Half-Life 1 Celebrates Twenty fifth Anniversary with Free Director’s Reduce!

As we speak Valve launched the Half-Life 1: Director’s Reduce to rejoice the sport’s Twenty fifth anniversary. From November 19 to twenty, 2023, Half-Life might be free to maintain on Steam — with it’s new so-called “Half-Life: The Twenty fifth Anniversary Replace” — so choose it up whilst you can! Learn beneath what’s new….

Go behind-the-scenes with the unique Half-Life 1 improvement workforce on this new documentary:

THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY UPDATE
FOR HALF-LIFE INCLUDES:

HALF-LIFE UPLINK

Initially launched as a CD unique for magazines and {hardware} producers, this mini-campaign was constructed by the Half-Life workforce proper after the sport went gold. As this was many individuals’s first expertise with Half-Life, we thought it was lastly time to bundle it with the principle recreation—no sound card buy mandatory.

4 NEW MULTIPLAYER MAPS

Constructed by Valve stage designers, these new maps push the bounds of what’s doable within the Half-Life engine.

CONTAMINATION

Two-foot-thick metal doorways block off entry to this contaminated waste facility, which has questionable scientific targets at finest. Strap on a gluon gun and roast all intruders.

POOL PARTY

Take pleasure in a soothing keep at this deserted Xen outpost constructed round a cluster of soothing therapeutic swimming pools free-floating in area. How do you breathe right here? It doesn’t matter!

DISPOSAL

Processing Space 3, an enormous radioactive waste plant gone quiet. Tons of room for you and your colleagues to do experiments with a Tau Cannon or some hand grenades.

ROCKET FRENZY

The creaking weight of this decaying orbital satellite tv for pc launch facility someway feels acquainted… If we may swap on the oxygen traces, energy, and gas, we would simply be capable to gentle this candle.

UPDATED GRAPHICS SETTINGS

Play the sport the best way it seemed in 1998, however on a contemporary monitor.

• Widescreen subject of view!
• Choice to disable texture smoothing on the GL renderer!
• Lighting fixes together with the long-lost GL Overbright assist!
• Software program rendering on Linux! Crisp colours, animated water, and unfiltered textures!

CONTROLLER AND STEAM NETWORKING SUPPORT

• A correct gamepad config out of the field!
• Added assist for Steam Networking! Invite your mates or be part of video games immediately with no fuss.

STEAM DECK SUPPORT!

We lastly put our recreation via our personal “Verified” exams, and… we failed tremendous exhausting. So we fastened it! After re-testing the sport, Half-Life will get to formally put on the inexperienced checkmark.

Now you may play Half-Life on the perfect handheld gaming laptop on the earth in superb 800p with improved controls and UI.

UI SCALING SUPPORT FOR HIGHER RESOLUTIONS

Your entire UI has been reworked to scale at bigger display screen sizes. We constructed most of these things for 640×480 CRTs and apparently a few of you’ve upgraded since then.

RESTORED CONTENT

We introduced again the basic Valve emblem video with its iconic music and reskinned the menu to match the 1998 construct.

ORIGINAL MAIN MENU ARTWORK

VALVE LOGO INTRO VIDEO

IVAN THE SPACE BIKER AND PROTO-BARNEY

In any case this time we lastly shipped the unique heroes from the alpha builds of Half-Life, out there as multiplayer skins!

AS WELL AS THESE RARELY-SEEN EXTRAS!

In 1999, Valve launched a CD referred to as Half-Life: Additional Information at retail shops, and we’re lastly together with a lot of that content material.

THREE MULTIPLAYER MAPS

DOUBLE CROSS

RUST MILL

XEN DM

TWO MP PLAYER MODELS

The Half-Life: Additional Information CD additionally included some multiplayer skins made by the unique workforce; we’ve introduced again this unbelievable skeleton (now with tintable eyes!) and fan-favorite Too A lot Espresso Man.

DOZENS OF SPRAYS

Whereas taking part in a bunch of multiplayer matches we stored wanting extra sprays… So we grabbed a number of megabytes of them from the Additional Information launch!

BUG FIXES AND CHANGE NOTES

New Content material:

• Now Verified on the Steam Deck (and our native Linux runtime has been set because the default).
• Half-Life: Uplink — the unique standalone Half-Life demo — has been added to the sport, and is accessible via the “New Sport” menu.
• Added 4 all-new Half-Life Deathmatch maps: contamination, pool_party, disposal, and rocket_frenzy
• Added three outdated Half-Life Deathmatch maps previously out there solely on the “Half-Life: Additional Information” CD: doublecross, rust_mill, xen_dm.
• Added Ivan the House Biker, Prototype Barney, Skeleton, and Too A lot Espresso Man as participant fashions to Half-Life Deathmatch.
• Added dozens of recent sprays previously out there solely on the “Half-Life: Additional Information” CD.
• Added assist for Steam Networking, permitting straightforward multiplayer by way of Steam’s Be a part of Sport and Invite options.
• Added assist for Steam Pals Wealthy Presence, permitting your mates to observe your journey via Black Mesa.

Nostalgia:

• Introduced again the unique Valve Intro video. Might be skipped with the “-novid” launch command.
• Up to date predominant menu to a design impressed by the sport’s unique 1998 predominant menu.
• Modified the default fashions to the unique (non “HD”) fashions.

Gameplay Modifications:

• Improved physics for throwing grenades.
• Improved randomness for preliminary spawn factors in multiplayer.
• Improved satchel cost controls: major hearth now at all times throws a brand new satchel, and secondary hearth at all times detonates.
• Mounted push-able entity motion being primarily based on framerate.
• Mounted gamers with excessive framerates freezing in place on demise in multiplayer.
• Mounted some instances the place the participant may get caught in place on stage transitions.
• Mounted some instances the place characters would interrupt vital dialogue with their “greetings” dialogue.
• Mounted weapon view-bob angles.
• Mounted purple barrels at first of Floor Stress not launching as meant.
• Mounted Snarks attacking FL_WORLDBRUSH entities (similar to func_walls).
• Mounted gamers generally failing to deploy a snark whereas crouching and looking out down.
• Mounted sure convars (“pausable” and “sv_maxspeed”) being set to incorrect values when coming into a singleplayer recreation after a multiplayer recreation.
• Mounted singleplayer auto-aim setting being modified when coming into a multiplayer recreation that disallows auto-aim.
• Mounted the flashlight HUD exhibiting empty after loading a savegame.
• Mounted rockets in CONTENTS_SKY not at all times detonating.
• Mounted incorrect bullet affect sounds for NPCs.
• Mounted gauss gun making a loud static noise if it was charged throughout stage transitions.
• Mounted a crash in mods that show keybinds of their UI.
• Mounted singleplayer weapons not auto-switching away when exhausted (grenades / snarks / satchels / and many others)
• Mounted interpolation artifacts when animated fashions are moved by different entities.
• Mounted some buffer overflow exploits.

UI Modifications:

• Principal-menu background and buttons have been reskinned, and now scale primarily based upon display screen decision with out stretching, supporting background picture layouts as much as 3840×1600.
• In-Sport HUD now makes use of double or triple sized sprites when taking part in at increased resolutions.
• UI dialogs and in-game fonts now scale to enhance readability at excessive display screen resolutions.
• In-Sport HUD HEV go well with show has been shifted to the left of the display screen, and now not modifications place at bigger display screen resolutions.
• Added an “Allow texture filtering” setting.
• Added an “Permit widescreen Discipline of View” setting to appropriate non-anamorphic FOVs, for widescreen and ultrawide shows.
• Re-organized all of the Settings screens to enhance legibility, and assist controller navigation.
• Up to date the Pause menu to concentrate on the present gameplay mode.
• The default server identify and multiplayer participant identify are actually primarily based on the participant’s Steam Persona.
• The Steam platform menu has been eliminated, now that every one its options are in Steam itself.
• Mounted software icon rendering incorrectly when utilizing the software program renderer.
• Mounted participant and spray photographs not updating their coloring on the settings display screen.
• Eliminated the now very pointless “Low video high quality. Helps with slower video playing cards.” setting.

Enter Modifications:

• Improved assist for keyboard and controller navigation all over the place.
• Added “Decrease Enter Latency” choice: Synchronizes the CPU and GPU to scale back the time between enter and show output.
• Mounted points that induced jerky mouse / joystick enter.
• (We mainly rewrote all of it – should you’ve acquired a customized Steam Enter controller configuration, it is best to rebuild it from our newly revealed Official Configuration).

Multiplayer Balancing:

• Elevated the 357 injury from 40 ? 50.
• Hive Hand reload time has been lowered from 0.5s ? 0.3s per shot, and it is going to be chosen at increased precedence than the pistol on pickup.
• MP5 now at all times begins it with full ammo when picked up.
• Gamers now not drop empty weapons, and any which might be dropped are reloaded by what’s within the dying participant’s backpack.
• Improved client-side prediction to scale back “ghost pictures”. Like Counter-Strike, think about hitboxes and never simply bounding containers for hits on the consumer.
• Mounted community predicted crowbar swing injury being incorrect.

Rendering:

• Added supported for UI Sprites and Texture recordsdata bigger than 256×256.
• Added assist for UI Font particular render modes: “blur” and “additive”.
• Added setting to show off texture filtering when utilizing the OpenGL renderer.
• Default decision is now primarily based on the decision of the desktop, as an alternative of a 640×480 window.
• Default gamma has been decreased from 2.5 ? 2.2, now that we aren’t all taking part in on CRTs.
• Software program renderer will now accurately filter out incompatible resolutions, until there may be only one decision out there on the show.
• Restored OpenGL overbright assist.
• Mounted fullscreen software program renderer crashing on methods that don’t assist 16-bit shade.
• Mounted software program renderer being stretched when utilizing widescreen resolutions.
• Mounted skyboxes and sky shade incorrectly carrying over when transitioning maps in multiplayer.
• Mounted the sport showing too darkish after modifying video settings.
• Mounted MSAA in windowed mode.
• Mounted mipmap rendering on studio fashions.
• Mounted gluon gun sprite rendering in multiplayer.
• Mounted gluon gun sinusoidal noise being incorrect.
• Varied optimizations to assist the newly elevated engine limits.
• OpenGL optimizations for the Steam Deck.

Engine Enhancements for Mod Makers:

• Elevated most restrict of dynamic sound channels from 8 ? 32.
• Elevated most restrict of sentences within the sentences.txt file from 1536 ? 2048.
• Elevated most variety of entities (MAX_EDICTS) from 900 ? 1200.
• Elevated MAX_PACKET_ENTITIES elevated from 256 ? 1024.
• Elevated MAX_GLTEXTURES from 4800 ? 10000.
• Elevated software program renderer geometry limits: max spans 3000 ? 6000, max surfaces 2000 ? 4000, and max edges 7200 ? 14400.
• Cycler and func_button entities can now be the entity goal for scripted_sentence entities, and are allowed to talk in multiplayer.
• Integrated func_vehicle entity assist from Counter-Strike, for mod-makers to make use of. Full SDK replace will come later, however stage designers can use it now.

Native Linux Construct:

• Added assist for the software program renderer.
• Improved font rendering.
• Many stability and habits fixes.

Different:

• Localization recordsdata up to date.
• Miscellaneous safety fixes.

Notes:

• The earlier model of the sport has been archived to a publicly seen Beta department named “steam_legacy”, with the outline “Pre-Twenty fifth Anniversary Construct.” If a mod or function is behaving in an surprising method, you might must run this archived construct till the problem is resolved within the default construct.
• We now think about this anniversary model of Half Life to be the definitive model, and the one we’ll proceed to assist going ahead. Due to this fact, we’ll be lowering the visibility of Half Life: Supply on the Steam Retailer. We all know Half-Life: Supply’s property are nonetheless being utilized by the Supply engine group, so it’ll stay out there, however we’ll be encouraging new Half-Life gamers to play this model as an alternative.

WALLPAPERS

Have fun 25 years of Half-life by adorning your desktop and cell phone.

Are you excited to play the final word model of Half-Life 1 whilst you watch for Half-Life 3?