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Updated
on March 19, 2001 by Thomas
McGuire
Visuals
Load Half-Life, select
Configuration, then Video, then select the Video Modes
button.
Display Mode. Select your
Rendering API here as appropriate – Software,
OpenGL or Direct3D. For the majority of
graphics cards OpenGL will yiel best performance &
visual quality. If you have no 3D graphics card installed select
Software. You should strongly consider purchasing a new
Graphics card if this is the case however.
Selecting a lower Resolution can improve
performance & maintain a stable, higher frame rate. Although higher
resolutions will look better (sharper & less jagged), they generally run
slower. 800 x 600 should be considered the minimum resolution to run Half-Life in
nowadays.
OpenGL Driver. If
OpenGL is selected as your rendering API then you may select
your OpenGL driver here if required. For 3dfx Graphics card owners (Bar Voodoo
1) you should select 3dfx Mini Driver for optimal
performance. Owners of other Graphics cards should leave this set to
Default.
Click Ok, then hit
the Video options button.
Screen size. Use this slider
to adjust the size of your game window. Move this slider to the far
Right to maximize
the view screen, moving it to the Left will reduce the screen size,
although on some old systems reducing the screen size a few notches can make the
game a lot more playable.
Gamma. This slider may be used to
adjust the RGB colour intensity. Move this slider to the Right to
increase this level, this can reduce texture detail by brightening
up textures, & vice versa.
Glare reduction. This slider
controls the amount of glare reduction in Half-Life. Move this slider to the
Right to increase
the amount of glare reduction & vice
versa.
You can further tweak visual settings in
your Config file. Add/Edit the following lines as you see
fit. NOTE – Editing some of these settings may have no effect as Valve
have disabled them to counter
potential/actual Cheats in the game.
cl_bob
"0.xxx". x determines how much you roll back & forth while
running. Leave it at the default value or 0 to remove the
movement. This & the other 2 settings below may help you
aleviate any motion sickness you may experience after prolonged gaming sessions.
Aiming may also be improved when the bobbing is disabled.
cl_bobcycle
"0.xxx". x determines how much you roll back & forth while
moving. Leave it at the default value or 0 to remove the
movement.
cl_bobup "0.xxx". x
determines how much you bob up while moving. Leave it at the default
value or 0 to remove the movement.
cl_himodels "x". Setting x
to 1 enables higher quality player models when playing
network/internet games. 0 is the default, which uses slightly lower
quality player models, although performance is oosted as a
result.
cl_showfps "x". Setting x
to 1 enables the display of your current frame rate, 0
disables this counter. I'd recommend setting this to 1 if you want
to see the "real" effect tweaking display settings has on your frame
rate.
gl_alphamin "x". This has to do
with surfaces such as fences. If you experience that such surfaces aren't
displaying correctly (e.g. Not appearing) try a lower value than the
default. Otherwise, leave it at default.
gl_clear
"x". A value of 0 for x fills cracks
between textures, 1 makes these visible. 0 is slower than
1, although more pleasing visually.
gl_cull "x". Setting x to
1 enables the rendering of visible objects only. 0 renders
all regardless which should reduce performance. I'd recommend setting this to
1.
gl_dither "x". A value of
1 for x enables dithering. If you have a card
that can render in colour depths greating than 16 bit then try set this to
0.
gl_keeptjunctions "x". Setting
x to 1 may fix some visual tearing (fills cracks between
textures), although possibly at a slight performance hit. 0
disables this & may run faster, although potentially with visual
anomolies (cracks between textures).
gl_lightholes "x". If you've set
r_lightmap "0", then also set x to 1,
otherwise set it to 0.
gl_max_size "x". x sets the
maximum texture size. 256 is the default. Depending on your
video you may be able to use larger textures, e.g. Pre-Voodoo 4 users should use
256. Others may be able to set 512 or
higher.
gl_overbright "x". A value
of 1 for x enables maximum brightness mode. This
will yield brighter & more vivid textures being
displayed.
gl_palette_tex "x". A value of
1 for x enables paletted textures. Set it to 0 if
your videocard doesn't support palettized textures.
gl_picmip "x". A setting of
0 for x gives best image quality. Setting it higher (0 to
4) may improve performance but reduce image quality. I’d recommend
leaving this at either 0 or 1.
gl_playermip "x". Setting x
to 0 gives best texture quality for models. Setting it higher (up
to 2) may improve performance but reduce image quality for models. I’d
recommend leaving this at either 0 or 1.
gl_polyoffset "x". x sets
polygon offset factor. Other values may fix flickering with decals or
missing decals. NOTE - This will not solve flickering cause by
gl_ztrick "1". Leave at the default if none of the glitches mentioned are
occuring. 0.1, 1 or 20 reportedly fixes these
problems.
gl_round_down "x". I'd recommend
leaving this set to 0 or 1.
gl_smoothmodels "x". Set x
to 1 to enable Gourad shading of models for better improved visual
quality. Setting x to 0 disables this,
although performance may improve as a result. I'd recommend leaving it
enabled.
gl_spriteblend "x". Leave x
set to 1.
gl_texsort "x". A value of
1 for x enables Multi-texturing, which can improve
performance on some cards. Setting this to 0 allows you set
gl_overbright "1".
gl_texturemode "x". Valid entries
for x are GL_NEAREST (worst),
GL_NEAREST_MIPMAP_NEAREST (2nd
worst),
GL_LINEAR,
GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_NEAREST
(Bilinear),
GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR
(best).
Setting it to GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR
(Trilnear) will yield best
visual quality, but lowest performance. Setting it to the other settings will
improve performance, but give increasingly worse image quality. NOTE – 3dfx
cards cannot perform Trilinear texturing filtering & Multi-texturing at
simultaneously.
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