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The original Half-Life turned out to look and feel rather different than what originally shown before release. This fan project seeks to give players a different experience more inline with that original design.

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Half-Life didn’t always look and feel the same way as the final product. The actively-developed fan modification Absolute Zero seeks to capture the feel of those early days and is working towards having a finished product by year’s end. It’s definitely a cool project and well worth checking out for any curious fans of Half-Life.

Now, because this mod uses an old version of the game engine that predates Valve’s port of Half-Life to Linux, the developers aren’t able to put out their own native builds. I can confirm that the game runs with Proton (albeit a little poorly) but a clever Reddit user has posted a solution that used the open source Xash3D FWGS engine to run the mod instead. These are the steps needed:

Instructions, click me

1) Install Half-Life and Half-Life: Absolute Zero

2) Download and extract xash3d_fwgs_linux_0.19.2.tar.xz (recent Xash3D FWGS 0.20 doesn't run the mod.)

3) Copy ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Half-Life Absolute Zero/AbsoluteZero and ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Half-Life/valve into Xash3D FWGS's directory.

4) Copy ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Half-Life/valve/cl_dlls/client.so into /AbsoluteZero/cl_dlls

5) Launch the game with following command:

LC_ALL=C ./xash3d.sh -game AbsoluteZero -dll dlls/az.dll -clientlib cl_dlls/client.so -console

6) If some NPCs' skins are robot skins, disable German censorship in /AbsoluteZero/config.cfg

sv_germancensorship "0"

I've tried the above instructions and can report that things work rather well. I was able to play for a while and progress without any issues. Now, Absolute Zero isn't quite finished yet and the game is still unbeatable as of the time of writing. It's the mod team's hope that things will be done by the end of October. Still, speaking as someone who has played through Half-Life a few times, it's really interesting to see this alternate visiion for the game.

You can get Half-Life: Absolute Zero on Steam though you'll need a copy of the original Half-Life as well.

Thanks for the tip, RTheren

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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5 comments

Nezchan Aug 3, 2020
I'm not really sure what different "look and feel" we're talking about here, and the trailer doesn't tell me either. It seems...slightly more action oriented? Or a little more disturbing during scripted events? Or maybe that's just how the trailer is cut, I can't really tell.
whizse Aug 3, 2020
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This is refreshing to see:

Minimum System Requirements:
Processor: Pentium 166+
Memory: 32 MB RAM
Nagezahn Aug 4, 2020
Quoting: NezchanI'm not really sure what different "look and feel" we're talking about here, and the trailer doesn't tell me either. It seems...slightly more action oriented? Or a little more disturbing during scripted events? Or maybe that's just how the trailer is cut, I can't really tell.
I'm wondering the exact same thing. The trailer was conveying a different tone than the Half-Life I remember, though that's due to the kind of music they put into it. Their page on Steam doesn't tell much either.
stormtux Aug 5, 2020
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Quoting: Nagezahn
Quoting: NezchanI'm not really sure what different "look and feel" we're talking about here, and the trailer doesn't tell me either. It seems...slightly more action oriented? Or a little more disturbing during scripted events? Or maybe that's just how the trailer is cut, I can't really tell.
I'm wondering the exact same thing. The trailer was conveying a different tone than the Half-Life I remember, though that's due to the kind of music they put into it. Their page on Steam doesn't tell much either.
It is comforting to see that I am not the only one with this question. Wherever I read about this project it is described in the same way but I have never found an explanation of what this different "look and feel".
GermainZ Aug 5, 2020
From what I gathered from Steam reviews, the major differences seem to be:

- Movement style, though I'm not 100% certain what this refers to.
- Enemies that were cut from the released game (e.g. PantherEye, HECU Sergeant.
- Cut locations.
- Some different models (e.g. suit colors, guns, HUD) and voice lines.
- Vials that give you certain abilities (e.g. reincarnation after death, immunity to toxins).

Doesn't seem like it's long either (about 3 hours to go through) if anyone's interested in just giving it a try.
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