Half-Life(the Valve game) is ten years old today

Started by DocJon · 45 posts · 6,273 views

  3. #3
    I was just thinking the other day that I have been gaming online steady since 1996. Man, I'm an old fart.

  4. #4
    Sarge wrote:To celebrate this, Valve is offering the game for $0.98 through tomorrow.

    http://store.steampowered.com/app/70/


    This is a GREAT way for someone who is interested in trying out first-person shooters to get their feet wet (hint hint). It's a great game with an engrossing storyline, it will run on computers made back in 1998, and it's less than a dollar! It should be quite small too, by today's standards, so it won't take up all your hard drive space. It also has a lot of free mods available for it, like Counter-Strike.

    It's obviously not as PRETTY as the newer games, but it was state-of-the-art in 1998. It's still serviceable.
  5. #5
    I beleive I have a free gift of HL or HL2 that I can give someone, so just speak up and its yours. It came as part of the orange box.
  6. #6
    And I have a free Episode 1 that I can add to Bubba's HL2.

  7. #7
    Is the first HL still good to play on XP Pro?
    Never played HL1 - may take you up on it Bubba as long as no one else wants it.
    If someone has spoken for it in the private forums, no biggie.

    I liked HL2 but tended to get wonkie head on the powerboat stage really really bad.
  8. #8
    Duck wrote:Is the first HL still good to play on XP Pro?
    Never played HL1 - may take you up on it Bubba as long as no one else wants it.
    If someone has spoken for it in the private forums, no biggie.

    I liked HL2 but tended to get wonkie head on the powerboat stage really really bad.

    XP pro is fine for original HL. If there ever was a problem, Valve fixed it. I bought the disk, but I haven't seen it in years. Steam knows I bought it, and I DL it whenever I need to. Usually with reinstalls, I just run Steam, sign in and point it to my games partition. It knows what I should have, and checks the disk to see if anything else needs DL'ed. It doesn't DL everything all over again just because I formatted/reinstalled my C: drive. I like that.
  9. #9
    That is nice, I have no earthly idea where my HL2 is, but with it registered at steam, I do the same thing, just go get it when ever I want it.

  10. #10
    I would appear I was wrong and have a gift of HL2 to give. Sorry Duck
  11. #11
    Bubbaspanky wrote:I would appear I was wrong and have a gift of HL2 to give. Sorry Duck

    It's 98 freakin' CENTS now. A cup of coffee costs more than that! Get it TONIGHT before the price goes up TOMORROW! Seriously, if you havent' been paying attention, it's been on sale the past couple days because of it's 10th anniversary, but the sale is over today.


    Load up Steam and get it. NOW.
  12. #12
    DocJon wrote:It's 98 freakin' CENTS now. A cup of coffee costs more than that! Get it TONIGHT before the price goes up TOMORROW! Seriously, if you havent' been paying attention, it's been on sale the past couple days because of it's 10th anniversary, but the sale is over today.


    Load up Steam and get it. NOW.


    gusch its always stress.deadlines to keep all that but ....
    Ha. Got it. Even without reading the "(hint hint)" post. I swear.

    jTher will be a party tonight at my house. Just to celebrate a llill.
    (Martina and Guiness will also show up for a while. After that its tea and coffee)
    This is the first PC game I ever bought in my life. 🙂
    thank u so mutsch again, DocJ, bro
  13. #13
    saintchism wrote:gusch its always stress.deadlines to keep all that but ....
    Ha. Got it. Even without reading the "(hint hint)" post. I swear.

    jTher will be a party tonight at my house. Just to celebrate a llill.
    (Martina and Guiness will also show up for a while. After that its tea and coffee)
    This is the first PC game I ever bought in my life. 🙂
    thank u so mutsch again, DocJ, bro

    Well cool! It's like $10 normally, I think, and with you showing interest in shooters and Duck showing interest in this game, I wanted to be sure you guys saw this post. I'm not sure when the sale is over, but I thought it was Friday or Saturday.
  14. #14
    I caved, call me Mr. Big Spender (Sir will do also) I spent the whole .98 to get the game, might as well do something for the next week while I'm stuck with just on board video.
  15. #15
    Duck wrote:I caved, call me Mr. Big Spender (Sir will do also) I spent the whole .98 to get the game, might as well do something for the next week while I'm stuck with just on board video.


    Nifty. The gfx are limited, but so is your machine, for now. The game was fairly innovative in it's storytelling, and it has some cool weapons and GREAT GREAT GREAT level design. SURFACE TENSION was my favorite "chapter".

    I love the beginning as well. A nice intro to the game world, and also somewhat innovative at the time. If you can get past the 1998 gfx, you should like the game. . . except for maybe a couple jumping puzzles I didn't care for.

    Don't forget that buying Half-Life lets you play Counter-Strike. Ppl still play that today, but be aware, the ppl that still play it are HARD-CORE.

    Too bad you didn't buy the Orange Box. I got Half-Life:Source free with that. Half-Life done in the Source(HL2) engine. Looks a LITTLE better.

  16. #16
    Got an issue. The FUBAR happens the "aliens" are in black mesa I make my way up to the employee locker room get the power packs and spare ammo, when I leave the locker room the game locks up.

    Trying new settings later.....
    Got some other things to do, but strange that it locks every time right there.

  17. #17
    BLACK MESA, a fan-created mod of the Half-Life 2 engine to recreate the original Half-Life, has a new video out demoing what they've done so far.

    This will be a must-have once it's finished.

    http://www.blackmesasource.com/


  18. #18
    I like Half-Life a lot! I have nothing to compare it with really, but I am happy with the game.
    The point is, and I knew that would happen, I am not happy with my laptop's resolution and any ways its a laptop, and my "nerd" did not answer to my specifications (Doc's from newsegg).
    I am slowly running out of patients here. Need my training! 🙂

    & just a side question: it is not possible to buy the orange box anymore? Was it a limited offer. The way u were talking about it with Ducky. It seems so. Too bad.
  20. #20
    saintchism wrote:I like Half-Life a lot! I have nothing to compare it with really, but I am happy with the game.
    The point is, and I knew that would happen, I am not happy with my laptop's resolution and any ways its a laptop, and my "nerd" did not answer to my specifications (Doc's from newsegg).
    I am slowly running out of patients here. Need my training! 🙂

    & just a side question: it is not possible to buy the orange box anymore? Was it a limited offer. The way u were talking about it with Ducky. It seems so. Too bad.

    Nope, Orange Box is still available. It's down to $29.99 now, which is a great deal if you don't already have any of the 5 games that come with it.

    http://store.steampowered.com/sub/469/

    If you've got the cash or credit you're willing to use, I'm sure we can talk about what you should/need to buy. You could post links to perspective computers and we can look 'em over and see if they're worthy. . .within reason. I'm not signing myself or anyone else up to look at ten or more different computers a day 🙂 But you can tell us how much you want to spend, what you want to do with the computer, and then we can start discussing your options.

    Since you aren't familiar with building your own machine from parts, I think someone suggested looking at the Dell Europe website.

    http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/default....;l=en&s=gen

    I'd REALLY recommend you find someone you personally know in meat-space that can at least give their opinion on anything we would end up approving. Too much trust in faceless strangers isn't a good thing. Trust, but verify 🙂

  21. #21
    DocJon wrote:Nope, Orange Box is still available. It's down to $29.99 now, which is a great deal if you don't already have any of the 5 games that come with it.

    Good news. 🙂
    Since you aren't familiar with building your own machine from parts, I think someone suggested looking at the Dell Europe website.

    It was lexx & he was probably right. Atomm is also constantly on this dell ad trip. It haunts me.
    And I will look out for a good deal. Don't worry there won't be 10 of them each day ..... only..... maybe .... 3 or 4 or maybe ...., no don't worry!
    I'd REALLY recommend you find someone you personally know in meat-space that can at least give their opinion on anything we would end up approving.
    "meat-space" that sounds so funny, but yeah sure is a good thing.
    And i sure don't trust anybody without prooving it within my range of possibilities. Wheres no risk theres no win, man. But normally I am very cautious with strangers in or out of meat-space 🙂
  22. #22
    Bubbaspanky wrote:Naw you should be able to get it.


    Thanks. I got it now through steam. I think this is a good solution because with steam its so easy. With Amazon I have to be in the US to buy from Amazon USA. That was the reason why a good friend of mine had to buy me Vyans cd on Amazon and he'll send it over to me. His cd is not available on Amazon Europe. When I would have bought the orange box from spanish Amazon it would not have been a problem either, but I prefer steam. For the beginning. Its right there. And I can play it everywhere. At work, on the beach, in Germany and so on.... 🙂
  23. #23
    Yeah I would gladly give computer advice. Or you can send me 10,000 euros and I will build you one... And keep it for me
  24. #24
    Saint, don't forget to google for refurbs in your area. Dell runs a refurb site that has incredible savings on systems, yet you still get a full warranty.

    I saw a Dell the other day for $179, P4, loaded with OS and monitor. Remember, the power is in the video card. Just plug in a 8500+ and your ready for COD4 🙂
  25. #25
    HL2 SP hack - I don't have portal but it would be cool to try with HL2 bring the working portal gun in to the HL2 game.
    w00t


    Portal Gun Hack
    This process modifies your game files, so make back-ups of the proper files and directories before attempting this hack.

    1. You need both Portal and Half-life 2 for starters. Install or re-install both games now.


    2. Back up your Portal directory. Unless you changed the install path, the directory is in ...\Steam\steamapps\(your_username)\portal. If you make a mistake during this hack, you may need to re-download Portal through Steam (or at worse, Half-life 2 through Steam).


    3. Download and install GCFScape if you do not have it already. This program allows you to access the cached game files for games using the Source engine.


    4. Head into the directory ...\Steam\steamapps\ for all the available GCF archives available. Open the file half-life 2 content.gcf via GCFScape. Click the hl2 folder on the left pane of the GCFScape Explorer window. Right mouse click maps and select the command Extract to place all the contents of the maps folder into the directory ...\Steam\steamapps\the_great_bundini\portal\portal. This merges Half-life 2 maps with the Portal map folder.


    5. Repeat the above step with the scenes folder via GCFScape.


    6. Boot up Steam to run Portal. Drop the developer console with ‘~’ (you may need to enable it under your keyboard options or enable it via the -console command switch on the executable's shortcut).


    7. On the developer console, type maps * to list all the available maps; this should inclde the Half-life 2 maps imported from the previous steps. Type map and then the name of that map (i.e., map d1_canals_01).


    8. Once the map is loaded and you can play, drop the console and enable the cheats for Portal by entering sv_cheats 1. Give yourself all weapons (including the Portal Gun) by entering impulse 101. You may need to input upgrade_portalgun to enable you to fire both portals.


    9. Enjoy the havoc. Note that this hack also works with Episode 1 and Episode 2. You will notice that while NPCs from Half-life cannot pass through portals, all other inert objects (including yourself) and weapons fire will pass through with no problems.

  26. #26
    Funny the anniversary was the other day. I just loaded HL Monday via steam just to check it out and play around a bit. It was long enough ago I still get stuck for a bit before figuring out what needs to be done.
    Good game and still entertaining. My first PC game purchase as well.
  27. #27
    Duck wrote:Portal Gun Hack
    This process modifies your game files, so make back-ups of the proper files and directories before attempting this hack.

    COOL! I want to shoot a portal into the snipers rooms and pop in behind the snipers. . .Seems like a lot of trouble, but I know I'll get bored and try it sometime.

  28. #28
    Hymen_Slaughter wrote:Funny the anniversary was the other day. I just loaded HL Monday via steam just to check it out and play around a bit. It was long enough ago I still get stuck for a bit before figuring out what needs to be done.
    Good game and still entertaining. My first PC game purchase as well.


    No matter what I do my HL1 hangs about 1/3 way through "On a rail" - it might be because I'm stuck using on board video chip set (new card and PS arrive today w00t!) but it so far was a fun game.

    This is my first time playing HL1 *gasp* so I would like to complete the game someday.
  29. #29
    whilst I could get a nice though refurbished Dell machine for $2.379,00 if I would live in the States I have to pay
    € 3.249,oo for the same machine here.

    Dell Spain ordenadores sobre mesa XPS 730

    sucks to buy it here.
  30. #30
    Duck wrote:No matter what I do my HL1 hangs about 1/3 way through "On a rail" - it might be because I'm stuck using on board video chip set (new card and PS arrive today w00t!) but it so far was a fun game.

    This is my first time playing HL1 *gasp* so I would like to complete the game someday.

    That might be it. You'll probably do better when the new card is installed.

    What the hell machine are you looking at? That's pricey as hell! I guess you HAVE to buy an expensive one, though. At least you're not paying for it!
  31. #31
    DocJon wrote:That might be it. You'll probably do better when the new card is installed.

    What the hell machine are you looking at? That's pricey as hell! I guess you HAVE to buy an expensive one, though. At least you're not paying for it!


    U don´t know how stupid it is to play HL on a Laptop that has such a bad resolution as 600x800 and at work I am with a small Dell that is giving me all kind of issues: sound error, and freezing during the game, so it stops.

    So now I saw this ad 🙂

    alienware-pms

    and its also BECAUSE I do not have a live aid nerd at my side who can advice or build me a PC.
    So I figured it has to be expensive to let run games with much more advanced graphics run smoothly and u come and say its expensive and I am not paying for it...

    well, I´m sure there r a still a couple of different options available in the future, but ....its probably me running out of patients a littleeeeeeeeeeeeeee
  32. #32
    lexx wrote:Saint, don't forget to google for refurbs in your area. Dell runs a refurb site that has incredible savings on systems, yet you still get a full warranty.

    I saw a Dell the other day for $179, P4, loaded with OS and monitor. Remember, the power is in the video card. Just plug in a 8500+ and your ready for COD4 🙂


    And is it really that easy? Just the vid card? Whats with the processor? To be fast don´t u need a core 2 at least? And the memory? When I load games I always thought I need a hell of memory. And to add that stuff later on I always have to rely on others. Hm

    Yes I was searching for the Dell outlet store in Spain. They have none.

    & Duck, ur portal gun hack sounds goood, tempting. I am still playing with Half-Life but its not a shooting game, like I thought it would. For my taste not enough shooting action so far...
  33. #33
    saintchism wrote:And is it really that easy? Just the vid card? Whats with the processor? To be fast don´t u need a core 2 at least? And the memory? When I load games I always thought I need a hell of memory. And to add that stuff later on I always have to rely on others. Hm

    Yes I was searching for the Dell outlet store in Spain. They have none.

    & Duck, ur portal gun hack sounds goood, tempting. I am still playing with Half-Life but its not a shooting game, like I thought it would. For my taste not enough shooting action so far...


    The shooting will come as the story develops.

    Anybody know what the deal is with COUNTERSTRIKE? It used to be a free mod, did they take that and make you pay for that now as well? The original I mean, not SOURCE.

    Alienware is still something of a 'boutique' vender. Very nice machines, but a premium price. You could probably get similar performance from a nice Dell for less money.
  34. #34
    Alienware is owned by dell. So its a dell machine that has alot of neon added to it and costs alot more.

    Actually I think they use less propritary parts than dell machines. But it is the same company now a days
  35. #35
    Bubbaspanky wrote:Alienware is owned by dell. So its a dell machine that has alot of neon added to it and costs alot more.

    Actually I think they use less propritary parts than dell machines. But it is the same company now a days


    Is there a relation between the dropping niveau/level of correct implemention of orthography and raisin intelectual standards in GRFs executers posts ?

    What I have seen so far - makes me think of , well I´ll call it the "Hybrid" solution: go with a bargain for a mayor brand PC from an x-mas sale or so and upgrade it with e.g. a better graphic card i.e.

    I am not willing to spend just one buck for a PC just to have to fear later about a transportation damage, because I am intenting to move soon. 🙂
  36. #36
    I like pie.
  37. #37
    saintchism wrote:What I have seen so far - makes me think of , well I´ll call it the "Hybrid" solution: go with a bargain for a mayor brand PC from an x-mas sale or so and upgrade it with e.g. a better graphic card i.e.

    Yes, if you don't really have many mail order options this is a way to go. Just make sure the basic system doesn't use a cheap celeron processor. Look for a P4 3.0 or higher. Dual core AMD or Intel is better, 2 gigs of ram almost the min, and make sure it has a PCI-E video card slot to drop in a better graphics card. nVidia 86xx + and you would be set.

    Another option, read articles on tomshardware.com. Google systems and read the reviews by consumers for each deal you've seen online or in a store. Check the stores in your area for thier .com sites. Look for warehouse clubs on your island as well. They typically sell entire systems for up to 15% cheaper than smaller outlet stores.

    Maybe you'd be better off buying it when you visit Germany for the holidays. Ask your family there to keep a lookout for sales ads and email you the particulars.


    In the end, your going to have to do the research to get the best bang for your buck, or Euro ;p

  38. #38
    Saint, I've done for years what you are thinking about.
    I've kept an OLD Dell Dimension 4600 powering along, I have not replaced the mother board, or the processor (Intel Pentium 4, 2.80 GHz), everything else has been replaced/upgraded at least twice now.

    I've swapped the 80G HD for a 500G and a 250G HD's, gone from 512M to 4G ram, replaced the CD with 2 dual layer DVD writers, and recently the new 800W supply and the best AGP 8x card I could find.

    Although I am now at the maximum I can upgrade this box, I have been using it since ~ late 2002

    With critical buying, so far I have been able to play the games we talk about here, with no issues.

  39. #39
    I am happy with Half-Life. Particulary its design is well done, witty dialogs so the gamer can see the developers personality shining through. Awesome.
    Today I got curious enough to visit a server with ppl playing the Action Half-Life mod.
    It has nothing to do with Half-Life though, just the same engine. Did not like it.
  40. #40
    saintchism wrote:I am happy with Half-Life. Particulary its design is well done, witty dialogs so the gamer can see the developers personality shining through. Awesome.
    Today I got curious enough to visit a server with ppl playing the Action Half-Life mod.
    It has nothing to do with Half-Life though, just the same engine. Did not like it.

    It was a major step forward in gaming. Good plot, great levels, enemies and guns.

    Here's my post about a single-player mod for Half-life that was pretty good.

    http://forums.gamersradionetwork.com/index...ost&p=46372

  41. #41
    DocJon wrote:It was a major step forward in gaming. Good plot, great levels, enemies and guns.

    Here's my post about a single-player mod for Half-life that was pretty good.

    http://forums.gamersradionetwork.com/index...ost&p=46372


    I almost went without having read ur highly recommended other single-player mod Minerva: Metastasis. But with Half-Life, I see now its good to get a grip on it and build it from there. So many possibilties. Fantasitic hints u give here, I have to lift u up once again. 🙂
  42. #42
    saintchism wrote:I almost went without having read ur highly recommended other single-player mod Minerva: Metastasis. But with Half-Life, I see now its good to get a grip on it and build it from there. So many possibilties. Fantasitic hints u give here, I have to lift u up once again. 🙂

    Thanks. "Minerva" & "Riot Act" are excellent mods, but unfortunately, they are for Half Life 2, not the original Half-Life. "Poke 646" and it's sequel, "Poke 646:Vendetta" are for the original Half-Life(the one you bought), so stick with those for now.
  43. #43
    DocJon wrote:"Poke 646" and it's sequel, "Poke 646:Vendetta" are for the original Half-Life(the one you bought), so stick with those for now.


    No other was my intention.

    Just one thing u forgot is, I bought the orange box.
    So its nice to take a gllimpse at things to come and have st to look forward to.
  44. #44
    saintchism wrote:No other was my intention.

    Just one thing u forgot is, I bought the orange box.
    So its nice to take a gllimpse at things to come and have st to look forward to.

    Not only did I forget it, I forgot READING about it at all! Good to know. Hopefully you'll get a machine soon so you can enjoy it with all the gfx settings turned up.