Twenty years in the past this month, Valve launched Half-Life 2. The corporate is celebrating the anniversary with a 20th anniversary update that features new content material and varied bug fixes. Better of all, Half-Life 2 is free proper now on Steam, however solely till 1 PM ET in the present day, November 18.
One of the thrilling additions for the Half-Life 2 replace is new commentary tracks (spanning 3.5 hours) for all the recreation that includes the unique Half-Life 2 builders discussing how they introduced the sport to life. Moreover, Half-Life 2 now has in-game Steam Workshop help, together with help for Steam’s new Sport Recording characteristic. The replace additionally fixes varied points with the 20-year-old recreation, together with holes within the recreation world and disappearing objects. Gamers can even anticipate “cleaner, smoother horizon strains” and higher-resolution lightmaps throughout all the recreation.
What’s extra, gamers can select unique graphics settings for blood and fireplace results or new ones that had been launched later. There may be additionally a Excessive High quality mode that is been added, whereas the goal help characteristic has ben overhauled to assist it really feel higher.
One thing else to know is that Half-Life 2’s Episodes 1 and 2 are actually a part of Half-Life 2 itself, and as a consequence of this, Valve stated it will likely be “decreasing the visibility” of the standalone variations on Steam. They’ll now seem contained in the Instruments menu on Steam.
Along with the replace, Valve partnered with former GameSpot video producer Danny O’Dwyer’s Secret Tape for a two-hour documentary about Half-Life 2. On this characteristic, Valve discusses the sport’s origins, growth, and legacy, and naturally, the fabled Half-Life 2: Episode 3. Kotaku reports that within the documentary, Valve mentioned why Episode 3 by no means noticed the sunshine of day and even revealed new footage of the sport. Episode 3 would have been set within the Arctic and would have targeted on a ship, Borealis, that went lacking.
The sport was within the works for six months, however amounted to a “assortment of playable ranges in no explicit order” and solely containing some story parts. Nonetheless, author Marc Laidlaw stated the group was “working out of gas” and in the end determined to desert Episode 3 altogether because the group labored on ending Left 4 Useless, which might be launched in 2008 to nice success.
(*2*)
Valve engineer David Speyrer stated the “tragic and virtually comical” a part of Left 4 Useless’s success was that, “By the point we thought-about going again to Episode 3, the argument was made like, ‘Properly, we missed it. It is too late now.”
Speyrer stated that in hindsight, Valve made the “unsuitable determination.” He stated, “We might have positively gone again and spent two years to make Episode 3.”
Whereas Valve by no means made Half-Life 2: Episode 3, the corporate did create a brand new Half-Life recreation, the VR title Half-Life: Alyx. It was launched in 2020 to important acclaim, and was GameSpot’s Sport of the 12 months.
In different information, the Half-Life 2 20th anniversary replace has helped Half-Life 2 reach a new concurrent player record on Steam.
Half-Life 2 20th anniversary patch notes:
Content material:
- Added 3.5 hours of Developer Commentary by members of the Half-Life 2 group.
- Half-Life 2: Episode One and Episode Two are actually playable from the Half-Life 2 fundamental menu.
- Half-Life 2: Misplaced Coast has been added to the Extras menu.
- Added Steam Workshop help. Play whole campaigns or substitute weapons, enemies, UI, and extra with content material created by the neighborhood.
- Added customized Steam Sport Recording gameplay occasions and phases all through the sport.
Rendering and graphics
- Fastened points inflicting props or whole maps to be totally vibrant or totally darkish relying on settings.
- Added bicubic filtering for lightmaps to provide smoother shadows. It may be enabled by setting Shader Element to Very Excessive.
- Fastened lacking grass element sprites in lots of maps.
- Added settings to allow Traditional Results that had been initially in Half-Life 2. These results will also be enabled utilizing r_classic_blood or r_classic_fire.
- Added help for radial fog.
- Specular reflectivity has been adjusted all through Half-Life 2 to raised match the unique launch.
- Up to date fashions for the Crossbow and RPG weapons to help ultrawide shows.
- Fastened digicam clipping into autos at excessive FOV settings.
- Fastened lambda cache indicators and different decals vanishing when backtracking by means of map transitions.
- Setting Mannequin Element to Excessive will now at all times show the very best element model of a mannequin and by no means swap for a decrease level-of-detail.
- Set Antialiasing to 4x MSAA by default.
- Fastened tooth shader rendering totally white on some GPUs.
UI and choices
- The UI now scales to help greater resolutions.
- Launching the sport in Steam Big Image mode will now use the gamepad-friendly UI beforehand accessible on Steam Deck. You can too launch this mode with the “-gamepadui” launch choice.
- The Excessive Dynamic Vary setting has been moved to the primary Video settings web page.
- Commentary mode can now be enabled on the New Sport display screen.
- Fastened show of greyscale artwork for locked achievement icons to match their habits in steam.
- Improved legibility of gamepad button icons.
- Button hints will now desire to show customary face buttons and set off icons solely. This habits will be disabled with the “sc_prefer_basic_origin_hints” convar.
- Changed cases of system fonts like Verdana all through the UI with a brand new font, GorDIN.
- Added a brand new font renderer that gives extra constant rendering between platforms.
- Fastened edges of sure font characters being reduce off with antialiasing enabled.
- Fastened scrollbars and button animations utilizing inverted colours.
- Eliminated the non-functional “Use ‘bloom’ impact when accessible” setting.
- Added Wealthy Presence information whereas enjoying Half-Life 2.
Enter
- Up to date the default Steam Enter configuration.
- Added a Gamepad settings menu.
- Added the flexibility to pick out a weapon choice UI model whereas utilizing a gamepad.
- Added settings for separate Purpose-Help modes for mouse/keyboard and gamepad. The brand new Purpose-Help “Enhanced” mode now makes an attempt to trace enemies and snap-to-target whereas driving autos.
- If utilizing toggle crouch, urgent dash will now make the participant stand.
- Legacy joystick settings have been faraway from the Mouse settings menu.
Gameplay
- Lowered possibilities of birds getting caught on the planet.
- Fastened Mix crouching habits throughout door assault scene.
- Fastened Mix not firing in some instances in the course of the finale.
- Sport sounds and music now pause whereas the sport is paused.
- Repair crash that may happen if the participant will get too far forward of the helicopter in canals.
- Fastened Dr. Breen not trying on the digicam in sure broadcasts.
- Fastened clean friction sounds not enjoying.
Basic map updates
- Full HDR lighting and tonemapping cross throughout each map in Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch.
- Elevated lightmap decision in most maps.
- Adjusted rendering distances throughout the sport so particulars and objects stay seen a lot additional away.
- Eliminated Far-Z clip aircraft from most maps.
- Elevated window and door fade distances.
- Improved lighting and world element inconsistencies throughout many map transitions.
- Tuned fog and skyboxes for each map with water on the horizon for higher horizon mixing.
- Changed cases of easy reflective water with totally reflective water in practically each map.
- Fastened many cases of floating props throughout the sport.
- Sewed up holes, aligned textures, and stuck seams on many displacements all through the sport.
- Swapped some distant timber out for greater element fashions.
- Enabled shadows on many static props that had been lacking them.
- Added glow sprites to all lights that had been lacking them.
- Fastened lightmapping for a lot of giant static prop constructions.
- Added easy rooftop geometry to background buildings that had been lacking them.
- Added background displacement geometry to areas which are actually uncovered by eliminated the clipping aircraft.
Particular map updates
- The introduction sequence has been adjusted to intently match the unique sequence, together with fixing specular highlights on the G-Man’s eyes.
- Fastened varied texture seams on prepare station wall
- All fences now correctly solid shadows.
- Fastened points with stage transitions setting fog values improperly.
- Eliminated emissive worth from base of lighting prop which was glowing in unusual locations.
- Fastened a bug with Eli’s idle animations in the course of the teleport sequence.
- Fastened lightmapping of prepare vehicles in Purple Letter Day and Route Kanal.
- Fastened a rendering bug in Route Kanal the place world geometry would pop out and in of view when trying down the tracks.
- Aligned pipe and canal wall textures in a number of areas to scale back seams and misalignment in Route Kanal.
- Added and adjusted canal wall brushes the place stage geometry was conspicuously lacking.
- Adjusted brightness and falloff of ambient lights in darker sections of the canals.
- Added small grates as dim mild sources of ambient mild in a number of locations within the canals.
- Fastened a difficulty the place the splash for Manhack Matt’s leap into the water can be out of sync.
- Fastened a bug the place the massive brick smokestacks had been popping out and in relying on the participant’s place in Water Hazard.
- Added lacking cables to utility poles in varied canal maps.
- Fastened lighting and shadows on the dock and electrical tower exterior of Black Mesa East.
- Added displacements and water aircraft to 3D skybox close to the dam entrance to switch easy brush cliff face.
- Fastened the lighting on the rocks and props in and across the Ravenholm graveyard.
- Fastened gamers having the ability to entice themselves within the graveyard by closing the gate after Gregori would open it.
- Added radial fog to all coast maps within the Freeway 17 chapter.
- Eliminated space portals from lots of the smaller constructions alongside Freeway 17.
- Fastened a crash that may happen in case you parked the buggy in sure areas earlier than coming into the bridge stage.
- Fastened a bug the place Vortigaunts might fall by means of the world.
- Added easy 3D skybox illustration of the subsequent map seen from the highest of the lighthouse in Sandtraps.
- Fastened lighting points in the course of the basement flare sequence in Nova Prospekt.
- Added extra geometry to numerous home windows all through the degrees to solid extra detailed shadows in Nova Prospekt.
- Fastened a bug in teleport sequence in Entanglement ending too early leaving Gordon and Alyx standing round whereas the teleporter reached its vacation spot.
- Fastened the catwalk explosion detonating on the unsuitable time in Anticitizen One.
- Fastened the constructing dome having no polygons on the outstide in Comply with Freeman.
- Fastened the ship visibly flying by means of the constructing dome in Comply with Freeman.
- Fastened Barney being left behind throughout a stage transition or nagging the participant too early to “roll a grenade” in Comply with Freeman.
- Improved decision of portal render texture throughout finale.
- Added soundscape to all menu background maps
- Darkened components of the skyboxes that fall behind Half-Life 2 brand to assist with textual content legibility.
- Added geometry to menu background maps for Ultrawide help.
- Added smoke to the Ravenholm and Comply with Freeman background maps.
- Fastened a bug the place you might hear the participant’s bones break within the Citadel menu background map.
Half-Life 2: Deathmatch fixes
- Fastened participant mannequin choice within the choices menu.
- Fastened slam not having the ability to be detonated in case you had been too near a wall
- Fastened view bob with the SMG geared up.
- Fastened utilizing the Gravity Gun to yo-yo grenades, typically inflicting the server to disconnect or crash.
- Fastened lacking sound results for the Gravity Gun.
- Fastened characters enjoying a lacking animation when switching weapons whereas leaping and shifting.
- Repair weapons being invisible when being given one other weapon of the identical class.
Half-Life 2: Deathmatch maps
- Elevated participant spawn level depend in lots of maps.
- Fastened prop placement in maps that may enable gamers to flee the world.
- Fastened floating props in dm_runoff.
- Fastened the world portal on the blast door in dm_runoff inflicting the world to not render when the door was shut.
- Added geometry to many maps the place the participant might see exterior of bounds.
- Fastened a number of areas the place the participant might see out of the world.
- Moved the blue barrels in dm_resistance that you might decide up with the Gravity Gun by means of the chainlink doorways.
Different
- Improved high quality of the Valve intro film when launching the sport.
- Fastened playback of the the post-credits film on the finish of Episode One and the intro film in the beginning of Episode Two.
- The achievements for Episode One and Two have been added to Half-Life 2. When launching the sport it’ll try to learn knowledge from put in standalone Episodes to re-grant these duplicated achievements.
- Hammer: Present element sprite preview on non-displacement surfaces.
- Hammer: Fastened bug the place orphaned entities added extra knowledge on every map load.
- Hammer: Fastened the flexibility to render cubemaps.
- Hammer: Elevated many limits for BSP knowledge. Fashions 1024 -> 2048, Brushes 8192 -> 16384, TexInfo 12288 -> 16384, TexData 2048 -> 8096, DispInfo 2048 -> 8096.
- Added save_transition_music convar that permits streaming music to proceed to play in between stage transitions.
- Localization information 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-20th Anniversary Construct.” If a mod or characteristic is behaving in an surprising approach, you could must run this archived construct till the difficulty is resolved within the default construct.
- With the Episodes and Misplaced Coast now contained inside Half-Life 2 itself, we’ll be decreasing the visibility of the standalone variations on the Steam Retailer. The previous standalone functions will stay accessible to make sure neighborhood tasks that depend on them nonetheless operate correctly however they are going to now seem throughout the Instruments menu in your Steam Library.
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