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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

#91

Post by spiritplumber »

jsheard wrote: post #6
vkazanov wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does a lot, yes, but also is very much a continuation of the original codebase - i've spent quite some time tinkering with internals of it.

Yeah, but Half Life 2's Source engine was itself a continuation of Goldsrc which was itself a continuation of the Quake 1 engine. The lineage is there but beyond a certain point it's not really Quake anymore. GZDoom/UZDoom is a similar grey area, it is built on the original Doom codebase but they've added so many features that it's practically its own distinct engine now. Those forks can even render arbitrary 3D mode…

We are all fish.

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

#92

Post by lproven »

jamesfinlayson wrote: post #74
nomel wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam version: This product is not compatible with macOS 10.15 Catalina or above.

Yeah Apple's latest round of breaking changes hasn't been addressed (and seemingly won't be). The Linux and Mac ports happened in 2013 or so (presumably getting one working went a lot of the way to getting the other working, though there is some speculation that Apple poured in some money to help make it happen).

MacOS 10.15 dropped support for x86-32 binaries.

Later it became clear why: the Apple Silicon transition, and Rosetta 2, which is optimised for running x86-64 binaries on Apple's Arm64.

But the same change is looming on Linux: Ubuntu tried in 2019 but was persuaded not to, Fedora has tried more than once.

WINE 11 can run Win32 binaries on a pure 64-bit host OS without 32-bit libraries. So, you can run some 32-bit Windows games on 64-bit Linux and macOS which cannot run the 32-bit binaries of their own older versions.

Apple merely jumped first. I think it's not to be blamed here. It'll happen everywhere in time.

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

#93

Post by henriquecm8 »

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/

IMHO, if you want to play Half-Life today, you can also just play the original, I've played it recently and still an amazing game, and several aspects I like it more than Half-life 2. Some might not like the graphics for being dated, but after a while you get used to it.

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

#94

Post by pipes »

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…

Do you mean the later levels are bigger and more confusing in black mesa?

Genuine question, as I own both versions and don't know which to play.

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

#95

Post by bigyabai »

its_magic wrote: post #84
bigyabai wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Remember what I said above about the GIANT WASTE OF TIME AND ENERGY that copyright law creates?

You are the only one wasting your time in this entire comment chain. Everyone else has moved on.

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

#96

Post by orleyhuxwell »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #88
pezezin wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm confused after reading this thread; the Xen levels are long in original HF, or in Black Mesa?

> Unfortunately, by the end of the earth levels and certainly on Xen, the levels switch over to original designs

By original designs, do you mean HF1 version, or pre-HF1 designs that didn't get implemented in HF1?

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

#97

Post by matheusmoreira »

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/

Steam Deck owners might want to skip this one. Black Mesa randomly crashes on my Deck for some reason despite being listed as playable.

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

#98

Post by jamesfinlayson »

orleyhuxwell wrote: post #96
reitzensteinm wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm confused after reading this thread; the Xen levels are long in original HF, or in Black Mesa? > Unfortunately, by the end of the earth levels and certainly on Xen, the levels switch over to original designs By original designs, do you mean HF1 version, or pre-HF1 designs that didn't get implemented in HF1?

Black Mesa has a longer Xen and original designs took inspiration from retail Half-Life but weren't exact copies of map layouts etc.

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

#99

Post by jamesfinlayson »

lproven wrote: post #92
jamesfinlayson wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah Apple's latest round of breaking changes hasn't been addressed (and seemingly won't be). The Linux and Mac ports happened in 2013 or so (presumably getting one working went a lot of the way to getting the other working, though there is some speculation that Apple poured in some money to help make it happen).

MacOS 10.15 dropped support for x86-32 binaries. Later it became clear why: the Apple Silicon transition, and Rosetta 2, which is optimised for running x86-64 binaries on Apple's Arm64. But the same change is looming on Linux: Ubuntu tried in 2019 but was persuaded not to, Fedora has tried more than once. WINE 11 can run Win32 binaries on a pure 64-bit host OS without 32-bit libraries. So, you can run some 32-bit Win…

Oh that's right the - the 32-bit thing. Incidentally Valve experimented with 64-bit GoldSource 20+ years ago for servers at least but didn't really pursue it.

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

#100

Post by jamesfinlayson »

plorkyeran wrote: post #46
tsunamifury wrote: post #29

De-makes are interesting because they continuously seem to show what may have been possible long ago in ancient engines if teams pushed them even further. Then again maybe that level of detail even in idtech1 would have required more computing than was available for many years.

I do suspect this would not run well on a 75 Mhz Pentium 1. It would be very surprising if Quake 1 was actually the pinnacle of what as possible on the hardware of the time, though. id made exactly one game targeting that generation of hardware, and then their next game had meaningfully higher system requirements despite coming out only a year later. The hardware capabilities were changing so fast that there simply w…

Not sure but I think it might have been getting close to what was possible - I remember reading about Michael Abrash working with John Carmack on all sorts of things to get acceptable framerates.
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