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Half-Life 2: Year Long Alarm

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Half-Life 2: Year Long Alarm
Half-Life 2: Year Long Alarm cover
Developers
Chuck Wilson
Engines
Source
Release dates
Windows April 4, 2012
Taxonomy
Microtransactions None
Modes Singleplayer
Pacing Real-time
Perspectives First-person
Controls Direct control
Genres Shooter
Art styles Realistic
Themes Eastern Europe, Post-apocalyptic, Sci-fi
Series Half-Life mods and fangames
Subseries of Half-Life
Sven Co-op 1999
Synergy 2005
MINERVA 2013
Half-Life: Before 2013
Headcrab Frenzy! 2015
Prospekt 2016
Transmissions: Element 120 2016
Half-Life 2: DownFall 2017
Half-Life: Caged 2017
Entropy: Zero 2017
Half-Rats: Parasomnia 2017
Base Defense 2017
Half-Life 2: Year Long Alarm 2018
Halfquake Trilogy 2018
Hunt Down the Freeman 2018
Black Mesa 2020
Half-Life: Restored 2020
Half-Life 2: Genry's Great Escape from City 13 2020
Half-Life: Absolute Zero 2020
Amalgam 2020
Snowdrop Escape 2021
Requiem of Science 2022
Half-Life 2: VR Mod 2022
Evacuation 2023
Half-Life: MMod 2023
Half-Life 2: VR Mod - Episode One 2023
Half-Life 2: VR Mod - Episode Two 2023
Swelter 2023
Wilson Chronicles EA
Half-Life Decay: Solo Mission TBA
Lost Squad TBA
Operation: Black Mesa TBA
Hard-Life TBA
Obsidian Conflict TBA

Half-Life 2: Year Long Alarm is a fan-made single-player modification for Half-Life 2: Episode Two.

Initially released on April 24, 2012, it was later given a Steam release on November 16th, 2018.

General information

Steam Community Discussions
Run Think Shoot Live page

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Steam
DRM-free after installation through Steam client (notes may include more details)
DRM-free when launched directly from the executable with -game yearlongalarm command line argument.[1]
Windows
Official website
DRM-free with some exceptions (notes may include more details)
Linked to from developer's website
Requires Half-Life 2 or Source SDK Base 2013 Singleplayer
Windows

Essential improvements

Run as Half-Life 2 mod

Install size can be reduced from 6.3 GB to 226 MB by sharing assets with Half-Life 2 and it's episodes, or Source SDK Base 2013 Singleplayer, rather than being installed standalone.
Move yearlongalarm folder[2]
  1. Install Half-Life 2: Year Long Alarm normally, via Steam.
  2. Navigate to <path-to-game>.
  3. Move the yearlongalarm folder to <Steam-folder>\steamapps\common\Half-Life 2 or <Steam-folder>\steamapps\common\Source SDK Base 2013 Singleplayer.[Note 1]
  4. Uninstall Half-Life 2: Year Long Alarm via Steam.
  5. Add hl2.exe from the Half-Life 2 or Source SDK Base 2013 Singleplayer directories to Steam as a non-Steam game.
  6. Add the -game yearlongalarm command line argument to the newly created shortcut.

Note

Alternatively, download only the mod from Run Think Shoot Live, and install as a Source Mod.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Valve\Source\yearlongalarm\Settings
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/747250/pfx/[Note 2]

Save game data location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\yearlongalarm\SAVE\[Note 3]
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/747250/pfx/[Note 2]

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
Steam Cloud

Video

In-game general video settings.
In-game general video settings.
In-game advanced video settings.
In-game advanced video settings.

Graphics feature State Notes
Widescreen resolution
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
4K Ultra HD
Field of view (FOV)
Values between 75° and 90° horizontal can be set via in-game slider.
Windowed
Borderless fullscreen windowed
See Borderless fullscreen windowed.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
Up to 16x
Anti-aliasing (AA)
Up to 8x MSAA
Vertical sync (Vsync)
Double buffered [3]
60 FPS and 120+ FPS
Frame rate cap can be changed by changing fps_max in the developer console. To uncap FPS or cap FPS higher than 300 you must first set sv_cheats = 1 before using fps_max.
High dynamic range display (HDR)
Rendered image uses SDR color space. In-game HDR option refers only to HDR Rendering.

Borderless fullscreen windowed

Instructions
  1. See Command line arguments.
  2. Use -window -noborder

Notes

For the Oculus Rift, set vr_force_windowed 1 in the developer console.

Input

In-game key map settings.
In-game key map settings.
In-game mouse/gamepad settings.
In-game mouse/gamepad settings.

Keyboard and mouse State Notes
Remapping
Mouse acceleration
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support
Requires one-time enabling in Mouse Settings.
Full controller support
Controller cannot navigate between settings. Gameplay and menu navigation are fully supported.[Note 4]
Controller remapping
Controller sensitivity
X and Y axes are controlled separately.
Controller Y-axis inversion
Controller types
XInput-compatible controllers
Xbox button prompts
Keyboard/mouse prompts are shown instead.
Impulse Trigger vibration
PlayStation controllers
Generic/other controllers
Additional information
Controller hotplugging
Haptic feedback
Digital movement supported
Simultaneous controller+KB/M

Audio

In-game audio settings.
In-game audio settings.

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Game volume and music slider.
Surround sound
4.0, 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound. 7.1 output may require DirectSound3D restoration software.
Subtitles
There is an option to enable subtitles, but no actual subtitles are present.
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
Under a check box in the Audio menu.
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
Direct3D 9
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows

Middleware

Middleware Notes
Input SDL
Cutscenes Bink Video

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) XP
Processor (CPU) 1.7 GHz
System memory (RAM) 512 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 7 GB
Video card (GPU) DirectX® 8.1 level Graphics Card (Requires support for SSE)
DirectX 8.1 compatible


Notes

  1. Running via HL2 requires HL2, HL2:Ep1, and HL2:Ep2 to be installed. Running via SDK Base 2013 SP only requires SDK Base 2013 SP to be installed, as it includes both episode's assets.
  2. 2.0 2.1 File/folder structure within this directory reflects the path(s) listed for Windows and/or Steam game data (use Wine regedit to access Windows registry paths). Games with Steam Cloud support may store data in ~/.steam/steam/userdata/<user-id>/747250/ in addition to or instead of this directory. The app ID (747250) may differ in some cases. Treat backslashes as forward slashes. See the glossary page for details.
  3. When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below %PROGRAMFILES%, %PROGRAMDATA%, or %WINDIR% might be redirected to %LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore on Windows Vista and later (more details).
  4. Tested with Xbox One Controller.

References

  1. Verified by User:Taylor.mabby654 on 2024-02-10
    Worked flawlessly, played for 10 minutes with no Steam client running and offline.
  2. Verified by User:SirYodaJedi on 2022-10-13
    You can even reduce it further to 109 MB by using NTFS exe compression on the files.
  3. Black mesa vsync is double buffered - last accessed on 2024