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I found an old copy of Half-Life. The CD was scratched so it wouldn’t play so I activated the product on Steam using the CD-Key. Not only did it give me Half-Life but also a number of derivative games including:-
Counter-Strike
Day of Defeat
Deathmatch Classic
Opposing Force
Ricochet
Half-Life: Blue Shift
Team Fortress ClassicSo far I have tried Half-Life, Blue Shift and Team Fortress Classic. All seem to work very well, but I can only set the resolution to 800×600. If anyone knows of a hack to change this to the native resolution then I would be grateful.
So you use the CD-Key that came with the original disc? Cool, time to dig mine out! Steam got a bad reputation originally but the more I get the concept the more I think it is actually a great delivery system. Pushing it out with HL2 was a great way to get take up of the system from day 1.
Thanks for the tip.
Follow the instructions here to enable widescreen support:
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/wiki/index.php/Half-Life
Think I might give this a try myself, assuming I can find my copy lol. I haven’t played it for ages as I’ve been waiting for Black Mesa Source.
cool! I hadn’t heard about that. I haven’t even finished playing through HL2 yet though (I lost my saved games when I last upgraded).
The original will still be good for the NC10 though!
Nice one thanks for that info. Now if only I knew where my copy is. I’m sure I lent it to my friend a few years ago and never got it back.
Just a quick update on this – I followed the instructions on the link I posted previously and I’m sad to say that it doesn’t work on 1024×600 displays. Once the modifications are made, the video options should offer a widescreen mode, but this area is greyed-out. I tried on my desktop machine (with a 1680×1050 display) and the option was available.
After further investigation, it seems that widescreen mode is actually native to the game and it’s not necessary to make those file edits – assuming your display is supported.
I’m going to look into this further over the next few days and see if I can force the widescreen on. I suspect it has something to do with Steam not recognising the Intel graphics, so maybe a driver update will make a difference.
Cheers for the efforts. Anybody have an opinion on which game is the best multiplayer shooter. I play Team Fortress 2 on my big PC and think it’s great. Not loving Team Fortress Classic though.
Unreal!! What a choice!! Unreal tournament :op Well worth it, Quake series too.
Couple of games for the retro heads too: Blood 1 and D3D
I’d just like to clarify some things for any HL fans, now that I’ve run some tests. There are two versions of Half-Life 1:
– The original release from the last millenium
– The updated release that comes packaged with the Half-Life 2 variantsI have both, and I never knew the difference until now. The original release was designed for Pentium III hardware and relatively modest graphics. The updated release uses Valve’s new “Source” engine which provides enhanced visual effects, resolution options, etc. It is a little more resource hungry. In a quick five minute test in the first level, the original release was wonderfully playable, while the Source release stuttered a lot and was IMO unplayable, even at the lowest settings.
Interestingly, if you have a Steam account, you can install both releases on one machine (provided you have the licenses of course). The original release will be called simply “Half-Life” while the updated release will be called “Half-Life: Source” in the Steam menu. A similar naming scheme is used for the HL1 variants too.
So far from my experience, the *Source* version *does* support the native resolution right out of the box. The original version only supports 800×600 out of the box, as said by others.
Cheers littleguy. It seems I’ll have to fork out for the Source version if I want to play in widescreen. I think I’ll skip that and carry on waiting for Black Mesa to arrive, hopefully won’t be long now.
Good luck, as I said while source runs native it is very low framerates. Maybe some tinkering with drivers or adding 2G might make a difference? Haven’t spent much time tinkering…
I decided to buy Half-Life: Source as my curiosity was getting the better of me.
While it does indeed support 1024×600 natively, I’ve not been able to correct the poor performance issues. Sound is choppy and framerate peaks at about 10fps, dropping to 4fps when there is activity on screen.
I have tried in DX7 and DX8 modes, disabled sound acceleration and dropped all in-game video and sound settings to minimum with no positive results. I already have the 2Gb RAM upgrade, so it might be even worse with the default 1Gb. The only thing I haven’t changed is drivers as I have the latest already and don’t really want to mess about testing older ones.
It’s a shame it’s so unplayable, especially when the original CD version gives me a solid 50fps. To add further annoyance, the original game does seem to support some widescreen modes (1680×1050 for example) just not the 1024×600 required for netbooks.
So, my recommendation if you want to play this game on your NC10 is to go for the original non-Source version, which can still be purchased through Steam if you don’t own the CD. This seems to work very well, if only at 800×600.
well, you all have inspired me so I tried out the original and noticed it was in full screen (ie no black bars on the side). Is there a way to force it into the correct aspect ratio?
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