The good people of Crowbar Collective have given us at LambdaGeneration an exclusive in-depth look at Black Mesa’s first new major multiplayer update since the game’s stand-alone release on Steam, codenamed the Crossfire Update .

It brings a ton of engine innovations, including a new multiplayer animation system that completely overhauls the previous one, as well as improvements to the way multiplayer servers work and also better support for Steam Controllers.

The main emphasis of this update, though, is the re-imagination of the popular Half-Life Deathmatch map, Crossfire, which the team previously confirmed was in the pipeline.

(Click the images for full-size).

Like Black Mesa’s adaptation of Gasworks, Crossfire is a multiplayer map based on the original by Valve veteran Dario Casali. The main feature of the map is a bunker that the player can lock down from the inside. They then press a big red shiny button that nukes everyone else that got left out.

It’s Source successors are Run Off for Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, also created by Casali, the Opposing Force 2 mod’s own remake and now Black Mesa.

The update also adds three previously released maps, Chopper, Rail, and Power to the official map list. Stalkyard is getting a facelift, too. There will also be some minor model fixes. The shotgun, crossbow, egon, and rocket launcher all get improvements, and G-Man has better hands.

The Tau Cannon will also be able to do ‘wallshotting’, which, for anyone who remembers the original Half-Life Deathmatch, is the ability to overcharge the Tau and fire through walls in the map. It will now penetrate thin walls, split into weaker beams and scatter damage on the other side.

Improvements are not just visual. Server features got upgraded as well. Score is now saved for when a player leaves and then rejoins a match. Teams can also be locked for competitive sessions.

Players will be further encouraged to start creating their own content for Black Mesa. There will be a brand new user-content creation tool and the Black Mesa Steam Workshop will no longer have a mod size limit, making the possibilities endless.

So when will this update be coming out?

We can’t say the date, but we can confirm it will be soon.

We can also reassure you that the Crowbar Collective team plan on remaking the entirety of the original Half-Life storyline evenutally, including all of Xen and the part-cut Surface Tension. More on that to come.

If you haven’t got the game yet, you can grab it on Steam.

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