KT7AGuy wrote:

I'm a veteran. I have a NDSM but never saw any action, nor do I suffer from PTSD. However, hearing Reveille in Opposing Force's boot camp training mission immediately makes me tense, nervous, and irritable. If this is the most anxiety I carry with me from my time in the service, I suppose I should consider myself lucky.

That is very interesting. Can you explain what Reveille is? Is it a character or a weapon or something else? I haven't played Opposing Force.

A somewhat similar experience has been told by my grandfather. He was Polish freedom fighter during II WW, captured and detained in Nazi camp, liberated by Americans by the end of war. He visited a museum in Poland decades later, when he was 80-something years old. The museum has just installed multimedia exposition, which he didn't know about in advance. So when he was visiting lights went dimmed, sounds of tanks and planes were played, sharp military commands in German too. He almost passed away that day, the museum had to call ambulance. It all transported him half a century back and his heart and nervous system didn't take it well.

Reveille is a song. The military thinks it's funny to use it as a wake-up alarm when you're in boot camp. They play it at 194db and then a training instructor immediately begins screaming at you. It's a jarring and unpleasant start to what will be an even worse day. The training instructor I had was talented with the loudest, most annoying, nasal-pitched voice I've ever heard. The combination of Reveille and that douchebag screaming at me at 6AM is something I can't forget.

Here is the scene from Opposing Force that I was referring to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLB_Ma8WoWk

Ah, I know the song. Haven't connected the dots. Thank you for the explanation.

UCyborg:

Based on your list of pros and cons of Blue-Shift and Blue-Shift: Unlocked, it seems like the original version of Blue-Shift is preferable. What is the latest version of the game that doesn't suffer from the elevator glitch? Should I just run the game unpatched as it is from my original CDROM?

Thanks again for your advice

Maybe that elevator glitch isn't as bad as it may seem. Since you're already playing with VSync enabled at 60 Hz, that alone could be enough to avoid it. At least I couldn't reproduce it with these settings.

If you still go with the original, you probably should apply 1.0.0.1 patch as it fixes some issues with that version of the engine.

There aren't any additional patches for Blue-Shift: Unlocked AFAIK.

I completed both years ago without experiencing any serious problems. Personally I still prefer the Unlocked version because it lets me use all of my mouse's buttons out-of-the-box (the older engine doesn't recognize MOUSE4 and MOUSE5 buttons; would have to map them to some keyboard key and use some additional software to map those keys to extra mouse buttons).

I noticed tonight that I'm not getting any music in Opposing Force with the MP3 files. The Half-Life v1.1.1.0 patch only updates Opposing Force to v1.1.0.9. I'm not sure if this is the problem, but I'm definitely not hearing music with the tracks named as per previous instruction.

This isn't a show-stopper. I've popped my disc back in the drive to hear music until I finish this expansion pack.

I don't know, it works fine if everything is installed correctly; Half-Life patched to 1.1.1.0 and my MP3 fix plugin placed in Half-Life folder. MP3s should be placed in correct folders as well as not containing any fancier tags like ID3v2, ID3v1 tags are fine.

UCyborg,

Even after removing all tags via MP3Tag, the MP3 files still would not play in Opposing Force. However, I was not using your patch.

After dropping your "hl_mp3_fix.asi" patch into my Half-Life install directory, everything is now working great! Brilliant! Thank you so much for your help! 😀

Thank you https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vsp1e2ojeuQ

I just finished Opposing Force and I really liked it. I liked the action in Half-Life better, but it was 95% as good. I didn't realize until I finished that, for whatever reason, the high-definition pack had failed to take effect in Opposing Force. Oh well, it didn't detract from the game in any way.

Does anybody have an explanation for the floating, sparkly, fairy-like orbs that were frequently encountered throughout the game?

I'm starting Blue Shift now, and I've made sure that the high-definition pack is working.

Here is a good high definition pack. https://www.moddb.com/games/half-life/addons/ … lf-life-hd-pack

I don't know what's different with Blue Shift, but I'm getting all sorts of momentary pausing/stuttering/skipping/freezing in the game. I'm using v1.0.0.1, but the problem also happens in v1.0.

Anybody else encountered this? Any solutions?

UCyborg, you have done a great job. Thank you! Half-Life was one of the first games I played and it is still one of my favorites. I played a lot of mods made for it and all of the games based on the GoldSource engine. I have a laptop with a bad integrated graphics card that handles OpenGL poorly. Due to this I can't run the current Steam version of Half-Life properly. Xash3D is great, but it still has some minor bugs and certain mods have issues with it or don't run at all. The original WON (retail) version doesn't have widescreen support (previously there was only a hack for OpenGL) and I didn't know about the MP3 soundtrack support, so I never considered going back to it until now.

I tested your patch (for version 1.1.1.0) with the expansion packs and official mods (Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, Deathmatch Classic, etc.). I managed to get the retail copy of Gunman Chronicles to run as a Half-Life mod as well by copying the "rewolf" folder from the game into the Half-Life folder.

I came across a bug that happens in all of the games with your patch. In multiplayer, the FOV adjuster stops working after a map change. This happens if you create a LAN server and then go back to the menu and create a new one. It also happens if you restart the server through the console or if the map changes due to map rotation. You can fix it by leaving the multiplayer portion of the game and going back to the beginning menu. If you enter multiplayer again and create a server, FOV adjustment works, but only until the next map change. FOV adjustment works fine in singleplayer.

One of the mods I tried was Day of Defeat. The retail version of DoD came in two variations: as a standalone boxed release and as a free mod for owners of Half-Life. I used the mod version which can be found on moddb.com (http://www.moddb.com/games/day-of-defeat/down … 10-won-hl1-only).
After installing and launching it I noticed that the FOV adjuster stopped working. In fact, it stopped working for all of the games. I checked the DoD installation files and it turns out that they contain updated engine dll files which seem to break the FOV adjuster, although widescreen support still works fine. DoD crashes if these files are replaced by the original ones. I reinstalled Half-Life afterwards and FOV adjustment worked again, but the multiplayer bug I previously described still remains.

These issues aren't big since the multiplayer for this version of Half-Life is dead, but I like to play with bots, and it is still possible to host a LAN game.

As far as the menus are concerned, I found a way to run them in any resolution without the background glitching. For example, if you want to run Counter-Strike with the menu at 1024x768 (it is 640x480 by default) you need to go into the "Half-Life\cstrike\gfx\shell" folder and resize the image "splash.bmp" to 1024x768 (I used Paint.NET, but you can use ordinary MS Paint as well, just remember to save the image as a 24-bit Bitmap). After that you need to launch the game with command line parameters: " -lw 1024 -lh 768 " (without quotes). The game menu will launch at that resolution and the background will render properly without artifacts.
The process is similar for the other games. For Half-Life, Opposing Force and Blue Shift it is a bit more complicated, because the splash.bmp file is packaged inside pak files (pak0.pak). You will need a special program to open the pak file and extract the image. I used PakScape (http://gamebanana.com/tools/2548). Extract the image to the right folder, resize and launch the game with correct parameters. For Half-Life the files are in the "valve" folder, for Opposing Force in "gearbox" and for Blue Shift in "bshift". (I can upload the images with correct folder structure if someone wants them).
This is still not perfect for Half-Life and other games that have animated elements in the menu background. The logo movies remain at the original resolution (640x480) and they are fixed at the top left corner of the screen. It's a minor issue, and you can disable the logo movies by deleting the "logo.avi" file in the "media" folder of each game or by replacing it with an empty movie file.

I encountered a bug when running the menus at the same resolution as the game. The brightness settings had no effect in-game and the game became very bright. This is however probably a hardware issue with my laptop, because I encountered problems with brightness in games before, and it has nothing to do with the splash.bmp file since it happens regardless of whether I use the original or modified version.

Once again, I want to thank you for the patches you made. You mentioned it yourself previously, but I will repeat it: you should probably upload your fixes to some modding website (such as moddb.com or gamebanana.com). It is easy for such things to get buried and forgotten in a forum and you would reach a greater number of people. I will report more bugs if I find any.

I haven't forgotten about the patch. Thanks for the bug reports, LonelySpaceBiker, they're fixed now I hope. Also uploaded it to ModDB.

Day of Defeat totally slipped off the radar. Apparently, some of the updated DLLs are the same as the ones that you also get with unofficial 1.1.1.2 patch (which also uses hl.exe from 1.1.1.0 patch). Those updated DLLs are also responsible for the movement delay bug in singleplayer on level transitions I remember experiencing in the past, but couldn't point the finger at what's causing the issue. For versions where this bug exists, you can just add +clockwindow 0 command line parameter and forget about it, at least if you don't intend to play multiplayer. Speaking of multiplayer, looks like unofficial WON2 network is still a thing. Maybe multiplayer for this version isn't completely dead. I only actually played multiplayer with Steam version so far.

Regarding Steam version and OpenGL problems, did anyone try QIndieGL with it? And don't forget to add -insecure command line parameter to Half-Life launch options to not trigger VAC.

KT7AGuy wrote:

I don't know what's different with Blue Shift

Older engine version, though that probably shouldn't translate to stuttering. Going off my memory, I think they mentioned some engine optimizations in the later versions, but don't quote me on that.

Guys, what's your luck in running WON version of Half-Life in Windows 10?

Yesterday, I tried it on my fully updated Win 10 rig, and even though I'm able to run it, set the correct widescreen resolution (only under OpenGL though, but that's not the issue), I'm not able to play game, not really. Mouse in menu works as it should, but in game, there is huge lag with moving mouse, and every move results in beeping?!

I tried it also on my laptop with Win 7, and it works flawlessly, even with just Intel iGPU, so issue isn't with patch itself, it's surely in Win 10. Do you guys experience this, and if yes, do you know the solution for it?

Srandista wrote:

Guys, what's your luck in running WON version of Half-Life in Windows 10?

Works without major issues on my end in OpenGL mode. If I press ESC, the rendering window doesn't get out of the way on its own to make space for menus, so have to help it manually to get it to lose focus.

BTW, I updated the patch; MP3 functionality and consequently *.asi plugins weren't loaded on computers without optical drive.

KT7AGuy wrote:

RetroBoogie asked what kind of FPS I'm getting in OpenGL. Here are my bedroom HTPC's specs: […]
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RetroBoogie asked what kind of FPS I'm getting in OpenGL. Here are my bedroom HTPC's specs:

WinXP Pro SP3
ABIT KV85 (rev 2.0) (Socket 754)
Athlon 64 3700+ ClawHammer @ 2.4Ghz with 1mb L2 Cache
2gb (2x1gb) PC3200 RAM (Single Channel, running at 166mhz)
GeForce 7300 GT DDR2 (Drivers v197.45)
Audigy 2 ZS

With these settings I get a solid 60 FPS @ 1366x768 on a 32" LCD TV (60hz):

Anisotropic Filtering Off
Antialiasing - Gamma Off
Antialiasing - Setting 4x
Antialiasing - Transparency Off
Extension Limit On
Max pre-rendered frames 3
Multi-display / mixed-GPU Single
Texture Filter - Anisotropic mip Off
Texture Filter - Anisotropic sample Off
Texture Filter - Negative LOD Allow
Texture Filter - Quality High
Texture Filter - Trilinear Off
Threaded optimization Off
Triple Buffering On
V-Sync On

Some observations:

I used NVIDIA drivers v197.45 for both my 6800 GT and this 7300 GT. While the 6800 GT could not do anti-aliasing in Half-Life, the 7300 GT does it just fine. The Radeon 3650 also did it too. Perhaps this is a limitation of the 6800 GT?

A little late for me to respond, but thank you for posting this. I am playing through on Win98 with A3d (my first experience). I'll have to revisit this and report back. If I were playing on my XP box I'd be able to max everything out, but whatever. That's part of the fun besides playing - tinkering, right?

Reading through the thread, I noticed we could rip the audio into mp3 tracks for music without the disc. I don't remember hearing much music in this game to begin with. Perhaps I'm missing something like a cd-audio cable or setting or something.

Tonight I finally finished Blue Shift. Some observations:

Both of my Athlon 64 systems had weird pausing/stuttering issues with Blue Shift. My ThinkPad T60 had graphical corruption issues with it. I ended up running it on my Win7 Phenom II system with a 560 Ti and it worked just fine.

I did not experience the elevator health bug that was previously discussed.

The voice acting in Blue Shift was pretty bad.

Although it is the weakest of the Half-Life/Opposing Force/Blue Shift trilogy, it was by no means a bad game. I rather enjoyed it. I was pleasantly surprised by the happy ending; something the other two lacked. I've got enough negativity in my real life and I really don't need more of it from my entertainment. I was seriously expecting Dr. Rosenberg to abandon Calhoun, but the ending was quite refreshing.

So, what's next? Should I play Portal before Half-Life 2? Is there any tie-in at all?

(I already know that the cake is a lie.)

KT7AGuy wrote:

So, what's next? Should I play Portal before Half-Life 2? Is there any tie-in at all?

If I recall correctly there was only one very subtle mention of Black Mesa somewhere, the company that built the facility you are in Portal was a rival of Black Mesa and didn't like them very much. So no reason to play Portal before moving on to Half-Life 2, both Portals are great games still though.

Hi!

I recently played through Half life,oposing force and blue shift.

I wanted to thank you for making these patches.

It was awsome!

Is there any chance you could make a patch for Gunman chronicles aswell?

I really really would like to play gunman in widescreen too.

I would be so grateful if i could be able to play gunman with both A3D 2.0 and Widescreen.

Best regards!