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Yes, it is possible on a netbook...

One of the best games that becomes an instant classic is Half-Life. The first one was a classic as was HL2. Both games were highly rated, they are still played today, and that’s because it’s good. But on a bog-standard untweaked netbook, in order to make HL2 playable, you’ll need to pop the hood and do some dirty work.

Getting a game up to speed

The problem with Half-Life 2 is that you are playing a game that is not meant to be played on a netbook. The netbook simply doesn’t have enough power, but you can definitely do something about it. The goal here is firstly to get FPS up to playable rates.

Playing the game without tweaks, you will give up in no time. With FPS around 10-15 at best even in the lowest setting at 640×480 windowed, it’s just no fun at all. However, there are some tweaks you can do to make your game a lot more enjoyable.

Let’s see some steps to getting decent frame rates,

Incremental Steps to Playable FPS

The following guide is structured in such a way whereby the steps with the highest amount of FPS gain come first. This also means that you’ll face a trade-off in quality.

First Step: Unlock Ultra-Low

The first step to successfully play HL2 on your netbook is to get the low.cfg file (right-click and save) that will help you set the graphics to ultra-low. Place this in your Half Life 2\hl2\cfg folder.

Example:

1. C:\Program Files\Steam\Steamapps\Half life 2\hl2\cfg
2. C:\Program Files\Valve\Steam\Steamapps\Half life 2\hl2\cfg

How to Edit the Target field

To automatically activate low.cfg, you need to modify/create a HL2 shortcut by right-clicking on the shortcut’s Properties and add the +exec low.cfg in the Target field at the end of everything that was there.

If it works, you should see no muzzle flash when you fire. If that fails, try the going to your *\Half Life 2\hl2\cfg folder and find config.cfg, open it up in notepad and add exec low.cfg at the bottom

The last resort is to manually activate it every time you load the game up by going to console (~ key) and type in exec low.cfg

* if you don’t have access to the console, add it by putting –console in the Target field

Second Step: Lowering DX standards

By default, the smallest resolution you can play HL2 on is 640×480. Depending on your machine, 640×480 might be acceptable, so I leave this to your discretion. However, Half-Life 2 does use a significant amount of DirectX 9 stressors that few netbooks can tolerate, so we need to add this line to the Half-Life shortcut.

-dxlevel 70

What dxlevel does is to force HL2 to lower its rendering standards to that of DirectX 7.0 standards. In layman’s terms, it means to reduce the eye candy and increase your FPS.

Lastly: Lowering Resolution

This step is highly not recommended unless you want to squeeze out the extra FPS. With such a small resolution, you’ll have a problem seeing enemies that are far away or hidden in dark areas. To reduce resolution, head to the shortcut to your HL2 game and in the target section add the phrase

-h 480 –w 320 –window

In order to successfully run HL2 in a resolution lower than 640, you need to add in the command window. The variables h and w tells HL2 what resolution you want. You could go even lower if necessary.

Conclusion

After these three tweaks, I consider the game playable, with some slowdowns at really stressful areas, though otherwise, it’s a playable 20+ fps. However, I do notice significant penalty in graphics quality, especially draw distances. It’s a major compromise if you really want to play HL2 on a less-than-suitable netbook.

Like

Extremely engaging game

Dislike

Very tedious process to get the game running well

Game loses a lot of lustre after netbook modification

Verdict

Best suited to powerful netbooks, Half-Life 2 can offer you hours of enjoyment especially if you install the mods. The problem lies in the fact that there’s a lot of hassle involved to get it working well. Best enjoyed on a desktop or notebook, rather than forced into a netbook.

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