By TC-14 (Hint: Please spread the word of this guide [except on Emporio]. It's about time people help the n00bs, and even the "l33t" folk)
REPEAT: THIS WAS NOT WROTE BY EMPORIO AND WILL NOT BE POSTED ON EMPORIO! REPEAT: THIS WAS NOT WROTE BY EMPORIO AND WILL NOT BE POSTED ON EMPORIO! REPEAT: THIS WAS NOT WROTE BY EMPORIO AND WILL NOT BE POSTED ON EMPORIO!
Contents:
Extracting and setting up Half-Life 2
Configuring, fixing and improving performance in Half-Life 2
Setting up Counter-Strike: Source
Playing HL2 and CS:Source online
Other Files/Resources/Maps
Sorry for the recent lack of updates at the moment, I've been working on writing the whole level information (it takes some time). I've also been playing a bit of Doom III and I can say if you haven't got a decent graphics card (Radeon 9800 Pro or higher) don't waste your time downloading. It's a slow experience. Also, the game isn't fully compatible with laptop cards, which is a real bummer as you get shoddy lines in your models. A disappointing game in my opinion but anyway. Onto the actual guide
Okay, so I thought I might as well write a setup guide to this beta, even if the game is only going to be released in a month or two (or three). Anyway, all this guide is going to explain is what to extract, where to extract, what to change, etc. etc. So lets start off with the first step:
NOTE: These instructions relate to the anon-hl2 release, not the hispania, though the instructions are the same.
Step One:
Open up the first WinRAR out of the 100 parts which you downloaded, as shown below.
From here, extract this to a root directory for easy access, e.g. C:/ so there will be a folder created there called anon-hl2, so the exe would be in C:/anon-hl2/hl2.exe
Once the extraction has complted (takes ages) browse to the folder C:/anon-hl2/ or wherever you extracted it to. Then right-click and drag hl2.exe onto your desktop and choose "Create Shortcuts Here". Once that's done, rename it to something like "Half-Life 2 Beta".
On your newly created shortcut, right-click it and select Properties. In the Target window, change it so it has -console and -cl_drawhud 1, so the Target should look a little something like this:
Once that's been done, congratulations! There's the first part done!
Step Two:
Okay, so you've finished extracting the RAR files and you got a shortcut made and the game opens up fine? Good. Now, we're going to make some settings and show you how to load maps.
To start with, execute the Half-Life 2 Beta and you should get to the title screen. If your having problems, make sure you have DirectX 9.0b (download it from here ). If you're still having problems, check out the forums as places such as HL2World or jb55's HL2 Empourium and you should be able to find an answer to your problem.
Okay, so at the title screen, we should have a greeny colored background with a kind of tower/citadel to the right-hand side with the HL2 logo at the bottom right.
First things first, we might want to change a few of the Options, keep the Console window at all times! Because if you hit the ` key or close it, you're going to have to close down the whole game. So, open up the Options window, don't worry if you see some red error messages in the console while you do so, this is just saying that it could not find certain sound files for rollovers and for when you click on Options, most of the sounds are there in the beta :)
You might want to change the controls, but I'd leave them as they are. The most important part here is the Video tab, you should have a choice of what resolution you want the game at (depending on your graphics card), if you've got a 64MB graphics card, set this to either 640x480 and either OpenGL or Direct3D (I prefer OpenGL to Direct3D as the game's faster for my GeForce FX Go5600, but it maybe different depending on the graphics card). If you've got a GeForce 4/Radeon 9200, I'd set the resolution to around 800x600 or 1024x768, and if you've got a GeForce FX 5600+/9600 or 9800 or XT (lucky sods), set this to either your desktop resolution or more (I have my HL2 resolution set to 1400x1050).
Then if you have a widescreen monitor (yuck :p) change the setting from Standard to Widescreen. Finally, keep the textures to 16-bit, because 32-bit really isn't much difference and you usually end up 5-10 FPS slower, so avoid 32-bit and stick to 16-bit.
Okay, so we've got the resolution and graphics sorted, now it's time to start loading some maps up :D. In the console, type in map d2_coast_01 (a good starter map). Give it a chance to load (it's about 45s - 1m for mine to load, and I've got a 3GHz processor, 512MB RAM and a GeForce FX Go5600!). Once that's loaded, you should be stood on a dock type thing with a jeep in front of you. If so, nice one!
CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE IMAGE
If the pistol looks a bit bright, then you can download a patch from jb55 which fixes this problem. You can download the patch here.
Also, thanks to an e-mail recieved from a guy named Ayiga (thanks mate :D), he told me that you don't have to replace the pistol with the patch. In just about any map where the pistol is white, there are little entities called env_cubemap. The reason the pistol is white is because it has nothing to "reflect". But if you open up the console and type "buildcubemaps" and restart the map, you should no longer have pure-white pistols. However, I am unsure whether or not this has to be done each time for every map, as I have not tested this yet but hopefully it should do for those who want to fix this problem. If anyone else knows any other methods or etra information such as this, please contact me at teecee14@gmail.com.
If the FPS is really really slow, or you want to gain a few FPS, it's time to open up the console by pressing Esc.
In the console, try typing some of these commands to see if you can gain any performance.
To remove some objects shadows, type in "r_shadows 0" (most affective, gain around 5FPS)
To get rid of some of the 3D objects in the sky (such as tall buildings) type in "r_3dsky 0"
To remove dynamic lighting (I think it's what it does) type "r_dynamic 0", I'd say this would be a 2-3FPS gain.
Also try "r_lod 0", "r_trilinear 0" and "r_bilinear 0" (thanks to Burned_Alive [and Teranite for giving him this information] and the guide he wrote for this information. (go to http://www.burnedalive.co.uk/hl2-commands-switches-tips.txt for the most updated version of it).
Okay, so we should now have an okay framerate for the game, we can now learn a few in-game commands which might help out when you're playing some of the maps.
"impulse 101" - This command gives you the most common guns that would be used for the current map (usually a crowbar, pistol, SMG1, Shotgun, AR2, Grenades, RPG and the Physgun.
"impulse 82" - This command spawns a jeep, Useful if you lost the original one.
"god" - This command enables God Mode, which is when the player becomes invincible and cannot die, type it in the console again to turn it off.
"noclip" - This command allows you to fly around the map and pass through objects and walls. Type it in the console again to turn it off.
"buddha" - This command allows you to take damage, but the player will not die when they reach 0. Useful when you record a film using FRAPS or when you're recording a demo and don't want to end up dieing when you do so. Type it in the console again to turn it off
"hud_quickinfo 1" - This enables the crosshair used at E3 which displays your health in the left semi-circle an dyour ammo in the right semi-circle. Change the command to "hud_quickinfo 0" to change it back to the plain crosshair.
I know there are more commands which again can be found in Burned_Alive's excellent guide here. It's certainatly worth checking out.
By now then you should have a copy of the HL2 Beta running at an okay rate, and you should know a few in-game basics on how to load maps and how to gain weapons. That reminds me, Read Burned_Alive's Guide on how to gain some weapons such as the AK-47 and the I-Rifle, which you can't get by typing in "impulse 101". Also note that it's worth having a print off of his guide too, as it is only 6 pages long and it's great for when you forget a certain command.
Maps Guide:
Below I've wrote a guide to some of the maps in the HL2 Beta. I'm hoping to do the others, but I've uploaded the ones I've wrote about for now :D. The maps that load are in green and the one's that are in red don't load.
d1_canals_01 - Doesn't seem to load. The first part to the canals sections. d1_canals_02 - Map does load. This is the second part to the canals level. Features some barnacles under bridges, a manhack and metrocop encounter, some killing and fleeing from bullsquids and a chopper pursuit. If you continue on from this map to the next map, it leads to d1_under_03 which has very few textures. Just the good old "Reflectivity 50%" texture d1_canals_end - Map does load. This map has very few textures and is the final part to the canals level. This involves a little puzzle solving. Use the physgun to connect the wires for the crane. The combination (from left to right) is green, blue, red. Then either use the crane or the physgun to pick up some propane canisters (the red ones). Once you've got at least 5, the guy will say "OK that's good enough, hop on my barge and let's go" The barge will then set off, ending the level. d1_tempcanals_02 - Map does load. This level continues from the unknown map after d1_canals_02. The level features the airboat and is "a temporary transition map" between the unknown map after d1_canals_02 and d1_canals_end. Quite a short but sweet level. Remind me of Venice somewhat o.O
d1_town_01 - Map does load. A very small four-roomed map that contains a cool rotor blade which can cut the zombies up :P. The map doesn't continue onto the next map. d1_town_02 - Map does load. This map contains some dropping down a hole onto different floors, girders and planks until you reach the ground where an enemy that 's reproducing the headcrabs. You can head right and smash your way through all the wooden bars, but DO NOT get into the dodgy looking vehicle with no textures as it doesn't move and you can't move, forcing you to reload the map. But the boss thing that reproduces headcrabs seems invincible, I was attacking the creature for 20 minutes and it had no affect, except it shaked about a bit. For now, just type noclip in the console and pass this creature. Then take the elevator and continue to d1_town_03. d1_town_03 - Map does load. At the start, the doors havent been modelled correctly and therefore, you cannot pass through without typing noclip. Once your through the two small double doors, the rest of the map is fine. When you reach outside, there are three switches you can play with. The first valve (from left to right) turns on the gas, the switch next to the valve lights the gas and the lever to the far right shifts the gates at the back forwards and backwards. The lever downstairs opens and closes the gate. At the end of the map, it does not continue to d1_town_04, just type "map d1_town_04" it in the console to head to the next part. d1_town_04 - Map does load. This map looks very similar to the map you see in the "Traptown" E3 Movie. However, there are some major differences such as added vending machines, different enemies, added physic objects and half of the map being totally different to what you see in the E3 movie. Either this map is outdated, updated (unlikely) or the E3 video is some other level (probably the case). Anyway, most people get confused as to where you go on this map. Therefore, I've wrote a bit more of a level guide. So to start off, walk forward and you see a zombie except on it's hands and feet (I'll refer to these as "Crawling Zombies"). This kind of enemy is pretty fast and slightly stronger than the usual walking zombie. Kill it as well as the headcrab and head into the building on the left. Make your way to the top and you'll be outside. You'll notice a priest stood on a balcony. There's no sound file for what he says, ignore him and crouch jump to the electricity pole. From there, walk around the containers's rimjump into the boiler tank. Climb up the ladder and jump to the ladder slightly to the left that doesn't reach the ground. Head over to the pipe near the corner of the building and camp here (best with the shotgun) and use secondary fire to finish the two crawling zombies that will attempt to climb up and stop you. Then quickly turn around and finish the one approaching behind you. Once these have been defeated, open the door and hit the switch for the elevator. It's not noticable the elevator is on it's way, but to kill some time, three crawling zombies are climbing back up the pole. Head back to the pole with teh shotgun and use secondary fire to finish them off before they have a chance to attack you. After that, head back to the elevator and it should have arrived. Take the elevator and head outside. There will be a crab monster than spawns headcrabs. just throw a few grenades and he'll be down on the ground :). Finish off any crawling zombies that arrive and then walk up the plank that is resting on the fence. Then just walk through the door and along the path to end the level. Phew, that was a biggie to write :p d1_town_05 - Map does load. Features lots of zombies and the monsters that spawn headcrabs. No real objective to the map and no map follows on from it. A pretty dull map in my opinion.
d1_trainstation_01 - Map does load. The map seen in the Full E3 2004 Movie available to FilePlanet subscribers (and those who know other sites with it :p). Except this map has little sound and is very out of date in comparison to the map seen in the E3 Movie. You also discover something interesting about a metrocop too. The game crashes when you head to the next level. d1_trainstation_02 - Map doesn't load. The map continuing on from d1_trainstation_01. d1_trainstation_03 - Map does load. This map is set some rooftops of City 17. It's a short map and continues on to d1_trainstation_05. In the map, there are a group of creatures being forced to move along by a metrocop. Perhaps the metrocops are the cause of all of these bugs, which both are under control by G-Man? We'll have to wait for the final version to see :). d1_trainstation_05 - Map does load. This is a scene similar to the E3 Movie "Kleiner's Lab", except this looks like the scene when everyone first meets Gordon (besides Barney, as you may have figured out in d1_trainstation_01). I won't really say anything here as it's better if you just play it, as all the audio is there. If you don't want to ruin some of the storyline, I recommend you do not play this map.
d1_under_01 - Map does load. This map features a chopper trying to gun you at the start (take a left) and work your way through until you arrive at the right hand side. Then just head through the gate and end this short map. d1_under_02 - Map does load. At the start, just head down the passage until you arrive at the bridge. The bridge will break and you'll eventually meet up witha City 17 refugee. He will be killed, which is the first of three main manhack encounters. The map has a nice feel to it. Just look at those graphics :p. d1_under_03 - Map does load. This map could continue on from d1_under_02 or d1_canals_02 and has very few textures. It seems like an okay level, but the final version should be better once all the textures are in. Features loads of manhacks, a metrocop and some City 17 refugees which help you. d1_under_04 - Map doesn't load. The final part to the "under" level.
d2_coast_01 - Map does load. This series of maps is my favourite as I love driving the buggy around shooting antlions running, jumping and flying around. Anyway, this is the first map of the level. The map features some fun buggy driving. The end of the map is up the hill to the left of where you start at. The map continues on to the next map (d2_coast_02).
e3_bugbait - Map does load. As you can see by the title, it's the map from the E3 "Bugbait" video. This map features a pretty cool weapon (it's not really a weapon, but the antlions are) that allows you to control antlions. If you've seen the E3 demonstration, then it's pretty easy to see what to do and where to go. The only thing is, there's no scripted sequence for the bit at the end where the gigantic antlion smashes through the wall, so that's where the end of the level is. This map does not lead on to another map. e3_lab - Map does load. A short scene with Alyx and Dr. Kleiner. There's no audio, but it's meant to be like the E3 Movie "Kleiner's Lab". Try typing in "exec e3_lab" in the Console to enable the scripted sequences. I noticed no difference really, but the script must do something I guess. Once the strider has burst through the wall, there's nothing else you can do on this map.
To Be Continued.... [eerie music here :p]
Step Three:
Okay, so you may have heard about CS:Source and the fact it was leaked. And the fact that you want to play it too. So let's learn how to download, install and get everything working for CS:Source.
First, download the torrent either from SuprNova or any other torrent based website, or download it here [torrent no longer active, sorry folks!] (thanks to jb55 for making the torrent). I take it you should know how to download torrent files. Once the download has completed. Open up the HL2BetaCSSource.rar file and extract it to your "anon-hl2" directory.
Once extraction has completed. Browse to your anon-hl2 folder and the two new folders, bin_ports and cstrike should now be there. Okay now we are going to rename two of the folders, this is where most people get confused so I'm going to make this sound as simple as possible.
In your "anon-hl2" folder, rename the "bin" folder to anything you like, as long as you can remember the name of it (a good name would be bin-hl2). So we now have a "bin-hl2" folder, which was previously named "bin", and a "bin_ports" folder which we recently extracted.
Now all you have to do is rename the "bin_ports" folder to "bin", so we now have a "bin" folder and a "bin-hl2" folder.
Once this has been done, create another hl2.exe shortcut on your desktop again.
Name this shortcut "CS - Source". Right-click your newly created shortcut and select Properties. This time we will do exactly the same as we did last time with the HL2 shortcut, but we will also add to the end of it "-game cstrike", so our shortcut will look like this:
Double-click the shortcut to run it and you should get a screen with a different background saying "Counter-Strike Source", like below:
The settings you made in HL2 should be the same. If not, just make the settings you did last time. You are able to load up some of the maps that are available in Counter-Strike. When you exit the game by the way, if you're going to play Half-Life 2, rename the folders back to what they were, so the "bin" folder is renamed back to "bin_ports", and "bin-hl2" is renamed to "bin".
Anyway, back into CS:Source, lets load up a test map, we'll try de_cbble.
map de_cbble
Okay, pick a team and select the top character model on the list. However, there will be a few problems. You will not be able to buy things. Also, you only have a pistol and a crowbar which has no animations. Not only that but when you look up to the sky, it's really really dodgy.
CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE IMAGE
So, what can we do to fix this? Well, thanks to jb55, he has released a few patches, one of which fixes this. Download the patch from here.
Follow the instructions the patch gives. You should now have some but not all skies.
Also, if you play on a defusal map and the game crashes when you plant the bomb, download this patch here and follow the instructions the readme gives.
It looks pretty cool having CS maps on the Source Engine, but this isn't much fun without opponents and some more guns. First, guns, or should I say, gun. To gte the AK-47, just type "give weapon_ak47" and then you have all three weapons available.
Update: CS:S Port Patch
Great news! The guys over at CS2World have finally finished their CS:S Port Patch. It features maps from Counter-Strike ported across to the Source Engine. It does require the CS Port which I'm sure most of you lot have. You can download the CS Port Patch from here . Thanks to all of those that contributed to the CS Port patch, You all deserve a shiny gold medal :p. Below are a few screenshots of the CS Port Patch:
Now I'm going to show you how to play Half-Life 2 Beta and CS: Source leak online!
Step Four:
I'm sure most people will be thinking, "Half-Life 2? Online? So, you're wanting me to to say 'Hi VALVe! Fancy a game of HL2?!". Well, this isn't really the case. You see, we just have so many l33t people who manage to code such great programs that allow us to play these leaked betas online. With GREAT GREAT THANKS to jb55 for coding this excellent application: EkomZ.
EkomZ is a bit like the Steam Server Browser, where you can join or create online gaming servers. Most people are usually worried that VALVe (the creators of HL2) will find out about them and they think they will end up in "trouble". This isn't the case, as like Steam, a server list is hosted on a server which contains all the information about what the name of the server is, how many players are currently playing, which map they are playing etc. And EkomZ has a server list on it's own server (also known as the Master Server) and is completely seperate from Steam. So lets start off by downloading EkomZ, click the image below to download the program (requires .NET Framework 1.1):
I think you will find the program pretty self-explanatory as you use it (extract the program to your anon-hl directory where hl2.exe is).
If you do have any problems with EkomZ, check out the EkomZ FAQ and check to see if there is an answer to your problem.
One other problem is that there is no player model for Half-Life 2 online. To fix this problem, download this patch to make the metrocop model the player model.
So now, you should be able to play HL2 and CS:Source online! After this, theres not much more we can actually do with the beta. If you want to make HL2 easier to use however, try downloading this great program coded by SLKNeo called HL2 Launcher. Theres three different versions of it, each one looks completely different (I'd recommend downloading Version 2.0). You can download these by clicking on the images of the versions below:
Version 2.1 Now released! Click the image below to download (requires .NET Framework 1.1). Thanks to SLKNeo for linking to my guide :).
HL2 Port Switcher:
For those of you who have the CS:Source and HL1 Ports, then the HL2 Port Switcher by jb55 may be useful for you. It's just a simple program which allows you to play the HL1 and CS ports without having to manually rename the ports folder. Handy if you're regularly switching between the two. Click the image below to download the HL2 Port Switcher. (requires .NET Framework 1.1).
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The HL1 Port
Not only is there a Counter-Strike Port, but there's a Half-Life one too! I haven't actually got the file yet, so I dont know that much about it, but I found a few screenshots on the internet. The screenshots can be found here (thank tundra_cool for actually making decent screenshots and putting them up :D. Now that I've seen screenies, I'm desperate to download it! hehe). I'm currently downloading the HL1 Port and it's 5% complete so far and at a slow speed of around 2 to 4kb/s. Once Ihave it done within the next few days, I'll see if I can torrent it, put it on a server, or allow you to download it from me off DC++ or something. For now, enjoy the screenshots :)
That's about every useful HL2 thing I know or can find. If you know anything else which may help fix errors or bugs or problems, or links to useful HL2 information and HL2 mappers, oh and also anything about the HL1 Port, please e-mail me at teecee14@gmail.com
Категория: Бэта | Добавил: roman (05.04.2008)
| Автор: Роман Наборский
