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Since the release of the patch 1.1 from Valve, a lot of HL fans have discovered that some of their favorite mods - came from a period which could be named the pre-1.1 Era - could not work any longer with the new HL version. The main problem is that Valve went straight with the decision to make changes to the HL engine that are uncompatibles with these mods. The old mods that make use of their own DLL or of some graphical functions that Valve have decided to get rid of, cannot be run with HL 1.1 or newer any longer.
The easiest solution is to install a second copy of Half-Life in a different folder and in a version prior to 1.1 (from 1.0.0.9 to 1.0.1.6). However, this solution result in a great lost of hard-drive space (near of 500 Mb) in the unique goal to play some old pre-1.1. great mods. So, for all of you whom could not afford such a lost, this page is dedicated to an other solution.
Taking a closer look to the Half-Life installation, we can see that there is only a few files that make a real change between differents versions of Half-Life (seven files for a total of 4 to 5 Mb depending on the version considered). So why not running two versions of Half-Life from the same directory? It is possible. How? We will describe below what you need to do, step by step.
Note: for the following example, we suppose that your copy of HL 1.1 is installed in the default folder, namely: "C:\Sierra\Half-Life\".
The first thing to do is to rename some HL 1.1 files. There are seven of these files and here is which they are:
hl.exe
hl.dat
hl_res.dll
hw.dll
sw.dll
valve\dlls\hl.dll
valve\cl_dlls\client.dll
You must rename every and each of these files by adding "11" before their real name. Therefore, files names become:
11hl.exe
11hl.dat
11hl_res.dll
11hw.dll
11sw.dll
valve\dlls\11hl.dll
valve\cl_dlls\11client.dll
Renaming these files prevent them to be overwritted during the following step (because the final goal is not to get rid of HL 1.1, right?).
Once these files have been renamed, you must understand that Half-Life cannot be run any longer. So we need to replace these files and we will do it with the same files but from an older version of Half-LIfe. If you already have a second older copy of Half-Life installed in a different folder, you can directly copy those files from this folder to the HL 1.1 folder. Otherwise you will need to proceed to a new and temporary installation of an older HL version (from 1.0.0.9 to 1.0.1.6) in order to copy files from it (you should delete this temporary installation after copying files because only those files are really important).
Note: it would be a far lot easier for you to have us prepared these seven files for you to download, unfortunatly, those files are copyrighted so we cannot distribut them. Sorry.
Finally, copy the files corresponding to those you have renamed in the step 1, FROM the folder of the OLDER VERSION of Half-Life TO the folder of the NEW VERSION 1.1. Take care of the exact locations where these files must be placed.
Following this operation you will have a new fresh OLDER version of Half-Life ready to be run. Yes, that's right, just give it a try! And note the different version number in the main menu of Half-Life.
Well of course you would certainly want to recover your Half-Life version 1.1 when you won't be playing with one of your old mods, for example to play a round of Counter-Strike. Lucky guys! I've put up for you a little VB6 executable called Version Switcher that will render this task really easy. All you have to do is to download the zip file (less than 5Kb) containing this program and to extract it to your Half-Life folder and nowhere else! After that you will launch this file (hlswitch.exe) in replacement of the Half-Life icon.
CAUTION: HLSWITCH.EXE WILL FUNCTION PROPERLY ONLY IF YOU HAVE CAUTIOUSLY FOLLOWED THE TWO STEPS DEPICTED ABOVE.
Once launched, this program will present you with a some buttons representing different options. You could switch between version 1.0 and 1.1 of HL in a blink of the eye and launch HL either in normal or in console mode. The main purpose of this little utility is to allow you to CHOOSE THE VERSION OF HALF-LIFE YOU WANT TO PLAY WITH!
This executable will function with Win95/98/ME as well as with Win NT4/2000 but you must have the VB6 runtime files installed on your computer (i.e. the file named MSVBVM60.DLL must be present in your Windows\System folder - you should have it because all VB6 programs need it and there's a lot of these). If this is not the case, download the VB6 runtime files directly from this address:
ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/softlib/mslfiles/vbrun60sp3.exe
...and run vbrun60sp3.exe before running hlswicth.exe... that's all.
(Thanks to Brian Kahn who have tested HL Version Switcher with NT)
Okay, now, you have the complete solution to avoid yourself the reinstallation of a second copy of Half-Life and the consequent lost of HD space.
Enjoy! And while you're there, don't forget to check out the Nuclear Target modification for Half-Life web site for which I am the webmaster...
By Starfox - team member of the Nuclear Target modification - july 2000
Half-Life is a trademark of SIERRA and VALVE L.L.C. The manipulation depicted above is unsupported by Sierra nor Valve, so use it at your very own risk!