Windows

Half-Life

Trivia

In the German gaming magazine PC Player (issue 01/1999) Half-Life was named as "Best Shooter in 1998" and "Best Game in 1998".

The surnames on the lockers where Gordon goes to collect his HEV suit are of people from the development team. Gordon also has a book by Half-Life writer Marc Laidlaw in his locker.

Although the engine in Half-Life was originally considered to be a heavily modified version of the Quake engine (which it is), Valve now refers to this engine as "GoldSrc" since the Valve team modified the Quake engine beyond recognition. This is probably how the "Source" engine from Half-Life 2 got its name.

Sales of over eight million since its release.

Source

A dreamcast version of the game was completed but never went to market. In certain circles of the internet, you can find a leaked copy and run it on your dreamcast.

A Macintosh port was in the works from Westlake interactive and reached reached beta before being cancelled because of concerns about responsibility for tech support.

The Gluon Gun was nicknamed "The Egon" after the Ghostbusters Character Egon Spengler. The Gluon gun projects a plasma stream similar to the ones used by the Ghostbusters.

Contributed by Santa (847) on Jun 24, 2006.

Very early beta footage of the game, as well as interviews with some of the programmers, is available on the Diablo expansion pack called 'Hellfire', released by Sierra a full year before the game ever shipped. Sierra already had advertisements for Half-Life in many of their products back then!

On December 16, 1998, the US version of Half-Life was put on the infamous German index by the BPjS. For more information about what this means and to see a list of games sharing the same fate, take a look here: BPjS/BPjM indexed games.

The game makes an appearance in season 1, episode 22 of Lost, a popular TV series. Some in-game action is shown, and the characters shortly discuss the use and the effectiveness of the crowbar as a weapon.

Contributed by Sciere (119141) on Oct 07, 2005.

Do you think that Counterstrike was a freak occurrence? Not so. Not only did Valve make the game editor immediately available, not only did it produce a mod, Team Fortress Classic, as an example of a finished mod, but it also sponsored "Mod Expos", events where modders could present their work to other gamers and the Press.

In its first finalized form, as it would have been published if the original release date was kept, Half-Life was nothing more than a total conversion of Quake with new enemies and levels. In the one additional year spent on development the game transformed into the form that led it to critical and commercial success.

Half-Life's script writer was Marc Laidlaw, the author of the novels "Dad's Nuke", "37th Mandala", "The Orchid Eater" and "Kalifornia" (not related to the film of the same title). Most of his work consists of science fiction, cyberpunk themed stories.

According to planethalflife.com: "the material that makes up the three green triangles protecting Nihilanth is the same as the crystal sample which you pushed into the beams to start this whole mess in the first place. Valve Software originally intended to make this connection more obvious but never did."

There's a minor technical error with the shotgun. It's presented in the game as a double-barreled weapon, and the alternative fire mode shoots two shells at half the speed. However, the shotgun is modeled on a single-barreled weapon, the popular Franchi SPAS-12, which appears in several computer games. What looks like a second barrel is actually the under-barrel tubular magazine, which holds the shells.

Did you notice where the security office is? It's in sector 7G, just like the sector where Homer Simpson works. Nice reference.

In early 2005 this game was completely re-mastered using Half Life 2's Source engine. It was re released under the new name "Half Life: Source".

Half-Life was ranked # 1 in the 50 Best Games of All Time list published by PC Gamer Magazine in its April 2005 issue.

Contributed by PCGamer77 (3025) on Mar 19, 2005.

Half-Life's Lambda symbol is the actual scientific symbol used to say "half life" in shorthand, referring to the amount of time a radioactive substance takes to decay so that only half is intact.

Half life was one of the first games to utilize a software driven enviromental sound engine. Effects were applied in context of room size and surfaces of reflection.

Reverb effects were calculated in realtime and applied on the fly as sounds were triggered.

Contributed by Santa (847) on Jan 16, 2005.

The code-name for Half-Life when Valve had just signed with Sierra was Quiver.

Half-Life was extremely influential in many little ways, popularising several gameplay devices which have subsequently become standards, such as: - The between-episode text which appears, overlaid on the screen, before slowly fading out (adopted not just in other computer games, but in several different Linux windowing systems too); - A training segment which is presented as an integral part of the storyline; - The practice of rendering cut-scenes with the in-game engine; - Blood-splatters and other persistent stains; - Semi-random NPC speech and 'interaction' in an otherwise straightforward action game; - Weaponry which needs to be manually reloaded between magazine changes.

Furthermore, much of the script - particularly terms such as 'the X complex', 'the science team', 'the test chamber' and so forth - has entered the gaming language, most obviously in the recent 'Doom 3', which borrowed the same basic plot.

When id Software saw what Valve was doing with their engine, they were reminded of their original idea for a seamless, story-based Doom and thought it would fail. It didn't.

Half-Life was released a full year after Quake II was released and it's a common belief that HL was based on the Quake II engine. This is not true.

Half-Life was based on the original Quake I engine and it's more than fair to say that it was modified beyond recognition by the Valve team.

Amongst the additions were built-in 3D accelerator support, skeletal systems and shadow casting (the latter didn't make it into the game).

'Half-Life' was named #1 of the Top 50 Best Games of all time, by the editors of PC Gamer magazine, in their October 2001 issue.

Half-Life, at one point, was completely finished for the Dreamcast console. Prima (the Official Strategy Guide folks) even had a Dreamcast-exclusive guide published. Unfortunately, the game wasn't published - probably due to the fact that Sega announced that they would not be making consoles and they would no longer produce new Dreamcasts.

Contributed by Chris Martin (1116) on Dec 27, 2001.

There is a special German version which features robots as enemies, green blood instead of red and innocent people cannot be killed any longer. (Editor's note: The robot design was outlined by Sierra's Germany division, then sent to Valve in Seattle, where the artists created and implemented the tin soldiers. The changes in the game's code and art, together with the text and speech localization, served to delay the German version by full four months. By then, even casual gamers had already purchased the original version, which was freely for sale up to its ban. However, Half-Life proved to be so immensely popular that the German robo-version still sold over 50,000 copies, so the venture was ultimately successful for Sierra. -Chris)

Contributed by phlux (4157) on Nov 25, 2001.

Aparently, Valve had written a part for Gordon's wife, Gina, to appear in the game, this idea got scrapped but she still made it to the game, her model was the one used for the holographic trainer.

According to Valve's Gabe Newell, originally Half-life was inspired by Stephen King's novella "The Mist". However the game evolved so much from the preliminary concepts that the only things that remained were the horror/technology combination and the designs for the Bull Squid and the blind tentacle.

In the 200th aniversary issue of Computer Gaming World, this game was the number one reader's choice of all time, and the staff's number two pick.

Half-Life was voted #1 overall in PCGamer Magazine's Readers All-Time Top 50 Games Poll (April 2000 issue).

Contributed by PCGamer77 (3025) on Jan 21, 2001.

This game is a member of Computer Gaming World's Hall of Fame.

Half-Life is built on the Quake engine, licensed from id Software. Valve reworked some of the rendering pipeline components to improve the lighting among other things.

Contributed by rstevenson (813) on Jun 25, 2000.

Something Half-Life introduced to the mainstream of first-person shooters is constant playflow, because the game does not consist of distinct levels. With some exceptions, you can walk totally free in the game world, even back to the beginning of major sections.