My friend ("Ocelot92" is his screen name if you really must know) gave me the original Half-Life and Opposing Forces, the kind that doesn't need STEAM to run. HL works fine (save for a few bugs, but I can cope), but I don't quite understand how to run OF.

They each come in their own directories, and the Opposing Forces directory looks like this:
The original Half-Life directory has it's own folder called "reslists"...am I supposed to replace this? I'm afraid to, though, because I fear it might compromise my game saves or even screw up the entire game.

Anyone fluent in the language of Gordan Freeman that can offer me some advice?

as far as i remember you first install Half life and then install oposing force which creates a subfolder in Half-life directory.

opposing force should laos create you a shortcut on desktop where oyu can run it to play it.

mods are separate from main game so they only use some files that are common bu thtey don't affect the save games. if you have original versions or copy version with the key then you should have no problems installing it or playing it. if you are too afraid then just make backup of your save files (copy them somewhere else) try installin ghte mod and if it give you trouble uninstall the whole thing, reinstall Half life and copy the save files back to their folder. and continue playing the game.

just as side note you can later switch between mods in one of the game menus. so play some opposing force, then maybe some half life then maybe some other mod...

Yes, but the problem is that neither of the two have install files, Ocelot gave me the games in the form of two .rar files. I'm just unclear as to what I should unzip where...

you make new directory called opfor or whatever, located in your 'half life' directory, and copy the stuff in to this opfor directory. then run half life, click mods and the opposing force will pop up in there OR run hl.exe with parameter "-game opfor"
so no replacing, just put the stuff in to new directory

btw opposing force was one of the best mods i think

Blue shift was better IMO. more realistic... you had a feeling of really playing the other part/side of story. with soldiers you were the good guy again... :-( plus they added some new aliens, weapons and other enemies which suddenly appeared in Black Messa.

yeah blue shift was more fun but i still think that OF was better cause blue shift was way toooo short. i could finish the whole game during a day

btw there is one cool free mod called 'point of view' where you play as one of those electric alien slaves :D

Thanks russ, i'll try running hl.exe with that switch and let you know if it works. :ok: