🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi all!

Please excuse my cross-posting to several groups but these groups have 
had the most discussion regarding problems with playing Half Life on an 
A3D capable card.  And I want to take a moment to give everyone the facts 
on what is going on with this.

1) Half Life will play in A3D mode on any true A3D-capable card.  Even 
though Half Life only supports A3D 2.0, this is not an issue.  We 
designed A3D 2.0 to take advantage of new features, but also be backwards 
compatible with our existing products.  This means that if your sound 
card uses the Vortex 1 chipset (TB Montego, Diamond Sonic Impact S90, 
Orchid NuSound PCI, Aztech PCI 338, Xitel Storm VX, etc...), or uses the 
Oak OTI-610 chipset (Xitel Storm PCI), or uses the Diamond Freedom PCI 
chipset (Monster Sound, M80, MX200), then you will be able to play A3D 
2.0 games as long as you have our A3D 2.0 drivers.

2) Our new Vortex 2 chipset can take advantage of all the new features of 
A3D 2.0.  The other cards I mentioned above are currently able to take 
advantage of A3D 2.0 direct path and occlusions; they cannot handle 
reflections.  None of our products can currently take advantage of EAX, 
but it makes little difference in Half Life because Valve Software's 
programmers did a great job on their software reverb in the game; it 
sounds absolutely fantastic on any sound card.

3) We are committed to working with Valve Software to iron out any issues 
we find with Half Life and our products.  The first patch released for 
Half Life fixed problems with some muffled audio in the underwater areas 
of the game.  We have also introduced new A3D drivers which will keep the 
A3D enable box checked.  There should be no outstanding issues in regards 
to Half Life and Vortex 1-based and Vortex 2-based cards.  We have also 
worked with Valve on a fix for the Monster Sound cards and if it passes 
QA, should be available as a patch soon.


Here's how to make sure your system is set up for playing Half Life.

-> Install the game, and download and apply the game patch.  The game has 
an Auto-Update feature or you can download the patch from various sites 
on the Internet.

-> Make sure you are using the latest audio drivers for your sound card. 
 If you need drivers or links to your sound card manufacturer's web site, 
please visit our web site.

-> Download the new A3D drivers from your web site.  Currently, there is 
no README file enclosed, but I will address that ASAP.  The way to 
install these new drivers is simply copy the A3D.VXD and A3D.DLL files in 
to your Windows System folder, replacing the ones already there.  Copy 
the A3DAPI.DLL file in to your Half Life game directory, replacing the 
one already there.  You must make sure you replace the A3DAPI.DLL file in 
the Half Life directory with the new one!

-> Restart your system, and you should be able to start Half Life, check 
the A3D enable box and enjoy!


I hope this clears up some stuff for you in regards to Half Life and A3D. 
 We at Aureal have been enjoying playing the game and we know you want to 
as well.  Hopefully, this will help those people still experiencing 
problems.  If not, please feel free to email me and I will see if I can 
help you.  And again, sorry for the long post.

Thanks!  Happy gaming!


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David A Gasior                           h: dgasior@home.com
Developer Relations, Aureal               w: dgasior@a3d.com
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Please note that this post reflects my own opinions, and not
necessarily those of my employer.