Installing Half Life 2 for use with Alive
Videos
Cool Half Life 2 heart rate feedback demo video
Important Notes
Note for users who have already installed Half Life 2: Make sure you download, and if possible print out, this Quick Start Guide for Half Life 2 to learn the basic keyboard controls for Half Life 2.
Half Life 2 is a very popular 3D first person shooter action game created by the gaming company Valve.
Alive for emWave users who own, or purchase, Half Life 2 can play certain Half Life 2 levels modified to respond to changes in heart rate smoothness. Half Life 2 is a very intense, violent, game. Using Half Life 2 with Alive is for users who want to be able to remain calm and in control of their breathing and stress responses under extreme circumstances. People who are already familiar with, and enjoy, first person shooter type games may also enjoy the unique experience.
The Steam installation and interface is not created by Somatic Vision. Somatic Vision cannot support any technical issues regarding installation or use of Half Life 2. If you have problems installing Steam or Half Life 2, please contact Valve through support.steampowered.com.
How to install and configure Half Life 2 for use with Alive
If you already have Half Life 2 installed, you can skip steps 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Note: You will need to purchase Half Life 2 from Valve, for approximately $10, during this process. Including downloading time this process will take hours (depending on your download speed), and require 6 GB for the downloaded files. If you want to avoid downloading gigabytes of data you can purchase a Half Life 2 disk on Amazon or through another game retailer.
- Download and install Somatic Vision's free Half Life 2 BioMod.
- Download and install Steam from steampowered.com. Once on the Steam website click "Install Steam Now".
- Open Steam and create a new account (if you have a prior Steam account enter your existing Steam account information).
- Purchase "Half Life 2" from the Steam store. This purchase should cost around $9.99. You do not need episode 1, or any other software aside from "Half Life 2". When purchasing Half Life 2 make sure you purchase it for yourself, not as a gift, otherwise it will not work with Alive as it will be missing the required Source SDK!
- Half Life 2 will begin downloading after purchased.
- When Half Life 2 is finished downloading, or at the same time if you prefer, download and install "Source SDK Base 2006". This is found under the Library->Tools menu in Steam.
- When both Half Life 2 and Source SDK Base 2006 show that they are fully downloaded open Half Life 2 to make sure it works on your computer. If your computer does not work with Half Life 2 please contact Valve through support.steampowered.com and get Half Life 2 running from Steam. Steam support won't know anything about, or be able to support, our Half Life 2 modification, but in order to use the Alive modification you must first make sure Half Life 2 runs normally on your system.
- Make sure you download, and if possible print out, this Quick Start Guide for Half Life 2. This quick start guide shows you the most important keyboard controls for Half Life 2 (which is played by using a keyboard and mouse at the same time).
Legal notice: The files for the Alive modification of Half Life 2 are not sold as part of Alive and are freely available for public download to both Alive users and the general public. Half-Life and Half-Life 2 are trademark or registered trademarks of Valve Software, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.
