Steam News

Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike: Source Update Released

December 22, 2004, 3:37 pm - Valve - Product Update

Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike: Source updates are available and will be applied automatically when Steam is restarted. The changes include:

Half-Life 2

• Fixed sound stuttering problems caused by thread contention in sound system
  

Counter-Strike: Source

• Fixed missing models when running the Video Stress Test
  

Half-Life 2 Closed Captioning and Steam Now in Portuguese

December 21, 2004, 6:47 pm - Valve - Product Update

Half-Life 2 Portuguese text closed captioning system and Game UI and Steam in Portuguese are now available through the Steam Options dialog. CounterStrike: Source and Half-Life: Source will be made available in Portuguese soon.

Source SDK Update Released

December 20, 2004, 5:09 pm - Valve - Product Update

A Source SDK update is available and will be applied automatically when Steam is restarted. The changes include:

Source SDK

• Fixed "bCloseSuccessful" bug in Hammer with directory trees too deep
  
• Added faceposer
  
• Included view model sources for Half-Life 2
  
• Revised directory structure - content and sources are kept separate
  
• Added presets for expert compiles within Hammer
  
• Fixed problems with launching the game from within Hammer
  
• Hammer's Game Configurations UI now displays the active configuration on entry
  
• Hammer now displays paths in a more readable manner
  
• Create a Mod puts the mod content into the SourceMods folder (shows up in Steam's games list)
  
• Added vconfig - a tool to handle specifying the current game you're editing
  
• Fixes for various cases of path environment variables not working
  
• Buildcubemaps fixed
  
• Improved startup speed of the SDK launcher
  
• Simplified debugging under Steam (eliminated the need to copy steam.dll and make steamapp.cfg)
  

Half-Life 2 Demo Released

December 20, 2004, 11:29 am - Valve - Product Release

A free demo of Half-Life 2 has been released. Featuring some of the amazing digital actors and physical gameplay that has made Half-Life 2 the leading contender for Game of the Year 2004, the demo takes players through some of the early levels of the game and later transports them to the area of the game known as Ravenholm. The demo is available at ATI.com and requires a Steam account to install.

Guardian Readers Declare Half-Life 2 Game of the Year

December 19, 2004, 12:02 pm - Valve - General Announcement

Readers of the most popular UK newspaper website, The Guardian, voted Half-Life 2 Game of the Year 2004. Readers logged on to vote in The Guardian's Annual Readers' Poll and Half-Life 2 garnered more votes than any game in all the categories.

Visit The Guardian's main site here. For the full results the poll is also listed on their dedicated Gamesblog.

Source Dedicated Server Update

December 17, 2004, 5:22 pm - Valve - Product Update

A Source Dedicated Server update is available and will be applied automatically when Steam is restarted. The changes include:

Source Dedicated Server

• Fixed +ip not being applied when given on the command line
  
• HL2 depot fix for upcoming SDK update
  

Counter-Strike: Source, Source Engine Update Available

December 16, 2004, 3:41 pm - Valve - Product Update

Counter-Strike: Source and Source Engine updates are available and will be applied automatically when Steam is restarted. The changes include:

Counter-Strike: Source

• Added map: de_prodigy
  
• Improved player movement against walls
  
• Improved choppy player movement when bouncing down slopes
  
• Purchase icon for defuser is shown
  
• Physics prop avoidance is scaled by the object's mass
  
• Detail prop fade distance can be controlled on a per-map basis with env_detail_controller
  
• Spectator GUI last mode is saved
  
• Added spectate player by name
  
• Grenades, weapons, etc., splash when they land in water
  
• Frag grenade deafness is delayed so the explosion is heard
  
• Fixed viewmodel lag
  
• Added consistency checking player model bounds
  
• Weapon reloads finish when the round restarts
  
• Autobuy and rebuy trigger a reload if you don't buy a primary weapon
  
• Rebuy doesn't drop pistols the player has picked up
  
• Dropped weapon ammo isn't lost if the player has another weapon using that ammo
  
• Re-added hostage hint messages
  
• Smoke grenade canisters fade out and are removed when smoke is dense
  
• Breakable glass is blown outward proportional to the damage recieved
  
• Soundscapes update for observers
  
• Fixed not being able to attach to ladder tops
  
• Misc fixes to spray import
  
  

Source Engine

• Fixed crash when trying to play an MP3 that doesn't exist or is an invalid format
  
• Fixed a crash when playing MP3 files with ID3 tags
  
• Fixed network being started early enough so UDP remote logging works
  
• World rendering optimizations
  
• Fixed problems with demo recording
  
• Added command "setinfo " to allow clients to add custom user info fields (creates a new cvar flagged as FCVAR_USERINFO)
  
• Enabled sv_downloadurl & sv_consistency on dedicated servers
  
• Fixed "kick " command via rcon if the name is surrounded by quotes
  
• Fixed bug in "logaddress_add" that wouldn't add the correct port if the port and address were surrounded by quotes
  
• Added "player_say" event for 3rd party plugins
  
• Fixed crash in dedicated servers when issuing a say before the map is run
  

Half-Life 2 Wins Spike TV's PC Game of the Year Award

December 16, 2004, 12:11 pm - Valve - General Announcement

On Tuesday, December 14th, SpikeTV held their Second Annual Video Game Award ceremony in Los Angeles, CA.

In addition to earning Best PC Game honors, Half-Life 2 was recognized for Best Graphics.

Steam Client Update Released

December 14, 2004, 10:57 am - Valve - Steam Client Update

A platform update is available and will be applied automatically when Steam is restarted. The changes include:

Steam

• Source MODs will now automatically appear in the games list
  
• Improved startup process for Steam
  
• Fixed crash when creating a backup that would span multiple DVDs
  
• Fixed a bug that would unnecessarily validate Steam caches after a cache corruption
  
• Fixed Condition Zero: Deleted Scenes and Codename Gordon failing to backup correctly
  
• Fixed a bug where the message "the game files will be deleted and re-acquired" would repeat
  
• Fixed offline mode failing after not connecting to Steam for more than a month
  

• Optimization to the Steam filesystem to reduce game launch and level transition time

• Simplified debug-launch process for MOD developers. MOD developers no longer need to place a config file in their directory
  
• Added a registry key for MOD developers to use to locate a user's Steam installation located at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Valve\Steam\SourceModInstallPath
  

Half-Life 2, HL2DM and Source Dedicated Server Update Released

December 10, 2004, 12:16 pm - Valve - Product Update

Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Deathmatch and Source Dedicated Server updates are available and will be applied automatically when Steam is restarted. The changes include:

Half-Life 2

• Solved disc in drive incompatibility error
  

Half-Life 2: Deathmatch

• Fixed players entering the game with a score of -1
  
• Fixed combine ball tracking teammates
  
• Fixed not being able to grab level designer placed combine balls with the physics cannon
  
• Fixed players randomly spawning without physcannons
  
• Fixed multishot pistol exploit
  
• Fixed wrong footstep sounds while in team mode
  
• Fixed last RPG shot not tracking
  
• Added cl_defaultweapon -- defaults to weapon_physcannon but can be changed to any other weapon you spawn with
  
• Added HUD string to print team name
  
• Added model specific death sounds
  
• Switching to the physcannon is now instantaneous
  
• Toned down 357 damage
  
• Updated dm_overwatch
  

Source Dedicated Server

• Fixed "failed to load server.dll" error with 3rd party mods
  
• Fixed linux dedicated server crash on some GLIBC versions
  
• Fixed dedicated server error in certain localized languages