Restored Logo Video Playback for Half-Life, Blue Shift, & Opposing Force (Steam and Retail) - Windows Only

This was primarily made for the Pre-25th Anniversary version of Half-Life on Steam since that version had absolutely no video playback at all. Now that the Anniversary update has come along restoring the logo video playback, it made restoring the other logos difficult since it involved replacing two files, making sure the audio is synced, having worse audio quality, and all audio files must be mixed into one file.

These are scripts that basically have the videos play with FFplay (FFmpeg but as a media player) instead and then launch the specified game, this way the videos are played externally and are no longer tied to the limits of the Gold Source Engine. FFplay was chosen due to it's portability, compatibility, and it best emulates the original way the videos played in the WON versions.

Windows version of FFplay is provided in this download for convenience with the license and readme files, those files only apply to ffplay.exe. I take no credit for anything except the vbs, bat, and ps1 files.

Before Installing:

The zip files contain VBS, BAT, and PS1 files for the sake of OS compatibility. You choose which ones to use as you do not need all of them extracted, they all do the exact same thing just in a different way. Their code can be reviewed by opening them in any text editor.

BAT files are the most compatible and the fastest, use the VBS files to run the BAT without a console window (VBS and BAT files must stay together). PS1 files use Powershell and are more modern. You may need to allow your system to run the files, they are a little slower than BAT files.

The version of FFplay provided will run on Windows 7 to modern Windows. Therefore, at least Windows 7 is required.

Installation:

Choose which zip file to download. Steam or WON.

The script file names start with "LWM", this stands for "Launch With Movies". The two letters afterward represent the name of the games. "HL" = "Half-Life", "BS" = "Blue Shift", and "OF" = "Opposing Force".

Steam:

The scripts will launch the game using steam itself via it's Browser Protocol and not the hl.exe file directly, so any configurations and/or arguments made in steam should still work like normal as it is the equivalent as clicking the "PLAY" button in Steam.

1. Extract the "Steam Versions.zip" file into the main installation directory. This will also add the missing logo files from the WON version of the games and utilize the already existing valve.webm file.

2. Open Steam and right click on Half-Life and click "properties". Add -novid to the launch options. Do this for Blue Shift and Opposing Force Also.

3. Run the script for the game you wish to play, it must be used every time to launch the game with logo playback.

WON:

Since the media files are already there and play just fine in this version, this is technically not needed. But, this still eliminates the video limits of the Gold Source Engine, providing the possibility of higher quality videos.

These scripts already include the -nosierra argument to prevent the videos from playing twice. If there are any other arguments you want to use, open the script files in a text editor, look for -nosierra, and add the arguments the same way you enter them in Steam, a space after each one.

1. For Half-Life and Opposing Force, extract the contents of the "Half-Life + Opposing Force" folder (not the folder itself) within the zip file into the main installation directory for Half-Life (where hl.exe is located). For Blue Shift, extract the contents of the "Blue Shift" folder (not the folder itself) within the zip file in the main installation directory for Blue Shift (where bshift.exe is located)

2. Run the script for the game you wish to play.