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Clean-room implementation of Half-Life 2 on the Quake 1 engine

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Re: Clean-room implementation of Half-Life 2 on the Quake 1 engine

#81

Post by jamesfinlayson »

amlib wrote: post #69
l-p wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While lighting is important, not using halflife.wad and going above the original budget of 500 polys per "scene" is what makes modern works look much better. Most of the original textures are under 128×96 px and some suffer from awful palletisation artefacts with purple and orange halos. We still cannot use more than 8 bpp but we can use 512×512 textures and do a better job at reducing to 256 colours. I use pngquant…

> In GoldSrc lightmaps cannot get more intricate though, they're tied to the texture scale so you cannot get a finer lightmap unless you also make larger textures and scale them down, and these two combined will wreck your "AllocBlock" budget in which all your textures and lightmaps must fit. AFAIK some of the improvements include much better light bouncing techniques, transmission of surface colors like source does,…

I think the biggest reason is just better hardware. In 1998 many of the props were just blocky level geometry.

Re: Clean-room implementation of Half-Life 2 on the Quake 1 engine

#83

Post by reitzensteinm »

pezezin wrote: post #77
bni wrote: post #50

If you want to play Half-Life today I highly recommend Xash3D FWGS (yes its a super awkward name) https://github.com/FWGS/xash3d-fwgs Easy to use Mac build here: https://www.macsourceports.com/game/halflife

IMHO, if you want to play Half-Life today, go get Black Mesa, an absolutely fantastic fan-made remake with Valve's blessing: https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/

Black Mesa is an almost exact copy of Half Life at the start, and where that's true it's incredibly well done. Feels very much like a remaster.

Unfortunately, by the end of the earth levels and certainly on Xen, the levels switch over to original designs. They become massive and sprawling, boring and confusing. They really should have stuck to doing a like for like reimplementation.

I grew up on Half Life, so playing the first half of Black Mesa a few years ago was one of my favorite adult gaming experiences. But I gave up who knows how close to finish line after Xen was insufferable.

Re: Clean-room implementation of Half-Life 2 on the Quake 1 engine

#84

Post by its_magic »

bigyabai wrote: post #72
its_magic wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a descendant of the man called Sequoyah, if it's not obvious. Writing clearly and expressively is not difficult for me. I do it as easily as breathing. If you can't parse my perfectly clear and understandable language, the problem is with you and not me. I didn't "lash out" at anyone. I simply asked why waste time on this when you can just use the original source code. It's a valid question, isn't it? It's also…

I have no defense for HN; the website is designed poorly, moderated inconsistently, and the YC-affiliated retinue is sketchier than a pencil drawing. That being said, people who take things personally for no reason is exactly the reason the "flag" button exists. We all know that the Half Life source code is out there on the internet, most of us agree that copyright is stupid, and a good handful of us are probably del…

I maintain my position that this project is a complete waste of time which exists only due to the abomination that is copyright law. (Without that reason, the author would have easily recognized this project as a waste of time, would he not?)

I continue to assert that it's OK to have such an opinion and to express it freely. I reject your incorrect, selfish, and quite frankly evil belief that I deserve to be censored. Nobody deserves to have their honest opinions be censored, ever, especially in what is allegedly a public discussion forum.

(Except maybe you--since you self-identify as a tyrant. I'm OK with you never being allowed to speak again, if you want to shut me up when I have done nothing wrong.)

There are about ten trillion important projects that need to be done in this world, many of critical, life and death importance. Reimplementing a 20-year old game (due to copyright concerns, of all reasons) is a foolish waste of time no matter how you slice it.

If the guy was collecting Pokemon cards or spent all his time watching sports, or blowing his money on hot rodding, or a thousand other foolish things, I'd post exactly the same advice: Stop wasting your time on useless activities and get serious.

Of course, such a sentiment isn't going to be popular in a forum full of so many young (or not so young) "men" and "women" who spend their entire "lives" inside video games, when they aren't doomscrolling on "their" phone. Lots of escapism and avoidance of reality going on around here. Let's just hate and attack the messenger, that's always a great move.

It's pretty sad we have to keep going back and forth about this. All you had to do is just let me express my opinion and move on. But you just couldn't do that; it was impossible. Now we have a giant "discussion" thread in which you are unsuccessfully attempting to argue with a brick wall, after your censorship attempt failed.

Remember what I said above about the GIANT WASTE OF TIME AND ENERGY that copyright law creates? I wonder how many watts and calories have been burned and lost forever as a result of this thread, in addition to all that has been wasted on this reimplementation of an old game.

Here's some more life wisdom: Just because somebody says something "negative" doesn't mean they're being an asshole. It is permissable to disagree and to express that disagreement. Stop being so thin skinned, perpetually offended at every word that comes out of my mouth. You will not succeed in censoring me. Period.

Re: Clean-room implementation of Half-Life 2 on the Quake 1 engine

#85

Post by jamesfinlayson »

homebrewer wrote: post #12
lloeki wrote: post #10

Interesing, there's more here including HL1 (a.k.a "valve") Funnily enough the looks of this HL2 through this engine makes it flow more with HL1 than I could expect; an interesting reverse Half Life: Source / Black Mesa / demake of sorts.

Even simple Half-Life 1 mods built on textures and models from Half-Life 2 look much closer to 2 than one would expect. For example this mod, but not only: https://moddb.com/mods/half-life-dark-future You won't confuse it with modern Half-Life 2, but the original HL2 engine had far worse graphics than the latest version. Makes you realize how much of the difference between HL2 and HL1 is due to different textures and…

Yeah Cry of Fear really pushed the GoldSource engine to its limits (I think it implemented a custom renderer but the models just push the base engine's limits with regards to maximum polygons and texture sizes).

Re: Clean-room implementation of Half-Life 2 on the Quake 1 engine

#86

Post by pezezin »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #83
pezezin wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO, if you want to play Half-Life today, go get Black Mesa, an absolutely fantastic fan-made remake with Valve's blessing: https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/

Black Mesa is an almost exact copy of Half Life at the start, and where that's true it's incredibly well done. Feels very much like a remaster. Unfortunately, by the end of the earth levels and certainly on Xen, the levels switch over to original designs. They become massive and sprawling, boring and confusing. They really should have stuck to doing a like for like reimplementation. I grew up on Half Life, so playing…

There is one Xen episode close to the end that is indeed way too big for its own good and quite boring, I will give you that, but otherwise I found the new Xen levels very well made and fleshed out. Lets be honest, the original Xen was quite lackluster...

Re: Clean-room implementation of Half-Life 2 on the Quake 1 engine

#87

Post by blell »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #83
pezezin wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO, if you want to play Half-Life today, go get Black Mesa, an absolutely fantastic fan-made remake with Valve's blessing: https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/

Black Mesa is an almost exact copy of Half Life at the start, and where that's true it's incredibly well done. Feels very much like a remaster. Unfortunately, by the end of the earth levels and certainly on Xen, the levels switch over to original designs. They become massive and sprawling, boring and confusing. They really should have stuck to doing a like for like reimplementation. I grew up on Half Life, so playing…

The original Xen is rubbish. I’m glad they remade it. Just like they did with “On a rail”.

Black Mesa is a masterpiece.

Re: Clean-room implementation of Half-Life 2 on the Quake 1 engine

#88

Post by reitzensteinm »

pezezin wrote: post #86
reitzensteinm wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Black Mesa is an almost exact copy of Half Life at the start, and where that's true it's incredibly well done. Feels very much like a remaster. Unfortunately, by the end of the earth levels and certainly on Xen, the levels switch over to original designs. They become massive and sprawling, boring and confusing. They really should have stuck to doing a like for like reimplementation. I grew up on Half Life, so playing…

There is one Xen episode close to the end that is indeed way too big for its own good and quite boring, I will give you that, but otherwise I found the new Xen levels very well made and fleshed out. Lets be honest, the original Xen was quite lackluster...

Well, even if the levels are well made and I've just got poor taste, Half Life was such a tightly designed package, introducing new weapons, things to play with (like the trains), enemies, environment modifiers at a steady pace.

Replacing a 5 minute level with a 20 minute level, even if it's better, ruins that pacing. There's just not enough content in the game to support it.

I agree Xen was by far the weakest of the original levels, but I don't think it's a coincidence that it was also pretty short. I think they knew it had novelty but no staying power and probably cut it to the bone.

Re: Clean-room implementation of Half-Life 2 on the Quake 1 engine

#89

Post by singularfutur »

This is what I love about the open source community. Twenty years later and people are still finding ways to make classic games accessible without DRM or platform lock in. Clean room implementations like this preserve gaming history better than any publisher ever will.

Re: Clean-room implementation of Half-Life 2 on the Quake 1 engine

#90

Post by jmiskovic »

bni wrote: post #50

If you want to play Half-Life today I highly recommend Xash3D FWGS (yes its a super awkward name) https://github.com/FWGS/xash3d-fwgs Easy to use Mac build here: https://www.macsourceports.com/game/halflife

This is engine for HL1 while OP talks about HL2.

I'll add, if you have a VR headset, modded HL1 runs beautifully on it with full hand controller support for gun aiming and crowbar smashing. I've also heard lots of praises for HL2 VR mod bringing the game to new levels, I have yet to try it myself.

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