Overview
This guide will show you how to change ammo values to be truer to the original Half-Life.
Foreward Disclaimer
This guide is intended for single-player only. I do not condone modding your game to give you an unfair advantage in multiplayer. I also have not tested any of this in multiplayer, so if using the below information causes a VAC-ban, don’t blame me. The fault will be solely yours.
USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.
Always revert back to normal settings for multiplayer and always create backups of original files.
Introduction
Black Mesa is a great re-envisioning of Half-Life, but I and some others were annoyed at the seemingly arbitrary changes to certain fundamental attributes. One of these is obviously the ammo values. For the most commonly used weapons, original ammo values were significantly reduced, while one weapon received a very slight boost. This guide will show you how to adjust your game so as to create an experience that is, in my opinion, truer to the original Half-Life experience.
Note that changing ammo values only changes your maximum capacity for ammo, it doesn’t instantly give you ammo or cause certain ammo pickups to appear more frequently in the game. If you want to give yourself ammo you can always enable cheats by typing “sv_cheats 1” and “impulse 101” into the console (default key is ~).
For reference, these are the changes in reserve ammo from Half-Life to Black Mesa:
Glock 17: Originally 250; reduced to 150.
.357 Magnum: Originally 36; reduced to 12.
MP5 Bullets: Originally 250; reduced to 150.
MP5 Magazine Clip: Originally 50; reduced to 30.
MP5 Grenades: Originally 10; reduced to 3.
SPAS-12 Shotgun: Originally 125; reduced to 64.
Crossbow: Originally 50; reduced to 10.
Tripmine: Originally 5; raised to 6.
Changing the Values (Everything Except MP5 Clip)
Use the following instructions to find the skill.cfg file, which is what we’ll be changing.
- Right-click Black Mesa in your Library.
- Click Properties. Go to the Local Files tab. Click Browse Local Files. This should instantly take you to your Black Mesa folder.
- Open up the “bms” folder. Inside that, open the “cfg” folder.
- Find the file called skill.cfg. Open it with Notepad or, preferably, Notepad++.
Before editing skill.cfg, I highly recommend making a backup copy of it (copy and paste the original somewhere else and title it something like skill_ORIGINAL.cfg). Once you’ve opened up skill.cfg, however, find the heading titled “PLAYER – Items.” Below it, you’ll find “MAX AMMO.” Here you’ll see ammo listings for the Glock, MP5, etc. Technically you can change these to whatever you want (it’s your game, after all), but to create a truer Half-Life experience, use the below settings:
The only thing that’s not changed with this is the MP5’s clip capacity, which will remain 30 instead of 50. The only way to fix this is to follow the steps in the following section.
Known Issues: After a developer update, you’ll probably have to re-input the changes into skill.cfg.
Changing MP5 Clip Values
The above instructions will work for every weapon except for the MP5. Mistersinclair commented and showed me a way to get the MP5 back to the default ammo value of 50. It should be noted that this method is significantly more convoluted and time-consuming, but it does work. There are two ways to do it.
Download this file from my Mediafire account:
www (DOT) mediafire (DOT) com/file/0bffk2e9fe085ie/MP5_Ammo_Value.zip
There is a readme inside with instructions, but here are the instructions anyway.
1. Go to your SteamsteamappscommonBlack Mesabms folder. If you don’t have a folder called “custom” in here, create on. Add the “mods” folder to this custom folder.
(The following steps are only applicable if you’ve never set up your custom folder)
2. Go to your SteamsteamappscommonBlack Mesabms folder.
3. Open up gameinfo.txt with Notepad or WordPad.
4. Scroll down to where it says SearchPaths. Between these two lines
and
paste in this line:
5. Save gameinfo.txt and close.
1. You’ll need GCFScape. If you don’t have it, get it here[nemesis.thewavelength.net]. Go to your Black Mesabms folder and open bms_misc_dir.vpk with GCFScape. Open the scripts folder, then the gameplay folder, and then the weapons folder. Extract the weapons folder somewhere (preferably desktop).
2. Open the weapons folder, and then open weapon-mp5.dmx with Notepad or WordPad. Find where it says “clip_size” “int” “30”. Change “30” to “50”. Save the revised file and close it.
3. Put the weapons folder in a new folder called gameplay. Then place that gameplay folder in a new folder called scripts. Finally, place the scripts folder in a folder called mods. Navigate to your Black Mesabms folder and create a folder called custom if you don’t have one already. Move the mods folder to your custom folder.
4. Now you’ll need to set up your custom folder. Go to your SteamsteamappscommonBlack Mesabms folder. Open up gameinfo.txt with Notepad or WordPad. Scroll down to where it says SearchPaths. Between these two lines
and
paste in this line:
Save gameinfo.txt and close.
If you need additional assistance for setting up your custom folder, read this guide here: [link]
BONUS: Reducing MP5 Recoil
I was very disappointed with Crowbar Collective’s decision to add drastic recoil to the MP5, causing each shot to pull significantly upwards. I feel that this is a severe disservice to the original game. So in this final, “bonus” section, I’ll oultine how to reduce the MP5’s recoil or even eliminate it entirely.
The method of doing this is almost entirely the same as in the previous section, requiring you to extract and edit the weapon_mp5.dmx file and set up a custom folder. Assuming you’ve followed all the steps above, here’s a quick way to edit the recoil.
Open weapon_mp5.dmx in Notepad or Wordpad. Find where it says “recoil” “recoil”. Here are the default values:
You can alter these however you wish. Changing everything to zero will give you absolutely zero recoil. However, if you want your game to be like Half-Life 1, change the values to the following. It will still pull up slightly, but it should hardly affect your aim at all except when holding down Mouse 1 and firing all 50 shots.
Or you can download this file from my Mediafire and put it in your custom folder (the instructions are the same as in the previous section):
www (DOT) mediafire (DOT) com/file/d4659m6y89n5k8z/MP5_Ammo_Value_and_Recoil.zip
Additional Reading/Credits
Additional information can be found here[forums.blackmesasource.com] (though it’s based on the mod version of BMS, so the information might not be totally accurate). Credits to Mistersinclair for informing me on how to change the ammo value of the MP5.
This guide was written solely by me (Olde). You can (and should!) use this guide and share it with others. However, you should not distribute it while giving authorial credit to either yourself, someone else, or to nobody at all. You may quote from it at length but please do not post the entirety as a guide on any other forum or site without my express permission. I also reserve the right to remove or modify this guide at any time and/or make it unavailable, with or without providing a reason.
I hope you enjoyed this guide! I value your input so please leave a comment below! Thanks for reading!