Half-Life: Source Bugs

This is a page for reporting bugs in Half-Life: Source. For bugs specific to deathmatch see Half-Life Deathmatch: Source Bugs

Note:As of the 2013 SteamPipe update, Half-Life: Source has been updated to

Source 2013 Singleplayer engine branch. This caused the game to suffering from even more bugs.
Many bugs have been unofficially fixed by using mods such as

Half-Life: Source Fixed and

Half-Life: Source Fix Pack v5.
To report new

Half-Life: Source bugs, see

Source Engine GitHub Issues page.

Note:These bugs don't exist in the Steam version of Half-Life as of September.

Weapons

The viewmodel jitters back and forth slightly when the player aims and shoots straight up.
When using the health or suit charger, if the player switches weapons, then the player will still be charging rather than briefly stopping the charge and starting it again.

Glock/Beretta

When HD content is not loaded, a part of Gordon's glove is red when tht part is orange while holding any other weapon and any weapon if HD content is loaded.
When HD content is loaded, the reload sound doesn't play.

MP5/M4 carbine

When HD content is loaded, the reload sound doesn't play.

Shotgun

When using the secondary fire, the single barrel sound plays instead of double barrel.

.357

The zoom function is available when obtaining the weapon through the impulse 101 console command. This was only available in Half-Life's multiplayer.

Snarks

The snark pickup uses the wrong world model. It uses models/w_squeak.mdl instead of models/w_sqknest.mdl. The model is in the game files and should be used instead.

Monsters / NPCs

The bounding box for many monsters is too small for them. This causes some hitboxes to be outside the bounding box. The game considers if the bullet or projectile hits the bounding box before the hitboxes since the bounding box is cheaper to compute.
Some monsters don't have their squads set up properly, which causes bugs such as the human grunt being afraid of the scientist in c1a3d.
Some monsters scream when turned to gibs.
The gibs of monsters make plastic sounds instead of flesh sounds since they were not given proper surface properties.
If a monster dies while outside the player's PVS, then that monster's blood and corpse may not exist but a weapon will still drop if the monster has one.

Apache

Some have increased health, so it takes more ammo to kill. (Maybe feature?)
Can be killed using a Glock.

Scientist

If damaged, a scientist can get stuck in a loop of trying to run away and playing a frightened animation and may keep making pain sounds indefinitely until he dies.

Security Guard

His firerate is increased when HD content is enabled.
His Kevlar vest doesn't reduce damage.
If he gets damaged, he will keep making pain sounds indefinitely until he dies.
He will not start attacking the player if he sees them attack a scientist or another security guard.

Gargantua

Its energy ball attack (garg_stomp) spawns slightly above the ground then falls to the ground instead of spawning on the ground.

Houndeyes

When they sleep, their eyelids don't shut.
Sometimes a loud screeching sound with the path of sound/player/general/sonic_damage.wav can be heard when they attack.

Human Grunts

Helmets still protect them, but when shot there are no sparks and it leaves a flesh impact decal.
Decals can be painted on a human grunt's weapon.
Dropped weapons don't set their angles properly when spawning.
The impulse 76 console command does not work, instead the command attempts to spawn NPC_human_grunt. This fails, as the human grunt's classname is monster_human_grunt.
They don't fear MP5/M4 carbine grenades.

Nihilanth

Explosives can't break Nihilanth's portal ball projectiles. Was this intended?
In the fourth room the portal ball projectiles send you to, jumping to the teleporter in the ceiling may result in the player being teleported back into the same room instead of the Nihilanth pit. Sometimes repeatedly.

Barnacles

Tongues don't render correctly.
If a monster gets caught by a barnacle and the barnacle dies while the monster is caught, then the animation of such monster being pulled or eaten will continue until the monster walks or does another task.
If a monster gets caught by a barnacle and such monster dies while being pulled to the barnacle (didn't take damage from it yet) then the barnacle's eating animation will continue until the barnacle dies or it successfully pulls a monster to the top of it.

Cockroaches

Those can overtime break boxes even if the player has not interact with such boxes, although it may take all day long.

Tentacle

Usually when a tentacle hits the player, it doesn't cause any damage.
The player can get through tentacles without taking any damage doing so.

Sentry Gun

When a sentry gun gets attacked, the other sentry guns don't activate.
The player can stand on top of the sentry gun to prevent it from attacking the player.

Automatic Turret

The shield doesn't protect those from damage.

Zombie

If a zombie who is eating gets attacked, the zombie will far too quickly go up and turn to the player.

monster_rat

appears in hazard course in original Half-Life but the entity is not present in Half-Life: Source

Sounds

Footstep, button and door sounds are inconsistent with HL1. They now use Half-Life 2 sound effects.
Music tracks stop playing after level transitions.

Maps

Hazard Course

In maps t0a0 and t0a0a, the Holographic Assistant becomes completely black instead of disappearing or becoming invisible. The Holographic Assistant also lights up when a flashlight is used on her even though light should get through her.
In map t0a0b1, when transitioning to t0a0b2, the player can see the tables spawn since those don't exist in t0a0b1 and the trigger_changelevel is too far back to hide that.
In map t0a0d, the scientist and security guards talk as if the Black Mesa Incident already started.

Prologue

In Black Mesa Inbound, map c0a0b, the helicopter floats.
In addition, during map c0a0d, the robot walking into the radioactive materials gets flung up into the air, although it's barely visible by then.

Anomalous Materials

In map c1a0, if the player presses the button to open the screen at the corner of the first room the player enters (not counting the hallways), then the sound of the machine will keep playing even after the scientist presses the button again to lower the screen.
- In addition, the scientist with the G-Man usually don't play their animations properly.
In map c1a0a, the elevator is extremely quiet.
In map c1a0b, a scientist floats.
In map c1a0d, When the player collects the Hazardous Environment Suit, the light above the suit stays green.

Unforeseen Consequences

In map c1a1, about where the headcrab spawns, the water on the ground that decreases the friction of the player is hardly visible.
In map c1a1b, if the player comes close to the door to the room that spawns the first alien slave in this map, then while being outside the room the monster spawns in, uses the flashlight on either of the two north corners of the doorframe for the door, then there will be an invisible part of the door being projected as a shadow. This piece of the door is solid.
In map c1a1c, if the player kills the headcrabs who were in the lower canal but such player didn't go up or down the ladder to get to the lower canal safely then decides to go up or down such ladder, then the headcrabs will respawn.
In map c1a1f, when the scientist smashes the headcrab with the cabinet, no blood is displayed.

Office Complex

In map c1a2, the tongues of the barnacles may get through the ceiling.
- In the same map, during the sequence of the zombie breaking the door, the glass breaks too early and the sounds don't play properly.
In map c1a2a, the ceiling turret is black and is already seen extended down but quickly contracts up then extends down again when it detects the player. Flipping the lever that powers the turret will make the turret disappear instantly.
- In the same map, if the player is infront of the glass that has the alien slave behind it, the alien slave will not attack the glass (to destroy it).
In map c1a2b, if the player kills the zombie in the room with the headcrabs over the ceiling, then the headcrabs wouldn't fall unlike in Half-Life.
- In the same map, when the player enters the hallway with the entrance to the elevator shaft at the end that leads to c1a3, the player can turn around to see a corner of a wall is gray concrete instead of yellow bricks while the rest of such wall is yellow bricks.
In map c1a2d, when the security guard moves his hands to open the door, the lever moves with a significant delay.

"We've Got Hostiles!"

At the start, in map c1a3, if you hurt the scientist who yells, "For god's sake, open the silo door..." while standing in front of him, but before he starts running away to the trip mine's laser, instead of running past you and through the trip mine, if it's done right, he'll run to the security office door and it'll open, allowing you to skip the rest of the "We've Got Hostiles" chapter if you desire.
- In addition, if the player breaks the glass that causes the fire door to close and waits for the door to fully close before touching the trigger that activates the scripted sequence for the scientist who yells, "For god's sake, open the silo door..." then the {code|player}} touches such trigger, then the scientist will teleport past the door and open it at the same time without the fire alarm sound or lights being activated.
In map c1a3a, when transitioning to the next level, c1a3b, the player could clearly see a large concrete wall that gets removed when c1a3b gets loaded.
In map c1a3d, when transitioning to the next level, c1a3a, the player could clearly see a large concrete wall that gets removed when c1a3a gets loaded.
In map c1a3c, sometimes when the human grunts get deployed by the Osprey Heliplane, they get deployed to outside the vent shaft.

Blast Pit

In map c1a4b, the two of the three silo doors on the outside of the blast silo "building" will always be open. When a player transitions from c1a4b to c1a4i, the silo door that the player went through to go between levels will close but if there is another previously closed outer silo door, then it will be open due to the transition of c1a4i to c1a4b. This causes the silo doors to appear to instantly open when transitioning from c1a4i to c1a4b through another silo door.
In map c1a4i, the Tentacle does not kill the security guard, so they attack each other indefinitely.
- In the same map, some of the brush geometry is messed up where some outer walls have almost invisible bumps that are a fraction of a hammer unit thick. This can kill the player if such player wallstrafes on the outer wall while jumping over the first gap that the player must jump over to access the bottom silo door (labeled "POWER FACILITY").
In Power Up, map c2a1b, when the bullsquid drags the human grunt, the bullsquid and human grunt will unexpectedly disappear (assuming the player doesn't kill the bullsquid in time).

On a Rail

In map c2a2, the tongues of the barnacles get through the elevator as if it doesn't exist.

Apprehension

In map c2a3a, the Crossbow is floating in the air by several hammer units.
If holding any weapon in the transition from (map c2a3d) to (map c2a3e), its viewmodel will erroneously appear to still be in your hands until obtaining the Crowbar. This bug is reported on the player_weaponstrip entity's page.

Residue Processing

In map c2a4c, Sometimes the flashlight glitches due to a really messed up shader which pretty much makes it unplayable, causing severe graphical artifacts. This glitch happens on (DX9+). This is likely due to the water since setting the mat_drawwater console variable to 0 will fix the bug at the cost of not rendering water. Another solution is to either set the -dxlevel launch parameter to 80 or 81, or to disable multicore rendering (having the mat_queue_mode console variable set to 0).

The flashlight glitch, causing weird distortions. (map: c2a4c, location: right after the timed pistons near the start)

Questionable Ethics

In map c2a4d, the button to start the experiment can be pressed more than once during the experiment, causing the experiment to go off more than once.
In map c2a4e, if the player loads a save to this map, then a trip mine will explode if it didn't explode already. This causes the room with the two alien grunts to have the two lifts go up and allow the human grunts to quickly go in the room once the player enters the room that the trip mine that exploded was in.
- In the same map, if the player loads c2a4e then loads c2a4f then loads c2a4e again, the blood from Peters on the floor and walls will disappear.

Surface Tension

In map c2a5a, the RPG spawns high above ground.
In map c2a5c, if the player moves out quickly North before the jet fighter starts moving, then the player may see for a brief moment the aircraft staying in its spawn position (not moving) then it will start to quickly move North.
- In the same map, the skybox smears. This is likely caused by the leak the map has.
In map c2a5d, there is a trip mine that has the laser end at the railings of the stairs. This is unlike Half-Life where the laser will stop at the wall instead of railings.
- Secondly, if the player uses the flashlight, then the player may see invisible breakable entities above the trip mines being projected as a shadow.
- Thirdly, there was a crate on an elevator in Half-Life that is absent in Half-Life: Source.

"Forget About Freeman!"

In map c3a1, the ceiling turret spawns at a different rotation, which makes the security guard able to kill it without assistance from the player.
In map c3a1a, the second gear that the player goes through, the player could get around it at either side of it instead due to the added space between the gear and the walls or the bounding box of the player is smaller.
In map c3a1b, when climbing to the top of the ladder on the tank and jump, you will be flung up in the air.

Before jumping on the tank's ladder in c3a1b.

After jumping. Notice that the player is higher up than normally due to excessive physics force from the ladder top.

Lambda Core

In map c3a2d, many weapons are floating in the air where it's quite noticeable. There are also two trip mines in the ground.

Gonarch's Lair

In maps c4a2 to c4a2b, the Gonarch may not attack you, may not spawn baby headcrabs(or spawn very few), and when a projectile from it hits the ground, it creates a black box.

Interloper

In map c4a1b, the alien craft will start flying around the first part of the map immediately once the map is loaded and it will not drop any alien slaves or alien grunts.
- In the same map, there is an alien slave that if killed in Half-Life, alien controllers will spawn but in Half-Life: Source, they don't spawn.
In maps c4a1c and c4a1d, the conveyor belts move much slower and some have been widened to compensate for the lack of speed.

Background maps

In background07, the Tentacle does not kill the security guard, so they attack each other indefinitely.

General

Some enemies do not spawn.
Difficulty settings appears to be broken, with the game always on "Hard" difficulty by default.
Corpses are static. The killed enemies should ragdoll instead.
Materials are set to reflect a pre-made cubemap. This is not only unrealistic, but it also prevents level designers from using HDR if any reflecting Half-Life: Source material is used. This is likely related to the bug reported on $envmap.
When using the health or suit chargers, the player doesn't get slower.
There are many entities that don't look like doors at all but if the player collides with those, then it will make a locked door sound. Many doors that shouldn't make such sounds also do. Many entities that can move also will sometimes make an unlocked door sound right before or at the same time as those moving.
If the player has "Display multiplayer scores" bound to Tab then presses it, then the player will see a white rectangle at the middle of the screen.
Many items cast shadows right through the table they're on, on to the ground.
Many surfaces are far too shiny.
The thumbnails for the autosaves in the load game and save game dialogs have the Half-Life 2 icon.
There aren't any subtitles for the characters talking.
The vending machines don't make a drop can sound when pressing the buttons. For all the vending machines except one, the player can't collect the soda cans so the player can't get healed by those.

Starting a chapter with "New Game"

All chapters are unlocked by default.
The thumbnail for the Office Complex chapter in the New Game dialog is taken from the Unforeseen Consequences chapter, map c1a1c.

Suggestions And Requests

Inclusion of an FGD and Hammer configuration