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i was just browsing YouTube videos of Half-Life 2, and i came across these:

Natural Selection is a team based mod for Half-Life 1, with a “aliens versus humans” play style.

you can view the Natural Selection web site here:
http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns/

you can download the 3.0 client here:
http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns/view?action=files

you can view the game’s trailer here:
http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns/view?action=trailer

one of the most anticipated games in a while just came out, Half-Life 2.

if you haven’t bought Half-Life 2 yet, i recommend NOT getting a copy at the store, but through the STEAM service instead. grab the Silver package. you get more games than retail, Valve (the hard working devlopers) gets more money instead of Vivendi / Sierra (the evil, big corporation publisher), and you dont have to deal with CD checks, cd key, or file authentication that the Retail version annoys you with when you want to play (the Steam version is ready to go without headaches)

you can read about the history of Half-Life 2 here.

i wanted to install the High Definition pack onto Half-Life (updates some sounds, some character/player models, improves the look of some guns, etc).

the installer for the HD pack checks for the old/legacy registry settings to see where Half Life is installed to, and doesnt install if you have the Steam version installed – simply because the legacy registry settings dont exist with a Steam-installed version of Half-Life.

to find a solution, i did a search on the Steam forum.

i found lots of posts where people were asking to do exactly what i was trying to do, install the HD pack into Steam. some people even made the same post over and over in different sub forums looking for an answer.

this guide link was posted a few times as a solution to the problem: http://www.jan-ripper.de/articles/steam_hd/index.html

the person who made that guide lists the problem as being Steam not liking PAK files, and gives information on how to extract PAK files.
that info is helpfull — but thats not the issue when installing the HD pack. the issue is if the HD pack doesnt find the registry keys from a legacy install, it wont install the PAK files in the first place. how can you extract the PAK files if you cant get them out of the installer??

so I made a post on the Steam forum asking if anyone had any REAL info needed to install the HD pack. people just told me exactly what the guide says – “install the HD pack, then extract the data from the PAK files” — i mention that CERTAIN REGISTRY KEYS ARE NEEDED before it will install.

responses i got didn’t help me at all, and made it seem like people were talking about something else. how many Blue Shift CDs were released with different versions of the HD pack? is my copy the only one that checks to see if you even have the games installed?

anyway, i figured out the registry keys it was checking for, learned exactly what keys it was looking at and where, and learned how to modify them to give me different options with the HD pack’s installer.

basically, if the registry values arent there, you get this when you try to install the HD pack:

and if it does find the keys its looking for, you get this screen:

i dont know what i’m missing here – why i couldnt find any real information on the Steam forum, or why the people seemed clueless. what HD pack are they using that its install is so different from my version? i’m using the install off a Blue Shift CD i purchased at K-Mart over a year ago.

i just made a simple guide that tells what registry keys to add to get the HD pack to install. the guide should be HERE.