Half-Life Forum

hi, i recently activated my hl platium pack on steam through crossover for the mac. The games run perfectly and i have no complaints so far, but i can't seem to find a way to install the hi def pack for blue shift or any of my games through steam. I don't have a cd copy of blueshift, so i can't install it that way, and other forums say to download it from a paid-subscription file downloading website. Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks for your time

when entered the cd key for my blue shift it downloaded everything from half-life to day of defeat and of course blue shift; doing so without any problems. it didn't, however, include the hi-def pack and if you don't have the cd i doubt you'll find it on steam (though don't give up looking!). i'm going to try and install it from my cd to see if the games run from steam will recognize it (i don't see why not).

and as a side note, entering the cd key for my half-life game of the year edition (which is separate from my blue shift) results in steam attempting to download all of the same programs. no big deal, but i bought blue shift on its own for about $3 and got everything for free that i paid for with my old game of the year bundle.

There used to be a link to download the HI-def pack for Half-Life one on the Steam website. But I have been unable to find it these days. If anyone else has seen it, feel free to post it here.

The link to download the Hi-Def pack is:

steam://installaddon/halflifehd

To get this to work you need to install IE6 in the same bottle as Steam, run it and paste this URL into IE while Steam is running. The pack will then download as an update in the Steam Games list.

Update - installing IE6 messes up the html formatting in the Steam GUI, so I recommend using Opera instead.

Does anyone know how to do this with CrossOver Games? Whenever I try to install Opera or IE I just get "installation failed"

I've just used this steam address in Firefox (installed in the same bottle) and it appears to have worked (well it said it was installing the add on).

How can I check that it is installed correctly and what difference will the add on make to the game?

You can check in the filesystem if there is a file named "half-life high definition.gcf" inside the "[Steam Installation Folder]\steamapps". This file has all the hires textures and will be included by the game upon start. (this will be downloaded when you use the above link. btw. the url steam://removeaddon/halflifehd will uninstall the hi-def pack again.)
The difference will be that the textures will have more detail an look better. Other than that you won't notice any difference.

Simple way to install this, as I just did it and figured I'd see if anyone else had trouble figuring it out. In the Steam GUI go to the store section and then the page for Half-life. Once there click teh link that says "view update history." From that page you can run a search for "HiDef model pack" and a update from August 29, 2005, this will have a link to install the high def pack from within the steam client. If the search does not show any results, uncheck the filters for "product updates" and "half-life" and it should show up as they only thing then. Enjoy!

Thanks for the tip, I'll add it to the tips and tricks, and give you credit of course.

I managed to get it working in Opposing Force and Blue Shift(no Hi-def for Half Life, Rockin' Source) You just google it look for the one that takes you too steam and when you download it, it should ask you what app to open it with(I used firefox so use that if it does not work) It will show steam if you have the macintosh version but choose other and pick the crossover version of steam.