Half-Life News

Half-Life's 25th anniversary celebrations have caused a resonance cascade in its Steam player-count, surging to a new all-time high over the weekend

Half-Life, the little-known game about a monorail enthusiast who undergoes the most brutal job interview in history, reached its 25th birthday on Sunday. And Valve was in a surprisingly celebratory mood for a company that is normally as reticent as it is forward-looking. On its YouTube channel, Valve released a brand-new documentary that brought the original Half-Life team together for a captivating chew over its development...
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Gabe Newell on making Half-Life's crowbar fun: 'We were just running around like idiots smacking the wall'

To celebrate its 25th birthday, Valve updated Half-Life and gave it away for free. At the same time, it released an hour-long documentary in which the original developers talked about making the influential FPS. In the documentary, Valve's co-founder Gabe Newell explained why game delays are OK, but also took some time to explain the theory of fun Valve came up with while developing the original Half-Life...
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November 19, 2023 Update

Steam Networking and Server Browser improvements.
The HUD will no longer scale to 2x size at 1024x768 and 1280x720 resolution.
Fixes for GL Overbright shaders.
Fixes for text alignment in custom in-game menus at various resolutions.
Fixed 357 zoomed crosshair appearing as the wrong texture at the largest screen resolutions.
Fixed some server events that cause crashes with high player counts.
Fixed crash if the user set their Field of View to 0 and then zoomed in with the crossbow.
Fixed window icons drawing inverted for mods.
Fixed the inability to launch Half-Life: Blue Shift and Day of Defeat, as well as many other mods.

NOTE: Many GoldSrc mods, Counter-Strike included, may still have compatibility issues with the updated version of the Half-Life engine. While we work on improving mod support it is advisable to install the beta "steam_legacy" build of Half-Life (which can be selected in the game's properties page) when playing mods.

Half-Life triples its own Steam record after big Valve update

With Half-Life still free to keep for a brief time and Valve releasing a colossal 25th-anniversary update for the iconic FPS, we've seen a monumental player increase in the game. Between restored cut content, entirely new multiplayer maps, and even an hour-long documentary celebrating the game, Half-Life is well and truly back.

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All of Half-Life's textures were created by a single person, new making-of documentary explains

Half-Life turns 25 years old tomorrow, with new maps and updates to celebrate. Valve also reunited the game's original developers for an hour-long making-of documentary in which its original programmers and artists reminisce about creating the first-person classic at a time when many of them had never shipped a game before.

Chief among the revelations within is that all of Half-Life's textures were created by a single person, Karen Laur.