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Half-Life 2 in a Browser

hl2.slqnt.dev

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Re: Half-Life 2 in a Browser

#61

Post by ErroneousBosh »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #55
mrtksn wrote: post #37

Interesting, I am not able to play HL2 on Steam because macOS no longer has 32-bit support and Valve never compiled if for 64-bit but here we are, it’s playable on the same OS in the browser. BTW IIRC there was some method to convert the 32-bit game binaries to make them run on recent macs. I remember doing it.

On paper qemu should be able to do this. The hard part is hardware acceleration for the GPU. Without Apple putting effort into supporting this with e.g. documentation, that's a bit hard. That's also holding back linux support on Apple hardware. But it's a fixable problem that will only get easier as hw gets better and faster over time.

> The hard part is hardware acceleration for the GPU

Is it, though?

How Hard Can It Possibly Be to just do a software GL renderer that emulates a mid-2000s Radeon, these days?

Re: Half-Life 2 in a Browser

#63

Post by Klonoar »

mrtksn wrote: post #37

Interesting, I am not able to play HL2 on Steam because macOS no longer has 32-bit support and Valve never compiled if for 64-bit but here we are, it’s playable on the same OS in the browser. BTW IIRC there was some method to convert the 32-bit game binaries to make them run on recent macs. I remember doing it.

I admit that Valve’s approach to Steam on macOS has never made sense to me.

Re: Half-Life 2 in a Browser

#64

Post by nba456_ »

crote wrote: post #31
AzzyHN wrote: post #2

[flagged]

Valve already gave Half-Life 2 away for free, and released the source code of the HL1 engine. Is it technically illegal? Yeah, but Valve isn't losing out on any money, and there's no way they're going to risk the negative PR blowback they'd get for a takedown. Besides, IP law is dead. The rise of AI made it pretty clear that you can steal literally anything without consequences.

>Besides, IP law is dead. The rise of AI made it pretty clear that you can steal literally anything without consequences.

God, AI keeps making life better than I could've ever imagined!

Re: Half-Life 2 in a Browser

#65

Post by noufalibrahim »

typon wrote: post #21

I remember saving up for a year to buy the ATI Radeon 9600 XT (I think it was $200 MSRP) so I could play the game on high settings. Now we can play it inside a virtual machine on a crappy laptop. What a journey

I was just going to say the same thing. I couldn't afford the rigs needed to run any of these games and never really played them. Now, it's running inside a browser on a laptop.

Re: Half-Life 2 in a Browser

#66

Post by doublerabbit »

Klonoar wrote: post #63
mrtksn wrote: post #37

Interesting, I am not able to play HL2 on Steam because macOS no longer has 32-bit support and Valve never compiled if for 64-bit but here we are, it’s playable on the same OS in the browser. BTW IIRC there was some method to convert the 32-bit game binaries to make them run on recent macs. I remember doing it.

I admit that Valve’s approach to Steam on macOS has never made sense to me.

This was more Apple's doing rather than Valve's.

Valve wanted steam to co-exist on the mac in the early days and John Sculley of Apple didn't want Apple to be seen as a gaming device or a "personal home computer". So they ceased contact with Valve and the rest is history. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPTLPXNtb2I

Apple refused to license joysticks so they could prevent customers from considering early mac's as game machines and deliberately refused to support games on the machine. Myst was only few that were exclusive to the Mac; that they then ported to PC.

Re: Half-Life 2 in a Browser

#67

Post by foldr »

modeless wrote: post #9

And Quake 3: https://thelongestyard.link/q3a-demo/ And Unreal Tournament: https://dos.zone/mp/?lobby=ut There's also https://noclip.website/ which, while not playable, has hundreds of levels from dozens of older games that you can explore freely. Including Half-Life 2, with more accurate rendering than this web port (which seems to be missing many shaders including character eyes).

I vibe coded this for exploring levels in the original Deus Ex: https://dxwebview.pages.dev/ (https://github.com/addrummond/dxwebview).

It's a bit janky owing to the vibe coding, but the basic functionality works pretty well. You need the original game data files to use it.

Re: Half-Life 2 in a Browser

#68

Post by account42 »

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #61
jillesvangurp wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On paper qemu should be able to do this. The hard part is hardware acceleration for the GPU. Without Apple putting effort into supporting this with e.g. documentation, that's a bit hard. That's also holding back linux support on Apple hardware. But it's a fixable problem that will only get easier as hw gets better and faster over time.

> The hard part is hardware acceleration for the GPU Is it, though? How Hard Can It Possibly Be to just do a software GL renderer that emulates a mid-2000s Radeon, these days?

At what resolution. You're not going to software render 4K120FPS even with 2000s graphics. But you also don't need a software implementation since translating to a host API isn't really any harder than that (and often much easier). And this already exists in Wine.

Re: Half-Life 2 in a Browser

#69

Post by foldr »

crote wrote: post #31
AzzyHN wrote: post #2

[flagged]

Valve already gave Half-Life 2 away for free, and released the source code of the HL1 engine. Is it technically illegal? Yeah, but Valve isn't losing out on any money, and there's no way they're going to risk the negative PR blowback they'd get for a takedown. Besides, IP law is dead. The rise of AI made it pretty clear that you can steal literally anything without consequences.

HL2 is not free: https://store.steampowered.com/app/220/HalfLife_2/

Re: Half-Life 2 in a Browser

#70

Post by alt227 »

fragmede wrote: post #46
m00dy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

looks like you forgot to add /s tag to your comment :swh

But what about the people who aren't idiots and can read sarcasm without the /s? I reflexively downvote ever comment I come across with a /s. People aren't idiots until you treat them like one.

But what about people who are in different parts of the world and don't inherently understand your meaning? That is terrible behaviour to downvote the notation.

Text is notorious for not conveying context. Sarcasm can easily be seen as serious by some people, why is why we have the /s notation to make it obvious.

People aren't idiots, they come from different backgrounds, locations, languages, and all use English as a common tongue. Have some consideration and stop thinking you are so big and clever.

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