Original Half-Life Ray Tracing Mod Announced
Fancy an upgrade to the original Half-Life? A Half-Life ray tracing mod has been announced, which upgrades the game’s original graphics without the creation of new models and skins.
Demonstrated in the clip above, YouTuber sultim_t is developing the ray tracing mod, which highlights the differences in lighting, shadows, and water effects with a simple wipe effect. Although currently unavailable to download, the video has raised expectations of yet another way to play the 24 year old FPS. People just can’t get enough of Gordon Freeman.
Essentially, ray tracing improves the in-game graphics, increasing realism by tracking light sources and distributing light around the player – where necessary, of course. sultim_t isn’t the only developer to attempt a ray tracing mod for Half-Life. As the developer notes on the video page:
This project is a reengineered version of https://github.com/w23/xash3d-fwgs, which is ANOTHER port of HL1 to ray tracing
Valve’s Half-Life originally launched in 1998, published by Sierra Studios. While featuring good graphics for the time, it looks a little dated now, which is one of the benefits of the Black Mesa reworking. But while this mod uses the original Half-Life graphics, the game never looked so good.
Gaming since 1984, retro gaming since 2004. Contributes to Linux Format magazine, TechRadar.com, and other publications.
