Fan Made Half-Life 1: Ray Traced Gets Release Trailer

It’s no secret that Half-Life is one of the most iconic and loved series ever to grace the world of gaming. The first game set a high standard, the second game took things to the next level, and the third? Well, let’s not talk about that one. Alas, Half-Life was released back in 1998, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, protohumans communicated in primitive T9 English such as “UWOTM8” and “I woz ere b4u”, and the internet was just a penny-per-minute phonecall away. In short, it was a long f***ing time ago.

A lot has changed in the world since then, and while not all for the better, graphics have at least improved exponentially in that time. You could run Half-Life on a toaster these days it requires so little GPU power to run. However, what about if you’re adding ray tracing? This kick-ass mod keeps things surprisingly vanilla, and it’s all the better for it. It has that retro look to the textures and models, which I love, but the light and shadows are absolutely on point for 2023.

System requirements haven’t been revealed, but I suspect any ray-tracing capable card will do, and there are plenty of those out there these days. It also optionally supports DLSS, which is Nvidia only, of course. Check out the release trailer below.

How to Install

1. Buy and install Half-Life 1 on Steam
   • A clean installation is preferable
2. Open its folder
   • In Steam library: right click on Half Life → Manage → Browse local Files
3. Unzip hl1-rt.zip and hl1-rt-resources.zip into the folder
   • Replace if prompted: so original configs will not interfere with HL1 RT
4. Run rt_bin/xash3d.exe
   • Press X to switch renderers on the fly

For more information and the download, head over to the github here.