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Half-Life 2 Hints
Activating the Cheat Console
To activate the cheat console, you can edit the properties of your Windows desktop shortcut for running the game so that the "Target:" field has "-console" (w/o quotes) at the end of it, but there's another way. Run the game with an unedited shortcut, then choose "Options" from the main menu. Click on the "Keyboard" tab and then on the "Advanced..." button. That'll bring up a window in which you can enable the developer console.
Once the console is enabled, you can press ~ anytime while playing or on the main menu screen to bring up the console window. To get the cheats fully enabled, you need to enter the code sv_cheats 1 on the console after loading your saved game or starting a new game. Once that's done, any of the cheat codes can be entered to get the desired effect. (Note that the sv_cheats 1 code has to be re-entered every time you run the game, but the effects of many individual cheats, such as invincibility, are stored in each saved game.)
NOTE: You can type one letter on the console line and then use the up and down arrow keys to look through all the commands and variables and so forth that start with that letter. Also, you can use the "find" command to find everything related to the parameter (as in find map to find all map-related entities) and the "help" command to get a bit of info about something (as in help noclip).
You can use the "bind" command to bind a cheat command to a key. For instance, to be able to press X at any time to fill up on weapons and ammo, type: bind x "impulse 101". (Note that quote marks are necessary whenever the command to be bound has a space in it.)
