Half-Life 2 free to keep until November 18th, Episodes One & Two now included with a huge update

Content material

• Added 3.5 hours of Developer Commentary by members of the Half-Life 2 workforce.
• Half-Life 2: Episode One and Episode Two are actually playable from the Half-Life 2 principal menu.
• Half-Life 2: Misplaced Coast has been added to the Extras menu.
• Added Steam Workshop help. Play complete 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

• Mounted points inflicting props or complete 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.
• Mounted 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 raised match the unique launch.
• Up to date fashions for the Crossbow and RPG weapons to help ultrawide shows.
• Mounted digital camera clipping into autos at excessive FOV settings.
• Mounted lambda cache indicators and different decals vanishing when backtracking via map transitions.
• Setting Mannequin Element to Excessive will now at all times show the best element model of a mannequin and by no means swap for a decrease level-of-detail.
• Set Antialiasing to 4x MSAA by default.
• Mounted tooth shader rendering totally 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 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.
• Mounted 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 commonplace face buttons and set off icons solely. This habits might 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.
• Mounted edges of sure font characters being lower off with antialiasing enabled.
• Mounted scrollbars and button animations utilizing inverted colours.
• Eliminated the non-functional “Use ‘bloom’ impact when accessible” setting.
• Added Wealthy Presence information 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 type whereas utilizing a gamepad.
• Added settings for separate Goal-Help modes for mouse/keyboard and gamepad. The brand new Goal-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

• Decreased possibilities of birds getting caught on the planet.
• Mounted Mix crouching habits throughout door assault scene.
• Mounted 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.
• Mounted Dr. Breen not trying on the digital camera in sure broadcasts.
• Mounted easy friction sounds not taking part in.

Basic Map Updates

• Full HDR lighting and tonemapping go 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 straightforward reflective water with totally reflective water in practically each map.
• Mounted many situations of floating props throughout the sport.
• Sewed up holes, aligned textures, and glued seams on many displacements all through the sport.
• Swapped some distant timber 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.
• Mounted 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 airplane.

Particular Map Fixes

• The introduction sequence has been adjusted to intently match the unique sequence, together with fixing specular highlights on the G-Man’s eyes.
• Mounted varied texture seams on practice station wall
• All fences now correctly solid shadows.
• Mounted points with stage transitions setting fog values improperly.
• Eliminated emissive worth from base of lighting prop which was glowing in unusual locations.
• Mounted a bug with Eli’s idle animations through the teleport sequence.
• Mounted lightmapping of practice vehicles in Purple Letter Day and Route Kanal.
• Mounted 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 just a few 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 just a few locations within the canals.
• Mounted a difficulty the place the splash for Manhack Matt’s soar into the water can be out of sync.
• Mounted 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.
• Mounted lighting and shadows on the dock and electrical tower outdoors of Black Mesa East.
• Added displacements and water airplane to 3D skybox close to the dam entrance to switch easy brush cliff face.
• Mounted the lighting on the rocks and props in and across the Ravenholm graveyard.
• Mounted 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 most of the smaller constructions alongside Freeway 17.
• Mounted a crash that may happen when you parked the buggy in sure areas earlier than coming into the bridge stage.
• Mounted a bug the place Vortigaunts might fall via the world.
• Added easy 3D skybox illustration of the subsequent map seen from the highest of the lighthouse in Sandtraps.
• Mounted lighting points through the basement flare sequence in Nova Prospekt.
• Added further geometry to numerous home windows all through the degrees to solid extra detailed shadows in Nova Prospekt.
• Mounted a bug in teleport sequence in Entanglement ending too early leaving Gordon and Alyx standing round whereas the teleporter reached its vacation spot.
• Mounted the catwalk explosion detonating on the flawed time in Anticitizen One.
• Mounted the constructing dome having no polygons on the outstide in Observe Freeman.
• Mounted the ship visibly flying via the constructing dome in Observe Freeman.
• Mounted Barney being left behind throughout a stage transition or nagging the participant too early to “roll a grenade” in Observe Freeman.
• Improved decision of portal render texture throughout finale.
• Added soundscape to all menu background maps
• Darkened elements 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 Observe Freeman background maps.
• Mounted a bug the place you possibly can hear the participant’s bones break within the Citadel menu background map.

Half-Life 2: Deathmatch Fixes

• Mounted participant mannequin choice within the choices menu.
• Mounted slam not having the ability to be detonated when you had been too near a wall
• Mounted view bob with the SMG geared up.
• Mounted utilizing the Gravity Gun to yo-yo grenades, generally inflicting the server to disconnect or crash.
• Mounted lacking sound results for the Gravity Gun.
• Mounted 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 rely in lots of maps.
• Mounted prop placement in maps that may enable gamers to flee the world.
• Mounted floating props in dm_runoff.
• Mounted 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 outdoors of bounds.
• Mounted a number of areas the place the participant might see out of the world.
• Moved the blue barrels in dm_resistance that you possibly can decide up with the Gravity Gun via the chainlink doorways.

Different

• Improved high quality of the Valve intro film when launching the sport.
• Mounted playback of the the post-credits film on the finish of Episode One and the intro film at the beginning of Episode Two.
• The achievements for Episode One and Two have been added to Half-Life 2. When launching the sport it can 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: Mounted bug the place orphaned entities added further information on every map load.
• Hammer: Mounted 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 enables 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-Twentieth Anniversary Construct.” If a mod or function is behaving in an surprising approach, you could have to 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 lowering the visibility of the standalone variations on the Steam Retailer. The previous standalone purposes will stay accessible to make sure neighborhood tasks that depend on them nonetheless perform correctly however they may now seem inside the Instruments menu in your Steam Library.