Proto:Half-Life (Windows)/Half-Life: Uplink

This is a sub-page of Proto:Half-Life (Windows).

Half-Life: Uplink is a demo for Half-Life that was released on February 12th 1999. While released after the final game, it does have some differences.

The demo's maps are based on a location cut from the final game, making it scrapped material that was given a new life.

Valve later added Uplink to the full game proper with the 25th Anniversary update in November 2023, meaning you can experience this without the need to track down a copy online or buy a sound card. How kind of them.

General

Main Menu

Demo	Final

Uplink's menu has a changed title to reflect the demo's name, "View Readme" option as "View Readme.txt", the "Multiplayer" and "Custom game" options missing, and "Previews" replaced with "Full Version", a link that sends the player to a defunct page that was meant to let the player order the game. There is also a yellow tag near the lower right-hand corner that says "Game of the Year" with PC Gamer's logo on it.

Startup Video

When starting up the demo, the game will play an almost minute-long video showing the demo's title, then various game of the year awards Half-Life had received.

Multiplayer

This demo does not have multiplayer.

Cheats

Cheats are disabled in the demo.

Machine Gun Gibbing

The machine gun in Uplink will gib enemies, while the one in the final game doesn't.

Demo	Final

Localization

To do: Maybe discuss more detail about the builds? (Especially if there are any differences between the German builds)

In addition to the English version, there exist three non-English builds of this demo, two German and one French.

• The files of the two German demos are mostly identical, with the exception of the gfx/shell folder in the pak0.PAK file. The old demo uses main menu graphics and keyboard bindings in English, whereas in the new demo these are translated,

• The French and new German demos include unused graphics for multiplayer menu entries, incl. creating and browsing games and chatrooms. These are not present in the English version,

• The localized demos use a different sentences.txt approach, wherein all sentences which use more than one file were prerecorded in full and placed in the sound/sentences folder,

• In all localized versions, the titles.txt files, aside from being fully translated, contain the following note at the end:

*NOTE* the word " uplink " is the subtitle of this 'product' and should not
be probably not be localized - we're not localizing it in our title art.

• The German demos contain voice lines from the full game, including the early, cut holographic assistant voice lines also present in the final German release (holointro.wav, holostn1-16.wav),

• The German demos are censored and therefore use different models for the grunt (replaced with robot) as well as Barney and the scientist (lack of dying animations),

• All localized demos have a gfx/status folder which is missing from the English version. It contains the files credits_font.bmp, loading.bmp, and outline_font.bmp,

• The French gfx/status/loading.bmp file is the simpler loading screen also used in Half-Life: Day One:

English	German	French

• While the hldemo.exe file is identical in all localized demos, it differs from the English exe in binary content, despite being the same size. The hl.dll and client.dll files are identical in all versions.

PlayStation 2 Version

Uplink was included as part of the June 2002 PlayStation Underground demo disc from the Official PlayStation Magazine. The only notable map change is the replacement of the original brush based health & suit chargers with the new model based ones from the PS2 version of Half-Life.