Back Issue 10 - 21th Nov to 27th Nov 1998

Level 5

   Got a nice forwarded e-mail from Runabout of the Daily Death:

Okay, here is an important message to you guys, and the rest of the HL community;

We should be releasing some preliminary screenshots in 1-2 weeks (we don't want to release shots of non-quality work). These shots will be of the first level or two, and likely some shots from the new Firing Range training map we are adding in.

We're Hiring: We're looking for people that have worked on previous packs or mods, and are interested in working on a commercial expansion pack in order to get some serious exposure, and perhaps make some cash. We require at least 2 more modelers, 2 more mappers, and 2 more texture artists. All applicants are required to send samples of their work.

For the modeler and texture artist roles on the team send applications and resumes to shahrani@radioactivesoftware.com

For the mapper positions, send mail to dhatch@radioactivesoftware.com

Please distribute this information to other HL and gaming sites.

Sam "Samurai" Shahrani
Co-founder, Programmer, Artist
RadioActive Software
www.radioactivesoftware.com

Update by Dann - 26 November 1998 24:47:52

HeT Update - New Model & Mini-SDK

   Valve's Harry Teasley made a follow-up e-mail after Gabe Newalls letter yesterday mentioning the release of a mini-SDK and also a new multiplayer model, being Barney the Security Guard.

   Go read Harry T's update here. Both these links are linked via the venerable Bluesnews, when I get a chance to play the game a little bit, (due out in the UK in 12hours and counting!) I'll get myself organised and upload a files page.

Reviews, Reviews...

Update by Alex - 26 November 1998 20:12:42

Telefragged review

   Telefragged has updated it's "I-picked-apart-every-detail-holding- nothing-back-and-found-things-wrong-thus-saying-it's-a-bad-game- so-I'm-a-great-reviewer" review and has replaced it with a milder "Alright-it's-not-that-bad-but- I'm-still-right" review.

Half-life problems?

   Half-life accidentally find viruses too, as put in this statement by Gabe:

We've had a couple of reports that Half-Life wouldn't authenticate on people's systems because they had an out of date or corrupt version of the game that have turned out to be viruses (see below). It didn't occur to us that Half-Life would be a virus checker (we did the hash to make sure people had the latest version of the game, not detect viruses), but it's a nice side effect. This isn't the only reason people might get this error, but it's happening often enough that we thought it would help to spread the word.

Oh, to be clear, the virus isn't on the CD, it's on users systems
already, and hl.exe gets infected the way any other binary would.

Entity list

   Wavelength (of course) has gotten the full entity list for Worldcraft, and has accomanying pictures for each. Of course if you don't want to have the game ruined, I'd suggest not going.

Update by dann - 25 November 1998 22:16:34

Gabe Does An Update!

UK Faction Launches!

   Lucky I have such a nice platform to 'launch' my next website, ;-), oh well the 1st ever United Kingdom based Half-Life and TeamFortress II Squad website is now officially open for business. the faction website is now properly online and accepting new members, from the UK only I'm afriad... for ping times you understand!

   And for all those UK people gagging to get their hands on or just see Half-life over here check out The Playing Fields, which is an Internet/Gaming cafe in London. Wel they'll be selling copies of Half-Life from midnight friday, and having a 'lock-in' session from midnight till 10.00am for those silly gamers who want to spend all night getting sore eyes... cya there tomorrow night!

Update by Alex - 25 November 1998 20:35:06

Good Old Barry. Bad Old...

   Here is the quote from their site so you can read it for yourself...

Basically, when HL arrives over here you`ll get a 13 digit "key" (number thing I assume) to enter during installation. Unlike other CD Keys this authenticates to the WON network everytime you play.
Theres 4 known problems already.

1. Authentication server is unreachable (timeout or something)
2. Some git is using your key after randomly generating it to play his pirated version
3. A bug in HL multiplayer means that your not logged off WON for 45mins after leaving a game.
4. If you get cutoff and have to redial and get a different IP address then you wont be able to play again for 30mins as the original IP you had is registered at WON against your Key.

This 3rd one is stressed as "a theory". Whatever the reason theres a good chance you wont be able to play online if the stories are true. Theres even talk of returning the game for refunds.
In a poll conducted on 3DNews 54% of respondents said their Key didnt work in multiplayer and 28% of them said they`d return the game for a refund. 61% said they`d keep the game in hope of a fix.
Sierra has said that "..Valve softwares Gabe Newell will officially address the situation in a statement issued by sierra within 24 hours"

Update by Alex - 24 November 1998 20:11:07

Server Admin FAQ, New Config & Cheats

   Also there is a humourous page on picking corny one-liners for screenshots from Half-Life, this is over on WON.net yet again.

   Also something which affects me not in the slightest because A) I dont have Half-Life Yet! and B) I dont have a Space-Orb but Bluesnews says that here is where you can find a decent config for those of you unfortunate to use such a controller... my opinion of course. ;-)

   Oh and i'm also sick to death of people asking for cheat codes for Half-Life, so go to this page on Gameaholic if you want to spoil your enjoyment of the game so early on.

Update by Alex - 23 November 1998 20:27:24

Getting on multi-player

Recently WON had a program on called primaryserver. When downloading primaryserver you receive a registration key. Entering this key stores a number in the Half-Life section of the Windows 95 registry.

I went out and purchased Half-Life today from EB and installed it. I went to play multiplayer right away and was frustrated when the game told me it could not validate my key with the WON authentification server...therefore no multiplayer

So I looked in the registry and noticed it was using the dedicated server CDKey...I deleted it and ran the game again....it prompted me for the CDKey (lower left hand corner written vertically) I entered it and BAM it works.

Update by Dann - 22 November 1998 24:08:19

Multiplayer Review & Screenies!

   Apparently a there have been trouble with peoples CD-Keys and the Riva TNT graphics card, I cant help anyone out because I dont have HL yet! (mores the pity...) :-(

Update by Alex - 22 November 1998 23:56:48

Gabe On European Release Dates

Half-Life has gone gold in the UK and in France. The release candidates for Italian and Spanish will be burned on Tuesday.

Update by Alex - 21 November 1998 16:55:22

WON.net Pages & Pages & ...

   Here are the more interesting and useful features which you can play around with for the time being, we'll have a full listing of the console commands online here at F2C ASAP.

Our courageous developers have provided the following tricks to help with Multiplayer problems over a modem. To execute these (the commands) press the tilde (~) key while in the game and type the appropriate command and press the ENTER key.

Depending on the connection speeds to your ISP your individual results will vary. The first commands to try would be fps_modem and rate.

cl_nodelta - This defaults to "0" (off). Setting it to "1" will turn this on. This command will toggle network packet delta compression.

r_netgraph - This defaults to "0" (off). Setting it to "1" will turn this on. This command will toggle the display of a graph showing network performance. This can help in determining if the user is losing packets.

r_decals - This defaults to "0" (off). Setting it to "1" will turn this on. Turns decals on or off. Pretty straight forward. If you turn off decals you will see performance increases.

fps_modem - Defaults to 30 fps. If you find yourself spawning into walls or your character feels lag, lower this number. Your frames-per-second rate is directly tied to the rate at which you receive packets from the server. If you set this value too high then you modem will not be able to handle the loads of getting a pack for each frame.

rate - This defaults to 2500 (28.8 modem) This sets the maximum amount of bytes per second that the server should send to the client. The higher the value, the smoother the movement. Value of 5000 is recommended for non-analog connections. A rate of 9999 is used for LAN/T1 connections. If the user is actually playing in a LAN game they should double-check their rate and make sure it's set to 9999.

pushlatency - This defaults to -50. This command adjusts client side prediction by negating the effects of latency. Use the negative value of your ping to achieve the best results. For example, if your ping is 250, set the pushlatency to -250.

More Reviews

Update by Alex - 21 November 1998 11:31:06

Older bits & bobs

   And the new links on the block were; the Half-Life Support Page and the Half-Life Editing Resource Center. And did I mention that Half-Life is in stores near you! (only USA & Canada).

Update by Alex - 21 November 1998 11:01:10