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Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9

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Re: Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9

#81

Post by CursedSilicon »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #80
CursedSilicon wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a bizarre take Many people refuse to use LLM's for various reasons that I don't need to rehash here

"Bizarre" is rejecting powerful tools on ... what, religious grounds? It would be one thing if we were talking woodworking or pottery or another skilled craft, where your personal growth of talent with experience is evident in the product, resulting in something you can look back on fondly and point to with pride. But moving some legacy code (which you didn't write) from one platform to another? What do you get out o…

You seem either deliberately or functionally unable to grasp the premise of why anyone would do this (or reject LLM's)

I suggest instead you go read up on why people dislike them and gain a more well-rounded and nuanced understanding of the topic

Re: Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9

#82

Post by ColdStream »

gilgoomesh wrote: post #79

In one of the most infamous stories of the era, Half-Life was officially ported to Mac OS back in the year 2000 by Logicware/MacPlay but got shut down by Valve at the last minute. I've watched interviews with Rebecca Heineman (one of the devs involved) on the topic. It did not make her happy. Here's an article from the era: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/mac-half-life-canceled/110... Interview with Rebecca Heinema…

Oh dear Becky 'Burger' did see both the best and worst of this industry.

Re: Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9

#83

Post by rufo »

gilgoomesh wrote: post #79

In one of the most infamous stories of the era, Half-Life was officially ported to Mac OS back in the year 2000 by Logicware/MacPlay but got shut down by Valve at the last minute. I've watched interviews with Rebecca Heineman (one of the devs involved) on the topic. It did not make her happy. Here's an article from the era: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/mac-half-life-canceled/110... Interview with Rebecca Heinema…

I was so steamed about this as a teenager back when it happened - pretty sure it was one of the foundational reasons I started to consider building my own gaming PC once I got the money together.

As an adult, and with the hindsight of seeing how Valve has (generally) supported their games over the years, I can appreciate gaben's reasoning for cancelling it... though as someone gaming on the Mac, we were all kind of used to being second class citizens and bodging together mod support and whatever, so I still think they should've let it come out.

> “Given the realities of the Mac gaming market, our Mac customers were… always going to be second-class customers where we couldn’t invest to the same degree in the Mac version as we did elsewhere,” commented Newell. “I don’t want to be in that business. I would much rather we just eat the money we’ve spent so far than take money from Mac customers and shortchange them.”

Re: Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9

#84

Post by manytimesaway »

CursedSilicon wrote: post #72
manytimesaway wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xash3D is not really open-source. The original codebase comes from leaked/decompiled code, and nowadays still requires the proprietary HLSDK to build.

Can you provide citations for this? The original Xash3D engine is listed as open source on ModDB

Example discussion here : https://github.com/FWGS/xash3d-fwgs/issues/63#issuecomment-9...

HN comment from a major maintainer here : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38314427

Valve has confirmed that it violates the HLSDK EULA, too. At least for the original Xash3D release.

Re: Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9

#85

Post by yowzadave »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #74
CursedSilicon wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in retro spaces there's a lot of rejection of using AI to do things. Half-Life (and the later Source engine games such as Half-Life 2 and Portal) were ported without LLM assistance however (Source: I am in the Discord where the developer has been working and diligently posting updates on the project)

(Removed inaccurate remark, or rather, removed my reply to an inaccurate remark)

I recommend you approach life in a spirit of curiosity—it can be interesting to learn about the different interests and motivations of other people!

Re: Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9

#86

Post by srp-shay »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #74
CursedSilicon wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in retro spaces there's a lot of rejection of using AI to do things. Half-Life (and the later Source engine games such as Half-Life 2 and Portal) were ported without LLM assistance however (Source: I am in the Discord where the developer has been working and diligently posting updates on the project)

(Removed inaccurate remark, or rather, removed my reply to an inaccurate remark)

Hi there, I'm the developer of this port.

I did use AI to assist me in development and I'm not shy about admitting that. This was still a hands-on effort that took well over 40 hours of development time spread over a couple months. Much like other development tools, AI certainly sped up my development process and allowed to ship something in a couple of months using my free time.

AI is a tool and it isn't going anywhere, I've posted my thoughts about AI extensively in the PowerPC community. I don't proactively volunteer or plaster my readmes with notes about AI because it doesn't really matter.

Speaking for me personally I have no problem using tools in my toolbelt to solve problems faster in my limited free time.

Re: Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9

#87

Post by dosisking »

someperson wrote: post #43
xp84 wrote: post #42

More and more, I wonder if projects like this (I assume they're made possible 'all of a sudden' because of AI coding tools) are going to eventually breathe new life into dozens of "obsolete" platforms long ago deemed too costly to keep supporting. Maybe we'll be able to daily drive OS9 with modern browsers and bugfixes. Or for those of us less masochistic, say, Windows 2000 or NextStep!

I feel like the best Beatles songs are yet to be written. Or alternatively best classic Simpsons episodes are yet to be made.

> Or alternatively best classic Simpsons episodes are yet to be made.

Yes. This will happen.... when pigs fly

(It's still good, it's still good)

Re: Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9

#88

Post by CamperBob2 »

CursedSilicon wrote: post #81
CamperBob2 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Bizarre" is rejecting powerful tools on ... what, religious grounds? It would be one thing if we were talking woodworking or pottery or another skilled craft, where your personal growth of talent with experience is evident in the product, resulting in something you can look back on fondly and point to with pride. But moving some legacy code (which you didn't write) from one platform to another? What do you get out o…

You seem either deliberately or functionally unable to grasp the premise of why anyone would do this (or reject LLM's) I suggest instead you go read up on why people dislike them and gain a more well-rounded and nuanced understanding of the topic

And you seem to be operating on a faulty premise (as was I.)

Re: Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9

#89

Post by srp-shay »

hedgehog wrote: post #64
walrus01 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The G3 iMac that came out in this time period had much weaker 3D rendering capability than a contemporary PC gaming video card like a TNT2. Their video ability was closer to the 2D/office oriented video cards sold for non gaming use... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIVA_TNT2 Or a voodoo2...

Yes, but Half-Life was designed to be somewhat playable with software rendering even on a 133MHz Pentium and that would have been the better rendering path on the earliest iMacs. In my opinion in that generation Half-Life's software renderer looked better than most of those cards due to the blurry textures and poor scaling (lack of VRAM basically unless you had cash for the 32MB versions) so no big loss for single pl…

The 1998 release required a 500MHz processor at a minimum... 133MHz might be pushing it.

Re: Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9

#90

Post by cellularmitosis »

xp84 wrote: post #42

More and more, I wonder if projects like this (I assume they're made possible 'all of a sudden' because of AI coding tools) are going to eventually breathe new life into dozens of "obsolete" platforms long ago deemed too costly to keep supporting. Maybe we'll be able to daily drive OS9 with modern browsers and bugfixes. Or for those of us less masochistic, say, Windows 2000 or NextStep!

related: https://powerfox.jazzzny.me/
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