• New honorary achievement for Gnome Chompski's upcoming journey into space on Rocket Lab's "Return To Sender" mission.

Content Build ID: 5850798

• Fixed a case where developer commentary would appear to turn off when continuing from an autosave generated at the start of a map
  
• Correctly display commentary panel on primary hand in single-controller mode
  
• Corrected numbering of Commentary points of interest in Processing Plant map

Content Build ID: 5844889

Developer Commentary contains significant spoilers.
We highly recommend that you play the game to its conclusion before enabling commentary

As you may recall, the Half-Life: Alyx team was in the process of finishing the game when the COVID-19 lockdown went into effect here in Washington State. In fact, much of the team had already made the decision to work from home prior to that point. Adapting to this new way of collaborating meant that, while were able to get the game out on time, we weren't able complete some work, such as Developer Commentary and Steam Workshop integration.

We later shipped Steam Workshop integration while in quarantine in May and, over the summer, we have had time to reflect on the development of Half-Life: Alyx. We have collected 147 different points of interest from the team and recorded over three hours of audio commentary, covering every aspect of development, including design, art, animation, rendering, sound and more. You can access these points of interest by starting a new game with Developer Commentary enabled. As the commentary contains significant spoilers, we highly recommend that you play the game to its conclusion before playing through with commentary.

Like much of the world, we are all working from home, which means that rather than using our comfortable high-quality recording studio at the office, we have been recording our commentary voice overs in closets and blanket forts around greater Seattle.



When you play in commentary mode, you will see a floating headset at each point of interest. To listen, just grab the headset and put it on your head. A commentary status panel will be displayed above your off hand, showing the playback progress and the name of the speaker. If you like, you can remove the headset to stop playback. When you drop it, it will return to its original location. Commentary subtitles are available in English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Castilian Spanish, Latin American Spanish, Russian, Polish, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese.




Added in-game localization for Bulgarian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Norwegian, Romanian, Swedish, Thai and Turkish.

Added new convar: hlvr_move_ladder_must_reach_top. When set, players are required to climb all the way to the top of a ladder before they are automatically teleported there when they let go with both hands. This addresses a request made by a number of players to make the ladders more realistic.

• Fixed recent problem preventing creating or updating new Workshop items.

Content Build ID: 5292973

This update includes some small fixes discovered after the bigger 1.4.1 Update released earlier this week.

• Fixed a regression where attempting to hack a tripmine could crash.
  
• The in-game Addon menu no longer lists templates and non-playable addons.
  
• "New Game" preferences are no longer reset when returning to main menu from in game.
  
• Several other crash fixes.

Content Build ID: 5175117

• Added option to turn off Valve Index pre-order weapon skins to the Preferences menu.
  
• Fixed wine bottle labels that had been regressed by the liquids update, and fixed several issues with the liquid shader.
  
• Fixed an issue that could result in corrupt save games.
  
• Numerous crash fixes.

• Added hl_vr_weapon_generic_pistol, a data-driven weapon entity for workshop customization.
  
• Included sources to many of Half-Life: Alyx's AnimGraphs as example content, plus usability improvements to the AnimGraph editor.
  
• Added simple example addon for audio content, plus audio workflow improvements and fixes.
  
• Added example materials and subrect files demonstrating use of more complex shaders and dynamic expressions.
  
• Added support point, directional, spot and ortho lights to Source Filmmaker.
  
• Added "Show Intro" toggle to hacking plugs (allows placing hacking plugs that do not play a hologram intro animation).
  
• Reduced memory usage for compiling maps (32GB RAM is recommended).

• ModelDoc Tutorials
  
• Replacing Sounds
  
• Custom Pistols
  
• Hotspot Texturing

• Fixed a bug which was causing transitions between Valve maps to disable any loaded addons, and level transitions to not work at all when transitioning between maps within an addon.
  
• Fixed bug where map extensions could spawn multiple times (or not at all) when multiple addons were active.
  
• Fixes and clarifications added to hacking_example map.
  
• Fixed a crash in maps with a very large numbers of handposes.
  
• Fixed shadow artifacts with Source Filmmaker's projected lights.

Content Build ID: 5168833

• Added subtitles for: Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Ukrainian, Vietnamese
  
• Bottles now appear to have liquid inside them that sloshes around as you shake them.
  
• UI appears quicker when returning to Main Menu
  
• Improvements to addon management UI

• Added checks for users loading a savegame with missing addons (eg. unsubscribed or deleted)
  
• Added error message if a game fails to load due to a missing map requested by an addon
  
• Various crash fixes
  
• Fixed bug where exiting the game by closing SteamVR could generate bad save files

• Enabled the Postprocessing Editor (Documentation)
  
• Added "Custom Character" example addon (Documentation)
  
• Added example maps for:
  • Blind Zombie (a.k.a. Jeff)
    
  • Hacking and Toner Puzzles
    
  • Parked Vehicles and other Interactive Prefabs
    
  • Visibility System (Documentation)
    
  • Postprocessing Volumes (Documentation)
• Added core functionality required for Lua scripting and added some Alyx-specific script bindings for querying VR controller input and creating nav mesh paths from entity scripts
  
• Enabled live bone constraints in SFM, which can be baked/enabled as procedural bones, like cloth

• Fixed case where some explicitly specified meshes became hulls. (eg. func_shatterglass will now build in a map without having to enable legacy collision mesh.)
  
• Added some meshes that were missing from parked vehicle prefabs.
  
• Made SFM UI less Dota-specific in a few places
  
• Fixed missing map models (mostly combine stations) in SFM
  
• Fixed Import Sequence in SFM to work correctly on sequences with animated root orientation

Content Build ID: 5087083

Changes:

• Added missing tools lighting preview environments and associated assets.
  
• Fixed Hammer's "entity-only" compile mode not working properly.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented interactive prefabs and other physics entities from compiling correctly.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented "Start Game with Addons" from working with "Original Maps".
  
• Fixed a bug where loading a mis-configured addon could result in getting stuck at the loading screen.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause point_worldtext rendering to be corrupted.
  
• Numerous crash fixes and other minor fixes.

Content Build ID: 5050655

Half-Life: Alyx has been updated to include Steam Workshop support. This includes a beta release of our community development tools, as well as support for Linux and the Vulkan rendering API, and a few small quality of life updates.

Half-Life Alyx's level editing tools are now open to the community! You can create new levels, models, textures, and animations for Half-Life: Alyx, and using Steam Workshop you can browse and play everything the community has uploaded.

Want to make your own VR physics sandbox or a giant Rube Goldberg machine? Design a new combat encounter featuring a dozen Combine soldiers at once? What about creating the world's longest Multitool puzzle, or imagining a whole new district of City 17? Crack open the tools yourself and make it happen! If you just want to play what the community's been making, browse the Half-Life Alyx Steam Workshop page to try out the latest and most popular addons.

This is the first Beta release of the Alyx Workshop tools suite, and we intend to add to and improve them in the coming weeks. Included in this release are new or updated versions of:

• Hammer, the latest version of the Source 2 level editor.
  
• Material Editor, the tool for creating and tuning materials in Source 2.
  
• ModelDoc, a tool for viewing, editing, and compiling models with animation, collision, and other gameplay attributes.
  
• AnimGraph, our animation tool used to create complicated animation setups with blends and transitions.
  
• Particle Editor, for making new particle effects.
  
• Subrect Editor, for creating smart texture sheets known as "hotspots."
  
• Source Filmmaker, the Source 2 cinematic renderer and animation tool.

In addition to these tools, the update includes several sample maps. We've included these to demonstrate and explain how we authored enemy encounters in the game, as well as showcase some new features of the Half-Life: Alyx level art pipeline including tile meshes, static and dynamic cables, and texture hotspotting. The entire set of Half-Life: Alyx maps is also included as editable source for reference - this includes a large collection of interactive objects and prefabs. We'll have news on more features and some smaller additional tools and examples in an future update.

We've also started writing Half-Life: Alyx Workshop Tools documentation. If you're looking to start your first addon, this is a good place to start. This is a beta release of the development suite and we are still writing documentation for many of these tools, but we hope in the meantime you will dive in and learn by exploring for yourself. We can't wait to see what you make!

The Half Life: Alyx Workshop update adds a native Linux version of the game using the Vulkan rendering API, as well as optional support for using Vulkan on Windows.

Depending on your system, you may experience better performance using Vulkan, especially if your system is closer to minimum spec. To try Vulkan on Windows, open the Half-Life: Alyx main menu and choose Options > Performance > Advanced (Gear icon) > Rendering API. (You must restart the game for the Rendering API choice to take effect.)



On Linux, AMD graphics and the Mesa RADV driver are recommended for best results.

On Linux, if you had installed the game through Proton previously, please follow these steps to correctly download the update:

• Go in the Properties for Half-Life Alyx by right-clicking the game in your Steam Library
  
• Check the "Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool" box
  
• Uncheck the box, and the download will properly complete.

The spectator view (the view other people see when watching someone play) has received a few small updates as well. The spectator view now supports two zoom levels, and can be run in full screen mode by adding -fullscreen to your Launch Options in Steam. There is also now an option to draw the Spectator HUD directly in the SteamVR "VR View" window, so your spectators can see the HUD along with any other SteamVR overlays you use.

Fixed some occurrences of the player's in-game hands shaking, GPU optimizations for rendering fog, and CPU optimizations for NPCs.

Version 1.3, Content Build ID: 5035510

We are excited to announce the launch of the Half-Life: Alyx Soundtrack. Today we are releasing Chapter 1. Entanglement, which includes 9 tracks in both MP3 (320K) and FLAC formats. We will be releasing all 11 chapters of the soundtrack over the next few months on Steam. If you purchase the soundtrack, it will update with each release and you will get the new chapters automatically in your Steam Library.

More about the Half-Life: Alyx Soundtrack:

Following the story and locations of Half-Life: Alyx, the soundtrack evolves and combines industrial, electronic, experimental and orchestral cinematic pieces, alternating between abstract environmental, emotional soundscapes and direct action-oriented cues.

Owners of Half-Life: Alyx get 25% off for a limited time.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1310460/HalfLife_Alyx_Soundtrack/