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Developer gets Half-Life running at 30 FPS on a Nokia N95

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Re: Developer gets Half-Life running at 30 FPS on a Nokia N95

#31

Post by WorldMaker »

jamesfinlayson wrote: post #8
skotobaza wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an open Half-Life 1 SDK on Valve's GitHub [1], not sure if it's missing something regarding the engine. [1] https://github.com/ValveSoftware/halflife

Yeah that's just the game logic which has been out since 1999. The rendering/networking/animation/UI/sound etc stuff is all still closed source (though apparently there is a leak from a Counter-Strike Online developer circulating among private hands - some code was contributed to Xash3D which perfectly implemented a non-trivial scripting system which was suspicious enough that it was removed).

Isn't that because a lot of GoldSrc was idTech-derived enough that the legality of open sourcing it is trapped in contract law limbo? Even though those years of the idTech engine itself are now also open source, the contracts at the time did not plan for that and it is likely at this point that solving those contracts would be a 3-way legal question between Microsoft (ActiVision because of Vivendi/Sierra, Half-Life's original publisher), Microsoft (Bethesda because of inheriting idTech), and Valve, with the obviously problem in the way of that Valve and Microsoft have a complex history and aren't likely to want to get into a legal discussion if they can help it.

I seem to recall a fan project trying to take idTech's open source and recreate GoldSrc's fork from it by trying to reverse engineer from the parts of Half Life that are open source but not having much luck because the divergence was strong enough in some places to be somewhat impenetrable without some other Rosetta Stone.

Re: Developer gets Half-Life running at 30 FPS on a Nokia N95

#32

Post by Melatonic »

kotaKat wrote: post #22
ndiddy wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the purpose of refurbishing old phones like this? Is it just to sell to enthusiasts/collectors? In most of the world, 3G has been shut down and 2G is either already shut down or in the process of being shut down, so you wouldn't be able to get much practical use out of the phone.

fun thing is a bunch of hobbyists are running around with SDRs and old cell hardware and running low power experimental cell networks in their houses, questionable legality be damned. OpenBTS/YateBTS/OsmoBTS and friends are useful here to spin up a working network and relive a happier time. I've been meaning to get one of the tiny SDR cards like an XRTX and place it into a Pi or similar device and build a "mobile mob…

That's actually a very interesting idea - do you have any good resources for setting this up ?

There are some cars that can only access 3G for certain features and it would be cool to test around and see what my vehicle can do and if I want to disable it for reliability reasons

Re: Developer gets Half-Life running at 30 FPS on a Nokia N95

#33

Post by rahimnathwani »

kotaKat wrote: post #22
ndiddy wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the purpose of refurbishing old phones like this? Is it just to sell to enthusiasts/collectors? In most of the world, 3G has been shut down and 2G is either already shut down or in the process of being shut down, so you wouldn't be able to get much practical use out of the phone.

fun thing is a bunch of hobbyists are running around with SDRs and old cell hardware and running low power experimental cell networks in their houses, questionable legality be damned. OpenBTS/YateBTS/OsmoBTS and friends are useful here to spin up a working network and relive a happier time. I've been meaning to get one of the tiny SDR cards like an XRTX and place it into a Pi or similar device and build a "mobile mob…

802.11b/g :(

Re: Developer gets Half-Life running at 30 FPS on a Nokia N95

#34

Post by geoffeg »

ge96 wrote: post #15
kotaKat wrote: post #4

I noticed quite recently in awe at the Chinese parts recycling market with the N95 (and a few other old Nokias) - https://www.ebay.com/itm/227249518747 Apparently they've been rebuilding full "new" N95s and other Nokia fare from old motherboards and new spares/knockoff parts. It's like a new legitimate knockoff from the grey market? They've even got things like 'refurbed' N900s... Mine came with a text message still…

N900 was a crazy phone, ahead of its time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9CFrJnCKqU At that time I had a flip phone maybe a black berry curve so not aware of it

I would love a modern version of the N900/N810. If I could get one with a recent ARM processor, good slide out keyboard, and running a more desktop-oriented Linux install (meaning more hacking/developer friendly than just Android), I'd be seriously tempted. Sadly, I assume the current component prices would mean it would be too expensive to be realistic.

Re: Developer gets Half-Life running at 30 FPS on a Nokia N95

#35

Post by realityfactchex »

kotaKat wrote: post #4

I noticed quite recently in awe at the Chinese parts recycling market with the N95 (and a few other old Nokias) - https://www.ebay.com/itm/227249518747 Apparently they've been rebuilding full "new" N95s and other Nokia fare from old motherboards and new spares/knockoff parts. It's like a new legitimate knockoff from the grey market? They've even got things like 'refurbed' N900s... Mine came with a text message still…

> They've even got things like 'refurbed' N900s

As an original N900 user, I got one of the eBay "refurbed" N900s from China I think a few years ago for fun. It was a piece of junk, literally, like arrived with broken keyboard etc. A clear case of false advertising. I got a full refund.

YMMV. I was really thinking I was buying a proper refurbed N900. Maybe they're out there. Buyer beware.

Re: Developer gets Half-Life running at 30 FPS on a Nokia N95

#36

Post by burnte »

realityfactchex wrote: post #35
kotaKat wrote: post #4

I noticed quite recently in awe at the Chinese parts recycling market with the N95 (and a few other old Nokias) - https://www.ebay.com/itm/227249518747 Apparently they've been rebuilding full "new" N95s and other Nokia fare from old motherboards and new spares/knockoff parts. It's like a new legitimate knockoff from the grey market? They've even got things like 'refurbed' N900s... Mine came with a text message still…

> They've even got things like 'refurbed' N900s As an original N900 user, I got one of the eBay "refurbed" N900s from China I think a few years ago for fun. It was a piece of junk, literally, like arrived with broken keyboard etc. A clear case of false advertising. I got a full refund. YMMV. I was really thinking I was buying a proper refurbed N900. Maybe they're out there. Buyer beware.

I had an N900 when it came out, after falling in love with the N810, one of my favorite devices to this day, I'd buy a new one with modern guts in a heartbeat. The N900 was junk. The build quality was terrible and the software was half baked. Right after it released Nokia said they were cancelling everything about it and pretended to care about software going forward but didn't. In the VERY short time I had one I had the ear piece speaker break (common), the magnets fall out (also common), the screen slide break (also common!), and even when it worked the slide felt janky and the OS was extremely slow. They never fixed MMS, despite promises.

Re: Developer gets Half-Life running at 30 FPS on a Nokia N95

#37

Post by burnte »

geoffeg wrote: post #34
ge96 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

N900 was a crazy phone, ahead of its time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9CFrJnCKqU At that time I had a flip phone maybe a black berry curve so not aware of it

I would love a modern version of the N900/N810. If I could get one with a recent ARM processor, good slide out keyboard, and running a more desktop-oriented Linux install (meaning more hacking/developer friendly than just Android), I'd be seriously tempted. Sadly, I assume the current component prices would mean it would be too expensive to be realistic.

I'd buy an N810 formfactor right now with modern guts.

Re: Developer gets Half-Life running at 30 FPS on a Nokia N95

#38

Post by ge96 »

geoffeg wrote: post #34
ge96 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

N900 was a crazy phone, ahead of its time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9CFrJnCKqU At that time I had a flip phone maybe a black berry curve so not aware of it

I would love a modern version of the N900/N810. If I could get one with a recent ARM processor, good slide out keyboard, and running a more desktop-oriented Linux install (meaning more hacking/developer friendly than just Android), I'd be seriously tempted. Sadly, I assume the current component prices would mean it would be too expensive to be realistic.

Funny I tried to buy one of those breakout blackberry keyboards but they were sold out everywhere

Re: Developer gets Half-Life running at 30 FPS on a Nokia N95

#39

Post by mewse-hn »

WorldMaker wrote: post #31
jamesfinlayson wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that's just the game logic which has been out since 1999. The rendering/networking/animation/UI/sound etc stuff is all still closed source (though apparently there is a leak from a Counter-Strike Online developer circulating among private hands - some code was contributed to Xash3D which perfectly implemented a non-trivial scripting system which was suspicious enough that it was removed).

Isn't that because a lot of GoldSrc was idTech-derived enough that the legality of open sourcing it is trapped in contract law limbo? Even though those years of the idTech engine itself are now also open source, the contracts at the time did not plan for that and it is likely at this point that solving those contracts would be a 3-way legal question between Microsoft (ActiVision because of Vivendi/Sierra, Half-Life's…

Maybe.. kind of.

The Doom source code was originally released under a non-commercial license that was weirdly restrictive and it was eventually re-released under GPL. The Quake source code was released under GPL from the beginning.

If Valve really wanted to release HL1/GoldSrc source code, they could re-base to the GPL quake source code and release their changes as GPL as well. This would be a miserable job because the remaining quake code is probably scattered across the codebase in weird orphaned fragments, but afaik it would be completely legal.

e: oh yeah if the shambling zombie that is Sierra still holds any rights over HL1 then god knows what the IP situation is with that property

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