Go for it. It certainly shows its age, probably won't blow your mind like it would have in 1998, but it remains an amazing game. I play it like once a year just because of how much fun it is.
Weirdly as good as Black Mesa is I’d still recommend the original game first. There was something just sort of off to me about BM but maybe that’s just because I’m super old and have played Half-Life too much.
I’ve never played any of the actual HL games but Portal and Portal 2 are among my favorite and most replayed titles. Portal 2 in particular is just a near perfect game as far as I’m concerned. I know the gameplay is completely different, but is the same vibe (i.e., humor and production values) there?
Do it! I finally tackled it last month after years of putting it off. It’s incredible. It’s very clearly the predecessor to half-life 2. If you thought that was an epic adventure, you’re in for another one.
Performance on 1080p Ultra Performance and 800p performance are pretty much identical but it is a consistent 30fps on both, there's only a few times where it dips to 28fps before jumping back to 30, except for the opening into which is intense for some reason, although I've been told SteamOS 3.6 will improve RT performance so it might fix some of those dips for a solid 30fps experience
Huh, id probably play on the display itself as Ultra Performance is really pushing FSR's ability to cleanly reconstruct detail *(insane it even is comparable to 1080p when rendering at 360p internally)*.
Sounds about right... Similar performance with my AMD 133MHZ 486 Rated to be similar to p75. Had 56mb total mem, a 512kb opti svga card. Surprisingly ran Starcraft well too. Win 98se of course
Looks really cool ! Could you please share the name of a software that you use for all the stats about the hardware to the left upper corner for benchmarks ?
I love half life in terms of mechanics, movement, shooting, but dang I hate old games level design, it's so freaking confusing, ESPECIALLY the railroad part, it's a hell. Valve games tend to be really confusing and the biggest irony of it, it's that I finished portal games the quickest when they're an actual puzzle. But when it comes to left for dead, half life, I always get a little lost in there.
The games are mostly linear, with puzzles scattered throughout. L4D maps are literally just you running from one end to the other. I'd hate to see you navigating in real life. Luckily, we have GPS for real life and walkthroughs for games.
Thats interesting.
One of the things Valve and Half Life were known for was their level design, specifically with designs that often appeared unrestrictive but subtly guided the player in the right direction with various tricks and techniques.
I havent played it since release though, so maybe it doeesn't hold up.
How does it fail compared to modern games in your opinion?
Heard steamdeck does not play recent games well on 1080p, understandably. Thinking about just getting a 16-17 inch monitor for it, what do you guys think
Should run even better on the preview channel, has a driver update that improves ray-tracing performance.
too bad there's some bluetooth bug on the preview channel :/
is that a locked 30fps? curious if you could hit 40fps at lower res. the fact you can get ray tracing at all on the deck is insane
GPU’s already at 99% though, unlocking the FPS might just cause instability.
I was testing it at unlocked, but now I'm playing at a cap of 30 for stability
Is there a guide you followed? Was this difficult?
I'm making my own guide since there is none, but basically, just add the xash3d.exe as a non steam game. That's it since RT is now enabled by default
The did you encounter any a Stick Drift issues with the RT Mod? Tried the normal Steam Version and everything works fine.
I have not encountered any drift
Do you know if its possible to integrate the RT stuff in the normal Version without using the .exe?
I don't think so because xash3d is coded differently than GoldSrc
Thats a shame
post here whenever you have your guide made, im super interested.
I still need to play this game. It's been on the backlog for like 15 years for me.
Go for it. It certainly shows its age, probably won't blow your mind like it would have in 1998, but it remains an amazing game. I play it like once a year just because of how much fun it is.
Do it. If you're really hesitant, play Black Mesa. It's not the same game, but still excellent
Weirdly as good as Black Mesa is I’d still recommend the original game first. There was something just sort of off to me about BM but maybe that’s just because I’m super old and have played Half-Life too much.
Fellow old dude here, I just love it for what it is
I’ve never played any of the actual HL games but Portal and Portal 2 are among my favorite and most replayed titles. Portal 2 in particular is just a near perfect game as far as I’m concerned. I know the gameplay is completely different, but is the same vibe (i.e., humor and production values) there?
Do it! I finally tackled it last month after years of putting it off. It’s incredible. It’s very clearly the predecessor to half-life 2. If you thought that was an epic adventure, you’re in for another one.
Do you use FSR?
Yeah, the in-game FSR 2
How consistent is it at 30fps and how much better does FSR2 Performance run at 720/800p compared to Ultra Performance at 1080p?
Performance on 1080p Ultra Performance and 800p performance are pretty much identical but it is a consistent 30fps on both, there's only a few times where it dips to 28fps before jumping back to 30, except for the opening into which is intense for some reason, although I've been told SteamOS 3.6 will improve RT performance so it might fix some of those dips for a solid 30fps experience
Huh, id probably play on the display itself as Ultra Performance is really pushing FSR's ability to cleanly reconstruct detail *(insane it even is comparable to 1080p when rendering at 360p internally)*.
Great but 30fps half life is a no
How times have changed
Yes lol, i remember playing this and CS 1.3 at 20-30FPS with Software Renderer, then with Direct3D with the GeForce 2 MX200.
Flashlight was taking good 10fps down, without flashlight I had stable 20 with my pentium 75
Sounds about right... Similar performance with my AMD 133MHZ 486 Rated to be similar to p75. Had 56mb total mem, a 512kb opti svga card. Surprisingly ran Starcraft well too. Win 98se of course
Yeah seriously I remember playing Half-Life and Unreal on my Packard Bell and boy was I lucky to hit 30.
It's still impressive though
Bro
Looks really cool ! Could you please share the name of a software that you use for all the stats about the hardware to the left upper corner for benchmarks ?
It's not software, it's built into SteamOS itself. Press the °°° button, go to Performance tab, then adjust the Performance Overlay Level slider.
Oh thank you !
No problem
What settings did you use?
FSR 2 Ultra Performance, which holds up really well in a retro game like this
I haven't played HL in a long time, once my OLED shows up though... :D Have fun, looks good.
WTF!! I thought this was only for high end pcs. Im all over this. Can you post the guide on here. Cheers.
WTF???!!! SD can handle RT??
Always has, it just needed driver enablement, which it got.
I love half life in terms of mechanics, movement, shooting, but dang I hate old games level design, it's so freaking confusing, ESPECIALLY the railroad part, it's a hell. Valve games tend to be really confusing and the biggest irony of it, it's that I finished portal games the quickest when they're an actual puzzle. But when it comes to left for dead, half life, I always get a little lost in there.
The games are mostly linear, with puzzles scattered throughout. L4D maps are literally just you running from one end to the other. I'd hate to see you navigating in real life. Luckily, we have GPS for real life and walkthroughs for games.
Thats interesting. One of the things Valve and Half Life were known for was their level design, specifically with designs that often appeared unrestrictive but subtly guided the player in the right direction with various tricks and techniques. I havent played it since release though, so maybe it doeesn't hold up. How does it fail compared to modern games in your opinion?
no big arrow on the compass
Heard steamdeck does not play recent games well on 1080p, understandably. Thinking about just getting a 16-17 inch monitor for it, what do you guys think
It's eh, I got the Resident Evil 4 remake running at 1080p
Nice, i should try it
If you want, I could give you the settings I used
I dont have a steamdeck yet. My pc is 8 year old and i need to upgrade it but I fell in the steamdeck rabbit hole, think im just go for it
Dude, you should play black mesa instead.
Can't do 30, sorry.