Half-Life 2 With New Features and Fixes for „Perennial” Bugs; Valve Refreshes Game for Steam Deck
Valve has released a beta of an update for Half-Life 2. The new patch was designed for the Steam Deck, but with a lot of improvements that fans have been asking for for years.
- Changes in resolution and interface to adapt the game to Steam Deck;
- Ultrawide resolution support;
- Bug fixes;
- FOV increased to 110;
- Vulkan API support.
Valve has quietly released a new update for Half-Life 2. For now, it is only available as a test version, within the so-called "beta branch", and in order to install it you must activate this feature in the Steam client. Everything indicates that the patch was created mainly to adapt the game to the upcoming Steam Deck platform. However, many of the game's new features are also beneficial for people playing on standard PCs.
The patch has modified the interface to make texts more readable on Steam Deck. HUD position is no longer locked permanently and scales appropriately to any screen aspect ratio. The lack of this feature was causing a lot of problems and players have been asking for changes for many years. Ultrawide resolution support has been added, the maximum Field of View/FOV available in the menu has been increased to 110, and several visual issues in maps have been fixed.
Support for the Vulkan API has also been added, which should guarantee good performance on Steam Deck, since this device uses Linux.
It is worth noting that earlier Vulkan support was introduced to Portal 2, so there is a good chance that Valve will implement this feature to its other productions as well.
Recall that a few days ago the studio revealed a compatibility classification system for games on Steam Deck. Games will be divided into four categories: verified, playable, unplayable and status unknown. Valve has hired additional testers and created an internal team whose task will be to check all productions available on Steam in this regard.
