It’s the Twentieth anniversary of Valve’s Half-Life 2, and to rejoice, the event crew has launched a meaty replace. Moreover, the bottom recreation and each Episodes are free to say on Steam till November 18th. Suffice it to say that that is the right alternative to play top-of-the-line video games of all time.
For many who already personal (and certain cleared) it, the anniversary replace is properly value testing. It provides 3.5 hours of developer commentary from the unique crew and Steam Workshop help to exchange weapons, enemies, the UI, and even expertise full campaigns. Lightmaps have additionally seen enhancements, with bicubic filtering leading to higher shadows, whereas radial fog leads to “cleaner, smoother horizon traces.”
UI-scaling now helps larger resolutions, whereas each map (and Deathmatch map) now helps full HDR lighting and tone mapping. Gamers also can use blood and fireplace results from the Episodes or these from the unique launch. That is all on prime of dozens of bug fixes and enhancements. Test all of it out beneath.
Half-Life 2 Twentieth Anniversary Replace
Bug Fixes and Change Notes
Content material
- Added 3.5 hours of Developer Commentary by members of the Half-Life 2 crew.
- Half-Life 2: Episode One and Episode Two at the moment are playable from the Half-Life 2 essential menu.
- Half-Life 2: Misplaced Coast has been added to the Extras menu.
- Added Steam Workshop help. Play complete campaigns or exchange weapons, enemies, UI, and extra with content material created by the group.
- Added customized Steam Sport Recording gameplay occasions and phases all through the sport.
Rendering and Graphics
- Fastened points inflicting props or complete maps to be absolutely shiny or absolutely 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 may 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 higher 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 via map transitions.
- Setting Mannequin Element to Excessive will now all the time 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 enamel shader rendering absolutely white on some GPUs.
UI and Choices
- The UI now scales to help larger resolutions.
- Launching the sport in Steam Large Image mode will now use the gamepad-friendly UI beforehand out there on Steam Deck. You can too launch this mode with the “-gamepadui” launch possibility.
- 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.
- 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 want to show normal face buttons and set off icons solely. This habits may be disabled with the “sc_prefer_basic_origin_hints” convar.
- Changed situations 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 lower off with antialiasing enabled.
- Fastened scrollbars and button animations utilizing inverted colours.
- Eliminated the non-functional “Use ‘bloom’ impact when out there” setting.
- Added Wealthy Presence data whereas taking part in Half-Life 2.
Enter
- Up to date the default Steam Enter configuration.
- Added a Gamepad settings menu.
- Added the power to pick a weapon choice UI model whereas utilizing a gamepad.
- Added settings for separate Intention-Help modes for mouse/keyboard and gamepad. The brand new Intention-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
- Diminished probabilities of birds getting caught on the planet.
- Fastened Mix crouching habits throughout door assault scene.
- Fastened Mix not firing in some circumstances through 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 wanting on the digicam in sure broadcasts.
- Fastened easy friction sounds not taking part in.
Basic Map Updates
- Full HDR lighting and tonemapping move 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 airplane 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 situations of easy reflective water with absolutely reflective water in practically each map.
- Fastened many situations of floating props throughout the sport.
- Sewed up holes, aligned textures, and stuck seams on many displacements all through the sport.
- Swapped some distant bushes out for larger 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 massive static prop buildings.
- Added easy rooftop geometry to background buildings that had been lacking them.
- Added background displacement geometry to areas which at the moment are uncovered by eliminated the clipping airplane.
Particular Map Updates
- The introduction sequence has been adjusted to carefully 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 through the teleport sequence.
- Fastened lightmapping of prepare automobiles in Pink Letter Day and Route Kanal.
- Fastened a rendering bug in Route Kanal the place world geometry would pop out and in of view when wanting down the tracks.
- Aligned pipe and canal wall textures in a couple 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 gentle sources of ambient gentle in a couple of locations within the canals.
- Fastened a difficulty the place the splash for Manhack Matt’s soar into the water can be out of sync.
- Fastened a bug the place the big 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 airplane to 3D skybox close to the dam entrance to exchange easy brush cliff face.
- Fastened the lighting on the rocks and props in and across the Ravenholm graveyard.
- Fastened gamers with the ability to lure 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 most of the smaller buildings alongside Freeway 17.
- Fastened a crash that might happen for those who parked the buggy in sure areas earlier than getting into the bridge stage.
- Fastened a bug the place Vortigaunts might fall via the world.
- Added easy 3D skybox illustration of the following map seen from the highest of the lighthouse in Sandtraps.
- Fastened lighting points through the basement flare sequence in Nova Prospekt.
- Added extra geometry to varied 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 flawed time in Anticitizen One.
- Fastened the constructing dome having no polygons on the outstide in Comply with Freeman.
- Fastened the ship visibly flying via 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 emblem 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 with the ability to be detonated for those who had been too near a wall
- Fastened view bob with the SMG geared up.
- Fastened utilizing the Gravity Gun to yo-yo grenades, generally inflicting the server to disconnect or crash.
- Fastened lacking sound results for the Gravity Gun.
- Fastened characters taking part in a lacking animation when switching weapons whereas leaping and transferring.
- 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 might enable gamers to flee the world.
- Fastened floating props in dm_runoff.
- Fastened the realm portal on the blast door in dm_runoff inflicting the world to now 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 via the chainlink doorways.
- 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 initially of Episode Two.
- The achievements for Episode One and Two have been added to Half-Life 2. When launching the sport it should try to learn information 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 information on every map load.
- Hammer: Fastened the power to render cubemaps.
- Hammer: Elevated many limits for BSP information. 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.
Different
- The earlier model of the sport has been archived to a publicly seen Beta department named “steam_legacy”, with the outline “Pre-Twentieth Anniversary Construct.” If a mod or function is behaving in an surprising manner, you might must run this archived construct till the problem 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 outdated standalone purposes will stay out there to make sure group initiatives that depend on them nonetheless operate correctly however they’ll now seem throughout the Instruments menu in your Steam Library.