Poll: So Valve broke HL1...

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ScrabbitRabbit

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Kopikatsu said:
ScrabbitRabbit said:
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.
GOG and GMG generally have better sales than Steam, despite giving you a Steam key most of the time. So there's another thing against them.
Very true. I got Dishonored for £14.99 a couple of weeks after release through GMG. Steam's none-sale prices are often higher than anyone else's, too.

And one of the best things about GOG is how you're not tied to a client at all. You can just launch the game and play it! Madness!
 

antigodoflife

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Ziame said:
In a weird move from valve, they are fiercely updating the first (yes, that old poo) half-life.

"What did they fix?!" you ask, "What new features we got?" you cry.

Uh, none. They removed D3D. They removed EAX.

Only two options remain in the video rendering department - software (uh...) and OpenGL(UH...!)

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...

And this is why I don't like Steam. first they force us to use steam's auth servers, and now THIS? Come ON!

VALVE, WHAT THE FUCK?


Discussion value: What do you think of such moves? (also the question in the poll, escapist ate it)

I say it's being an asshole. Were it a fresh buy I would definitely demand my cash back. I think it is definitely wrong to downgrade a game - even as old as this - just to satisfy some 'policy'. Fine, don't add DirectX to new games Valve*, but why downgrade purchased copies?

What next? "Multiplayer has been dropped in new build"?



*oh right, you don't make games anymore.


EDIT: it seems it happened almost a year ago... still, haven't heard about it till now.
I have no idea what you just said... can someone please translate this in to elementary grade English for me so I may understand.
 

Ziame

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antigodoflife said:
I have no idea what you just said... can someone please translate this in to elementary grade English for me so I may understand.
Everyone understood, save you alone. I think there is something wrong with you, not the post :p

Valve took a game - Half-Life 1 - and disabled Direct 3D support ( a part of DirectX libraries), forcing users to use OpenGL rendering or Sofware rendering. Latter looks like shit(for example lacking certain effects), former does not really have good support nowadays, especially from Intel integrated graphics, which I happen to use on my laptop. Discussion value: What do you think of removing features from such an old game? Is it a good move by Valve? How would you handle the situation?

SkarKrow said:
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 worked. It does not now. Besides, not like I can update a laptop. Nor should I, for a 15-year old game.

Bad Jim said:
try software
It works fine, but lacks some of the effects (that need D3D/OGL to work). I do use it right now.

Auron said:
but my intel integrated can't handle OpenGL for shit,
I can't possibly imagine how old it must be if it stutters on HL1, perhaps it's time to get a new one(laptop, card or whatever.)
It's not old, it just has shit drivers for OGL. It can handle HL1 fine in D3D/Software, as well as, say, Empire Earth or Starcraft.

Spitfire said:
I don't own the original Half-Life on Steam, but I do own Counter-Strike, which runs on the same engine, and to me it shows that D3D and EAX are still available.
yea, cause they don't change it in all at once. Blue Shift has D3D as well... Imagine the shit storm.

Mr.Tea said:
All that being said, who says you have to have the Steam version? wink, wink
I agree that intel drivers are shit for OGL, but fact stands that the game WORKED before, and now it does NOT.

Disc version doesn't have online multiplayer anymore (they dropped the auth servers) so only Steam is a viable option for MP(especially with mods dropping support for disc versions). We played vanilla from disc for a while tbh, we just craved for Sven COOP.


___


Guys, please stop posting "Buy new computer" or "buy a new game". I have a good PC that handles all my favourite games, but it would be stupid to carry PC+screen+speakers/headphone+mouse+keyboard to every party.

I gather at my pal's place and we play on our work-laptops. We have chosen HL1 because it looked and played good on those laptops, that lack proper GPUs. Now with the update, those same laptops can't handle the game on the same level of playability, even though nothing was added to it. Mind you, laptops we use are in no way gaming laptops, and as such many games just do not work: Starship Troopers, Magicka etc. just won't work, finito, so we do not really have an alternative

I see NO discussion value in repeating "lol your laptop is shit" or "lol you play hl1". Thread is supposed to be about Steam's update policy, using recent developments in HL1 department as an example.
 

DoPo

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Ziame said:
Guys, please stop posting "Buy new computer" or "buy a new game".
Yeah, it also annoyed me while reading the thread. But there might be a fix- try adding -nofbo to the launch options - that disables some new OGL feature Valve apparently added and that feature is known to have faulty implementations in software/hardware some times. Credit for the tip goes to AyaReiko.
 

Ziame

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DoPo said:
Ziame said:
Guys, please stop posting "Buy new computer" or "buy a new game".
Yeah, it also annoyed me while reading the thread. But there might be a fix- try adding -nofbo to the launch options - that disables some new OGL feature Valve apparently added and that feature is known to have faulty implementations in software/hardware some times. Credit for the tip goes to AyaReiko.
Increases FPS from 5 to 7 so it's a start! :)


Forlong said:
Wasn't there a third episode to Half-Life 2 they were supposed to be finishing?
exactly what i was thinking
 

DoPo

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Ziame said:
DoPo said:
Ziame said:
Guys, please stop posting "Buy new computer" or "buy a new game".
Yeah, it also annoyed me while reading the thread. But there might be a fix- try adding -nofbo to the launch options - that disables some new OGL feature Valve apparently added and that feature is known to have faulty implementations in software/hardware some times. Credit for the tip goes to AyaReiko.
Increases FPS from 5 to 7 so it's a start! :)
Hey, it's a 50% increase! Well, 40% to be precise but it could be 50% if there is rounding going on.

Yeah, sorry it didn't work - it's just what AyaReiko mentioned and after a brief bit of reading, it seemed like a probable cause and a solution.

Might be a long shot but you can try 3D Analyze - it attempts to emulate missing graphics card features when you launch an application. It might work - I've mostly seen it work to actually make a game run on Intel chipsets, since otherwise the game would just die at start but considering HL is already running, it could increase performance. Or maybe not - I tried it once to see what was it about and a game that actually ran on my machine refused to do so with 3D Analyze. It's annoying and stupid, I know, and it's not guaranteed to work or do anything but it's worth giving it 5 minutes or something.
 

Ziame

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DoPo said:
snippanty
I don't really care about those features, but thanks for help :) it's just black texture here and there you know, static lighting and such

I am more worried about the precedent set in Steam. Half life players (however few of them may exist) have been stripped of one of the games features, without warning, and without even giving a reason for it. Y'know what I mean.
 

The White Hunter

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Ziame said:
SkarKrow said:
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 worked. It does not now. Besides, not like I can update a laptop. Nor should I, for a 15-year old game.
Yeah as I said elsewhere I skimmed over the OP and didnt catch the laptop bit. I also said it might well be a driver issue of some kind, because it really should just run on integrated graphics from the last 10 years or so.
 

Ziame

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SkarKrow said:
Ziame said:
SkarKrow said:
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 worked. It does not now. Besides, not like I can update a laptop. Nor should I, for a 15-year old game.
Yeah as I said elsewhere I skimmed over the OP and didnt catch the laptop bit. I also said it might well be a driver issue of some kind, because it really should just run on integrated graphics from the last 10 years or so.
Whatever the reason, point stands - it worked, and now it does not :) Intel integrated drivers tho suck so much dick it should be rated M
 

DoPo

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itchcrotch said:
I have no idea what's happening. I don't know what any of these acronyms mean...
Seriously...let me repeat myself

DoPo said:
Erm, there are three acronyms used:
D3D is short from Direct3D and that can just be substituted with DirectX - it's for rendering 3D stuff.
OGL, which is actually referred to OpenGL so it's not an unexplained acronym but at any rate, it's an open source alternative of DirectX
Finally, EAX which is known as EAX. The meaning behind the acronym is "environmental audio extension" but I actually had to look that up - I've usually seen it referred to EAX. It's for audio processing.

Well, there is also LAN and for the record, that's a "local area network" but I suppose you know it.
 

The White Hunter

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Ziame said:
SkarKrow said:
Ziame said:
SkarKrow said:
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 worked. It does not now. Besides, not like I can update a laptop. Nor should I, for a 15-year old game.
Yeah as I said elsewhere I skimmed over the OP and didnt catch the laptop bit. I also said it might well be a driver issue of some kind, because it really should just run on integrated graphics from the last 10 years or so.
Whatever the reason, point stands - it worked, and now it does not :) Intel integrated drivers tho suck so much dick it should be rated M
Indeed they do. See if there's any updates for mods you may be using or something, otherwise I wouldn't really know. What exactly is the CPU in your laptop? I can vouch that if it's "Celeron" of any description it's sentient and will decide what to play for itself, my laptop does it often.

It ran typing of the dead, now it doesn't, it wouldn't run Halo, now it does, etc.
 

The White Hunter

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Forlong said:
Wasn't there a third episode to Half-Life 2 they were supposed to be finishing?
Valve doesn't work on the same system as us for numbers, they work in base 3. Hence there is no actual 3.

Just 1, 2, 10, 11, 12, 20, etc.

They tried to get around the crippling deficiency with episodes but it just didn't work.
 

Ieyke

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ResonanceSD said:
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.
They're promoting Linux because Microsoft is a bunch of assholes trying to fuck up the PC gaming industry with Windows 8.
Did you seriously miss that?

Microsoft is trying to make Windows a closed platform like Apple products, where every program that runs on it has to be certified by Microsoft first, which means people would have to pay MS for it and MS can block things from running on Windows 8.

Valve, Mojang, etc etc all said "oh hell no, fuck this" and have decided to stop dealing with MS until they stop being jackasses.
 

Epona

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I object to Valve taking away options for a game I own (if I owned it) just like I object to Sony taking away OtherOS for those who already owned a PS3.


Valve is shooting itself in the foot screwing over Windows customers for Linux customers. Yes, I think removing options screws over Windows customers.

Also, to those who voted "Who cares about HL1 these days", do you think this vendetta against Microsoft and DirectX will end here?
 

Olas

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I would imagine Valve probably did this for no good reason just to fuck with their fans and be general arseholes, all as part of their grand scheme to form a monopoly on gaming and take over the world.

And of course valve fans are blind sheep incapable of judging anything valve does objectively, so they won't care. [/sarcasm]

But really, it sounds like Valve dropped what they thought was an unimportant extra feature and a few people like OP fell into the cracks. Since we don't know exactly why they dropped D3D support though I think we should temper our valve hate to simply asking why Valve forces us to update games at all.

SkarKrow said:
Forlong said:
Wasn't there a third episode to Half-Life 2 they were supposed to be finishing?
Valve doesn't work on the same system as us for numbers, they work in base 3. Hence there is no actual 3.

Just 1, 2, 10, 11, 12, 20, etc.

They tried to get around the crippling deficiency with episodes but it just didn't work.
Well then I guess that explains why they had to drop, D3D.
 

Meatspinner

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Wouldn't this thread fit better in the advice forums?

I'm sure there would be able to figure out how to make a 9 year old laptop run a 15 year old game
 

TheNarrator

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Phasing out Direct3D has short-term downsides, but is good for everyone on the long term. Now, time and resources are wasted on separately developing 2 independent 3D rendering API's, one of which is the very definition of a vendor lock-in scheme, which is anticompetitive and immoral. Imho, we should applaud every attempt, by any company, to make the _open_ standard _the_ standard again.
 

monkey_man

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I feel sorry for you mate, if your gaming rig can't handle Half Life, it probably won't run beast games like Crysis or BF3 or something. Perhaps you should consider an update, because you're probably missing out a lot now.

If for some reason that's not the case, ignore my rambles.

Anyway, I am amazed that people still play HL1, but I don't know why Valve would just cut support like that. Perhaps they figured that everyone would be able to run HL1 with 4000 FPS now, so that the older rendering thingies were obsolete.
It's still a bit harsh. but perhaps you ought to move on, and buy a more recent game, Team Fortress 2 is fun, and GTA 4 is, and Counter Strike, and well loads of games. some of them really cheap too, thanks to sales.