Full Screen Borderless Half-Life 2 Steam Games

If you are like me and have two screens you end up with other things going on, on one screen while you are playing games. While playing Left 4 Dead 2 the game was crashing so someone said they used borderless full screen. So I set up Team-Fortress 2 and it is so much better to have it this way. So here is a little tutorial.

  1. In steam open your Library of games, select the game you want and right click it to open the menu and select Properties.
  2. Click on Set Launch Options
  3. Add the “-window -noborder -novid” to the box and select OK
  4. Start the game like you normally would

This should work on any game any game with the Valve Source Engine based on Half-Life 2 such as Half-Life 2 and its episodes, Team-Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead 1 and 2, Day of Defeat : Source, Counter-Strike : Source and Half-Life 2 Death Match. Now I need to see if World of Warcraft has some of the same options.

The -novid option makes it so that the Valve video and the game intro video don’t play every time you load the game.

Wow: Redridge Mountains

So I found out about the World of Warcraft year pass that you get when you subscribe for a year and you get a mount in game and also a copy of Diablo 3. Any way I have been playing a little bit, my hunter that is 85 didn’t seem fun to play so I got on a priest that was level 5. I worked through Elywnn Forest and Westfall to come to Redridge Mountains. From the past the quests were kind of dumb and you would need a group to do some of the higher level quests so when I would get to them I would just try my hand at Duskwood, but since the update I found that the area was fun to play.

When they had the Cataclysm expansion they updated the old original content to add new quests and tweak game play. From what I saw in this area I am liking the changes to some of these area I have done 20-30 times. To start they changed the quests to work in a progression rather than just have a pile of quests that you go out and do. This is keeping in the new areas that have a story rather than just a pile of quests, I didn’t read much of the quests text, seem to have stopped doing that before I got my first guy to level 40 but it was clear that there is a story line and you play though cleaning up the area from the Blackrock orcs.

There new phasing system were as you work through the quests that things change helps with the story because it helps you see that by blowing up that tower did keep the tower blown up and the orcs around it would go away or change in some way making the world more dynamic and not so static.

I have not done any of this with any other players were they may be on a different part of the quest line, and they have made it so that you can do the quests by yourself even when there are elite attacking you by in the case of Redridge you get a elite squad from being captured and then work with them to finish off the boss in the area that is causing the problems.

As for gear and loot they do a good job now all the way from the start to my now level 23 giving out gear that is good, some of the old areas such as these were giving out gear with no stats while the new areas were giving some good stats on them or you would have to go to dungeons to get some of your gear. It helps you work through a level vary easy also, so that you never feel stuck and leveling up even a priest by myself has been fun and not too hard ether.

I plan on playing this guy mostly doing just quests, I was expecting to get him up to a level where I could get into dungeons and just tag along a bunch of them to get my levels but I am enjoying what they have done to make the old world more fun to play.