Half-Life: Alyx is an incredible benchmark for virtual reality game design. The amount of interaction the game provides in puzzle-solving, combat, and just plain environmental interaction is already incredible. Valve did an incredible job, but they aren’t done. A new Update 1.4 just dropped alongside a set of Half-Life: Alyx patch notes, and this one features an interesting new addition of adding sloshing and reactive liquid to bottles.
Half-Life: Alyx Update 1.4 patch notes
Valve launched Half-Life: Alyx Update 1.4 and its patch notes on May 27, 2020. The big headliner here is the new liquids visual feature in bottles and glass containers. As you can see above, when you turn the bottle or shake it around, the liquid moves and reacts to the vessel’s movement. It might not seem like a big deal, but it’s just another way Half-Life: Alyx is going beyond to make the VR world it exhibits feel all the more immersive. Other updates include expanded language options for subtitles and additions to Half-Life: Alyx’s recently opened Steam Workshop, including a Postprocessing Editor, core Lua scripting functionality and example maps for various objects and characters. Check out the full notes just below.
Bottles now appear to have liquid inside them that sloshes around as you shake them.
UI appears quicker when returning to Main Menu
Improvements to addon management UI
Game Fixes
Added checks for users loading a savegame with missing addons (eg. unsubscribed or deleted)
Added error message if a game fails to load due to a missing map requested by an addon
Various crash fixes
Fixed bug where exiting the game by closing SteamVR could generate bad save files
Workshop Features
Enabled the Postprocessing Editor (Documentation)
Added "Custom Character" example addon (Documentation)
Added example maps for:
Blind Zombie (a.k.a. Jeff)
Hacking and Toner Puzzles
Parked Vehicles and other Interactive Prefabs
Visibility System (Documentation)
Postprocessing Volumes (Documentation)
Added core functionality required for Lua scripting and added some Alyx-specific script bindings for querying VR controller input and creating nav mesh paths from entity scripts
Enabled live bone constraints in SFM, which can be baked/enabled as procedural bones, like cloth
Workshop Fixes
Fixed case where some explicitly specified meshes became hulls. (eg. func_shatterglass will now build in a map without having to enable legacy collision mesh.)
Added some meshes that were missing from parked vehicle prefabs.
Made SFM UI less Dota-specific in a few places
Fixed missing map models (mostly combine stations) in SFM
Fixed Import Sequence in SFM to work correctly on sequences with animated root orientation
With such an interesting little addition to the game (not to mention ongoing support and upgrades for the Steam Workshop mod scene), Half-Life: Alyx continues to be one of the coolest things going on in VR gaming. Be sure to check out our Shacknews review if you haven’t already to get the full lowdown on what makes it so good.