Half-Life without Steam?

[Gannin]

I recently got the Half-Life Anthology. I can get Steam to work fine and I can play it through Steam, but I was wondering if there was a way to play it without Steam? When I go to its own program directory and try to run it directly with "wine hl.exe" it still tries to launch the Steam updater, and if there's no access to the Internet, it won't work. Is there any way around this?

[Mblackwell]

No.

[Brynster]

No.

Saidly abrupt but to the point. Steam is integral to Half Life counterstrike and other Source based games.

In windows you can play in offline mode when steam detects no interent access, however i have not got this to work in Wine.:mad:

[lakersforce]

There are .exe's out there that circumvents steam.

EDIT: And user-made patches that fixes the AI_Disabled bug.

So the answer is: Yes, you can definitely get half-life 2 running without steam!!

[lordhebe]

It's possible to run Half-life 1 without Steam if you get an early version, (Like from 1998 ), but it is not possible to run Half life 2 without Steam. Yes, they do have EXE's outside of steam, but all it does is launch steam plus the -applaunch command.

[Gannin]

Very interesting information. This is the Half-Life 1 Anthology, released in 2005, so it comes with Steam.

[Mblackwell]

Well, there are ways to obtain EXE's that don't need Steam. But uh... yep.

[Brynster]

Yup there are .exe files that launch HL and HL:s and all valve derivatives without Steam. The issue is using them with is a breach of the Valve EULA as they can be used to circumvent the VAC anti-cheat program. I for one as a (lousy CS:Source) player cannot and will not advocate them nor supply instruction on how to set them up and use them :-)

[eiscoldaim]

i had the same problem, since my comp that plays games does not have internet. There are programs (www.megagames.com) that will not only install the game for you without steam, but also let you play them. I don't know how they work in Linux though, as i did this through windows.

[mrThefter]

actually, all that's needed is a patched .dll, no special exe's. you just drop it into the directory where the files were created by steam, make some config files pointing to the GCF caches, and it's gametime.

of course, this violates some questionable EULA rules (heck, i bought the game, why the hell do i need internet and memhog software to play one player?!) BUT contrary to what the above user states, it's not possible to circumvent VAC. In fact, that's been the complaint of users of the patches for over the last two or so years.

[Brynster]

it's not possible to circumvent VAC. In fact, that's been the complaint of users of the patches for over the last two or so years.


Its been attempted using verious DLL's and exe files. The reason its a breach of the EULA is if you launch without steam then they cannot ban your account as you don't have a valid unique steam ID.

On the point of the bloated nature and memory hogging of steam i with you brother. I wouldn't run it if i didn't have to.

[SBFC]

You mentioned that if you have no internet connection it doesn't work.

I have HL2 GOTY edition, didn't do anything special to install it. Just copied all 5 cd's to my hdd and gave it a go.

If I'm at a LAN and fire up Steam it prompts me to start in offline mode. What happens with yours when there is no internet connection present?

It just crashes?

[Brynster]

It doesn't give me any "offline" option. It just pops up a prompt telling me that i have no internet connection, when i click ok it closes steam.

quite simple and quite abruptly.

[Polygon]

steam is neither bloated or a memory hog.

and to have steam work in offline mode, you must check the "remember my password" option in the login window, and make sure that all your games (that are installed... i think) are 100% up to date. then when you have no net connection and try to start steam it should start up in offline mode.