In November 1998, Valve released a first-person shooter that became an instant hit named Half-Life. Apparently, it is still as well loved as it was back then, and as well maintained, as Valve has released a new patch for the game....19 years later.
A brief summary of the patch notes first:
- Fixed crash when entering certain malformed strings into the game console.
- Fixed crash when loading a specially crafted malformed BSP file.
- Fixed malformed SAV files allowing arbitrary files to be written into the game folder.
- Fixed a crash when quickly changing weapons that are consumable.
- Fixed crash when setting custom decals.
This is truly amazing. Where other developers would have long abandoned looking after an old I.P., Valve continues improve the game. According to EuroGamer, this comes after the gaming community complained about small errors in the historical game.
I guess some would complain about the waste of resources on maintaining old games instead of using them to remaster them. I quite like this idea, and wished some of my old favourite games could have been patched to work on the latest PC technology, like Riven from the Myst game series. I still have the old Riven 5-disc set for the PC from when it was released, although I had eventually moved over to the PS1 version of the game.
Are there any old games that you wish they had continued patching instead of remastering? Let that thought run through your mind as you watch the original trailer for Half-Life, compliments of Brian Henshaw.
