It’s still unclear whether a Half-Life 3 will ever happen, but fans of Valve’s sci-fi shooter franchise can now revisit the original installment with a modern sheen. Software engineer Sultim Tsyrendashiev (sultim-t) has finally released the real-time path-tracing mod for Half-Life that he has been teasing for over a year, allowing PC gamers to re-experience the 1998 classic with ray-traced effects that appear to include vastly improved lighting. According to the installation instructions that can be found on Github, the mod supports DLSS for improved performance.
From sultim-t/xash-rt (Github):
Install
- Buy and install Half-Life 1 on Steam
- A clean installation is preferable
- Open its folder
- In Steam library: right click on Half Life → Manage → Browse local Files
- Unzip hl1-rt.zip and hl1-rt-resources.zip into the folder
- Replace if prompted: so original configs will not interfere with HL1 RT
- Run rt_bin/xash3d.exe
- Press X to switch renderers on the fly
Optional DLSS
- Download nvngx_dlss.dll
- Place it into the rt_bin folder, ensure that it’s called nvngx_dlss.dll
- Download RayTracedGL1-Bundle-DLSS.zip
- Replace the original rt_bin/RayTracedGL1.dll with a new one bin/RayTracedGL1.dll from RayTracedGL1-Bundle-DLSS.zip
Known issues
- AMD GPUs might have some incompatibility issues
- Part of the objects are culled by a server before sending packets to a client (and in HL1, even in singleplayer, a local server is created). So some objects might not have proper shadows / be reflected in mirrors / etc, until a server actually sends them
- Classic renderer doesn’t support dynamic lightmaps (consequently, a flashlight)
- Classic renderer doesn’t support sky visibility polygons, so some unintended objects might be observed in a skybox
- Classic renderer’s decals don’t have lightmap lighting
- Custom maps should work, but the lighting might be overly dark and unplayable; performance on them may be worse
- Hazard Course is not supported yet