows by using host_timecslae 0.1)
(left is low right is medium and down is high)
potato just turns it off, high, ultra and riduiclous doesnt have any difference and they almost dont drop fps expect on riduiclous. so go on ultra but if you have any graphical issue with this setting then change it to potato
God ray is controls from volumetric light, its not just react from the sun but also react from your gun
choosing off just disables god ray, low enables it and yes it reacts with gun light but doesnt take alot of fps, not even single one. high doesnt have any difference and takes over 4-5 fps, im not sure if the resolution got increase. heres the comparsson
HIGH
LOW
OFF
And that wraps up our share on Black Mesa: Black Mesa | Necro Patch | OptImization Guide | Every Settings Tested | EN. If you have any additional insights or tips to contribute, don’t hesitate to drop a comment below. For a more in-depth read, you can refer to the original article here by C1TY, who deserves all the credit. Happy gaming!