Please, Microsoft and Valve, make this happen officially :)

@rowanunderwood

7 ай бұрын

The delisting suggests that this will never happen.

@RealRoboKnight

7 ай бұрын

​@@rowanunderwoodit's not being delisted though...

@kodemasterx

7 ай бұрын

HL2 was my first Steam game back in late 2004, I replay the whole series every couple of years including the beloved Black Mesa, I really hope Valve can one day finish the story 😢

@nikolaiiscoolguyproduction4807

7 ай бұрын

​@@RealRoboKnightDid you watch the video?

@albinodino5050

7 ай бұрын

@@RealRoboKnightit was as of February of this year

Valve definitely needs to make an orange box for the modern systems, add in portal 2 and L4D2 and it would be an amazing game to introduce many to Valve. The 360 OB was the way I learned of Valves existence so I'm sure it can happen for others.

@ThePreciseClimber

6 ай бұрын

You'd think they also would've done Half-life Alyx for PS VR2.

@MightyTheWolf

6 ай бұрын

They're never going to do that lol.

I'm unsure if you're aware, but it's actually possible to disable the Xbox One X enhancements on backwards-compatible Xbox 360 games by pressing the "Select" and "Start" buttons simultaneously while in game to open up the Xbox 360 style overlay, going all the way over to the rightmost menu, selecting "Xbox One X Settings", and then selecting the "Performance" option, this will disable the increased resolution and revert it to the original resolution, it would have been cool to see the performance of Half-Life 2 and its episodes on the Xbox One X without the resolution enhancement while keeping the 60fps mod in place

@PMartinez527

7 ай бұрын

It's already a locked 60fps with the enhancements, what would be cool to see without them?

@GreenSwede

7 ай бұрын

@@PMartinez527 To see the performance increase with the original resolution.

@mrratchet

7 ай бұрын

@@PMartinez527 It wasn't on the One X but is on the Series X. Though looking at the performance of the One S and One X, it looks more like a CPU limitation so I don't think disabling One X settings would help.

@emiloguechoons9030

7 ай бұрын

@@PMartinez527 It wasn't a locked 60fps on Xbox One X, far from it, are you confusing the Xbox One X with the Xbox Series X?

@dalton2k538

7 ай бұрын

It may help the One X hit 60 fps more consistently actually.

This brings back memories. Man the 2000s were magical!

@rare6499

7 ай бұрын

Early to mid 2000’s was peak gaming especially on PC IMO

Wow half life looks amazing with those upgrades vale really crafted a game that looked ahead of its time. Hopefully Microsoft and valve could work together for an update or maybe even a remaster of the orange box.

Half Life 2 is still better than 90% of games realised these days. It's amazing. The oppressive atmosphere of City 17 and the open but lonely vista's of Highway 17 are my favourite. Not to mention Ravenholm.

@styeiwehdeisfdo

7 ай бұрын

I'd say better than 99% of games nowadays. One of the best of all time.

@infinitysynthesis

7 ай бұрын

@@styeiwehdeisfdo So true. It's been inspirational for so many of the games we have nowadays. I really hope this 60fps fix can become official. I would love to see Portal 2 with it to.

@LN.2233

7 ай бұрын

nah

@user-qu6be7yf1g

7 ай бұрын

Half life 1 is still better than 99% of games these days.

@reyjimenz

7 ай бұрын

Better games came out.

The graphics for The Orange Box was amazing when it launched back in the day. It would be nice to get an official update. That said, I do own a copy and still have my X360.

There is a ton of stuff you can do with console commands mapped to controller inputs using this method. Back in the day, I would spawn walls, change grav values, crit chance, and move speed in 2fort to make it a deathmatch arena. So fun!

@glungusgongus

7 ай бұрын

You're a GOAT for saying this btw

Thanks for spreading the word, Tom! This was news to me!

@ThorStoneGaming

7 ай бұрын

Yeah, crazy this was known a year ago, if I had known about it I would've tried it back then.

Orange box has been removed well before 2023! It was more like 8 years ago. The orange box has to be bought on the store using a computer on the Microsoft store.

I have the means to do this i.e. physical copy of the orange box, xbox 360 & xbox series x but probably wouldn't due to the game save limitation. However saying that I appreciate you bringing this to Valve & Microsoft's attention. Games such as these are undoubtedly the original classics and should be preserved/enhanced where realistically possible and made available to the newer generation of gamers as I am sure they would draw as much inspiration from them as we did.

The whole unlocking frame rate with archives thing I also tried on GTA Definitive Edition, going into the game on XSX and setting 60 fps (frame rate mode), then syncing the cloud archive and opening it on One X unlocked the 60 fps run, which was stable for the most part, but again, you can't change the game settings on the X1X or it automatically changes back to 30 fps. Normal game archiving is fine. So I think the cloud synchronization is between the archive and the user configuration, which hides some parameters that are not visible on the console, such as the fps settings. I found this method when GTA SA Definitive Edition just came to XGPU cloud gaming, I didn't have XSX at that time, so I clouded it and then found it after syncing the archive on OneX.

I love revisiting older games especially on PC at 4k 120+fps

@JustFeral

7 ай бұрын

I still play the OG Star Wars: Battlefront 2 and man it's funny how high the FPS will go.

@0Synergy

7 ай бұрын

Same, FEAR at 5120x1440 at 240fps with HDR is an experience everyone has to try.

@MA-qu3hi

7 ай бұрын

@@0SynergyFEAR holds up so dang well. I’m so glad there wasn’t a janky pc port fps cap on it

@Agent-mb1xx

7 ай бұрын

240FPS only? Your rig is fucked mate or did you forget to unlock the framerate? My 1200AF at 4.1GHz does the same@@0Synergy

@TheScrubmuffin69

7 ай бұрын

​​@Agent-mb1xx my pc does 4,500+ fps at 4k, nerd.

Very cool, thanks for looking back at unlocked performance on the 360! Makes you wonder if optimized settings could have bridged the gap to 60 fps

This is a great piece of news. I do like playing HL2 from the couch with a controller, and usually have to use the PS3 version for this. A Series X option with functioning saves, would be attractive.

@snowwsquire

7 ай бұрын

tbh you should just stream from a PC, you could get 4k 120hz that way with good textures too😊

@xportz

7 ай бұрын

@@snowwsquiredoes it play the same with a controller on PC as it would with the X360 version?

@snowwsquire

7 ай бұрын

@@xportz It should

It's worth notng that the One X supports VRR, so it still might be worth doing this on that console if you have a VRR display.

Wonderful! Thanks Tom!

A "mod" workaround built off of years of experience and tools people have created to mod Xbox 360 games working on Series X and Series S years later. This is somehow weirdly beautiful.

If MS could make every 360 4K/60 or 1440p/120 fps I would buy a Series X in a Heartbeat.

Microsoft and Valve Please make this happen officially (fan service)

Very cool as a novelty, and it's neat to see that this is done in the save file itself! Unfortunate about all the caveats (including the delisting), but at least the entire Orange Box's contents go for what, $5 on PC?

bangin opening tune choice

Yes! Many of us still prefer TF2 on 360 but 30fps is hard to deal with, this is a game-changer!

@GreenSwede

7 ай бұрын

TF2 at 60 fps on consoles will cause frustrating weird stutters if you're playing in online matches, though it looks fine if you're the host yourself.

@sickSNIPE316

7 ай бұрын

@@GreenSwede Interesting, I'll have to check it out and decide from there.

These should definitely get a modern re-release

Kinda disappointed that Tom didn't cover TF2 here, though I assume it was due to time constraints. Either that or TF2's cfg file lacks key command lines needed to unlock the framerate, likely to prevent cheating.

@DigitalFoundry

7 ай бұрын

TF2 works as well, but we had to contain the scale of the project somehow.

@GreenSwede

7 ай бұрын

@@DigitalFoundry Also worth pointing out, assuming you only tested TF2 on Xbox in a local LAN match, that it has some client-side lag issues when fps is set to 60 if you're *not* the host. I have tested it before previously and the viewmodel animations as well as the camera suffers from stutters, so if Valve and Microsoft were to ever consider an official fix for 60 fps then they really should keep TF2 at 30 fps.

@sickSNIPE316

7 ай бұрын

@@GreenSwede If I'm host, will the other players be ok?

@GreenSwede

7 ай бұрын

@@sickSNIPE316 Yes other players who'll be set to default 30 fps should be fine as far as I know

As HL3 is likely to never appear, I'd love a remake of the first two games.

@Soup-man

7 ай бұрын

For Half-Life 1, a fan remake called Black Mesa exists on PC. It's pretty cool. I recommend playing it

@RARufus

7 ай бұрын

I second Black Mesa as an excellent remake of HL1. I played HL1 a lot back in the day and Black Mesa is such a great, more modern take, on it. I played HL2 even more when it came out and it still holds up today.

@Soup-man

7 ай бұрын

Also, Half-Life 2 RTX is coming out soon. It's similar to Portal RTX if you've heard of that

@NightWanderer31415

7 ай бұрын

Black Mesa is a remake of HL1

@ThePreciseClimber

6 ай бұрын

@@Soup-man A PS5 port of Black Mesa would be neat.

That sync of the snare drum with the shotgun at 1:04 🤌

maaan could you imagine an orange box for any other game company today?

@63alkash

7 ай бұрын

3 parts each one for 40 bucks or grab your season pass just for 99,99and have them all! Plus, you can pay 120 and play one week before the official launch

@johnconnorpliskin7184

7 ай бұрын

The closest thing we have is MCC. Despite how good it is now the original launch left a lot to be desired.

@Blownkingg

7 ай бұрын

@@johnconnorpliskin7184 and mass effect legendary edition. The remaster included all previous games and DLC for the price of one.

@JeremyForTheWin

7 ай бұрын

a Supergiant box would be awesome

@corey2232

7 ай бұрын

@@johnconnorpliskin7184 Yeah, but they did way more than just smooth out issues from launch. So much content was added, including entirely new games to the collection. Halo ODST (plus 100 achievements), the Spartan Ops episodes from Halo 4, a PC version & crossplay, etc. etc. etc. They even programmed back in the OG glitches from the Halo 2 campaign to help speedrunners, and just made the overall package filled with additional Halo content. Considering how other games like Cyberpunk & No Man's Sky get praised for what they became, MCC should get the same kind of credit.

valve should make a "valve anthology" for the PS5 and XBS. it would contain all half-life games, portal games and all the multiplayer games they can bring to the new systems all rendered at 4k60fps minimum with all the extra settings they could possibly added from the PC version. it is would just be a straight port with a clear statement about the multiplayer games would not be getting any updates. the entire point would just be about getting valve games into new players hands. the thing is the multiplayer games still hold up in my eyes and i think a lot of console gamers would love a locked latest version of TF2, L4D, L4D2, DoD:S, HL2DM it would just kinda exist.

@Spr1ggan87

7 ай бұрын

Who's the port beggars now

@deathtrooper2048

7 ай бұрын

Valve would somehow mess it up, all of their games are half assed.

@imnotshub

7 ай бұрын

@@deathtrooper2048 poor bait, please try again and don't half ass it

For Xbox One X I recommend capping it to 40fps, its stable throughout the game and feels much better than 30fps

Just putting this here cos It came to mind. I was always under the impression that Valve were not making Half Life 3 because they were waiting for that technology to come along that would allow them to just create a fresh and impactful game around. Like Half-Life 2 had the physics engine and Alyx had virtual reality. Might ray tracing be that tech? We are starting to see studios use raytracing for uses other than lighting and reflections, so I feel Valve could do something crazy once like 4080 or 90 tier RT acceleration is like the norm.

@paullucci

7 ай бұрын

You're absolutely correct re: Half-Life pushing new tech and experiences. I'm not sure if graphical fidelity is enough of a leap for Valve to commit. I think that's why the newest HL game we have is Alyx. Since Alyx, my thought is that it would take the next level of physics/material interaction, VR adoption, or even possibly some sort of social aspect (or faked social aspect via AI; an advanced version of Alyx as a companion, for example) to make Valve want to push forward with a HL3. That said, if the game had these elements, I'm sure ray or path tracing would be part of the package.

@alyxoj1361

7 ай бұрын

@@paullucci Yeah well my theory kind of came from a couple of use cases of RT. In Spiderman 2, Insomniac used RT to generate 3D interiors for the buildings. Also, we have had examples of ray traced audio. I am just thinking that with more powerful RT acceleration at out disposal, I could see Valve using this to create something that seeps over into the gameplay and design. On its surface, the physics in HL2 serve an aesthetic purpose (things look good when they move) but they were able to implement it into the gameplay via the Gravity Gun and certain scenarios. So yeah I could see them coming up with some kind of unforseen gameplay implementation with RT for Half-Life 3.

@theobserver4214

5 ай бұрын

⁠​⁠@@alyxoj1361With the incoming Zen 5 + Arrow Lake CPUs and RTX 50/RDNA 4 GPUs + APIs like DirectStorage, Valve has ample resources to create a Half-Life game fully pushing the potential of raytracing and AI acceleration.

Well done Tom 😊

Nice timing. I just replayed them on PC at 2k@240hz/fps.

Can't wait for the "The Finals" and the "Avatar" reviews. I have some performance problems on my series X and ps5 but not on my pc so i don't think its server related.

@kennypowers1945

7 ай бұрын

Depends what pc you got lol. Most pc gamers according to steam can’t even run those games with 1080p 60fps graphics so you have some nice hardware

@Ast0sH

7 ай бұрын

@@kennypowers1945 i mean i have a 4080/7700 pc but its really to remove the server side of the problem and be sure it's either and io or a gpu/cpu problem on consoles. Also i know a lot of people think a pc is just better than a console and in many way its true but pc is also very wonky and enthusiasts focus for the best case. Games like Ori and the will of the whisps at 4k120 on my series on dolby vision provide me a better experience than any pc could. So yeah i will play Avatar on my ps5 even if i couldn't reach the image quality and framerate of my pc just because its more convenient

Cool video!

I played HL2 for the first time on the original Xbox. Thanks Tom, now I feeling old. Good job btw. I would ask Valve to priorize Left 4 Dead 2 on modern machines asap.

Digital Foundry + Half-Life = 🧡

Poor Tom and Ollie's videos always get so spoiled on the podcast lol Interesting video! I see absolutely no reason to do this but suoer cool that you can

I wonder if you could add MSAA by adding mat_antialias 4 to the cfg to fix the pixel crawl. AFAIK the console port's software AA doesn't work on the PC version, so it'd be interesting to see if PC's hardware AA does on console.

@Mrvideosandgames

7 ай бұрын

While not explicitly stated, it's suggested they may have tried that. 5:32

@iceman78772

7 ай бұрын

​​@@Mrvideosandgamesderp, don't know how I didn't catch that. I'll have to look at the .ekv files controlling the graphics options to check if I even said the right command. Half Life 2 on 360 actually has a button cheat code to disable AA that could be overriding it, but I'm just rambling since I don't have a copy to test.

@xbporter

2 ай бұрын

360 would always override this since it enforces 2x MSAA only when running at standard-definition, i.e. 480p, whilst at 720p it uses the standard-quality 5-tap software AA algorithm instead (which used to work on PC by default in Source 2007, but by Source 2013 Valve added extra checks to confirm you're running on a 360 in the code before enabling the software AA algorithm) Fun fact: Valve planned to support full 4X MSAA at 480p, but was forced to settle for 2XMSAA + high-quality 9-tap software AA due to problems with how their EDRAM RTs were configured.

Pausing after the 0:15 mark just to write this : this intro music was quite smooth !

The Orange Box was a magical release when it came out. The Half-Life 2 episodes, vanilla TF2, and playing Portal for the first time. Just an amazing experience.

In TF2, there is a render scale command. I wonder if you could add that and bump the resolution if it exists in the other source games to get a sort of anti aliasing effect.

@mcall9800

7 ай бұрын

Just checked, nope that was added on a TF2 update unfortunately.

@handymanshandle

7 ай бұрын

@@mcall9800 More importantly, mat_viewportscale only goes up to 1.0; it can't be used for supersampling, only for upscaling a lower resolution base image.

So cool to see the unlocked performance across the whole Xbox family.

It would be interesting to see Valve remaster The orange box for Xbox series X and PS5.

I've got the PC version of Half-Life 2 and Portal 1 and 2; now it's time to revisit it on XSX.

Very cool!

I simply do NOT UNDERSTAND why these companies don't release these games with all of these incredible boosts and features. I would re-release it and include all the frames / resolution support, it's basically free money they have already developed the game. Makes no sense.

@0xybelis

7 ай бұрын

Testing such ugrades is expensive.

@kalhamm3r

7 ай бұрын

@@0xybelis Bro they literally changed a few lines of text in a save file, and they did it. There is really no testing needed LMAOO

Mind blower: more time has passed between now and the orange box release than between the orange box release and the construction of the pyramids.

Microsoft should ask valve to port the orange box and black mesia to xbox series console it will be a number 1 sold

@coaltrain2299

7 ай бұрын

Black Mesa isn't valves, you'd need them to ask that dev team too

@GhostGamer799

7 ай бұрын

@@coaltrain2299 I'm sure the people behind black mesa will not have problems with it

@hellorandomperson221

7 ай бұрын

Just become an adult and get a PC instead of portbegging for scraps. This stoneage game runs at 4K 120fps on any toaster from 15/16 years ago. It's time to stop being pathetic, consoles are for little kids, adults get a PC and leave childish things behind.

@GhostGamer799

7 ай бұрын

@@hellorandomperson221 okay if you live 3rd world country and pc parts are expensive then tell me console are for children

I wonder if any other games, or PC ports allow for these changes, particularly some of those games that did get back compat, but may still look a lil fuzzy on SX.

Perfect timing. Played HL1 today on Steam Deck and thought it might be the time for a playthrough of the entire series.

@djayjp

7 ай бұрын

Need to check out the remake of HL1.

@kevinbuchanan67

7 ай бұрын

Black Mesa is definitely the best way to play the original

@lolcat

7 ай бұрын

They all have steam input support and work at max settings on deck

@yobama5288

7 ай бұрын

​@@kevinbuchanan67gonna have to disagree

@DigitalAsshat

7 ай бұрын

@@lolcat sure, but the tinkerer in me wants to try this save mod.

Oh man I hope they do this officially, would play Half Life 2 in a heartbeat

Cinematic mod.

Just seeing some pristine native locked 4K/60 gaming on a current-gen console in December 2023 is a nice change of pace. Also, as a recent member of the OLED master race having watched this on my C3 the game(s) look so much better than I remember. I really hope Valve does a proper update for Series owners.

Oh wow I remember using Horizon. My brother and I used it to mess around with mod menus in Cod WaW zombies and creating totally busted weapons in borderlands 2. Surprised to see its still around.

I recently installed Half-Life 2 on my Lenovo Go PC Handheld as i plan to complete it for the first time.

It is amazing to me, that upping the FPS and resolution is as simple as some config files yet companies don't do it. They would rather sell a "remastered" version for $60.

The only thing i'm sure of is there's never gonna be a SteamDeck3

If they don;t plan to re release a remaster for consoles then making it available to buy again would be nice.. though I suspect they'd bump the price up if they did.

Recently I have replayed through Orange Box on a PS3 and compared it with a PC.... of course the port isn't handled by Valve themselves, but it's interesting how many problems it has that makes it unique. I'd argue portal has the most flaws as a port, but you can still tolerate it. It's always worth replaying those games, they are exceptional.

This is a fun hack. However, pretty much everyone has a PC that can run this at 4K60 if they connected it to their TV. The Steam version has full controller support and everything.

@LutraLovegood

7 ай бұрын

4k120 even. You could get that kind of framerate with a 260X and now we have iGPUs that can do better than that.

I was able to buy The Orange Box on the xbox 360 marketplace site earlier this year. Now it seems that only a demo is available. I wonder if this fix would work on the demo?

For xbox one/x consoles you can switch between 4k and 720p resolution, by opening xbox 360 dashboard ingame. Same situation like in Final Fantasy XIII. I think you should give it a try and see results for yourselfs. :)

Valve should make a new Orange Box, an expanded collection containing their entire back catalog including the GoldSrc ones, and release it for PS5 and Xbox Series.

that soundtrack! ♪♫♪

Wonder if this would work all the time, if you make the .cfg file read only 🤔

Still one of the best games ever

Don’t know who’s still reading the comment section, but I discovered something; you don’t have to boot up a “New Game” every time, all you have to do is repeat the copying of the modified User Settings from your Xbox 360 to Cloud Storage before booting up the game on your Series console. This will force the settings to sync to the cloud again and in doing so, you’ll retain the 60 FPS as you reload your save. Unfortunately, you’ll have to do this every time you fully close out of the game (barring any quick resume). This actually makes the game conventionally playable from start to finish.

Finally!

I still have my original disk for Xbox and it still works

The 360 actually held up pretty well. All it needs is a VRR mod 😏

Uhhh buen motivo para ReJugar Half Life 2 xD! y lo tengo digital desde la xbox 360! Sin pagar! :p!

can you do this with any other games? to change native res or fov etc

Gabe? Gabe!? Gabe!!? We need you!

Lets see in five years from now how this video holds up

HL2 is now 20 years old. It's fair to say we haven't had quite the jump that 1984 -2004 gave us.......

Nostalgia

if V-sync were turned off, would it be possible to Half-Life 2 above 60fps or would it just be running the game in 60hz reducing the benefit of turning off v-sync?

@deathtrooper2048

7 ай бұрын

I know that the 360 emulator has its own vsync on by default so I doubt it.

ah hell naw they got the skibidi toilet game on the xbox series x

after rtx remix i can't go back to these visuals

Shootouts to f4mi

Done, works perfectly with some illumination issue, like close to a wall brightness goes up insanely. Any fix fot that?

Orange box would sell crazy in todays age

Would this be possible with L4D 1&2?

I was literally watching your Half-Life 2 videos. Lmao

@adriantrusca1245

7 ай бұрын

I thought you were watching FIGURATIVELY for a second there.

I wouldn't mind an official re-release for all consoles. I must have finished it dozens of times on PC, but I'd still jump on the chance to replay it and get the platinum trophy. Though I imagine Valve doesn't really care these days.

What's the song at the start? Is that from HL2?

As great as this is, it does illustrate the benefits of PC gaming. Unlocked framerate/resolution plus easy mod support. For example, HL2 VR mode which is amazing.

I remember doing this to the xbox 360 version using a modified config like this, It was fun because I could see that the xbox 360 could in fact, get a pretty good framerate for HL2! I'm surprised that the config file was so incredibly easy to edit.

Would this work on the L4D games?

Very interesting, thank you for the video! Does this mod affect achievements at all, do they still unlock normally? I actually sold my copy of Orange Box on the 360 years ago, but now I'm inclined to buy it back, as I do have a Xbox 360 still hooked up in my game room, next to the Xbox Series X.

@GreenSwede

7 ай бұрын

This will not affect achievements

good ol half life.

We need the Orange Box on Switch!!!

Can’t wait to try this out. Just need to get a 360 controller to navigate the old Xbox

@digital foundry Can this mod be done to L4D 1/2?

I’m just wondering whether this method could be implemented on other 360 BWC games.

I don't think Half-Life 2 looks particularly good in 4K without any texture or model enhancements because it was released in 2004 when 1024x768 was a common resolution. The artwork is simply not designed for a resolution this high. The 60 FPS is a much bigger update and much appreciated in my opinion.

@deathtrooper2048

7 ай бұрын

The 4k resolution would super sample the picture so on a 720p screen it would look great.

This reminds me of users modding RDR2 for PS4 to run 60fps on the PS5

I’m not an Xbox owner but that’s pretty cool.

No way horizon is still around thats so crazy I use to mod my saves the same way