GoldSrc

id Tech 2 ▶ GoldSrc ▶ Source ▶ Source 2

GoldSrc

Screenshot in-game of Half-Life, using the GoldSrc Engine.

Developer(s)

Valve Corporation

Release date(s)

November 19, 1998

Platform(s)

Windows, macOS, Linux, Xbox, PlayStation 2

Written in

C++, C, Assembly language

SDK

Half-Life SDK

License

Proprietary (source code available for non-commercial purposes)

Links

GitHub page
(SDK v2.5 source code & bug reports)
SDK v2.4 on GitHub (steam_legacy branch)
GoldSrc tutorials on TWHL

Successor

Source

GoldSrc (also known as GoldSource, and formerly just the Half-Life Engine) is a 3D video game engine created by Valve in 1996. It was the driving force behind many famous games of the late 90s and early 00s, such as Half-Life, Team Fortress Classic, Counter-Strike, and Day of Defeat. GoldSrc is a heavily modified version of the Quake engine and runs on C++ (with some "C" code). GoldSrc and its level editor, Valve Hammer Editor, were released by Valve for public use, making it the source of countless community-made modifications.

GoldSrc was replaced by its successor, Source, in 2004, which currently holds first place as the choice engine for Valve modders. Though GoldSrc is past its prime, many gamers and some third-party developers still seek to use it for mods and level design.

The engine is actively being updated and maintained by Valve as of 2023, recently with the Half-Life's 25th-anniversary updates which increased the engine limits and fixed many bugs.

Screenshot in-game of Half-Life: Blue Shift, using stencil Shadows.

Screenshot in-game of Cry of Fear, which runs on a heavily modified version of GoldSrc.

Screenshot in-game of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, using detail textures and higher-definition player models.

In-game screenshot of Counter-Strike on Xbox.

Features

Todo: expand here or add links

Renderer

GoldSrc has two in-game renderers Software Renderer and OpenGL (previously three as Direct3D 6 support was removed in the 2013 SteamPipe Update) both renderers have differences.

Colored lighting - Quake simply had monotone lighting
Transparent textures - Glass can now be used in maps
Transparent Water
Water ripple
Water waves
Dynamic iris simulation - adjust screen brightness automatically. A feature similar to Source's HDR Rendering. (only in )
Texture Filtering - First introduced with GLQuake, a version of Quake that runs on OpenGL.
- Anisotropic filtering (16x by default) supported since the 2013 SteamPipe update.
Skeletal animation - allowing for more stable animation of models, compared to the vertex animation in Quake
Higher poly counts - GoldSrc allows for far more detailed models than Quake
HD models - Higher polygon and texture quality for in-game models.
Detailed textures

Bug:Detail texture rendering has been broken since the 25th Anniversary update. [todo tested in?]

Since 2013 SteamPipe Update

FBO renderer - A new method of rendering the game, which allows MSAA to work with GoldSrc engine. This also allows the game to run on fullscreen in a borderless window (which also makes Alt+Tab faster), and aspect ratio that are different from your monitors, for example, 4:3 on 16:9, will not be stretched to fill the black bars.

Note:You can disable the new FBO renderer using -nofbo command line, note that this will also disable MSAA.

MSAA anti-aliasing - GoldSrc now natively support anti-aliasing, specifically, MSAA 4X, which is enabled by default on most modern hardwares. This will reduce the amount of jagged edges/staircases effect on the geometry.
Support for Anisotropic filtering - Increases visual quality of textures at steep angles to the camera. GoldSrc uses 16x Aanisotropic filtering by default.

Since 25th Anniversary

Widescreen "Hor+" FOV
- Instead of cropping the image and reducing FOV when using widescreen, the image will be expanded.
Shaders support (OpenGL)
- With shaders support, it also fix the issues with overbright lighting not working under OpenGL.
Dynamic Shadows

Note:This feature was originally from

GLQuake. To enable Dynamic Shadows r_shadows must be set to 1

Software Renderer support on Linux

AI

AI flocking - NPCs can group together, seen with Houndeyes.
Scripted sequences - Used extensively to tell Half-Life's story.
Player Bots - play multiplayer offline with bots. (only in )

Sound System

Supports MP3 (since 2003), WAV audio files, aswell as CD audio.
Hardware accelerated audio (A3D/EAX) - improves DSP sound effects (such as removing echo's buzzing noises), and add surround sounds support (Removed since 2013 SteamPipe update).
- Requires Sound Blaster-compatible (or A3D-compatible) sound cards (but can be bypassed using workaround below).
- While support for A3D/EAX was removed in most GoldSrc games since SteamPipe update (but can be restored using MetaAudio, which requires disabling VAC to work), there are some GoldSrc games that still support A3D/EAX. However, starting with Windows Vista or later, it requires an workaround to enable A3D/EAX audio.

UI

VGUI2 - Introduced in 2003 update (Steam), Valve's custom GUI interface mimics most of the Windows controls. This will allow the game to switch between the game and the menu quicker, without switching resolutions to 640x480, which adds delay.

Programming and Platforms

GoldSrc supports various platforms, such as Windows, macOS and Linux, aswell as consoles (PlayStation 2, Original Xbox).
All, or most of the engine code written on C/C++ using Visual Studio 2010, and 2019 (since 25th anniversary) or later.

Tools

Hammer 3.x (formerly Worldcraft)
- WYSIWYG World editor
- Create world brushes
- Place AI NPCs
- Place triggers, clip brushes, logic, etc.
- Allows level designer to hook up I/O between entities to control AI within the game
- Note:While it's functional, it is recommend to use modern third-party alternatives (such as J.A.C.K.) instead.
Half-Life Model Viewer
- Full model previewer
- Rotate models in any direction
- Set up hit boxes
- View physics hull
- View normals
- Wireframe, shaded or textured view modes
StudioMDL
- Model compiler
QCSG, QBSP2, QRAD, VIS
- Map compilation tools (bsp, lighting and visibility)
- Note:It is recommend to use ZHLT, VHLT and derivatives map compilation tool (HLCSG, HLBSP, HLVIS, HLRAD) instead, as some of the tools are bugged, especially QRAD which requires light_environment on every PVS.

Other

In-game advertisements ( Counter-Strike, removed since SteamPipe) - Introduced in 2007.

Since 25th Anniversary

Increased engine limits - Valve has increased engine limitations, allowing for more entities and detailed maps.
func_vehicle entity support from Counter-Strike
Native Steam Deck support
Steam Input support - Steam Input support was added, which allows the game to support more controllers and buttons. VGUI menu can be navigated using the controller.

Versions and forks

This article or section needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality.
For help, see the VDC Editing Help and Wikipedia cleanup process. Also, remember to check for any notes left by the tagger at this article's talk page.

Click here to edit this list.

Year	Version	Company	Features	Base	Notes
1998 ^[Clarify]	v1.0.x.x/SDK v1	Valve Software	Per-texture palettes Colored lighting Skeletal Models	Quake (id Tech 2)	v30 .bsp, v10 .mdl
2000^[Clarify]	v1.1.x.x/SDK v2.0	Valve Software	VGUI Prediction-based Networking	v1.0.x.x/SDK v1	v30 .bsp, v10 .mdl
2001 (leak)^[Clarify]	Dreamcast	Captivation Digital Laboratories Gearbox Software	Compressed model textures	v1.0.1.3/SDK v1	v30 .bsp, v11 .mdl
2001	PlayStation 2	Gearbox Software	LOD models	Dreamcast^{[citation needed]}	v40 .bs2, v10 .dol
2002	007 Nightfire	Gearbox Software	Direct3D 8 renderer MSAA support	v1.1.x.x/SDK v2.0 (For PC)^{[citation needed]}	v42 .bsp, v14 .mdl
2003	Xbox	Ritual Entertainment Turtle Rock Studios	Improved lighting	Counter-Strike: Condition Zero engine branch earlier version^{[citation needed]}	v30 .bsp, v11 .mdl, .sxwad format instead of wad
2003	Counter-Strike Neo engine branch	Namco	Heavily modified OpenGL Renderer Native linux support	v1.1.x.x/SDK v2.0 Confirm:only for ver.1 Counter-Strike: Condition Zero engine branch (ver.2)^{[citation needed]}	v30 .bsp, v10 .mdl ^[confirm]
2003	Day of Defeat	Valve Software	VGUI2 Widescreen resolution support	v1.1.x.x/SDK v2.0	v30 .bsp, v10 .mdl
2003	Steam	Valve Software Turtle Rock Studios Gearbox Software^{[citation needed]} Ritual Entertainment	Detail textures Removed support for WON (World Opponent Network)	v1.1.x.x/SDK v2.0^[confirm]	v30 .bsp, v10 .mdl ^[confirm]
2013	2013 SteamPipe (SDK 2.4)	Valve Software	Linux and Mac support FBO renderer MSAA (4X) support Removed support for EAX/A3D surround sound and Direct3D 7 renderer	Steam	v30 .bsp, v10 .mdl
2013	Cry of Fear engine branch	Team Psykskallar	Improved Paranoia's OpenGL Renderer	Steam/ Paranoia HLSDK fork^[3]	v30 .bsp, v10 .mdl ^[confirm]
2016	Svengine	Sven Co-op Team	AngelScript FMOD audio (restores EAX/surround sound features) Extended engine limits	2013 SteamPipe	v30 .bsp, v10 .mdl
2023	25th anniversary, aka HL25 (SDK 2.5)	Valve Software	Increased engine limit Steam Input Shaders Widescreen (Hor+) FOV	2013 SteamPipe	v30 .bsp, v10 .mdl

Half-Life SDK

Main article: Half-Life SDK

Todo: when were SDK 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3 released?

As of August 2013, it is available on Steam under the "Tools" section. With it comes Hammer 3.4, the 3ds Max sources for many cut and retail NPCs as well as player and weapon models, tools for packing textures into WADs, and detailed documentation on implementing baseline features such as voice chat into a mod.

The full source code for Half-Life SDK (2.5), which contains changes from Half-Life 25th anniversary update, can be found on Valve's GitHub Page. Source code for previous version (SDK 2.4) can be found here.

Note:

Hammer 3.5 is the final GoldSrc-only editor released by Valve and can be downloaded separately, such as through the

Sven Co-op SDK.

Products using GoldSrc

This is the list of games that uses the GoldSrc engine.

Officially Licensed

Click here to edit this list.

Year	Title	Developer(s)	Publisher(s)	Platforms	Notes
`1998`	Half-Life	Valve	Sierra Entertainment (retail) Valve (digital)	PC: Windows, Mac, Linux Console(s): PlayStation 2, Dreamcast (cancelled)	First official game to use the GoldSrc engine. The Mac port (for Mac OS 9, OS X on PowerPC systems) by Logicware was originally cancelled in 2000 before it's was silently released for Intel Macs running OS X/macOS in 2013 by Valve. The game received a major update in November 17, 2023, for it's 25th anniversary, which fixes tons of bugs, added new maps and content and increased engine limits.
`1999`	Half-Life: Opposing Force	Gearbox Software, Valve		PC: Windows, Mac, Linux	First official expansion for Half-Life.
`1999`	Team Fortress Classic	Valve		PC: Windows, Mac, Linux	Remake of Quake mod, Team Fortress in GoldSrc engine.
`2000`	Counter-Strike	Valve	Sierra Entertainment (retail) Valve (digital)	PC: Windows, Mac, Linux	Originally was an Half-Life mod, it was later available to purchase separately from Half-Life. The game later become popular when it was released and kick-start several tournaments involving Counter-Strike games.
	Gunman Chronicles	Rewolf Entertainment	Sierra Entertainment	PC: Windows
	Ricochet	Valve	Valve	PC: Windows, Mac, Linux
`2001`	Deathmatch Classic	Valve	Valve	PC: Windows, Mac, Linux
	Half-Life: Blue Shift	Gearbox Software, Valve	Sierra Entertainment (retail) Valve (digital)	PC: Windows, Mac, Linux Console(s): Dreamcast (cancelled)	Second official expansion to the original Half-Life, as well was set hours earlier and during the event of Half-Life. Players play as Barney Calhoun, who later returned in Half-Life 2 series.
	Half-Life: Decay	Gearbox Software	Sierra Entertainment	Console(s): PlayStation 2	Half-Life last expansion, exclusive to PlayStation 2. An unofficial port of Half-Life Decay for PC developed by Hoaxer, was released in 2008.
	James Bond 007: Nightfire	Gearbox Software (PC)	Electronic Arts	PC: Windows, Mac (PowerPC)	Highly modified engine with MSAA support (up to 8X) and Direct3D 8 (DX8). The console version was developed by Eurocom and uses an entirely different engine. Is the only GoldSrc game to be ported to PowerPC-based Mac (Half-Life port to PPC Mac was cancelled).
`2003`	Day of Defeat	Valve	Activision, Valve (digital)	PC: Windows, Mac, Linux
	Counter-Strike (Xbox)	Ritual Entertainment, Turtle Rock Studios	Xbox Game Studios (formerly Microsoft Studios)	Console(s): Original Xbox
	Counter-Strike Neo	Namco	Namco	PC (Arcade)
`2004`	Counter-Strike: Condition Zero Condition Zero Deleted Scenes	Valve, Ritual Entertainment, Gearbox Software, Turtle Rock Studios	Sierra Entertainment, Valve (digital)	PC: Windows, Mac, Linux	Last Valve game to be developed on GoldSrc engine (CS Online and Nexon Studio does not count).
`2008`	Counter-Strike Online	Valve, Nexon	Nexon	PC: Windows	Free to play game based off Counter-Strike: Condition Zero with micro-transcations and skins, as well as many other game modes like Zombies. This version doesn't require Steam, and is only available in Asia. The console commands has been restricted to only some commands to prevent cheating and other exploits.
`2012` (Mod) `2013` (Steam)	Cry of Fear	Team Psykskallar	Team Psykskallar	PC: Windows	Runs on older, but highly modified version of GoldSrc (based off Paranoia^[Clarify]) with better graphics. Standalone mod.
`2014`	Counter-Strike Nexon: Studio	Valve, Nexon	Nexon	PC: Windows	Last officially licensed game to use the GoldSrc engine. Worldwide (America, Europe) version of Counter-Strike Online. Originally called as Counter-Strike: Nexon Zombies.
`1999` (Mod) `2016` (Steam)	Sven Co-op	Sven Co-op Team	Sven Co-op Team	PC: Windows, Mac, Linux	GoldSrc was later forked into Svengine since version 5.0, which was slightly different than GoldSrc, and has support for Hor+ FOV, better audio via FMOD, and so on..., as well as increased engine limitations. Sven Co-op is a co-op mod that allows you to play Half-Life, it's expansions and other single player campaigns with multiplayer.
Year	Title	Developer(s)	Publisher(s)	Platforms	Notes

Modifications

Todo: Document modifications once hosted on Valve's mod master server and what's currently on Steam to download.

Todo: Some of these mods had beta releases prior to their 1.0 release. We may want to document that too.

Click here to edit this list.

Year	Title	Developer(s)	Platforms	Notes
`1999`	USS Darkstar	Black Widow Games	PC: Windows
`1999`
Redemption	Maverick Developments	PC: Windows	An updated version, Absolute Redemption, was released in 2000.
`2000`	They Hunger	Black Widow Games	PC: Windows
	Wasteland Half-Life	Wasteland HL Team	PC: Windows
	Adrenaline Gamer	Adrenaline Gamer Team	PC: Windows
	Firearms	The Firearms Team	PC: Windows
	WANTED!	Maverick Developments	PC: Windows
	Front Line Force	Front Line Force Team	PC: Windows
	Heart of Evil	Heart of Evil Team	PC: Windows
`2001`	BuzzyBots	The BuzzyBots Team	PC: Windows
`2001`	Vampire Slayer	Vampire Slayer Team	PC: Windows
`2002`	Desert Crisis	DC Team	PC: Windows
	Natural Selection	Unknown Worlds	PC: Windows
	The Specialists	The Specialists Team	PC: Windows
	Earth's Special Forces	Earth's Special Forces Team	PC: Windows
`2003`	The Wastes	The Wastes Team	PC: Windows	Successor to Wasteland Half-Life. Project was revived and released in 2018 on FTE and FreeCS/Nuclide
`2003`	Action Half-Life	Akimbo Team Productions	PC: Windows
`2004`	Science and Industry	Science and Industry Team	PC: Windows
`2004`	The Trenches	The Trenches Team	PC: Windows
`2005`	Zombie Panic!	Zombie Panic Team	PC: Windows
`2006`	The Battle Grounds	Battle Grounds Team	PC: Windows
`2006`	Digital Paintball	Digital Paintball Team	PC: Windows
`2007`	Paranoia	Paranoia Team	PC: Windows	Features modified OpenGL renderer for better graphics, downside of this is that the custom OpenGL renderer file "`opengl32.dll`" may get deleted by the game when launching any GoldSrc game outside Paranoia or prevents the player from playing multiplayer (due to VAC, which might also ban users for custom dlls file).
`2015`	Headcrab Frenzy!	Crystice Softworks	PC: Windows, Linux
`2020`	Halfquake Trilogy	Philipp Lehner	PC: Windows
	Digital Paintball Redux	DPB Redux Dev Team	PC: Windows
	Half-Life: Absolute Zero	Cobalt-57	PC: Windows
`2023`	Half-Life: MMod	MMod Team	PC: Windows, Linux
Year	Title	Developer(s)	Platforms	Notes

See GoldSrc games category for more games, and for articles about the game which uses the GoldSrc engine.

Specifications

Limits	GoldSrc Pre-25th	GoldSrc Post-25th	Xash3D	Svengine
Engine
Maximum number of dynamic sound channels	8	32	64	N/A
Default max number of server entities (`MAX_EDICTS`)	900	1200	600 - 8192	8192
Absolute max number of server entities (via liblist.gam edits)	2048	2048	8192	N/A
Maximum number of temporary entities (`MAX_TEMPENTS`)	500	N/A	300 - 2048	N/A
Maximum number of particles (`MAX_PARTICLES`)	4096	N/A	1024 - 131072	N/A
Maximum number of beams (`MAX_BEAMS`)	64	N/A	64 - 512	256
Maximum number of visible entities in the package (`MAX_VISIBLE_PACKET`)	256	1024	2048	N/A
Maximum number of pre-cacheable models and sprites (`MAX_MODELS`)	512	N/A	1024 (4096 in FWGS)	8192
Maximum number of pre-cached sounds (`MAX_SOUNDS`)	512	N/A	2048	4096
Maximum number of entries to read sentences made up of sentences (`MAX_SENTENCES`)	1536	2048	4096	N/A
Maximum number of user messages (`MAX_USER_MESSAGES`)	128	N/A	191	N/A
Max number of loaded textures (`MAX_TEXTURES`)	2048	N/A	4096 (8192 in FWGS)	N/A
Max number of GL textures (`MAX_GLTEXTURES`)	4800	10000	4096 (8192 in FWGS)	N/A
Number of messages titles.txt (`MAX_MESSAGES`)	1024	N/A	2048	N/A
Maximum size of indexed textures	512х512	512x512	8192х8192	N/A
Maximum size of full color textures	512х512	512x512	8192х8192	N/A
Maximum number of models on the map (`MAX_MAP_MODELS`)	256	N/A	768 (1024 in FWGS)	4096
Maximum number of map leafs (`MAX_MAP_LEAFS`)	8192	N/A	32767	65536
Maximum number of entities per packet (`MAX_PACKET_ENTITIES`)	256	1024	256	512
Maximum number of spans (software renderer geometry limit)	3000	6000	N/A	N/A
Maximum number of surfaces (software renderer geometry limit)	2000	4000	N/A	N/A
Maximum number of edges (software renderer geometry limit)	7200	14400	N/A	N/A

Bugs and Limitations

This article or section needs to be updated to include current information regarding the subject because:
Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update fixes a lot and breaks other stuff.
Remember to check for any notes left by the tagger at this article's talk page.

Use GitHub in order to prevent duplicate or outdated bug reports at the wiki.

Bug:Various GoldSrc non-standalone mods has been broken with the recent

Half-Life update, as part of its 25th anniversary. Some of these games would crash on startup with Visual C++ error.
Other games like

Team Fortress Classic was also affected, but appears to work almost perfectly fine aside from HUD scaling fixes were non-functional. And another one such as

Counter-Strike, which has been fixed to support the 25th anniversary update, may have other problems and issues that can crash the game. Additionally, mods that use custom OpenGL renderer (such as

Paranoia (non-Xash3D version) and older version of

Cry of Fear, etc...) will be also crashed on startup aswell (Issues #3710).

Workaround:To temporarily fix this, select the beta branch steam_legacy on Half-Life (and in some games such as Counter-Strike) by going to Half-Life > Properties... > Betas > select steam_legacy. Once those games has been fixed, you can opt out by set the beta branch to "None".

[todo tested in?]

Bug:Overbright lighting (gl_overbright 1) is broken due to an OpenGL extension used for multi-texturing, which is required for the detail textures used by

Counter-Strike: Condition Zero,

Day of Defeat, and some third-party mods.
This make the color less saturated and lighting much less brighter, as well as introduce chromatic aberration on brightly lit lightmaps.
The issue was fixed in the 25th anniversary update, which deprecated the gl_overbright 1 in favor of gl_use_shaders 1. However, there are more issues that was yet to be fixed with the new overbright lighting.
This issue can be also found on GLQuake, but for different reasons.

Workaround:To fix this for the older version of

Half-Life (steam_legacy branch) and most standalone mods, see

Overbright lighting section in PCGamingWiki's Half-Life page for more information.

Important:Please note that using DLL-based solutions in

VAC-protected multiplayer servers may result in a false positive ban. Use -insecure to disable VAC for local servers. This is not an issue for singleplayer, which is unaffected by VAC. Additionally, GPU driver hacks do not trigger VAC.

Note:Even though the overbright was properly fixed with the 25th anniversary update and with the November 19 hotfix patch, which fixes the brightness issues after enabling overbright, along with another one that fixed the underwater fog bug, models may not be affected by the overbright lighting.

[todo tested in?]

Bug:On some systems running

Windows Vista or later, the engine may suffer from extremely low frame rates during gameplay, especially on Intel iGPUs.

Workaround:

Set the game (hl.exe) to "High Priority" in Task Manager.
Disable multitexturing.

[todo tested in?]

Bug:Creative EAX and Aureal A3D Audio are no longer supported since SteamPipe update in 2013. This also removes support for surround sound, and drastically impacts how certain DSP effects sound (such as buzzing noises on DSP's Weirdo 1-3). A feature request about restoring EAX/A3D sound can be found at GitHub (issue #38).

Workaround:Use MetaAudio; see the

Audio section on PCGamingWiki's Half-Life page for more information.

Important:Please note that using MetaAudio in

VAC-protected multiplayer servers may result in a false positive ban. Use -insecure to disable VAC for local servers. This is not an issue for singleplayer, which is unaffected by VAC.

[todo tested in?]

Bug:Running any GoldSrc game other than

Half-Life over around 100-120FPS or higher can cause issues with movable objects (and prior to October 8, 2019 update, NPC turn rate), being slower or faster. Player movements in

Counter-Strike,

Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and

Condition Zero Deleted Scenes, after jumping, will be much slower than normal for few seconds.

Note:NPC turn rate bug will remains existed on most older, non-standalone mods (which was made on a older version of GoldSrc/HL SDK) when loaded on current version of HL1 (or other GoldSrc games) that have this bug fixed unless the dlls file (hl.dll and client.dll) on the mod folder itself was renamed. But keep in mind that this method may breaks some mods and cause it to crash, or made several new additions such as new weapons, new NPCs, etc... from the mod stops working.

[todo tested in?]

Important:OpenGL mode is somewhat different from software mode. Furthermore, the wave effect on water does not work with software renderer. See patbytes's "Half-Life - A Look at Water" on YouTube. Issue 2165.

Trivia

The term "GoldSrc" comes from development of the Source engine. A few months before the release of Half-Life, the Half-Life engine's source code was split into two branches: Src and GoldSrc. The GoldSrc branch was the gold master version of the codebase, and would be used for the proper release of the game. The Src branch, comparatively, would be continually iterated upon, adding and changing features for use in the sequel, with the term "Source Engine" eventually being picked up by marketing.^[1]

External links

Source code + GitHub Issues - bug reports and the GoldSrc source code can be found here.

References

User talk:Erik Johnson (Revision as of 12:53, 1 September 2005)
Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update
Relation between Paranoia & COF

GoldSrc

Contents