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Every classic Half-Life game is now free on Steam
- kasperni 7y agoOSX Catalina not supported for those that have upgraded.
- aequitas 7y agoLuckily Steam tells us which games will be incompatible with Catalina. For me it's a big part of my library and some are even recent (-5 years). I doubt these game will ever get updates or Apple will provide a compatiblity layer ala rosetta stone like they did for the PPC to X86 switch. A lot of old games are already lost to me because of this.
- acollins1331 7y agoMaybe try not spending 3x as much for a computer as you need to next time and you won't have this issue
- Alex3917 7y agoSome of the games that Steam says aren't compatible are still compatible.
- nness 7y agoAbsolutely incredibly how much of my Steam library disappeared overnight. I realize dual-booting Windows or an old OSX release is an option; but not so easy with the minuscule MacBook flash storage.
- aequitas 7y agoIf you want to go the dual boot way, target mode or an external disk to boot off might be viable.
- mceachen 7y agoI dual-boot my Mac mini (different Mojave and Catalina setups) off of a USB-C external enclosure with a 1tb m2 SSD. Boot time is a bit slower off the external drive, but it's workable.
- galad87 7y agoBut it's up to the games developers to set up the compatibility flag, and many are wrong. See https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17DkOsI9AwAT4dzPkLmunYJJmUpf1FuWR62Q1vAEfJzM/edit#gid=1334813227 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17DkOsI9AwAT4dzPkLmun...
- aequitas 7y agoI have not looked into this, but if it's a flag you might be able to change it yourself in the info.plist file. Unless code signing get in the way.
- galad87 7y agoIt's an issue in Steam database, not in the games. It shows the "this game is not compatible" message, but the games can still run.
- csunbird 7y agoAnother reason for me to not upgrade, despite the notification nags me every day
- joeraut 7y agoIt's quite easy to get System Preferences to ignore the update [0]. Ignoring Catalina isn't a long-term solution, but is pretty much a necessity for many right now. [0] https://www.macworld.com/article/3447396/how-to-stop-getting-a-reminder-to-update-to-catalina-in-macos.html https://www.macworld.com/article/3447396/how-to-stop-getting...
- klingonopera 7y agoOh boy, I'm excited that the chain of events around this might also move CSGO closer to finally being ported to the Source 2 engine... :D
- aequitas 7y agoI can advise anyone to (re)play these games with the developer commentary on. It goes into a lot of details on technical and game design stuff and really lets you experience the game with a whole different view. Like how certain parts of the map are setup to teach certain mechanics and the huge role gametesting played in determining the final layout of the game.
- debaserab2 7y agoI would LOVE to play with that. How do you turn developer commentary on?
- tikkabhuna 7y agohttps://half-life.fandom.com/wiki/Developer_commentary https://half-life.fandom.com/wiki/Developer_commentary Enjoy!
- aequitas 7y agoI believe it is an option in the settings or during start of the game in main menu. During the game speechbubbles will appear with which you activate the commentary. There is also the Lost Coast 'episode' which is more of a tech demo instead of a game but really worth to play through as well.
- somehnguy 7y agoThe part in the dev commentary that during play testing they found that players tend to never look up unless prompted is ingrained in my brain forever. I always look up now :)
- 83457 7y agoIn games or in life? There are so many skylights and other things that I've missed for years in a real life building and then one day I look up. On multiple occasions I'll ask the person I'm with if that skylight, chandelier, etc has always been there. For games this one surprised me given just how many times I've stood right under it... https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/3g6dh9/has_the_roof_on_mirage_palace_always_been_like/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/3g6dh9/has...
- simjue 7y agoIt's not free forever, only until march when Alyx launch's.
- 0xfaded 7y agoIf it's anything like episode 3, I guess it's defacto free forever.
- andybak 7y agoI think you're probably joking but it's not the same thing at all. Episode 3 was never given a launch date, was it?
- dx87 7y agoKind of. They said a new episode would be released each year, but Episode 3 never came out.
- Dylan16807 7y agoIgnoring the "every three months" thing... In May 2006, as they were launching episode 1, they promised episode 2 later in the year and episode 3 by "Christmas 2007".
- gmueckl 7y agoLooks that they got caught in Valve Time for good: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_Time https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_Time
- s_dev 7y agoI imagine they will make it free forever. We're nearly approaching two decades of the game being sold and it was one of the first digitally distributed games as well. Can't imagine there are many Steam accounts without HL2 and I don't imagine there are many PC gamers without a Steam account. It would great incentive offered by Valve to simply have a Steam account.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- odiroot 7y agoDo they work under Linux?
- 6581 7y agoHL1 has a native Linux version, HL2 works with Proton. Edit: As cosarara correctly points out, HL2 also runs natively.
- cosarara 7y agoHL2 works natively too.
- 6581 7y agoFor some reason only Windows and OS X are listed on the HL2 Steam store page. But you're right of course, HL2 runs natively too.
- non-entity 7y agoSome games seem to use Steamplay automatically. For example, I was able to install and run the old Star Wars Battelfront 2 on Linux without doing anything while I had to grab Proton to run other games
- anoncake 7y agoWhat do you mean with "grab Proton"? By default Steam only uses Proton for games where it was tested to work but there's a setting to enable it for all that aren't available natively. You can also force it to use Proton when a native version does exist which is useful for bad ports.
- non-entity 7y agoI think I had to grab a specific version for a game
- 7y ago
- rawbot 7y agoAnyone that is considering replaying HL2, should give SMOD [1] a look. It works on top of the original campaign, but it is highly customizable and makes for some interesting gameplay, e.g. Duke Nukem kick melee attack without changing weapons, completely customizable bullet-time (own speed, own projectiles speed, enemy speed, etc.), etc. 1: https://www.moddb.com/mods/smod https://www.moddb.com/mods/smod
- StavrosK 7y agoI'd love to, but how? I don't see installation instructions or even a download link there. The site is so full of link bars, toolbars and sidebars that I might easily be missing the link, though.
- zwirbl 7y agoclick on files right below "released 2004" and scroll down to the files. might want to get one of the popular ones (right sidebar) but you are right, the UI is quite horrible
- rawbot 7y agoWhen the Orange Box came out, it broke many mods, SMOD being one of them. I believe this version should work with the current HL2 version distributed by Steam: https://www.moddb.com/mods/smod/downloads/smod-40a-piped https://www.moddb.com/mods/smod/downloads/smod-40a-piped
- fenwick67 7y agoSeconded, SMOD is a blast if you're looking for an arcade-y experience.
- tantalor 7y agonow free -> free for now
- peruvian 7y agoDon't play FPS much any more but HL1 (and Deathmatch) had a big impact on me as a child in terms of what video games could do for story telling and immersion. I hope younger people give it a shot.
- untog 7y agoSame. Many fond memories of HL1 and playing Counterstrike over dial up. HL1 drew me in in a way that Unreal never did... it was hyped beyond belief and was technically incredible, but the game itself felt flat. Half-Life on the other hand... incredible. Even by the time HL2 rolled around I wasn't playing FPSes so much. I played and enjoyed it, but the experience doesn't compare to HL1.
- Shivetya 7y agoHalf Life 1 & 2 are still flagged as not compatible with Catalina, though I think there are a few games flagged as such which actually run
- lostgame 7y agoUgh. This is why I won't be moving past Mojave.
- anoncake 7y agoDoesn't Proton ("Steam Play") work on Mac OS?
- diffeomorphism 7y agoKeyword "Catalina". It works just fine on non-Catalina MacOS.
- nottorp 7y agoCities Skylines for example. Funny enough it's available only as 64 bit, but Steam says won't work on Catalina.
- jpm_sd 7y agoHalf-Life came out when I was in engineering school, and I told myself I'd get around to playing it when I graduated. Somehow the demands of school, career, and family have added up to more than 20 years, it's probably time to give it a go!
- kristiandupont 7y agoYou are in for a treat!
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- HenryKissinger 7y agoIf you're lucky, you'll get to play Half Life 3 before you reach retirement age.
- wolco 7y agoLife stopped after Half Life 2
- somehnguy 7y agoHalf Life: Alyx is what is finally pushing me to get on the VR train. It's not HL3 but the Half Life series was such a big part of my teenage life I can't not play it. At least I've been wanting to try VR for a while for the other games so it's not quite $1000 to play a single video game..Thats what I tell myself at least.
- olyjohn 7y agoThe announcement of that game definitely got me to look into VR setups. But when I went and tried my buddy's Oculus, I got sick in about 5 minutes. I've never had motion sickness problems in my life, so I was sort of disappointed. Defintely try out a setup before you buy it.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- classified 7y agoNot exactly. You can play the game for free until March but you cannot download it for free.
- fit2rule 7y agoI can't find it in Steam for free -does anyone have a specific link to the Steam store somehow? There are a lot of fan-made versions which are Free, but that's not what this is about is it?
- JadoJodo 7y agoThere are links to each game in the post.
- SloopJon 7y agoAs some of the other comments have noted, this is like a free-to-play weekend, but longer. It does not appear that you can associate it with your account for free. I was surprised that I don't already own Half-Life on Steam. I have the Orange Box, but I guess I only have boxed copies of the older games and expansions.
- Thev00d00 7y agoDo yourself a favour and check out the amazing community remake of HL1, Black Mesa! https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/
- augstein 7y agoWow, this looks really amazing. HL1 is still one of my favorite games. They even completely remade the Xen part and according to reviews, its better than the original, which some players did not like that much.
- thrower123 7y agoXen was pretty terrible in the original. I always loved the middle act of the game, basically from We've Got Hostiles onward until going through the teleporter, but that's usually where I stopped playing. The really alien, slightly demonic aesthetic didn't really appeal to me. Or the headcrabs... My real favorite was Opposing Force. It's unfortunate that games have become so complicated and mod-unfriendly that that font of creativity has pretty much dried up. I'm amazed at Black Mesa, but back in the early 2000s, you didn't need a large team to make decent levels, or even total conversions.
- dorkwood 7y agoWhat's the equivalent of half-life mods these days?
- spydum 7y agoMinecraft mods?
- tialaramex 7y agoMinecraft modding is fairly out of hand. But that's only for Java (PC) Minecraft where they basically couldn't stop it once it had started. In Minecraft you've got a situation where there is such a vibrant modding community that curation and configuration of mods to produce a complete working system with some particular flavour or theme is a whole separate skill. It's like the skill needed to make a decent container for a particular piece of server software. The right pieces but badly tuned may still be a miserable experience. It's actually very strange now for me in "vanilla" Minecraft because I'm so used to certain features "everybody" mods into the sort of packs I play. Vein mining is an example: Most packs these days recognise that individually mining several adjacent blocks (or similar with other tools e.g. chopping down a tree one block at a time) is busywork, so they eliminate it. Hold down a modifier, hit one block, all identical blocks are affected at a proportionate cost to hunger and wear on the tool used.
- JadoJodo 7y agoI run a yearly Halfvember (Novembda?) playthrough event of these games with friends/co-workers because they're such great games. Highly recommend playing through, if you've not yet done so. And if you have, I recommend the aforementioned Black Mesa edition of Half-Life, as well as the Community Edition of Half-Life 2.
- thebigshane 7y agoI play HL1/HL2 every 4 years or so since they came out. I still haven't finished HL2 Episode 2 though :( I can't find anything about "Community Edition of Half-Life 2", what is that? EDIT: Maybe you mean "HL2 Update"? ... https://www.polygon.com/2015/3/27/8302337/half-life-2-update-mod-valve https://www.polygon.com/2015/3/27/8302337/half-life-2-update... There is also the "HL2 Cinematic Mod" but that looks ridiculous (pretty much a scantily dressed Alyx) ... https://crappygames.miraheze.org/wiki/FakeFactory%27s_Cinematic_Mod https://crappygames.miraheze.org/wiki/FakeFactory%27s_Cinema...
- JadoJodo 7y agoYeah, the HL2 Update was what I meant. I think I've heard it referenced as 'Community Edition' due to it's inclusion of the community commentary.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- gordon_freeman 7y agoJust wanted to remind folks here that Half-Life is the game that single handedly popularized the entire genre of First Person Shooter (FPS). That in itself is a big achievement but the game is much more than that with its intricate puzzle style with giving minimum instructions to the player and let the player figure out things. Edit: OK...I see folks reminding me about other classic FPS games that came before HL but I was too young when those games came out so my first FPS experience was with HL. Also by the time I started playing video games those games were too old graphics-wise to entice me to play. But fair point!
- tharax 7y agoQuake? Doom? Wolfenstein 3D?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago....how f'ing old am I? Do people seriously not remember Doom!? And that FPS's used to be called Doom Clones!? GET OFF MY LAWN!
- ThrowawayR2 7y agoHey, at least he didn't say Halo. (rimshot)
- 0xffff2 7y agoMy video game history isn't all that great, but... what? Wolfenstein 3D (1992)? Doom (1993)? Quake (1996)?
- mceachen 7y agoBungie's Marathon series arguably had a story line.
- clarry 7y agoUnreal also came out before HL in 1998. And I think it looks, plays, and sounds better. The only things HL does better is scripted storytelling and realism. Unreal is a game I enjoy today and will probably play again sometime this year; HL's linear scripting is something I only need to see once, and its realism hasn't aged so well.
- ufo 7y agoDoes anyone know what is the difference between "Half-Life 2" and "Half-Life 2: Episode One"? Did they start counting from zero or is the latter a subset of the former?
- bordercases 7y agoIf they use a zero-index numeral system, then Valve does count to 3...?
- fetus8 7y agoEpisode 1 is continuation of the story started in Half Life 2. There's a follow up, Episode 2 as well. Play them in order: HL2, HL2 EP1, HL2 EP2.
- nudemanonbike 7y agoValve experimented with episodic games with half life. The idea was to release small, couple hour episodes as a continuation of the story frequently, instead of waiting a long time to make a half life 3. Clearly that didn't happen. What you need to know is that it's more campaign for half life 2. If HL2 is a movie, episode one is the first episode of the TV show. Smaller, but still good.
- euler_angles 7y agoHalf-Life 2: Episode One is a direct continuation of the story of Half-Life 2. Similarly, HL2: Episode Two continues where Episode One leaves off. Valve originally planned on releasing a series of episodic entries in the HL series, two per year if I remember correctly. However they were never able to meet this schedule.
- whalesalad 7y agoThe Steam support rollercoaster I went through recently to unlock these games was kind of insane but also wonderful at the same time. I went back and forth for an eternity with support trying to get access to an account that I no longer had email access for. When the support person finally handed over the keys to the kingdom after like 15 years of not being able to login I was ecstatic. I couldn’t believe that they basically helped me out on what really came down to the honor system. Now all these games are free. Go figure =) I’ve been reviving an old 3770k as of late, getting back into overclocking and desktop PCs in general. My goal is to build a decent little desktop side rig for compiling nerves/rpi kernels. The integrated graphics can’t do 4K, so I knew I needed an actual GPU. Getting back into this scene has been really nostalgic from the high school years. I started with a cheap RX570 that whines and cried under load like a thousand dying rats (coil whine?). So I returned that and took big green for a spin w/ a GTX 1650 from EVGA which is by no means a top dog card but it has worked really well to drive my 4K display. I fired up HL2 this weekend on Linux and played it for a few minutes. So nostalgic! The weird noises and radio crackles really hammer home the dystopian future. I can’t get the game to run full screen though (Linux problems) but it works okay in windowed mode. I don’t know how people game on Linux because despite the progress it’s still so far from being sane.
- unixhero 7y ago1. Install Linux Mint 2. Install Steam and enable compatibility mode in settings (And Gog Galaxy and special shout out to Lutris which should be installed as well) 3. Profit
- whalesalad 7y agoThanks. Your username is very fitting.
- unixhero 7y agoPenguins also like to have fun :).
- myself248 7y ago
- sammorrowdrums 7y agoThey missed having an actual half-life release schedule by 4 years :-/ 1998 HL -> 2004 HL2 (6 years) -> 2020 HL3 (16 years) At least improvements in VR tech might make overlook that...
- asutekku 7y agoHL Alyx is not a HL3 though, it is a prequel.
- sammorrowdrums 7y agoTrue, but regardless it's too late. I'd just accepted Alyx as the third major installment of Half-Life, that's really what I meant. Technically there were the episode releases too, and so it doesn't really hold up to scrutiny. I just liked the idea that they released one full game on schedule befitting the name.
- cowmix 7y agoI'm not a huge gamer but, for some reason, I have purchased the HL2 series like 5 times in the past 15+ years.
- ramshorns 7y agoNot including Opposing Force and Blue Shift. I guess we can't get our hopes up about Adrian Shephard being awoken to be Alyx's first sidekick, or anything like that.
- anoncake 7y agoDoes Valve actually own them? AFAIK at least one of them was developed by a different company.
- RandomOpinion 7y agoBoth were by Gearbox, IIRC, probably best known recently for the Borderlands series.
- qilo 7y agoNot mentioned in the announcement, but in fact both are also included in the "FREE to play" promo. https://store.steampowered.com/app/50/HalfLife_Opposing_Force/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/50/HalfLife_Opposing_Forc... https://store.steampowered.com/app/130/HalfLife_Blue_Shift/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/130/HalfLife_Blue_Shift/
- BuildTheRobots 7y agoSlightly annoyed as I bought Half Life a couple of weeks ago. Even more annoyed, as it turned out that it doesn't run on Windows 10 - it installs and launches, but isn't capable of any sort of useful FPS. I ended up installing Windows XP in a virtual machine and then installing HL on that - I get native resolution and fps that matches my monitor. Steam does have history selling games that can't be played. I bought Max Payne a few years ago at only to find that doesn't run on Windows 10 either (iirc I used WINE that time).
- jki275 7y agoI've played HL and HL2 on Windows 10 and not had any of the issues you describe -- what hardware are you using?
- nothis 7y agoSame. The issue probably isn’t Windows 10.
- BuildTheRobots 7y agoHL2 is absolutely fine. HL1 is not. It's a 6-core 4ghz processor with a gtx-970 graphics. No problems with other titles. See link below or just google for "half life 1 fps windows 10" https://steamcommunity.com/app/70/discussions/0/2579854400753165815/ https://steamcommunity.com/app/70/discussions/0/257985440075...
- dmead 7y agothis sounds wrong.
- asutekku 7y agoThis absolutely a problem with your computer. All valve games run at literally hundreds of FPS on my Win10.
- BuildTheRobots 7y agoI don't seem to be the only other person with problems - and considering I can get useful FPS out of HL2 and other modern titles (or decent fps when it's virtualised) I really don't think it's a hardware problem. See https://steamcommunity.com/app/70/discussions/0/2579854400753165815/ https://steamcommunity.com/app/70/discussions/0/257985440075... or search for "half life windows 10 fps"
- skizm 7y agoSmall note: free to play till launch. I don't think you get them forever. That said, they're great games and playing them only makes me sad they never made a true HL3.