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Valve finally patches Half-Life 2 + Episodes... To fix blinking and sound effects

Candescence

Candescence

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
2,253
Well this came out of fuckin' nowhere.

Updates to Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, and Half-Life: Source have been released. The changes include:

  • Fixed a hitch when saving games
  • Fixed SteamVR running when entering the settings menu
  • Fixed missing sounds on combine soldiers
  • Fixed NPCs not blinking
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Of course, you never know what the hell Valve is doing, but the Source Engine Half-Life games have been gradually suffering from more issues as they've been updated, and Valve hasn't fixed quite a few of them. Presentation-wise, blinking was one of the most notable bugs, so it was a bit of a pleasant surprise to see them finally fix that.

And no, this update doesn't automatically carry over to the Half-Life 2: Update mod, but as far as I know the main dev has been waiting for this fix first, so hopefully it won't take too long.
 
Castamere

Castamere

Member
Oct 26, 2017
3,517
RIght now dozens of people are franticllay combing through the game looking for an ARG to HAlf Life 3.
 
EatChildren

EatChildren

Wonder from Down Under
Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,048
Given Valve's workflow, this was probably just randomly patched on a whim by a handful of employees and shipped through.
 
JahIthBer

JahIthBer

Member
Jan 27, 2018
10,400
There is still many other bugs sadly, CP's missing shaders, pre baked shadows missing, sun glare missing etc, the move to the 2007 source engine was done poorly, the 2004 build is the definitive version.
 
modiz

modiz

Member
Oct 8, 2018
17,907
inb4 the NPCs now blink in morse code that can be converted to a link that starts the HL3 ARG
 
OP
OP
Candescence

Candescence

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
2,253
Just a funny side-note - this game has full reflections. Yes, as in, full proper reflections that aren't screen-space. I think Half-Life 2 was at a point in gaming history where full reflections were still viable without tanking your GPU or using ray-tracing.
 
Fiery Phoenix

Fiery Phoenix

Member
Oct 26, 2017
5,880
I think these games have aged quite well in comparison to other shooters from that time period. For example, I find vanilla HL2 is much better than Far Cry by today's.
 
PC-tan

PC-tan

Member
Feb 25, 2018
1,325
Fiery Phoenix said:
I think these games have aged quite well in comparison to other shooters from that time period. For example, I find vanilla HL2 is much better than Far Cry by today's.
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Ya, the only thing that I liked about Far Cry and did not even notice (I played the game for the first time earlier this year) was not very common back then was the loading screens, in Half Life 2 you have a lot of them and other than that Half Life 2 does feel like its aged a lot better, not using FMV i'm sure helps as well
 

Deleted member 9305

Oct 26, 2017
4,064
They are blinking morse code, I'm sure. Quick, someone follow up on that.
 
Koukalaka

Koukalaka

Member
Oct 28, 2017
9,389
Scotland
Either this is a couple of folks at Valve finally getting to some long-buried tasks on the Trello board...

Or it's the start of an ARG and we should get hyped as fuck.

"HOW MANY TIMES DO THEY BLINK?"
 
HalStep

HalStep

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,392
HL source is still broke,i just tried playing it for the first time (i have and played through the original and black mesa) but after getting the suit the guard won't open the door for me.

a known issue for a log time apparently,i thought that might have been fixed.
 
Jegriva

Jegriva

Banned
Sep 23, 2019
5,519
Is Half Life 2: Update compatible with (no pun intended) last update of Half Life 2?
 
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