Hello there!!
My name is Stefan and as the description says I'm from Africa, which basically translates into a terribly slow internet dial up (56K) connection with standard download rates between 2 and 5 kb/s which I only get to use in an internet cafe. Needless to say I am not in the least interested (or capable!) of playing natural selection over the internet. Up to now me and my friends have been playing NS 2.0 in lan only. Now we wanted to get going on the new version. So I dwonloaded the install file "ns_install_v3_b1.exe" in about 20 hours (cost me a hell of a lot of money!!) from your webpage in the hope of being able to install it although I do not have steam, like some people claimed in forums. Well turns out I get an error message telling me that: "Steam with proper third party mod support not installed" upon which the install process was cancelled.

Look I know that the futur development of NS is going towards steam and that there will be no further support for won, but is there any possibility at all of playing the new version with the half life retail version? And if so could anybody please describe how I go about doing that (what i need to install etc.) ?

Thanx a lot for your trouble and congrats on the best half life mod I've ever played!!
Stefan

Given that WON is going away, not migrating to Steam isn't really an option. Here is a snippet of news directly from the steam news site:

http://www.steampowered.com/index.php?area=news

WON Shutdown Timing
July 15, 2004, 11:56 am · cliffe
Starting July 26th the shutdown of the WON authentication servers will begin. This process will be completed on July 31st. This means players will no longer be able to access Internet features of Valve games, such as Counter-Strike 1.5, using the WON authentication servers. Users can continue using Valve games on the Steam service by downloading the Steam installer and setting up a Steam account. For more information visit www.steampowered.com. Counter-Strike 1.5 players will be upgraded to Counter-Strike 1.6 free of charge through Steam.

I think the ricochet version of steam is 16 MB... it should be enough to install NS. Then you can copy the nsp directory to your retail HL dir.
I don't know if it will work.

Or you can make the installer think steam is installed...
Try to create a steam folder and a dummy steam.exe file...
let's say you create a file names c:\steam\steam.exe
create a folder named
c:\steam\steamapps
then
c:\steam\steamapps\your@mail.here
then
c:\steam\steamapps\your@mail.here\half-life

try to add these keys to the registry:

in: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Valve\Steam
- SteamExe (string) c:\steam\steam.exe
- ModInstallPath (string) c:\steam\steamapps\your@mail.here\half-life

try it, if it doesn't work you'll have to add more values.

Thanx for the info I'll give it a try!!!

Cheers
Stefan

Thanx FireStorm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Your help worked. I was able to create the regestry entries and the files like you explained. The Game installed and I copied it to my Half Life Retail!!!!! Thanx you very much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you ever end up in Africa for some reason be sure to drop me a line at theil@mweb.com.na

Thanx again

Cheers
Stefan