[Half Life 2 Cat Texture
Jamar Lizarraga
Playing the original Half Life retail CD (even with patches) on my Pentium III systems with Geforce cards seems to get me this peculiar texture issue, where a lot of models have just plain white textures and the HUD elements are all single-colour squares. I've been using the last drivers available officially from Nvidia's site, 81.98; I wanted to try the earlier 45.23 drivers that I've seen recommended, but something about the download (from PhilsComputerLab's site) didn't let Windows 98SE see them as drivers at all. And I've seen mentions that they're not necessarily the best for DX9 games anyway, not that the FX series are the best cards for those either, but I want to give mine the best chance y'know? And with an FX 5700 and the 1.4GHz Tualatin system that it's in, it feels suitable to have the freedom to see how well I can run certain DX9 games. I've not have any problems like this with other games I've tried; Rome Total War had a visually somewhat similar issue when trying it on my Geforce 4, but was fine on my FX 5700, so I'm putting that down to a DX9 compatibility issue.
i think it's the driver that's causing that issue
i think in vogons drivers are some older versions that can be useful
from what i remember, later drivers are problematic in windows 9x, 45.23 is a very good one
Well, if you play CS 1.5 with certain custom mini-gl drivers for your Voodoo 3, you can see through walls at some points due to clipping errors, giving you a competitive edge with heavier weapons like the scout, g3 or AWP.
So I've heard.
Then, it got upgraded with all kinds of high res texture packs, etc, that won't be supported by the prehistoric engine and hence, not by any hardware 3d acceleration.
Leaving all the heavy lifting to software and the CPU. Which is why later HL with all the tweaks might run worse on a later CPU with later 3D GPU since all the patchwork upgrades overcompensate for the advance in the CPU and they tended to be overlooked in favor of the GPU budget.
It became a bloody CPU hog.
Meaning: Initial release of HL should work on a potato, HL with all the updates, not so much. Don't be surprised if a system past a 1.4 GHz Hoitytoity gives you some extra FPS, no matter the GPU. I played CS on a 1.4 Athlon TB, which seemed adequate.
Not sure any more to what extend half-life allowed one to install bug fix or patch updates without installing more demanding graphics at the same time - was a big topic with competitive gamers back then.
My main point was - don't think any GPU performance will make much difference beyond the GF4 and the game itself is Dx6. So, if you could do without the FX, an earlier card should be fine, if it gives you less troube.
But, not my field of expertise - some here obviously have analyzed that to death and back.
Anyway, I'm rather sure you've figured out the problem and the FX will work now.
But well, maybe it's a settings issue? Half Life was 1998, before Hardware T&L was introduced with the original Geforce; maybe something like that could be causing some issues? I can't see any settings related to that in the Nvidia options, but perhaps someone might know something else to try.
The strange thing though is that I couldn't find any other instances of this issue in searches; hence me asking here. If it didn't also happen with my Geforce 4 card, I'd try my backup FX 5200 to see if it might be a problem with my particular card. And if it was a known compatibility issue with Geforce cards (like Incoming has), or something like that, then sure, I'd live with it since the FX cards are so broadly compatible otherwise. But I've not seen anything to suggest it's a widespread issue, so it's confusing.
To do that, go to Control Panel > Add Remove Programs and uninstall the Nvidia Display Driver. If you forced the lower driver version on top of a newer one, you may have broken the uninstall process as well as the driver itself.
i'm guessing this is the openGL renderer? try the "limit opengl extensions" option, which should be in those drivers, or switching to the D3D renderer ingame. HL is definitely one of those games that need tweaking to get everything to work on certain setups.
Namely, I've built a new system, and for this one, I installed 45.23 straight from the get-go, so there should be no lingering driver shenanigans. This is a Pentium MMX system with an Intel chipset, which I've shoved a PCI Geforce FX 5200 into cus I had it spare and it gives me the optimal 1280x1024 desktop resolution.
From this experience of three different Geforce cards on very different systems with different firmware but all having the same glitch, I would have come to the conclusion that Half Life just has an incompatibility with Geforce 4 and FX cards. However, I couldn't find any other mentions of this issue in searches, so surely most others have had no issue.
Where can I find this "limit opengl extensions" option?
And mm, the D3D renderer looks visually consistent, but it also looks very different, and runs worse, so I'm not enthusiastic about playing it that way.
it might look different because of working overbright lighting, which is not the case for OGL with later patches and cards that support multitexturing. a pentium MMX is very slow for the game anyway, especially if not using the 3dfx miniGL driver, and higher driver overhead on the FX5200 probably makes things even worse for an old CPU.
No, my performance comment on the D3D renderer was from trying it on I think my Tualatin 1.4GHz system (or at least a 700MHz Celeron; I upgraded that system to the Tualatin around the same time) with my Geforce 4.
A leftover sign showing how to complete the vent puzzle in the scrapped The Security Complex chapter found in the 1997 prototype, along with labels for switches key to solving the puzzle, can be found in halflife.wad.
halflife.wad contains a lot of leftovers from a cut area, the Alien Research Lab, which can be seen in the 1997 prototype. While some of the textures were repurposed (mainly screen images), many were not, leaving them orphaned.
Graphics for earlier revisions of Forget About Freeman!, where the player had to decrease Black Mesa's security status by sending an all-clear message to an off-site location, are found in halflife.wad. Some of these graphics were reused for the Uplink demo.
What seem to be floor textures bearing the logo of the United States Department of Defense can be found. Most of them seem to fit the unused carpet textures, but there are two that appear to be overlaid on black and white tiles.
An unused sign that has the text "days since last injury", an empty box above the text, and ironically, a blood splatter on the sign can be found. It appears in various levels from the 1997 prototype.
An alternate version of the sign to the right of the first door that leads to the Anti-Mass Spectrometer can be found. The metal is of a different style and the "Test Lab" on the upper part is made in the same style as the text on the unused "Control Room" sign.
An unused set of textures for the M2 Bradley vehicle found in Surface Tension exists. These textures have a desert camouflage pattern and have much darker lines than the textures used. There is also an unidentifiable logo on the vehicle's side texture that does not appear in the used texture.
An alternate version of the Caution sign found near the start of Unforeseen Consequences can be found. This version uses a darker gray metal background and lacks the screws the used texture has.
There is also a sign for a "Sgt. Harrington", a character who is occasionally mentioned on the announcement system, that was meant to appear in Office Complex. This name is a reference to Valve's co-founder, Mike Harrington.
These signs mention a Sector D, which is where the chapter Office Complex is set. This suggests that the developers intended for the areas in Power Up and Office Complex to be connected in some way at one point.
This sign mentions the administrative sections the player travels through in Office Complex, including the cut "Level 3" mentioned earlier. It seems the developers wanted to make another connection between the rail section and Office Complex.
A texture named "NGIN_ROOF" can be found with the rest of the textures used for the train used at the start of Apprehension. It seems the Apprehension train would have a roof at one point, judging by its name.
A chart showing the Ichthyosaur's skeleton and a scientific-sounding name for it can be found in the game's files. Its filename has c2a3 in it, suggesting it was meant to be found in Apprehension.
An unused texture with "GEAR" in its name can be found. Based on the name, it was meant to appear in "Forget About Freeman!", where there are two gears the player must slip by in order to proceed. However, both gears use only one texture, while there are three textures labeled "GEAR" in halflife.wad.
City is a skybox featuring low resolution screenshots of a city.
In an early draft for the conclusion of the game, Gordon was to teleport to a human administrative setting, which allowed for a glimpse of a terrestrial sky.
Xen8 is a purple Xen skybox, similar to the one in the ending sequence. It's set to be used in the mines section of Interloper, but because these maps have no visible sky, it remains unseen. Like the previous ones, this also only exists in TGA format.
This skybox was most notably reused in Half-Life: Opposing Force.
The relatively mundane contents of the interdimensional agent's briefcase can be explained by the fact the the G-Man was originally supposed to be the "administrator" mentioned several times in the game. This was retconned, giving the admin position to Wallace Breen in Half-Life 2.
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