Orange Box Offline Installer

loony636

FS Member
Wow, it's been a while since I've been here, but I'm back, for a while at least. A quick note about the following tutorial: I originally wrote it for cs.rin.ru, and as a result, there are a lot of links to cs.rin.ru threads. I hope you don't mind :D.

As I recently learned of SteamCooker's tool to create .gcf's (see this thread), I can now introduce my new Orange Box installer.

This mainly applies to those of you who either downloaded the DVD's from a torrent (which is easy because of the high seeders) or have had their serial number disallowed by Steam. Either way, this guide will help you out. It's fairly complex, though still somewhat in the initial stages.

Things to do beforehand:

1) Install CF Toolbox.
2) Install Steam.
3) Create a Steam account and sign in once. That will create all the required files and folders.
4) Pick a method of playing cracked GCFs. I personally recommend the UCL (Universal Content Launcher), but UnDeadPatch, Orange Box Revolution Emulator, will all work sufficiently..

1) Download and extract the following archive: MEGAUPLOAD - The leading online storage and file delivery service.
2) Mount the DVDs (if you have an image, use Daemon Tools) or just place them in the drive (if you have the physical DVDs) and copy all the *.sid, *.sis and *.sim files you find on the disks to the same folder you extracted the archive to (it MUST be in the same directory as the install.bat file.
3) Run install.bat.
4) Go and have some coffee, read the newspaper, go for a jog, or whatever - it'll probably take about 45 minutes.
5) When you come back you'll have a folder called gcf. Inside it will be all the GCF's for the Orange Box.
6) Copy the contents of the gcf folder (ie. all of the .gcf files) to the steamapps folder (located by default in c:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps. MAKE SURE STEAM IS SHUTDOWN, since I'm pretty sure Steam will corrupt any GCFs you try to copy into the steamapps folder while Steam is running.
7) Open up CF Toolbox, go to the GCF/NCF file list, right-click on all of the outdated/0.00% files and press Download - Resume.
8) Once that is finished, go into your selected emulator/patch and enjoy the Orange Box!

N.B. This guide will NOT allow you to play on VAC2 protected servers or the like. All it does is give you a way of getting the gcf's from the Orange Box DVD. And remember always, you MUST make sure Steam is shut down at all times when copying GCFs/using Steam emulators.

If some people could test this out of me, that'd be great. I tested it this afternoon, and apart from a small hiccup with outdated files, it all worked fine. HL2 works out of the box so to speak, but the rest need the gcf's to finish downloading due to loss of files in the extraction process (either that, or you always needed to download them from Steam in order to get the game to work).

Enjoy.
 
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