That's not to say that you still can't improve the looks of the HL1 port as is. Most of the textures are alreadly slightly higher res due to the fact that the HL1 textures weren't always power of two. And... the HL1 port textures were created from the 8bit versions, as most of the original 24-bit versions were lost. New, 24-bit textures will look better.
Posts by MacMan
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Hey all! Thought I'd join in the fun and give you specifics. Here's the current process for porting a HL1 based map.
1. Convert the wad file or .bmp's to HL2 format - a dos tool called xwad will do the conversion for you, or you can do it by hand. Converting means:
a. change the texture from 8bit to 24bit.
b. rescale the texture to the nearest power of two (xwad will go always go larger so that you don't loose resolution).
c. Create a matching .vmt for each texture (xwad will create default .vmt's for each texture in a wad)
2. Convert the map to HL2 format - Load the HL1 .map file into the current version of Hammer. Go "file" "Convert WAD -> VMT". Hammer will compare the original textures size and offset with your newly converted textures and it will adjust the offset and scale accordingly.
3. Save your newly converted map as a .vmf.
4. Compile!
What all this means is that if you have the source files for a map, it's super easy to convert to HL2 and use high res textures. However, this brings up an interesting point. I'm not currently aware of a method to change resolution of textures in a map that is already compiled (especially since a higher resolution texture would also effect lightmaps).