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HLVR Game Icon Half-Life: VR

A highly immersive Virtual Reality mod for the classic Half-Life from 1998.

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Developer Guide

Contributing

Help with code is always very welcome.

Before you dive into the code to tackle a bug or implement a feature, please join my Discord Server Max Makes Mods and talk to me, so we won't accidentally work on the same issue in parallel.

See Contributing for more details.

Prerequisites

  • Visual Studio 2022
    • .NET Framework 4.7.2
    • C++17
  • Python 3
  • NuGet Package Manager
  • Steam with SteamVR
  • Valid installation of Half-Life or Half-Life: VR
  • Possibly something else I forgot to list.

Build The Mod

All source code lives in src.

  1. Open shared.props and make sure HLVRInstallDirectory points to the directory where you have Half-Life: VR installed.

    • If you don't have Half-Life: VR installed, see Create a Half-Life: VR folder from Half-Life below.
    • Visual Studio will automagically copy the generated files into your Half-Life: VR installation. The debugger will also correctly launch Half-Life: VR out of the box.

  2. Find (or create if not there) the file steam_appid.txt directly in the Half-Life VR folder, and make sure it contains nothing but the Steam App ID for the mod (1908720).

    • Important: Set the file to readonly, as otherwise hl.exe will overwrite it with 70 (the App ID for Half-Life).

  3. Open HLVR.sln with Visual Studio.

  4. To build HLVRConfig you need to ensure all NuGet packages are installed. Please refer to NuGet documentation if you don't know how.

  5. After building the game DLLs, Visual Studio runs DLLIncludeFixer.py. For this you need Python. Without this script, Half-Life: VR will use the wrong Steam API DLL and the game will crash.

If there are issues or if you have questions, join my Discord Server Max Makes Mods to ask for support!

Create a Half-Life: VR folder from Half-Life

Half-Life: VR is a heavily modified version of Half-Life. Building the source in this repo creates client.dll, hl.dll, and HLVRConfig.exe. For the full mod you still need several original game files as well as certain game files modified for VR.

If you don't have Half-Life: VR installed, e.g. if you are following this guide before the Steam release, you need to create your own Half-Life: VR folder. For this you need a valid installation of Half-Life. You can create the Half-Life: VR folder manually, or you can use a script provided in this repository.

1. Using the CreateHLVRFromHL.py script
  • Run CreateHLVRFromHL.py and provide the path to your Half-Life installation like so:
    python CreateHLVRFromHL.py -h "Path/To/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common/Half-Life"
  • The script will create a new Half-Life VR folder in the same location where your Half-Life folder is.
  • Some things to consider:
    • You must run the script from the src folder in a complete clone of this repo.
    • Your Half-Life installation must be a valid installation from Steam.
    • No Half-Life VR folder must exist yet.
    • You must have NuGet packages for HLVRConfig installed.
  • If the script encounters any problems, it will output an error message with a detailed explanation.
2. Creating the folder manually

  1. Create a copy of your Half-Life folder and name it Half-Life VR.

  2. Copy the sound, textures, sprites, and models folders into Half-Life VR/valve.

    • If you are prompted, confirm to override any files.

  3. Copy the actions and resource folders into Half-Life VR/valve.

    • If you are prompted, confirm to override any files.

  4. Copy third-party libraries directly into Half-Life VR:

    • OpenVR (SteamVR):
    • Client DLLS for 3D Sound:
    • HLVRConfig NuGet dependencies (you can find these in your NuGet packages folder after installing the packages):
      • Microsoft.Experimental.Collections.dll
      • Newtonsoft.Json.dll
      • MarkdownSharp.dll
      • HtmlToXamlConverter.dll
    • Steam API:
      • steam_api.dll => steamapi2.dll
        IMPORTANT! DO NOT OVERWRITE THE EXISTING steam_api.dll! You MUST rename this file to steamapi2.dll. This is because GoldSrc loads a different version of the Steam API. Both DLLs are needed for the mod to work. If they get mixed up, or if one is missing, the game will crash or simply not start.

  5. If it exists, delete the folder valve_hd.

Now follow the Build The Mod instructions above to build client.dll, hl.dll, and HLVRConfig.exe.

That should be it. If you run into problems or have questions, join my Discord Server Max Makes Mods!