Half-Life and Steam troubles

[R4L]

I just purchased Half-Life 1 at Wal-Mart for like 10 bucks and when I install it I get this error message when I click on half-life to play.

Steam.exe(main exception) failed to load library steam.dll

It's really pissing me off. I went to the Steam forums and looked for answers but I only found ones for client registrys. Can anyone help me with this?

[Phemar]

Try contacting valve about it. That's what I did about 2 years ago when HL2 came out. They may take a while to respond, but be patient.

[Chicky]

re-install steam?

[MrColossal]

Have you installed steam in the first place?

[MarVelo]

You know that steam is a seperate thing right?


download it here. Then pay.

http://www.planethalflife.com/half-life/files/

[Nine Toes]

Yeah.  Try that.

I bought Half-Life from Wal-Mart two days ago (also for $10).

Steam is needed to play the game in the first place, so you need to install Steam first.  I only know this because my girlfriend deleted Steam while I was at work.  I came home, hoping to play some Half-Life, and... What?  "FAIL/steam.exe not found".  She also deleted my saved games along with it.  The little brat!

Anyway, then you need to create an account on Steam.  After that, you can install Half-Life and enter the registration code.  Steam will automatically download anything else you need for the game.

I guess since someone brought this up, I'm having a few troubles.  Not with Half-Life itself, but with the cheat console, and the HL mod, They Hunger.

They Hunger crashes after I start a new game.

The cheat console doesn't appear to be working...
On the desktop, under "target" in the Half-Life shortcut properties, I have this: "C:\Program Files\Steam\Steam.exe" -applaunch 70\hl.exe -dev -toconsole".
The tilde key brings up the console, and I type "sv_cheats 1".  That seems to register just fine.
Then I type, say, "/impulse 101".  It says "unknown command: /impulse 101" (something along the lines of that).  I even tried typing the code, and restarting a new game, or reloading, like you're supposed to do.  It still appears that it does not work.

Any suggestions?

[BOYD1981]

have you tried launching HL with the console command from within Steam itself? it's in advanced options or somewhere like that under the properties for the game. also, i'm not entirely sure about this, but i don't think you need the / before any code other than /god, also it's -dev -console
but then i bought HL before the idea for steam was fished out of the toilet bowl of bad ideas.

also, how are you starting They Hunger? there's usually a third party option on the game window for mods in steam.

[Nine Toes]

I know what you mean, the "enable developer console" tickbox should be under Options>Keyboard>Advanced, but on my game there is no "Advanced" button on the keyboard menu.  Although, I've been wrong before, so I'll check again.

I've searched all over google.  There are lots of sites that tell you what the cheat codes are, but when they instruct you with what to add to the target line, it always mentions "Sierra".  None of the sites I've found mention anything about the Steam versions of the game.

As for They Hunger, I installed the game into the Half-Life folder under "C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\<my user ID>\half-life\Hunger".  They Hunger shows up on "My Games" in Steam.  Thats how I start it, from Steam.  But once I get to the game's options screen, I start a new game, and it crashes... (more than crashes, my whole computer freezes up, not even ctrl-alt-delete works).

EDIT:
After you told me I didn't need to use the "/" before a cheat command, I opened up Half-Life and tinkered with it a bit.  I typed "god", and it said "Godmode ON".  So okay, no up-slashes.  Cool.  However, "impulse 101" STILL apparently does nothing.

Also, I removed "-dev", and "-console" from the command line.  Apparently, the tilde key brings up the console no matter what in my version of the game.

[BOYD1981]

I know what you mean, the "enable developer console" tickbox should be under Options>Keyboard>Advanced, but on my game there is no "Advanced" button on the keyboard menu.Ã,  Although, I've been wrong before, so I'll check again.

it's not in the game, it's in the game properties in steam, go to My Games, choose Half-Life, click Properties and then click "Set launch options..." and type all your -console related stuff there...
OR, don't cheat!

[R4L]

 

Yeah. Try that.

I bought Half-Life from Wal-Mart two days ago (also for $10).

Steam is needed to play the game in the first place, so you need to install Steam first. I only know this because my girlfriend deleted Steam while I was at work. I came home, hoping to play some Half-Life, and... What? "FAIL/steam.exe not found". She also deleted my saved games along with it. The little brat!

Anyway, then you need to create an account on Steam. After that, you can install Half-Life and enter the registration code. Steam will automatically download anything else you need for the game.

I guess since someone brought this up, I'm having a few troubles. Not with Half-Life itself, but with the cheat console, and the HL mod, They Hunger.

They Hunger crashes after I start a new game.

The cheat console doesn't appear to be working...
On the desktop, under "target" in the Half-Life shortcut properties, I have this: "C:\Program Files\Steam\Steam.exe" -applaunch 70\hl.exe -dev -toconsole".
The tilde key brings up the console, and I type "sv_cheats 1". That seems to register just fine.
Then I type, say, "/impulse 101". It says "unknown command: /impulse 101" (something along the lines of that). I even tried typing the code, and restarting a new game, or reloading, like you're supposed to do. It still appears that it does not work.

Any suggestions?

Damn... internet needed. I don't have net at home at the moment but can I do this from another computer? I knew something was wrong when I didn't use my CD Key!

[LimpingFish]

You can take your computer to somebody who DOES have internet access and run Steam from there. Once the game is installed, tick the box "Run Steam In Offline Mode". The game will run offline if its entry under "My Games" in Steam says "100% Ready"...

Other than that...

Oh, and broadband is really the only way to go with Steam. Over dial-up it'll give you a hernia. :

[mwahahaha]

For half life 1, steam is not included, you'll have to d/l it seperately, as taffytom pointed out.  I've personally had very few problems with steam(I have HL1 and 2 as well as CS, CSS and a bunch of other games).  There was a weird steam bug once that everyone had, I just kept on trying and it worked eventually.  If the problem persists, contact Valve via their website.

[BOYD1981]

i've not had any problems with steam (apart from that time it told me that i didn't have any of the games i had installed installed), but it still think it's a pile of crap and that content delivery is a BAD idea, people are going to end up paying like £10 an episode for a game that might maybe have maybe 6 episodes and be no longer than a game you can get for £27, so if you want to play the entire game that's £60 - which you have to pay by credit card which not everyone has, and they probably don't accept payments through paypal.
plus it's not a new idea, Apogee did it during the 90s.

[Helm]

apogee sent you content through the internet back in the 90s? wow.

[Flippy_D]

One of Steam's updates has made my computer mega-unstable when playing CS:S.

It's goddamn annoying. I can't run HDR effectively, and Steam randomly spikes to consuming 99% of my CPU. It just eats my machine alive.

Symptoms:
Disappearing/flickering graphics,
Occasional graphical 'splinters' - where graphics lock to the centre of the screen, pulling threads of pixels after them,
Juttering game play, especially in wider or detailed spaces.
Exceptionally fragile on HDR maps, especially Militia.

It's really VERY frustrating. I used to be able to run CSS and Steam quite easily and without any jumps worse than the short spike at the start of a new map.

Any ideas?