Half-life 2 steamless install.
As I said above, just follow these directions and you’ll get an installation of half-life 2 that works without steam and works without the CD/dvd-checks.
First, you need following:
- Encrypted GCF files from original half-life 2 cds/DVD or from steam download.
- WinRar/Winzip archive manager (freeware)
- hlunp.exe tool (unpacker, part of this archive)
- steam.dll part (emulator, of this archive)
Getting encrypted GCF files
You'll need the following GCF's; copy them into a directory like C:\HL2\GCF and rename them to the following:
base source shared.gcf -> base_source_shared.gcf
base source shared materials.gcf -> base_source_shared_materials.gcf
base source shared models.gcf -> base_source_shared_models.gcf
base source shared sounds.gcf -> base_source_shared_sounds.gcf
and half-life 2 base content.gcf -> halflife_2_base_content.gcf
- This program should take care of that. If it doesn't you'll have to do it each one, manually. Just select the file in Windows Explorer, press F2 and eliminate the spaces and put in it's place the underscore.
- Or if you like to do it from the command prompt, type in:
ren "base source shared.gcf" base_source_shared.gcf
And Prest-o Change-O, it's magic! Get ready for the fun stuff!
- If you have installed but not activated half-life 2, these files are located in Steam\SteamApps directory. Copy all GCF files from there and uninstall steam and Half-life 2 completely.
- If you have the original DVD, then you can extract the GCF files from HL2x.CAB file. Start WinRar and open the hl2.cab file. Extract all files. Repeat this for hl22.cab – hl25.cab files. From every file extract all the files except the ones marked with “<--”.
Unpacking GCF files
- Make an empty folder where you want to install a game. I suggest something like C:\HL2\HL2_source . Then execute the provided unpackhl2.cmd command with parameters “unpackhl2.cmd <Path to directory with GCF files> <Path to target directory>”. You need to type this in command line prompt.
It should look like this:
C:\HL2\HL2_source>unpackhl2.cmd C:\HL2\GCF C:\HL2\HL2_source
If you don’t know what command-line is, use the provided shortcut. Just type in the location of your HL2 GCF files and this command.
- Wait awhile (about 10 minutes) and you will get a folder “root” created in the directory you specified. Look, there's a file called “hl2.exe” inside!
- Copy the provided steam.dll into the “root\bin” folder (it is a “bin” folder just next to hl2.exe file).
- Create a shortcut to hl2.exe file (right-click on it and select "create shortcut" then right-click on the shortcut and select properties, and click the shortcut tab) with the parameters “-steam” (change the target to say : C:\HL2\HL2_source\HL2.exe -steam ).
Congratulations, you just created a playable half-life 2 installation that does not require stupid steam or CD/dvd or internet connection to play. Notice that we never even installed steam! Woohoo! If you have it installed, uninstall this piece of crap as soon as possible. and enjoy your game!
About
Special thanks to Gizma for the tools and great idea. I had to put it all together. It wasn't until I figured out that the unpack command needed different names for the files that it finally worked for me.
This package is dedicated to Valve.
Dear Valve. Let me emphasize how happy we are with your steam service. It was such a pleasure for us to learn that we need to download and install a bunch of crap in order to play the game we bought. Thank you for rewarding people who brought a DVD with the best reward one can imagine – give them a special version of hl2.exe that has a securom protection on it, while having generic unprotected version on DVD, so people who pirated it can easily use it. Thank you for making such an install process totally bogus and irritating, and thank you for maintaining your servers with such a great availability. Please, continue to put activation and encryption in any game you’re going to release – we really love that. We'll always find a way around it...
- "..Ah-hem-hem! 'Screw all y'alls!'" - Strong Bad
http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail22.html
http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail22.swf
download:
http://free.hostultra.com/~dude55/HL..._daGamesta.zip