Original Half Life questions..

Ripstar · Post by **Ripstar** » Tue Oct 26, 2004 10:02 am

I have the original Half Life. So far I have not been able to get it to play on the XPP system I have. Have a Nvidia Gforce Ti card. Is there a fix for this?

The entire Half Life series is now available at a reasonable price, think it contains 4 or 5 titles. Is it worth buying and is it compatible with XP?

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Tue Oct 26, 2004 10:44 am

It is completely compatible with XP. I have played it, Opposing Force, and Blue Shift on XP without any special measures. Half-Life itself I have installed and had running under XP on three different motherboard/video card combinations (GeForce 3, Radeon 9700 Pro, 6800 GT).

Exactly what problems are you having?

bluefugue · Post by **bluefugue** » Tue Oct 26, 2004 12:50 pm

I can run it fine on an XP system with a Geforce 3. I think you need to run it in Open GL...?

The game is certainly worth playing IMO. Is it worth buying the expansions? Eh, Opposing Force is pretty good & has some great firefights. Blue Shift I can take or leave. It's so darn short, I won it in under 4 hours I think. Some of the best "expansions" are user made mods like They Hunger and Azure Sheep.

Teggy · Post by **Teggy** » Tue Oct 26, 2004 2:45 pm

I ran it under XP and a mobility radeon 7500. I had some issues with occasional crashes, but nothing too bad. I also had a problem with the elevators - I kept getting stuck to the floor when an elevator got to its destination. I found out you could avoid this by jumping up in the air before the elevator stopped. Annoying, but it didn't make it unplayable.

bluefugue · Post by **bluefugue** » Tue Oct 26, 2004 3:40 pm

Oh yeah, that elevator problem happened to me in at least one spot. Also I've seen a few flickery textures here and there but nothing major.

Ibby · Post by **Ibby** » Tue Oct 26, 2004 6:28 pm

Teggy wrote: I also had a problem with the elevators - I kept getting stuck to the floor when an elevator got to its destination. I found out you could avoid this by jumping up in the air before the elevator stopped. Annoying, but it didn't make it unplayable.

I was hot and heavy into TFC when this bug showed up in online play. Irritating, and like you, we figured out you had to be in the air before the elevator hit its destination otherwise you'd have to stand there and squirm amidsts grenades and rockets.

Ripstar · Post by **Ripstar** » Tue Oct 26, 2004 11:04 pm

Well I tried it again and am running it under open GL. All the splash screens load and I am able to configure the game.
However, when I attempt to play the cpu asks for the game cd which is in the drive. Re-insertion brings the message that the cd is not verified.

I haven't played this game since I had my new PC up and running I am not sure where the cd key is located. The on screen message says its on the cd case, but the number there may be something else.

If anyone has the original first edition, where do I look for the cd key, to verify I am looking in the right place. Pretty sure it was not a stick on.

Also do you have to run all the updates to get it to work under xp or should it work right out of the box?

Thanx all.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Tue Oct 26, 2004 11:50 pm

As I recall, it was printed in a white box on the back CD case insert.

I have never tried running it unpatched, so I can't really say.

As for your problem - are you running the CD from a DVD or CDRW drive? I have had a few older games that had trouble recognizing CDs in something other than a vanilla CD drive. Patch up to the latest non-steam patch (I think it is 'v1.1.1.0 - Full Client Patch'), put your CD key in, and if your drive still won't recognize the disk, grab a no-CD patch.

Ripstar · Post by **Ripstar** » Wed Oct 27, 2004 10:59 am

Thanx Blackhawk. I'll try your suggestions, but I think I'm beat.
No white box on the back of my cd case.
Both my cd drives are burners.
And hate to admit it never used a no cd patch, so what is it?

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Wed Oct 27, 2004 11:02 am

It is a modified .exe file that doesn't include the copy protection. They have become a regular method of solving some technical problems relating to copy protection. It is currently against the CoC to post links to them, so expect a PM with the info.

Teggy · Post by **Teggy** » Wed Oct 27, 2004 12:18 pm

Do they still allow you to play HL for free on Steam? It would be annoying since you went out and bought the game, plus there's no music on the Steam version, but it's an option if you get really stuck.

Ripstar · Post by **Ripstar** » Wed Oct 27, 2004 1:18 pm

Thanx again off to try out stuff.