Friends,
Hope this is an appropriate place to ask the question..
I have a legal copy of HL2, but utterly detest Steam. Even though I bought the thing, the initial install (as you will recall) is 5 discs long. OK. No big deal 20 minutes or so.
But the next step is the unbelievably endless (2.5 hrs plus) process of "steamifying" the bloody files. Ok. I suffered through this once. Something went slightly wrong towards the end (not even sure what), and I had to start again!
Another 2.5 hrs and 2 days later, I finally start a game.
Again, an interminible "steam" experience that involved having Steam "check for updates" (that i neither need nor want), "verify" (my legally bought game, that they have already determined is legal), and the "load" (and "load" and "load"). I start the game and enjoy it immensely.
I come back the next day, go through the whole bloody steam rigamarole, only to have the system stop for an even longer time on "loading". So long in fact that it did not load. Beautiful.
Hang on there. Here's what I did next.
Discovered a way to bypass our old friend Steam altogether (too complicated to go into at this point), and it seemed to work!
[clicking] on the HL2 icon almost immediately brought up the game (which I run w/ -developer 1); but no map loads or shows as valid.
Then, I get this message:
CModelLoader::Map_IsValid: 'd1_trainstation_01' is not a valid BSP
and nothing loads.
I've checked the \maps folde and everything appears to be in place.
There must be a way to tell HL2 that these are real files... they certainly look like real files...
Or have I been foiled again by the odious Steam!?....
I'd really like NOT to have to reinstall w/ Steam, so any wisdom on the subject would be greatly appreciated.
Linear Mode
