Half-Life 2 News

November 26, 2024 Update

Enable support to keep music playing during level transitions throughout the base Half-Life 2 campaign (no convar needed).
Added support for displaying an active Workshop campaign name in your Steam friends list.
Added a slider to the settings menu to allow scaling stick sensitivity for gamepads.
Fixed issue with overlapping commentary tracks if a commentary track was playing between level loads.
Fixed issue where gamepad buttons may be permanently stuck pressed after saving the game.
UI fonts updated for better support in Cyrillic languages.
Fixed Thai font rendering on Linux.
Added initial support for Ukranian and Vietnamese.
Various crash fixes when switching between episodes.
Fixed soundscape playback for the Citadel menu background map.
Removed collision from an underwater tube that speed runners enjoy.
Updated localization files.

Half-Life 2 testers horsing around with physics props 'to make the 47th playthrough of the game more interesting' probably had no idea it would result in Gabe Newell launching a garden gnome into space 16 years later

"Little Rocket Man" is truly one of the greatest bits in videogame history⁠—a challenging achievement in Half-Life 2: Episode 2 that requires you to carry a cherubic little garden gnome named "Gnome Chompski" through the entirety of the campaign and deposit the wee fellow on a rocket ship to another dimension in the final level. The Chompski achievement returned in several later Valve games, including Half-Life: Alyx. It reached apotheosis with Gabe Newell's 2020 IRL recreation, with a tangible Chompski launched into space as a fundraiser for a pediatric charity. And it all began with bored Valve QA testers messing around with physics props in Half-Life 2...
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Valve first came up with the Steam Hardware Survey more than 20 years ago because it wanted to know what specs it should target for Half-Life 2

The Steam Hardware Survey has become a critical resource for the games industry, allowing curious enthusiasts or practical-minded developers to get a sense of how the average PC gamer enjoys the hobby. To hear Valve senior engineer Jay Stelly tell it in Half-Life 2's new 20th anniversary developer commentary, the Steam Hardware Survey first came about because Valve itself had no other way of accessing the information...
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Valve zoomed in Half-Life 2's FOV from the gold standard 90 so you could see all those pretty Source engine faces better

PC gamers love tweaking our field of view sliders⁠, the extent of your in-game peripheral vision that gets rendered. Real heads tend to adopt a "the higher, the better," mentality, with 90 degrees being a commonly-accepted sweet spot. So why did PC gaming grande damme Valve saddle us with a miserly, dare I say console-like 75-degree default FOV in Half-Life 2?..
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The origin of the Source engine's iconic neon fuchsia checkerboard texture, as told by Half-Life 2's new commentary mode

It feels weird to say, , but the error texture on Valve's Source engine feels like an old friend to me. Its arresting, black and fuchsia checkerboard is a familiar face that shows up everywhere from Counter-Strike surf servers to bootleg Mario Kart maps in Team Fortress 2. It kind of rhymes with the similarly ugly-cute "FIREBLU" lava texture from Doom, a cheeky reminder of a beloved FPS. Now, in the 20th anniversary developer commentary for Half-Life 2, Valve has explained some of the reasoning behind creating the now-iconic error visual...
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