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The below config is the best I can come up with to make Half-Life look best. To get the game to load this config, there are two ways to do it (and do them in the steps listed) :
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(1) Create a file called, say, RevVis.cfg in C:\Half-Life\valve\ (your game folder maybe different but make sure it’s in \valve\)
(2) Bind a key to executing this file by starting the game, pull down the console (press the "~" key,the one just above the TAB key) and type bind HOME "exec RevVis.cfg" (you may bind another key instead of HOME but make sure you type the quotes)
(3) Exit the console and press the HOME key. You’ll see an immediate change most noticeably in the brightness of your weapon but you’ll have to quit and re-start the game for some changes to take effect. If you type "restart" (w/o the quotes) in-game at the console instead, it has the same effect but you'll lose whatever weapon/inventory you had at the point where you restarted.

OR
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if you want these settings to load up automatically each time you run the game (ie. no need to press any bound key to execute the file/settings), instead of naming the file RevVis.cfg and placing it in \Half-Life\valve\, name it 3dfx.cfg and put it in \Half-Life\valve\hw\. Half-Life always looks for this file to execute if you chose the "3dfx MiniGL" as your driver (like I put in bold at the top of the page,this guide is based on the Voodoo2 and Intel cpus. AMDs,TNTs,i740s,etc. are untested....anyone who owns any of these uses my config at their own risk coz I'm absolutely sure some settings will cause graphical anomalies) in the Video Modes menu in-game.After doing that,start,quit and re-start the game for the settings to take effect permanently.If you're the industrious and experimental type,certain settings can be changed on-the-fly in-game,others will require a re-start (refer to all of the above to see which cvar requires a restart for changes to take effect).
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Also, make sure you enable the console by adding either "-console" or "-toconsole" or both to your Half-Life command line, like this,
"C:\Half-Life\hl.exe –console –toconsole –zone 1024".
The first(-console) adds a "CONSOLE" button to the main menu in the game, the second (-toconsole) will start you up directly in the game’s console, having both in the command line will start up in the console but you’ll have to either press "ESC" or "~" to get to the main menu and still have the "CONSOLE" button available in the main menu. Having both in the command line is good if you want to see what’s being loaded by the game on start-up(you’ll see all that in the console). Also quite a few souls have asked me what the "-zone 1024" is for. H-L will crash out with a memory allocation error with repeated loading of large configs.The -zone 1024 command line parameter allocates 1meg of memory to prevent that.
Add "+load quick.sav" to the command line if you always want to start the game where you last quick saved.
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