Half-Life Tutorial: Gameplay Features

If you're reading this topic, either you have nothing better to do or you've just downloaded HL. Whether you downloaded it yourself or someone did it for you, either way, enjoy the enlightenment :).

Useful items

LongJump
Let's start with the longjump (LJ from here on). This thing helps you jump long distances, and it looks like this:

To do a long jump, press crouch+forward+jump; if you haven't changed any controls, those are the keys ctrl+space+w.

Armor



If you see this little thing or this wall charger, grab it and soak up everything it has. The thing is, 1 point of armor counts as 2 points of health (HP, Health Points, from here on) and absorbs almost all of the damage. For example, if someone shoots you with a pistol, you lose 12 HP (88 left), but if you had, say, 15 armor, you lose 2 HP and 5 armor, i.e. 2+5*2=12. If a crossbow bolt hits you in the body you die, since the crossbow deals 120 damage, but if you have 30 armor you'll be left with 30 HP. That's why armor is so important: even with just 15 armor you can survive an extra crossbow shot, and sometimes the win depends on exactly that.
(armor batteries respawn every 30 seconds)

Weapons

In HL there are 2 kinds of hits: head and body. A headshot multiplies the damage by 3, so if you shoot an opponent at 100/100 in the body, it takes 3 hits, but in the head just one.
I won't describe every weapon, only the trickiest and least obvious ones.

Gauss

The Gauss is a pro's weapon: it trains your accuracy (aim), brains and speed. At first glance it may seem like an unremarkable weapon with low damage... But not so fast! It has an alternative fire mode on the right mouse button, and without it HL/AG wouldn't be such a fast-paced and spectacular game.

With the Gauss's "alternative fire" you can:

1. Shoot and kill through walls.
   
2. Push yourself off surfaces.
   
3. Fly huge distances at huge speed.
   
4. Charge up power with the right mouse button and deal the biggest damage in the game.
   

So? Interested? :) Then let's go through each point one by one :).

1. If you've played Counter-Strike before, you know that weapons penetrate objects such as walls, crates and glass in a straight line. The Gauss also goes through walls, but with a huge difference. Take this room, for example:

if you shoot from the other side, every opponent inside takes damage, and the closer they are to the wall, the more damage they take. So if you know an opponent has run into some building and you have the Gauss, go ahead and blast the walls with the alternative attack; you'll kill or wound them for sure.
But that's not all: if you shoot at the corners of buildings, the damage radius gets bigger. Here's an example:


2. When you fire with the right mouse button (RMB from here on), the recoil increases, and the longer you held the button, the stronger the recoil. That's exactly what we'll use. Just don't forget that you can't hold a Gauss charge for long.
Say you're on crossfire, you've just come out of the LJ room, but you're short on armor, which is on the 3rd floor right above you. Hold the right mouse button, release it, hold S when you reach the top, and voila, we're on the 3rd floor! This trick is called a gaussjump (GJ from here on), and it works better if you do it mid-jump. With enough skill you can get up there with just two Gauss rounds.

If you're falling and have less than 10 HP, the Gauss can easily save you from certain death.
For example: the bunker is detonating, you hear the siren ending and know the bunker will blow up in a matter of seconds. You've just come out on top of a nasty scrape at the tunnel exit, sending that vicious Beowulf off to respawn, and you're left with 7 HP. To save yourself you have to jump higher than the bunker, but when you land you'll splat... or will you? Just hold the right mouse button for a full charge when you're about to hit the ground, and you won't lose a single HP! :)
3. Flying with the Gauss is simple: press jump and fire in the direction opposite to where you want to go, and you'll zoom over there at high speed. The more the Gauss is charged, the farther and faster you fly.

4. Hit someone in the body with a weakly charged RMB shot and they survive; hit them in the body with a fully charged one and they're dead.

The Gauss has no reload; max ammo is 100.

Egon (the vacuum cleaner)

The deadliest and simplest weapon, and that's exactly why it's disliked in Half-Life. Many players refuse to use it on principle, and people who do use it get called noobs. Let me explain why.
First, it deals damage continuously: you just have to keep your crosshair on the model, and an opponent at 100/100 dies in seconds. On top of that, when you shoot an opponent, their screen shakes and hitting you becomes impossible. Plus, the damage works like an explosion, just with a small radius, like the crossbow's primary attack, and the vacuum cleaner can also shoot through thin walls.

Crossbow

The crossbow is a powerful, accurate and aesthetically pleasing weapon :).
There are 2 kinds of bolts:

• Primary attack (left mouse button, LMB from here on): fires an explosive bolt. The bolt flies out and takes a while to reach the target, the farther, the longer. It doesn't do a lot of damage, but you can finish off a low-HP opponent by shooting at their feet.
  
• Alternative attack: pressing RMB turns on the zoom, which lets you kill opponents at long range. The shot is instant, i.e. aim, LMB, target's dead. A headshot kills a fully stacked target (100/100).
  

The longest reload: 5 seconds, same as the RPG.

MP5



A simple submachine gun with an underbarrel grenade launcher. Max ammo is 300 rounds and 10 grenades.
LMB: fires a pistol bullet, 12 damage to the body, 36 to the head; uses pistol ammo.
RMB: the grenade launcher. The damage is hard to describe, so I'll just say 2 things:

1. The closer to the head, the more damage; you can kill a fully stacked opponent with a single grenade.
   
2. Never fire a grenade straight at an opponent when you're standing close; aim at the floor or a nearby surface instead. Why? There's a weird bug that lets you kill lots of opponents: when a grenade hits a body, full explosion damage is dealt within a certain radius, and that will easily kill you.
   

Shotgun



Powerful like the Devastator, but not accurate =)

LMB: 4 pellets in an "accurate" and fast shot, 20 damage each to the body and 60 to the head,
RMB: 8 pellets, an inaccurate shot, use it only at close range; it fires with a longer delay than the primary attack.

It also has a few peculiarities:

• The only magazine weapon that lets you heal or charge up armor while it's reloading.
  
• The only weapon that reloads in parts, so the reload can be interrupted.
  

RPG

A slow, powerful weapon with area damage.
LMB: fires a rocket; aim the same way as with the grenade launcher.
RMB: turns the laser on or off, which lets you guide the rocket and makes it easier to hit a moving target.

This article was written by popa aka kanmiir ( tut moy id nax), disinfected by Nikita, and written with the support of Captain Obvious.