The latest Half-Life: Alyx mod ports a portion of the original game in the series into VR headsets like never before.
The original Half-Life is no stranger to VR ports; there’s an excellent one for the Oculus Quest for starters. But this Half-Life 1 Alyx mod from КотЭ, which extends up to the third chapter of the game, is very different. It’s a fascinating fusion of the two games, with Alyx’s controls and mechanics meeting the original game’s environments and enemies.
Half-Life 1 Alyx Mod Footage
Of course, you can’t play Half-Life without swinging a crowbar, but melee mechanics are missing from Alyx. They’ve been implemented here and it just about works (though it’s a little confusing working out when you’re doing damage and when you aren’t). Plus you physically reach out to activate health stations and climb ladders with your hands.
It’s a strange experience, especially when you realize you can’t put the crowbar in your inventory and try to negotiate getting up ladders and through levels keeping it firmly held the entire time. Against all odds, though, it sort of works. Hopefully the developer goes back to add more levels in the future.
This is just the latest in a series of really impressive Alyx mods we’ve seen. Last time, we checked out a Goldeneye mod that was incredibly faithful, and we’ve also seen lightsabers, horde modes and much more. It’s safe to say that the game’s modding community is starting to flourish; we hope to see bigger, more elaborate fan-made content going forward.
Are you going to check out the Half-Life 1 Alyx mod? Let us know in the comments below!
Games Done Quick, the charity organization raising money for Doctors Without Borders, just featured a Half-Life: Alyx speedrun as its first-ever VR title.
GDQ has been hosting speedrun streams in bulk to raise money for years now, but this year’s summer event is the first to be held from runner’s homes due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, runner Buffet Time took the chance to run Valve’s recent return to the Half-Life universe on the Index headset. It’s fitting to see Alyx as the first VR game for GDQ, given Half-Life 1 and 2 are popular speedrun choices at the event.
This attempt ends up at just below 40 minutes; not the fastest the game’s been run but still ridiculously quick. Watch here for some seriously fast VR playing. It starts around the 45 hour, 31 minute mark.
Naturally, speedrunning VR games is very different to traditional games, but there some similar elements, like glitching past walls. It’s fascinating to see how the platform augments the experience, though. Buffet Time uses dash locomotion to move faster, but actually assigns to movement to a button, not the stick, for even faster results. The game’s intro sequence is quickly hopped through, but once we get into the meat of the campaign, Buffet Time starts ducking to crawl through walls.
At one point, he throws himself to the floor to skip certain sequences and, in the second level, he navigates the opening to the quarantine zone by getting onto the floor and throwing himself back and forth. It’s quite a thing to see.
Alyx isn’t the only VR game good for speedrunning – Superhot VR is a popular choice for runners too, though it’s never featured at GDQ. Were you impressed by this Half-Life: Alyx speedrun? Do you think you could speedrun Alyx this way? Let us know in the comments below.
School corridors are mostly absent of life these days with classrooms left vacant. Playgrounds are deserted — only abandoned swings swaying eerily in the breeze. Everything has an almost dystopian feel; it’s almost like a Half-Life game.
Needless to say, schools have looked very different lately.
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I’m watching a video from Szkoła 33, a high school in the city of Poznań, western Poland. The camera tracks through the school, taking in rows of empty tables, discarded toys, and unused equipment. Eventually, it fades out to a teacher, who welcomes the children to the lesson.
Then the footage cuts away completely, and Half-Life: Alyx begins.
Dystopia might be correct – but in fact, the game was used by Szkoła 33 to conduct lessons for children in lockdown. A total of six VR sessions in Half-Life: Alyx were made by the school to teach various subjects, with many of the videos lasting over two hours. The lessons combined live and pre-recorded material, and were uploaded to Facebook, Twitch, and YouTube
“We decided to use VR in lessons because it seemed like a good opportunity to try something new and to engage our students in online classes,” explains Katarzyna Sut, English and Spanish teacher, and webpage administrator.
“The pandemic had just started back then, the schools were closed, and we wanted to interest our students in the classes somehow. We also hoped that it would help them with the uncomfortable situation everyone found themselves in – those first few weeks were not easy for kids, being on lockdown in their homes and not able to roam freely.”
Poland went into an early lockdown in an attempt to mitigate the spread of the virus, with schools closing onMarch 11th, 2020. Online learning was made compulsory on March 25th.
A mere five days later came Szkoła 33’s first foray into VR lessons, with the teachers keen to combine educational material with entertainment value as a way to try and keep children amused at home. Still, the lessons took a lot of work behind the scenes.
“A VR studio actually came to our school,” recalls Sut. “They made the magic happen right in our classes!”
The teachers cooperated with local media company OFFshot to make the Half-Life: Alyx VR classes. OFFshot had been previously working with the school on promotional videos for recruitment, but after hearing about other innovative uses for VR, they realized it could be used for livestream lessons too.
“VR is the future of creation,” believes OFFshot’s Adrian Michalski. “Projects like ours show that VR can be introduced more widely into universal teaching.”
Equipped with an HTC VIVE Pro and three cameras, the school recorded languages, math, and science lessons, with the teachers using pens inside the game to draw diagrams, as well as teaching children vocabulary in a virtual kitchen.
It’s a bit shaky at first: Michalski explains that the teachers had never used VR before, and only trained for half an hour before the lessons were filmed – but they mainly go off without a hitch.
The debut, on March 30th, was an English class. We see the teacher explore the space curiously: she comments on the weather, explains what she (and the viewers) can see, stops to pick up objects. It’s just as the game should be played, but with a twist.
“Here’s a mug,” she muses. “I was drinking a coffee this morning.”
Then – and heedlessly ignoring an incoming call from Eli Vance – she turns to some markers, and begins to scribble some English vocabulary onto the windows.
There’s an experimental feel to the videos, and a small picture-in-picture in the corner of the screen shows exactly what’s happening in the real world: the teacher – clad in a VR headset – tiptoeing around and drawing into the empty space of the real-life classroom.
A typical scene when playing Half-Life: Alyx the “proper” way.
“This was a nice touch,” adds Sut. “This way the kids could see something familiar from their usual days.”
And according to her, the move to VR teaching certainly seemed to pay off.
“We believe the students liked them,” she says. “From younger kids to teenagers, we have seen all of the age groups of our school gather together on Facebook to watch them. Going by the emojis they shared and reacted with, as well as the comments, they enjoyed them very much.”
“We also hope they got something out of them, knowledge-wise, but as to this, time will tell!” she jokes.
Michalski agrees that the VR lessons showed a lot of promise.
“The number of positive comments surprised us. People wrote to us: ‘I have been to school for a long time ago, but I watched all maths lessons and I am waiting for the next ones,’ or “I watched the whole lesson with the children. Thank you!’
“VR in schools has great potential.”
News of Szkoła 33’s adaptation to lockdown learning spread across Polish media, and its popularity has also changed the way the school is thinking about future lessons.
“We do have plans for future classes made using VR, but their amount and the number of students involved will depend on the pandemic situation after the summer holidays,” explains Sut. “We hope to be back at school in September, and if it all works out, we plan to have regular classes, at school, using the VR technology. Preferably, all kids will be able to take such a class at least once a week, but that depends on the situation around us, too.”
If the VR lessons can go ahead in future, they will be used in classrooms and online, teaching content across the school curriculum. For younger children, says Sut, VR provides an interesting alternative to mainstream education. For older students, it opens up even more possibilities.
“We can use VR to take them on virtual tours to another country, to another planet – the sky is the limit here,” she gushes. “The cognitive process becomes more natural, as opposed to just reading about things in books.
“VR looks very promising. We are very optimistic about it right now.”
Last week a new Half-Life: Alyx mod hit the Steam Workshop called Glorious Gloves that transforms the base Gravity Gloves into amazingly powerful weapons more similar to having two Gravity Guns embedded in the palms of your hands.
To be honest, this is probably closer to what most people had in mind when they first found out there would be Gravity Gloves in a Half-Life VR game. It seems like a more natural evolution of the Gravity Gun concept than the boiled down interpretation we actually got in Half-Life: Alyx. It’s still an incredible game, but these gloves just feel more badass. According to the mod’s creator you could finish about 90% of the game using only these new gloves as your weapons and nothing else.
According to the Glorious Gloves mod page on Steam, the features specifically are Levitation, Punting, and Improved Grabbity. Levitation works how you’d think by closing your hand to “grab” something from a distance, except now it can be used from a much further distance and on basically any physics object in the game.
Then if you punch that closed fist forward/away from you, it sends it flying with force — aka Punting. You can even do this on objects you’re not levitating as a sort of shockwave of energy, kind of like air punching. Plus, tethering and pulling objects towards you, aka using Grabbity, works from a further distance and on more objects as well.
You can see some gameplay of this Half-Life: Alyx mod in action at the top of this post and the trailer created by the mod’s author directly above this paragraph. Let us know what you think down in the comments below!
The name’s Vance, Alyx Vance. Yes, modders are turning N64 classic, Goldeneye, into a VR game via the magic of Half-Life: Alyx.
The team behind the mod, which is being adapted level-by-level, recently showed off its work modding two of the 1997 classic’s most memorable levels, Facility and Dam, into virtual existence. You can try them out for yourself via the Steam workshop. Like most Alyx mods and tributes, the team’s work recreates map layouts and hopes to reproduce the feel of the original Goldeneye.
We tried out the first part of the Dam level and, although it’s unquestionably still Alyx in feel, the map layouts do an incredible job of replicating the look of the original. Watch on below for some serious nostalgia. We didn’t make it to the bit where you jump off the Dam because I can only imagine that making me want to throw up all kinds of nasty things.
This actually isn’t the only VR version of Goldeneye we’ve seen in recent months. Back in March, we reported on another game’s multiplayer Oculus Quest project, 00Quest. This unofficial tribute is actually a new game inspired by Goldeneye, but its assets and environments look practically identical for that of the original.
Goldeneye itself has seen the official remake treatment a few times over the years, most recently with a first-person shooter on Wii. Given that motion controls were already implemented, it’d be great to see a more official version of the iconic game in headsets at some point.
Before it released Half-Life: Alyx earlier this year, Valve worked on two other Half-Life VR projects that never saw the light of day.
That much is revealed in Geoff Keighley’s Half-Life: Alyx – Final Hours, an interactive app detailing the last 13 years at the company leading up to this year’s release. According to the app, Valve was originally planning to ship a Half-Life-themed minigame inside its HTC Vive launch game, The Lab.
The Lab is a bundle of free minigames including references to Valve’s Portal series. But another demo called Shooter was also being developed and, according to Keighley, clearly set in the world of Half-Life 2’s City 17. Shooter consisted of a series of small gunfights that would offer more of an experience than a full game. Final Hours states that the project was ultimately pulled from release over concerns Valve wouldn’t be able to finish it in the project’s limited eight-month development window. A video in the app shows some basic gameplay.
The second project, however, sounds much more ambitious, though never got very far. Series writer Mark Laidlaw had taken a small team to work on a new VR game set in the Half-Life universe, running on Source 2. This project would, apparently, be set aboard a ship named the Borealis.
Spoilers for Portal and Half-Life games including Alyx below.
That name carries a lot of weight in both the Half-Life and Portal canon. The Borealis was an Aperture Science Research ship detailed in Half-Life 2’s two expansion episodes and even to some degree in Portal 2. It was known to be lost in the Arctic. The Half-Life cast theorizes it may carry a powerful weapon, but are undecided on whether to find it and use it or destroy it.
In Laidlaw’s outline, this other cancelled Half-Life VR game, itself codenamed Borealis, would see players explore the vessel as it travelled through time. You’d key visit moments in the Half-Life timeline, including the Seven Hour War that leads to Combine control of the earth. There would even be a segment set after Half-Life 2: Episode Two. No word on what it was, but those that played Alyx will know we’ve now travelled a little further past that point.
Sadly the project apparently never got far off the ground before being shut down around 2015.
A third project to mention is less of a cancellation and more of the foundation for what became Half-Life: Alyx. In 2016, a small group of Valve employees started working on a new Half-Life VR prototype, using assets from Half-Life 2. This small experience was used the helped rally more of the company behind the idea of a 4 – 5 hour Half-Life VR game, HLVR, set before the events of Half-Life 2 but still using the same art assets from that game. Over time, the scope of the project grew until, well, we got Alyx.
Again, Keighley’s app contains more videos, art and screenshots of some of these early designs. Half-Life: Alyx – Final Hours costs $9.99 and details other eras of Valve and the prospect of what might be next, too.
The Steam Summer Sale for 2020 is now live until July 9th at 10PM PT with discounts across the entire storefront on thousands of games including some of the very best VR titles like Half-Life: Alyx and The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners.
Every year Valve has an enormous Steam Summer Sale with deep discounts on popular games and often even new releases. You can browse the sales and categories on the main landing page. If you’ve been waiting to pull the trigger on a pricey VR game until it gets a bit of a discount, or want to try and grab a bunch of games you may have missed for lower prices, now is the time to act. The Steam Summer Sale will last until 10PM PT on July 9th.
Valve also has some mini-game or meta-level feature alongside each Steam Summer Sale usually as well. This time, it’s Steam Points. Various things on Steam can earn you points, such as buying games or contributing to communities. The conversion rate is 100 points for every $1.00 you spend. You can then spend points on animated avatars, frames, profile backgrounds, badges, and chat emotes, or even for items from games you already, that you get to keep forever.
What’s unique about this feature though is that it’s not just tied to the Steam Summer sale — the Points Shop is now a permanent feature on Steam. However, unlike trading cards and some in-game items, you cannot sell or trade anything purchased in the Points Shop.
Here are some of the stand out best quality and value deals we’ve identified in the Steam Summer Sale, but it’s worth browsing the entire VR category listing for more. You can see every discounted VR game on Steam right here (that’s over 1,000 results in total!) and the official VR landing page is right here.
With over 1,000 games in the Steam Summer Sale it’s impossible to pick all of the best deals in one single article. Let us know what you think people should buy down in the comments below!
Half-Life: Alyx, Valve’s flagship VR title, came out a time when much of the world was shutting down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike many other games, though, Alyx’s ship date wasn’t impacted. However, a new interview reveals that the Alyx development team only got everything done just in time before they transitioned to working from home.
In an interview recorded back in April, as part of the Game Maker’s Notebook podcast, Robin Walker from the Half-Life: Alyx team at Valve talked about how COVID-19 almost had a ‘scary’ effect on Alyx’s March 23rd ship date. Although the game did end up coming out as scheduled, Walker notes that this was mainly because the team coincidentally shifted from content production to final tweaks and touches a week before stay-at-home orders started to come into effect.
Here’s the full quote:
“We [at Valve] have always tried to be flexible with how people want to work… and working from home, or at work, is an obvious extension of that. And today, so much of what we do is in the cloud and all that sort of jazz, so it’s not a huge deal.
Obviously there’s parts of the project… you know, on the Alyx team, the week we started working from home we realized if we had had to start working from home one week, maybe two weeks, earlier it would have had a really scary effect on our ship date.
Because we just happened to coincide our content lockdown (when we said “alright we’re done making anything, now let’s just fix what we have and ship”), if I remember right, just about a week or two before stay at home orders came.
Actually I guess the stay at home orders actually came a little later. It was a week or two before [that] at Valve people started to say ‘you know, I’m not comfortable coming to work.’ There were a fair few people who started doing that before the actual stay at home orders came about.”
It seems like fans got very lucky that Half-Life: Alyx was scheduled for release on March 23 and not a couple of weeks later.
If you want to hear more about how Valve adapted to working from home and insights into the development of Half-Life: Alyx, you can check out the full interview between Robin Walker and Ted Price, the CEO and Founder of Insomniac Games, on the the Game Maker’s Notebook podcast.
Earlier this week Valve released Update 1.4.1 for Half-Life: Alyx which introduces a handful of crash and bug fixes for the game and workshop, as well as adds new Workshop Documentation and features to help new modders and creators.
In the update notes Valve specifically link to a new ModelDoc Tutorial, Replacing Sound Tutorial, Custom Pistols Tutorial, and Hotspot Texturing Tutorial. All of that should aid modders that want to crack open Half-Life: Alyx and get to work on creating their own content for Valve’s flagship VR shooter.
In addition to those new tutorials, Valve added a handful of other features as well. Specifically, there is now a “data-driven weapon entity” called hl_vr_weapon_generic_pistolto be used for workshop customization in conjunction with the new tutorials. There are also now sources for “many” of Half-Life: Alyx’s AnimGraphs as examples, complex shader examples and dynamic expressions, more lighting options to Source Filmmaker, and cut down on memory usage when compiling maps from the Workshop.
Did you miss out on the UploadVR Showcase: Summer Edition? Check out every trailer, article, announcement, interview, and more from the UploadVR Showcase right here.
We’re still waiting on a rescheduled date for Sony’s PS5 reveal, originally set for last Thursday. In the meantime, let’s put our speculation caps on.
Sony promised new game reveals for its digital event, though we’re not likely to learn every detail about the console itself. We wouldn’t expect to hear a whole lot about what PS5 launch looks like this holiday season, outside of what we’ll be playing on the console. That said, we’re hoping for a few clarifications on the PSVR front.
Below, we’ve outlined some realistic expectations for how Sony shares messaging to PSVR owners. To be absolutely clear, there’s a good chance the show comes and goes without so much as a mention of its headset, and we certainly wouldn’t expect concrete details on PSVR 2 (more on that here). That said, if there is to be any updates on the PSVR side, these would be our bets.
Confirmation PSVR Will Work On Day One
We’ve known the original PSVR will work on PS5 since the console was first officially detailed over a year ago. What we don’t know, though, is what the support looks like and when it will arrive. Will Sony have a solution in place for VR fans looking to upgrade on day one? Or, with the rumored limited rollout of PS5 this year, have VR plans been put on the backburner? We’re really hoping not, and we’re really hoping Sony clears up this question at its show.
A Look At How The Original PSVR Works On PS5
Confirmation of support is one thing, but we really want to know how that support is implemented too. Will we be plugging in our original PlayStation Cameras, or will we need to buy adapters? Sony’s DualSense controller doesn’t have a light bar on the back, so will some PSVR games like Astro Bot still need a Dualshock 4? There’s a lot to pick through here.
Confirmation PSVR Games Can Upgrade On PS5
This might be the single most important aspect about PSVR support on PS5. It’s no secret that PS4 can’t keep up with a high-powered PC when it comes to VR, leading to compromised ports and blurry graphics in some cases. But PS5 changes all that; last month’s demonstration of Unreal Engine 5 running on the platform showed that. If developers could somehow patch existing PSVR titles to take advantage of the hardware, we could see a huge step forward for many games practically overnight. The same is true for normal PS4 titles, of course, but it’s VR that really stands to benefit in this department.
Confirmation PSVR Will Get New Games Before PSVR 2
Another very important point. We’re not expecting PSVR 2 to arrive alongside PS5 later this year, so does that mean there will be no new VR games on the console until the new headset arrives? That would create a strange gap in the market for VR developers and one that doesn’t seem strictly necessary. Sure, they might still have to put up with tracking limitations, but getting games like Boneworks and Half-Life: Alyx onto PS5 would be a great way to tide over PSVR owners waiting for the next headset.
A Hint Of The Future
If there was to be any talk at all of the next PSVR headset (which, again, we wouldn’t expect), we’d guess it would be incredibly minute, along the lines of a Sony executive hinting “We’ll have very exciting VR news in the future.” Just dropping a small line like that in to secure the future of the platform would be a huge deal.
What are you expecting from the PS5 reveal event? Do you have any hopes to see VR at the show? Let us know in the comments below!
