If you want to revisit the origins of Gordon Freeman himself, you have two options: grab a copy of the excellent remake Black Mesa, or reinstall the original Half-Life, with all the glory of its low-definition models and textures. This FPS classic hit shelves in November 1998, and that makes it an excellent candidate to receive the ray tracing treatment, courtesy of the mod Xash3D: Ray Traced, published by Sultim Tsyrendashiev on GitHub.
"It's 8:47 in the morning... and you're running late. The day promises to be a hell, with a maximum temperature exceeding 40 degrees. The military helicopter and the suited men catch your attention, but not enough to escape the boredom. Honestly, your only entertainment is probably burning your colleague's food in the microwave..."
Unfortunately for theoretical physicist Gordon Freeman, his day was much, much more complex than that. Within a few hours he was not only fighting for his life, but also embroiled in a catastrophic conflict of interdimensional proportions. The first Half-Life grants us the privilege of taking control of Gordon Freeman, escaping the nightmare that is Black Mesa, fighting horrifying creatures, evading the marines who don't want to leave witnesses, and finally facing the true person responsible for the invasion.
Now, the game came out in 1998, which brings two things to the table: it runs on almost anything, and its graphics are definitely dated. Different mods have optimized Half-Life's visuals, and if you've never played it, you might feel more comfortable with its Black Mesa remake... but there's another alternative: Inject ray tracing into the original game.
Return to Black Mesa with Half-Life and Ray Tracing
The mod's real name is Xash3D: Ray Traced, a creation of Sultim Tsyrendashiev on GitHub. There, the developer explains the steps needed to activate ray tracing effects in Half-Life, which come down to installing the game on Steam, opening its folder, and dropping the contents of the hl1-rt.zip and hl1-rt-resources.zip files into that location. The final step is to run Half-Life using the xash3d.exe file inside the 'rt_bin' folder.
The latest build also includes instructions for enabling DLSS in case the framerate is too low, but considering the quality of the models and textures, I think it wouldn't be so bad to lower the resolution to compensate for the loss of performance. Sultim warns us about some limitations, such as certain compatibility details on AMD cards and the lack of support for the Hazard Course, but they're not serious issues, to say the least.
With this, Half-Life joins other titles that have already received the ray tracing treatment, among which the first Portal, Minecraft, Quake 2 stand out, and of course, another creation of Sultim, the mod for Doom.
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