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More accurate WON menu for Half-Life

By sensei 黒いバラ

More accurate original menu from WON (World Opponent Network) era with the same fonts, colors and almost the same effects recreated by me specifically for Half-Life.

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Created by

sensei 黒いバラ
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Category: Game Modes, Gameplay Basics, Modding or Configuration, Secrets

Languages: English

Posted

Updated

9 Nov, 2024 @ 7:49am

27 Nov, 2024 @ 1:26pm

521	Unique Visitors
17	Current Favorites

Guide Index

Overview

Introduction

Demonstration

Download links and installation

Possible questions

Final words

Comments

Introduction

As you all know, Valve had released a big update for Half-Life last year in honor of game's 25th anniversary. If you ask me, it's amazing of them not forgetting their golden title and giving it much deserved treatment.
I was especially excited for an unexpected return of iconic menu from WON era, which turned out to be good and quite similar to the original, but colors, effects and fonts were a bit different, so I've decided to change that.
At first, in April this year, I did it entirely for myself as a little hobby project, but recently I've thought that it would be good to share with everyone, so oldschool Half-Life fans and WON era/style connoisseurs could also have an opportunity to enjoy it.

Demonstration

Here is a couple of screenshots, which will show you what I was able to achieve:

1. Original WON menu (click on it to open a full image)

2. My recreated version for low resolutions (click on it to open a full image) — optimized for 800x600 and lower resolutions, original screenshot resolution is 640x480

3. My recreated version for high resolutions (click on it to open a full image) — optimized for 1024x768 and ANY higher resolution (even 4K, all the elements will scale), original screenshot resolution is 1280x720

Download links and installation

You can download it from my Google Drive[drive.google.com]and Mediafire[t.ly]
If you, for some reason, don't want to use short URL or it will stop working, then you can copy a direct link to download page on Mediafire (remove the space before "com"): mediafire. com/file/f8muw95ccx7qcjn/More_accurate_WON_menu_for_Half-Life.rar

Note: If you're worried about VAC ban - there's no point for that, because this modification includes only edited text files and images, which don't even replace original files, you can check it by yourself for more reassurance.

Installation is very easy:

1. Open your Half-Life directory, which is located in "Steam\steamapps\common", or go to your Steam library, press Right Mouse Button on Half-Life, hover your cursor on "Manage" and click on "Browse local files".

2. Open the downloaded archive. Now, if you're playing with resolution 1024x768 and higher - open the folder called "High Resolution", and if you're playing with lower resolution, then open the folder called "Low Resolution". After that drag the folder called "valve_addon" into your Half-Life directory.

3. When the process of copying files will be finished, launch the game, click on "Options", go to the tab "Content" and check the option which says "Allow custom addon content", as it is shown in the screenshot below. Then press "Apply" and the game will restart automatically.

That's it, you've successfully installed the modification.

Possible questions

1. Why in the version for high resolutions font is not as bold as in the version for low resolutions?

Answer: Unfortunately, you can't change font thickness in GoldSrc (Half-Life game engine) titles gradually, there's only an ability to choose between thin and bold versions. Bold version of used font is much thicker on higher resolutions (because of scaling), which, in my personal opinion, looks worse and is very different in comparison to the original WON menu appearance. So, I believe that I've chosen the best and universal option from very few options I've had.

2. Why hints are not perfectly lined up with menu options in the version for low resolutions?

Answer: I don't know the exact reason behind this issue, but it is also present in the original menu, which was recreated by Valve for 25th anniversary. The lower resolution, the smaller font size and gap between menu options are - the more visible and obvious it is. If you will look close enough, you will be able to see the same issue in the version for high resolutions as well, but not as obvious, because of higher resolution, larger font size and bigger gaps (better scaling in general). Also current recreated menu by Valve isn't really optimized for very low resolutions, that's why I've created two versions, even though majority of the people nowadays are using higher resolutions.

For instance, it wasn't like that in the original version of the game, but it had different GUI (Graphical User Interface). My assumption is that developers, who were responsible for this update, didn't have much time to polish their implementation of this idea with an old WON menu, because they needed to recreate everything from scratch and they had other tasks at hand related to other games and projects, so, it is what it is.

3. Why glowing effect is not perfectly the same as in the original WON menu?

Answer: As I've said, current implemented menu by Valve and its capabilities are not copied directly from the original version of the game, but recreated from scratch in completely different fashion in terms of its implementation. For example, WON menu literally is using BMP images for its functioning and design, while in Steam version of the game VGUI (Valve's Graphical User Interface) is responsible for that.
For this and other aforementioned reasons, this "glowing effect" and other things are working much differently, which creates quite strict limitations. In this case, if you increase value of this effect, it will add more blur and increase its range, but glowing density will be decreased and it will become more transparent, which, in my opinion, looks worse and far different from the original WON menu than current result.

4. Why didn't you use underlined characters, like it is in the original WON menu?

Answer: Because I personally didn't like it too much and I consider it unnecessary.

If you have any other questions - leave them in the comments and I will try my best to explain.

Final words