Half-Life: Alyx — patch notes and updates
Stored observation / content update:
Dated developer announcements recorded from Steam. Open the source for the complete update.
| Update | Date | Excerpt / source |
|---|---|---|
| Half-Life: Alyx Original Soundtrack coming to vinyl and CD | 2026-01-27 | After five years waiting in the vault, the Half-Life: Alyx Original Soundtrack is breaking into the physical world with new vinyl and CD releases coming April 24th. To celebrate, we're making the game 70% off for the next week:Physical music fans have been asking for this release for a while, and we're happy to partner with Ipecac Recordings to bring it to you in three unique editions. All of them will be available April 24th, but can be pre-ordered now from Ipecac's website. Here's a little more about each edition: 6 LP Vinyl Box Set EditionThis deluxe release features the full 72 track Half-Life: Alyx soundtrack spanned across six 180gr vin |
| Half-Life: Alyx Update 1.5.4 released | 2022-05-06 | Fixed transition from a1_intro_world_2 to a2_quarantine_entrance. Allowed Workshop Tag dialog to be resized. Content Build ID: 8694564 |
| Half-Life: Alyx Update 1.5.3 released | 2022-05-05 | Updated the Workshop Tag list, based upon the community's suggestions. Changed the method used to transition from a1_intro_world to a1_intro_world_2. This fixes addons being broken across that transition. Content Build ID: 8644003 |
| Half-Life Alyx, One Year Later | 2021-03-23 | It's been quite the year since we launched Half-Life: Alyx, our full-length virtual reality return to Half-Life. Shortly after its debut, we enabled Steam Workshop support to open the doors for the creativity of mod-makers and make it easy for players to expand on the Alyx experience. Later in 2020, we released over 3.5 hours of developer commentary, adding a new way to experience Alyx while hearing directly from the team about how we built the game. We are grateful to have been honored by our industry as well as the community of Half-Life: Alyx players. As developers, there is nothing more rewarding (or terrifying) than releasing your work t |
| Exploring some favorite Half-Life: Alyx mods | 2021-03-23 | As we celebrate the one-year anniversary since the launch of Half-Life: Alyx (more on that here), we thought it would be interesting to look at some of the great mods that the community have been creating that bring so much more life to HL Alyx. We enlisted the help of Craig Pearson, a journalist, writer, and Alyx-mods-aficionado, to play and write about his favorites. -- I’m Craig Pearson. I’ve worked for PCG, IGN, RPS, Facepunch, and more. I’m also a big fan of Half-Life: Alyx, and I’ve craved more ever since /that ending/. The community didn’t disappoint me. Just weeks after the game was released, before the official tools were out, there |
| Half-Life: Alyx Update 1.5.2 released | 2020-11-19 | Changes New honorary achievement for Gnome Chompski's upcoming journey into space on Rocket Lab's "Return To Sender" mission. Content Build ID: 5850798 |
| Half-Life: Alyx Update 1.5.1 released | 2020-11-18 | Game Fixes Fixed a case where developer commentary would appear to turn off when continuing from an autosave generated at the start of a map Correctly display commentary panel on primary hand in single-controller mode Corrected numbering of Commentary points of interest in Processing Plant map Content Build ID: 5844889 |
| Commentary Update | 2020-11-12 | Developer Commentary contains significant spoilers. We highly recommend that you play the game to its conclusion before enabling commentary As you may recall, the Half-Life: Alyx team was in the process of finishing the game when the COVID-19 lockdown went into effect here in Washington State. In fact, much of the team had already made the decision to work from home prior to that point. Adapting to this new way of collaborating meant that, while were able to get the game out on time, we weren't able complete some work, such as Developer Commentary and Steam Workshop integration. We later shipped Steam Workshop integration while in quarantine |
| Half-Life: Alyx Update 1.4.1b released | 2020-07-15 | Game Fixes Fixed recent problem preventing creating or updating new Workshop items. Content Build ID: 5292973 |
| Half-Life: Alyx Update 1.4.1a released | 2020-06-16 | This update includes some small fixes discovered after the bigger 1.4.1 Update released earlier this week. Game Fixes Fixed a regression where attempting to hack a tripmine could crash. The in-game Addon menu no longer lists templates and non-playable addons. "New Game" preferences are no longer reset when returning to main menu from in game. Several other crash fixes. Content Build ID: 5175117 |
| Half-Life: Alyx Update 1.4.1 released | 2020-06-15 | Game Features & FixesAdded option to turn off Valve Index pre-order weapon skins to the Preferences menu. Fixed wine bottle labels that had been regressed by the liquids update, and fixed several issues with the liquid shader. Fixed an issue that could result in corrupt save games. Numerous crash fixes. Workshop Features Added hl_vr_weapon_generic_pistol, a data-driven weapon entity for workshop customization. Included sources to many of Half-Life: Alyx's AnimGraphs as example content, plus usability improvements to the AnimGraph editor. Added simple example addon for audio content, plus audio workflow improvements and fixes. Added example ma |
| Half-Life: Alyx Update 1.4 released | 2020-05-28 | Game Features Added subtitles for: Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Ukrainian, Vietnamese Bottles now appear to have liquid inside them that sloshes around as you shake them. UI appears quicker when returning to Main Menu Improvements to addon management UI Game Fixes Added checks for users loading a savegame with missing addons (eg. unsubscribed or deleted) Added error message if a game fails to load due to a missing map requested by an addon Various crash fixes Fixed bug where exiting the game by closing SteamVR could generate bad save files Workshop FeaturesEnabled the Postprocessing Editor (Documentatio |
| Half-Life: Alyx Update 1.3.1 released | 2020-05-19 | Changes: Added missing tools lighting preview environments and associated assets. Fixed Hammer's "entity-only" compile mode not working properly. Fixed a bug that prevented interactive prefabs and other physics entities from compiling correctly. Fixed a bug that prevented "Start Game with Addons" from working with "Original Maps". Fixed a bug where loading a mis-configured addon could result in getting stuck at the loading screen. Fixed a bug that could cause point_worldtext rendering to be corrupted. Numerous crash fixes and other minor fixes. Content Build ID: 5050655 |
| The Half-Life: Alyx Workshop is now open | 2020-05-15 | Half-Life: Alyx has been updated to include Steam Workshop support. This includes a beta release of our community development tools, as well as support for Linux and the Vulkan rendering API, and a few small quality of life updates. Workshop and Editor Tools Beta Release Half-Life Alyx's level editing tools are now open to the community! You can create new levels, models, textures, and animations for Half-Life: Alyx, and using Steam Workshop you can browse and play everything the community has uploaded. Want to make your own VR physics sandbox or a giant Rube Goldberg machine? Design a new combat encounter featuring a dozen Combine soldiers a |
| Half-Life: Alyx Soundtrack - Chapter 1 Now Available | 2020-05-05 | We are excited to announce the launch of the Half-Life: Alyx Soundtrack. Today we are releasing Chapter 1. Entanglement, which includes 9 tracks in both MP3 (320K) and FLAC formats. We will be releasing all 11 chapters of the soundtrack over the next few months on Steam. If you purchase the soundtrack, it will update with each release and you will get the new chapters automatically in your Steam Library. More about the Half-Life: Alyx Soundtrack: Following the story and locations of Half-Life: Alyx, the soundtrack evolves and combines industrial, electronic, experimental and orchestral cinematic pieces, alternating between abstract environmen |
| Half-Life: Alyx Update 1.2.1 released | 2020-04-09 | Changes: Fixes for issues with carrying contained objects (e.g. objects in a crate). Fix for hand orientation on Windows MR and Vive systems. Fix for some missing haptic feedback on Windows MR and Vive systems. Fix for controller systems that don't have support for skeletal hand animation. Fix for exhausting GPU memory on Proton. Fix for several crashes. Fix for not properly falling back to English subtitles when selecting a language in Steam that is unsupported by Half-Life: Alyx. Improved rendering of Japanese narrow subtitles. Fixed a regression which rendered an empty subtitle panel even if the subtitles were only visible in the spectator |
| Half-Life: Alyx Locomotion Deep-Dive | 2020-04-06 | Join the Half-Life: Alyx team in a behind-the-scenes deep dive that examines locomotion and player presence in the game. Valve developers Jason Mitchell, Luke Nalker, Greg Coomer, and Roland Shaw share some of our early prototypes, and walk through user interface, audio, and player movement discoveries that led to the game's final designs. Transcription: Jason Mitchell: My name is Jason Mitchell, and I'm a developer at Valve. Today, some colleagues and I would like to share with you the details of the player movement in Half-Life: Alyx. Traversing space is a fundamental challenge in VR generally, and we have spent considerable effort on our l |
| Half-Life: Alyx Update 1.2 released | 2020-03-28 | Additions: Added full-featured support for left / right hand for movement controls, independently of left / right hand for weapon controls. To use this: Select Left / Right hand in the in-game UI, and then select the desired Weapon / Off-Hand bindings in the SteamVR controller bindings UI. Added an option to draw subtitles and captions to the spectator window only. Clarified Height Adjust accessibility options, and set better defaults across various controllers. Performance notes: Created a Performance Tips Page: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7689-WAKZ-8117 Improved discoverability of the Performance UI settings. Added b |
| Half-Life: Alyx Update 1.1 released | 2020-03-25 | Changes: Improved turning options in Preferences: - Added "Continuous Turn", and associated turning speed options. - Renamed "Quick turn" to "Snap Turn" to make its functionality clearer. - Added option to disable controller turning. Improved hand-over-mouth pose usability for Windows MR controllers. Improved the resolution of impact decals on enemies. Improved automatic detection of default Quality settings for some machine configurations. Fixed an issue where some sounds didn't play as intended. Fixed an issue where the main menu could become less responsive if you had many save games. Fixed several crashes. Content Build ID: 4815971 |
| Half-Life: Alyx is Now Available | 2020-03-23 | It's here. Half-Life: Alyx, Valve's long-awaited return to the Half-Life series, is NOW AVAILABLE to play. Compatible with all PC-based VR headsets, the game has been designed from the ground up for virtual reality. Half-Life: Alyx can be purchased from the Steam store and is available for download and play immediately. |