SteamLink is an effort to run Half-Life: Uplink, Half-Life's single-player demo campaign from 1998, in Steam as easily as
possible, while leaving it as true to the original demo as possible. No in-game
content has been modified, and the "loading" and menu backgrounds are taken directly from the original Uplink, as opposed
to the generic Half-Life screens in Steam.
Full version of Half-Life for Steam (installed and launched at least once). Half-Life: Source (which comes with Half-Life 2) will NOT work, you must have the classic GoldSrc version instead.
Original Uplink demo installation is not required; SteamLink includes all Uplink-specific files
Simply download and run the installer. The installer will determine your Steam installation directory, and place files in the necessary directory. After the installer finishes, restart Steam, and "Half-Life: Uplink" should appear as a "Third party mod". In addition, a "SteamLink" Start Menu group will be created for direct access to Half-Life: Uplink.
Download Half-Life through Steam for Linux / OS X, and run it at least once.
Download and extract the zip archive.
Run install.sh, which will determine the Half-Life for Steam install path, and copy the necessary files to the correct place.
$ sh steamlink/install.sh
After the installer finishes, restart Steam, and "Half-Life: Uplink" should appear as a "Third party mod". The installer will also create a shell launch script, and symlink it to ~/bin/steamlink.
$ ~/bin/steamlink
If ~/bin is in your $PATH, you may execute it directly.
$ steamlink
Once installed, the extracted zip contents are not needed, and may be removed.
Of course, the entire point of SteamLink is to play Half-Life: Uplink from within Steam, which means using the current Half-Life GoldSrc engine. The major benefit is better current hardware/Windows support. The downside is, for whatever reason, Valve decided to remove strafe leaning from GoldSrc a long time ago. You win some, you lose some.
SteamLink does not come with any altered models. However, it is compatible with the PHL High-Definition Pack for Steam, which will give you noticably higherqualitymodels, but will not change textures like walls, objects, etc.
Release History
SteamLink 1.0 (2007-10-31): Initial release.
SteamLink 1.1 (2007-11-03): Removed multiplayer options from the main menu.
SteamLink 1.2 (2008-09-21): Added installer.
SteamLink 1.3 (2009-07-23): Installer fixed to run completely as a user. No system-wide changes, no Vista UAC prompt.
SteamLink 1.4 (2013-03-30): Windows/Linux/OS X unification. Fixed Windows install path in modern Steam installations.
SteamLink 1.5 (2013-05-01): Linux/OS X fixes.
SteamLink's sources (NSIS files, etc) are managed in Git, and available on GitHub.
Thanks
Valve Software, of course, for Half-Life, Half-Life: Uplink and Steam.
Jason Stephens' Uplink Lite, for inspiring me to create a proper "mod" for Half-Life: Uplink.
Werner Spahl's Uplink Addon, for fixing the scientist-speaking-with-two-tongues bug.
"Rusty Le Cyborg", for showing how to remove the multiplayer options from the main menu
