Half-Life is a frighteningly realistic FPS where players take on the role of a physicist, Gordon Freeman. An explosion during one of his failed experiments at Black Mesa Research Facility rips open a portal, which leads to an alien invasion on Earth. Players now have to battle against aliens and government officials to survive and save humankind.

Every encounter in the action-packed Half-Life game is a new challenge, and players must think wisely if they want to survive. That said, there are still some cool things players can do to enhance their gameplay, such as spawning NPCs on demand. This guide can teach players how to spawn NPCs in Half-Life.

RELATED: Half-Life: How to Long Jump

How to Spawn NPCs in Half-Life

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Players who want to spawn NPCs can follow the steps below.

  1. Press the tilde (~) key on the keyboard to access the in-game developer console.
  2. In the grey dialogue box, type in sv_cheats 1 to enable cheats in the game.
  3. After turning on sv_cheats, go back to the console and type in the command give monster_[X], where X is the name of the NPC that players wish to spawn. For example, if players want to spawn a HECU soldier, they can type in give monster_human_grunt.

Alternatively, they can try using the command npc_create monster_[X] to spawn any NPC.

Players can only spawn an entity if it is already present in the relevant area on the map. If they try to spawn an NPC in an area where they don’t exist, the game will freeze.

To spawn NPCs in a multiplayer game, players can follow the steps below.

  1. Open the console by pressing the tilde (~) key
  2. Type the following command in the grey box at the bottom: mp_allowmonsters 1
  3. Next, they can spawn NPCs by typing in give monster_[X], where X is the name of the desired NPC.

List of NPCs in Half-Life

The following table contains a list of all available NPCs in Half-Life, along with their code names. Players can simply enter any code in place of [X] to spawn that specific NPC in the game.

NPC name Code
Alien Grunt alien_grunt
Alien Controller alien_controller
Assassin human_assassin
Barnacle barnacle
Bull Squid bullchicken
Gargantua gargantua
Gonarch bigmomma
Houndeye houndeye
Headcrab Zombie zombie
HECU Soldier human_grunt
Nihilanth nihilanth
Scientist scientist
Snark snark
Security Guard barney
Tentacle tentacle
Vortigaunt alien_slave
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Half-Life Tag Page Cover Art
Half-Life
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Released
November 19, 1998
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DIGITAL
PHYSICAL
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Developer(s)
Valve
Publisher(s)
Sierra Studios
Franchise
Half-Life
Platform(s)
PC, PS2, Linux, macOS
Genre(s)
Shooter