Half-Life:Source

I’d been interested in trying out Half-Life: Source ever since I first heard about it. But I kept hearing that the changes were so minimal that it wasn’t worth it. Well, I recently got it anyways and decided I would clear up all the changes that it does and doesn’t make. Most of them are inherent to the engine as you will see.

Water Water You can’t deny that the new water looks fabulous compared to the original’s.

Reflections and Lights Reflections and Lights Pools of water look nicer thanks to some cubemap reflections. The lighting is also crisper and more realistic, casting shadows from objects.

Fire and Smoke Fire and Smoke These effects are volumetric and thus more realistic looking than the sprite ones from Half-Life. Also notice that small fires are appearing on the tentacles; although not common, objects can burn now.

Physics (Buoyancy) Physics (Buoyancy) Valve just couldn’t stand it. They couldn’t let this scripted buoyancy puzzle from the original game alone and replaced it with the familiar HL2 cage with blue barrels one.

Physics (Non-Rigid Chains) Physics (Non-Rigid Chains) All the game’s ropes are replaced with non-rigid ones that twist and sway realistically.

Ragdolls and Blood Decals Ragdolls and Blood Decals All models will ragdoll when dead. When shot, they place high-resolution blood spatter decals on the walls. Notice here that the scientist on the left was placed dead into the game, but the other was killed during play, ragdolling and creating hi-res blood spatter. Hi-res bullet hole decals can also be seen.

Model Blood Decals Model Blood Decals When shot, models get blood decals placed on them–something not even possible in the original game’s engine.

Even with all these engine changes, the fact remains that all the textures and models are the same lo-res, lo-poly versions from the original game. It would have been really nice to see some crisp, high-resolution textures made. It’d only take a small group of artists less than a year. They wouldn’t even have to change the map’s geometry and it would have looked so much better. However, there have been some attempts are upping the quality of HL:S textures and models. One in particular called High Definition Source stands out. All of the weapons, most of the character models, and many textures have been redone, making it slightly more visually appealing than before. I tried putting Half-Life 2 models into HL:S, but they don’t work right, of course. The animations are missing, so they just kind of stand around and look pretty (see the screenshot at right).

There are also changes that you can’t see–changes to the audio system. Half-Life used a fairly early implementation of surround sound APIs in the form of Aureal3D or EAX. And while they sounded pretty awesome back in the day, now they’re noticeably flawed mainly because of their use of preset audio zones. You’d walk into a new zone, and instantly, the sound is transformed differently. In HL:S, the reverberations are smooth and not overdone. The surround sound is also smoother; sounds don’t jump from one speaker to the next. Like the game’s textures, the majority of sounds were not improved. Although, some were actually replaced, such as physics and door sounds. The music was converted to 128kbps MP3, which sounds very good, but will stop playing upon the frequent level loads.

I’d recommend Half-Life:Source if you were a big fan of Half-Life or have never played it. Otherwise, it is rather underwhelming. I still enjoyed it, though, and am now looking forward to how it should have been done with the community mod Black Mesa.