Black Mesa Necro Patch fixed antivirus false positives

Crowbar Collective released the Black Mesa update titled Necro Patch Patch on April 20, 2024. The patch addressed antivirus programs incorrectly flagging bms.exe, temporarily removed the DXVK launch option and expanded controller support.

The studio described the antivirus change as a temporary fix while it worked on a permanent solution. Installing the Steam update was enough to stop the false-positive warning in most cases, although the notes advised restarting Steam if the warning remained.

DXVK and controller changes

Crowbar Collective disabled DXVK as a launch option because of the antivirus hotfix. The studio planned to restore DXVK in a later patch.

The controller work covered Steam Deck, gyro aiming and custom layouts:

• Steam Deck movement — fixed cases where players could not climb ladders or use trams.
• Custom bindings — fixed controller assignments that failed to persist.
• Camera sensitivity — made controller movement follow the iron-sights sensitivity setting.
• Gyro aiming — separated gyro handling in line with Steam Input and added pitch and yaw sensitivity commands.
• Official layouts — added configurations for controllers with and without gyro support, plus a Steam Deck layout with trackpad menu control.
• Quick actions — added Steam Input actions for placing a tripmine, throwing a grenade and switching to the crowbar.

Auto-aim settings

The patch stopped auto-aim from locking onto objects held by the player, including portable sentries. Crowbar Collective also increased the targeting range and magnetism values. The sk_autoaim_scale and sk_autoaim_magnetism values for each difficulty level can be edited in Black Mesa\bms\cfg\skill.cfg.

The update also introduced steam_input_show_bindings, a console command that opens the Steam Input configurator through the Steam Overlay.

Dedicated servers and known issues

The developers fixed a missing compile switch in the dedicated-server build process. Internal testing was still underway when the notes were published, so the dedicated-server crash fix had not yet been declared final.

Crowbar Collective listed three known problems. Changing certain video settings during play could return the game to the main menu and prevent the newly created autosave from loading. Some new HUD and controller options still needed localization. An Invalid game configuration message could be cleared by restarting Steam and launching Black Mesa again.

Source: Crowbar Collective’s Necro Patch Patch announcement on Steam.