Poll: So Valve broke HL1...

[DoPo]

I would say something if I understood what the hell you were talking about. Another case of "use acronyms without explaining what they mean or do" -itis.

But downgrading old games through patches is just bullshit. I think the time when the game industry collapses and Jim Sterling will rally us under his banner and lead us to a new age of gaming can't be far away if this sort of stuff gets more common.

What on earth would be the point of Using a common acronym then going on to explain the acronym at length?

There's no need to explain the acronym at length, just say what it derives from. For example, D3D could mean anything (Diablo 3 Domination, Dungeons 3 Dragons etc.) but if you say it means Direct 3D that already gives me enough idea and context to figure out what it means in this specific situation. And especially on the internet you should always be wary on assuming how much people will understand various acronyms.

While true, mentioning Half-Life 1 does give context - in the video config options says D3D as well as Direct3D. Also, D3D is a common acronym for it, albeit a rather old one (with Direct X being around and all).

Just download Black Mesa and play that.

There is no COOP for Half Life 2. Also, I don't own HL2. Neither do my buddies with whom I play. Furthermore, Source games are more demanding than their GoldSRC counterparts.

Maybe it is time to save and buy a new computer? You can build your own that should run most modern games at a good 30 FPS for around 600-900. Hell, The one I built can be bought for around 950 right now, when I original spent 1300 for last year.

Erm...buying a new computer for a 15 year old game (OK, few years less - I can't remember which year is the new build from, but still) which one was able to play before?

 

[Souplex]

So now they're ruining the good Half Life game?
What is wrong with these people.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Stupid move, Valve.
I know you're pushing for Linux as a gaming OS, but that doesn't mean retroactively stripping old features out of pre-existing products. Don't be like Sony...

 

[The White Hunter]

Wait... Intel integrated? Really?

You might want to consider buying like a 7750 or something man they're like £80 and will change your experience completely given you have a PSU of about 400W...

 

[SquidVicious]

I am quite annoyed because this means I can't finish Cry of Fear or any other mod that uses the HL engine.

 

[DoPo]

Wait... Intel integrated? Really?

You might want to consider buying like a 7750 or something man they're like £80 and will change your experience completely given you have a PSU of about 400W...

It's a laptop, they aren't known for being greatly upgradable. Especially if it only has an integrated video card.

I am quite annoyed because this means I can't finish Cry of Fear or any other mod that uses the HL engine.

It depends - do you also have a problem running the game on OpenGL? I don't get any issues. Admittedly, I have v1.1.1.0 installed at the moment and not the Steam build but still I'm getting fine performance on OpenGL. In fact, it even supports more display resolutions than Direct3D - it goes up to 1600x1200, while the highest the other two have is 1024x768.

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

That's bullshit. I hate Steam's policy of forcing you to update, even if it doesn't benefit you you. Not to mention the stupidity of updating a 15 year old game to take functionality AWAY from it!

Shogun 2's 12GB patch still irritates me. I'm growing increasingly impatient with Steam. The sales and the fact that my friends use it are the only good things about it.

 

[synobal]

Removing EAX is no biggy, the D3D thing is sort of interesting but opengl has aged better. I don't really think it's a big deal either way.

 

[Requia]

Ummmm... could someone explain to me exactly why they would do this?

I mean, what do they gain from it? I just can't see the logic here.

Compatibility. Anything D3D/directX based will be dependent on Microsoft to make sure Half Life keeps working with future operating systems. With open source software anybody with the skill and time (Valve themselves if necessary) can do that.

 

[Requia]

Now, I don't have anything against OGL per se, but my intel integrated can't handle OpenGL for shit, and I am stuck with 5FPS (playing sven coop, which requires OGL or D3D). Why do I care? LAN-parties on laptops...


EDIT: it seems it happened almost a year ago... still, haven't heard about it till now.

This seems really odd, given that I ran Half Life with integrated graphics on windows 98 machine. Is this something that only happens with Sven Coop, or is the core game hurt as well?

Edit: According to the Sven Coop changelog, they didn't introduce openGL compatibility for env_fog until 4.06.

 

[bafrali]

Valve are busy fellating Linux for some stupid reason or another, this probably fits right into their plan.

But of course, on these forums VALVE CAN NEVER DO WRONG, EVER.

Yeah, Newell had a massive freakout about Windows 8 last year, didn't he?

Eh, whatever. Valve's a game retailer. They're easy to ignore these days.

Oh hai BhaalSpawn. I see that you are still make claims without reason to back it up

 

[Poetic Nova]

Am I glad i found the Sierra/Valve Anthology for a couple of euro's (no steam required). This is one of the reason's why I don't use Steam since '11.

 

[AyaReiko]

Have you tried the "-nofbo" command line option yet?

 

[Keith K]

2 questions to get a perspective on this:

Why did they do it?
Why do we care?

 

[Rariow]

As much of a Valve fanboy as I am... wow, really? That's pretty stupid. In pretty much 99.9% of the cases, more options is better than less options. I understand if Valve was to, say, not implement these features on future games (Which I'm still hoping against hope will eventually materialize), but removing them from games that already have them seems to be simply counter-productive for no other reason than to be dicks to Microsoft.

Valve used unreasonable patch!
Rariow's Respect for Valve Harshly Fell!
Rariow used Forum Post!
...it isn't very effective

 

[Johnson McGee]

2 questions to get a perspective on this:

Why did they do it?
Why do we care?

Why do we care? Somewhat important for questions about where consumer ownership over software ends and publisher control begins, etc.

Why did they do it? is a very good question, removing features just to cut Microsoft out of a 15 year old game is pointless unless they were forced to because of a collapse in licensing agreements or something. If that's the case, though, why haven't other Valve games dropped that support? There's probably an explanation other than dickery that I wouldn't mind knowing.

 

[DoPo]

Erm...buying a new computer for a 15 year old game (OK, few years less - I can't remember which year is the new build from, but still) which one was able to play before?

What I meant was, if he was having issues playing a game THAT old on his PC, it should be time to upgrade. Hell, even most shitty laptops (I hate laptops, ugh waste of money) can play some of the newer games out now.

Well, except for the fact that OP could already play the game before but not any more. And he does have a laptop, so the solution to "upgrade" is "buy a new one" which is a waste of money in a lot of cases.

Have you tried the "-nofbo" command line option yet?

Ah, I read up on that, and it seems that it could be a fix. For the record, FBO seems to be some sort of OpenGL extension that deals with...something to do with frames, buffers and objects - I don't care and I don't think most of you care eithe - if you do, you can look it up on your own. At any rate, FBO is a a feature of OpenGL 3.0+ and apparently seems to sometimes have faulty implementation on some platforms. The flag removes the feature and I'd hazard a guess that it shouldn't have a real big impact on quality, although I only read a description of what FBO is used for normally.

 

[Therumancer]

As far as Valve tinkering with Half-Life goes, that doesn't surprise me as the game is one people still play to catch up on the story and see what all the hype is about, especially with things like Portal(2) being loosely tied into it. Not to mention people find it easy to work with, for creating elaborate mods/their own games like "Cry For Fear" or some of the SCP game projects apparently. People still use it.

As far as the specific changes go, I have no paticular idea, but also wonder how many people would actually be negatively effected by this change, or if it's a tiny minority.

I use Windows myself (because it's there) but as an OS I've never much liked it. I haven't ever played with anything like Linux because I'm lazy when you get down to it. I'm guessing Gabe is probably anticipating a microsoft crash of sorts and trying to get prepped for a great changeover or something.

Who knows, maybe Valve will explain what they are thinking. At the end of the day they are the only ones who can answer the question, the rest of us can just speculate.

 

[The White Hunter]

Wait... Intel integrated? Really?

You might want to consider buying like a 7750 or something man they're like £80 and will change your experience completely given you have a PSU of about 400W...

Here's the obvious question.

Why would someone need a modern video card to play a 15 year old game?

You wouldn't. But then any CPU from the last decade should be able to run the game as he's described on it's own anyway.

It's friggin half life. My phone can probably run it maxed out by now.

 

[The White Hunter]

Wait... Intel integrated? Really?

You might want to consider buying like a 7750 or something man they're like £80 and will change your experience completely given you have a PSU of about 400W...

It's a laptop, they aren't known for being greatly upgradable. Especially if it only has an integrated video card.

Ah thats what I get for skimming topics. Still if I were gonna go integrated I'd go AMD, their APU's can actually y'know play modern games with decent fps at decent settings usually. But then intel has it's OEM monopoly =[.

Can probably run Half Life on my phone tbh though, it should run on his chip. My laptop can run it, and my laptop is a 2.0GHz CeleronM with an ATI 200X integrated graphics chip from like 2004.

Any chip from the last 8 years or so should probably be able to get silky smooth rates.

Actually as somebody above mentioned it could very well be an intel driver issue of some description.