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Half-Life 2 in a Browser

hl2.slqnt.dev

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Re: Half-Life 2 in a Browser

#91

Post by doublerabbit »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #83
doublerabbit wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Your timeline doesn't make sense. Steam launched in 2003. Scully was forced out of Apple in 1993.

So, your right. But the still holds true, that seed was what was sown not to encourage games for the Mac.

If you watch the YT video they go in to depth that they attempted to port the game and was axed by apple.

Re: Half-Life 2 in a Browser

#92

Post by crote »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #76
crote wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Giving things away for free (at one point) is not the same as making it public domain or relinquishing your (copy)rights. Source available is not the same as open source. Open source code does not mean open source assets/product. I find it weird that this needs to be explained in this community.

> Giving things away for free is not the same as making it public domain or relinquishing your (copy)rights.

Obviously. But it does kill the usual "piracy is bad because companies lose money" argument - especially for a 22-year-old game.

> Source available is not the same as open source.

Obviously. But it does show that Valve is more interested in preserving old genre-defying games for the general public, rather than milking every last cent of revenue out of it.

Re: Half-Life 2 in a Browser

#93

Post by __alexs »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #78
londons_explore wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is up for the copyright owner to enforce or not to enforce. Until they decide, we can't know if it's illegal or not - who knows, this site might have a license.

A crime is a crime even before a judge rules over it. Sure, innocent until proven guilty, but most people know when they're doing something wrong and then don't do it. Of course, this is a lot more grey area for copyright violations etc because it's a civil matter.

What happened to innocent until proven guilty?

Re: Half-Life 2 in a Browser

#94

Post by crote »

dminik wrote: post #41
crote wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

GoldSrc (HL1 engine) is very much not open source (or even source available). There's at least one open source remake (which is possibly illegal due to using the SDK) but no official release.

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/halflife is the HL1 engine, is it not?

Re: Half-Life 2 in a Browser

#95

Post by LandenLove »

roflcopter69 wrote: post #88
LandenLove wrote: post #7

As much as I dislike webdev stuff, I love the way you can distribute entire programs through WASM. Super cool stuff! For those who are interested, I recommend checking out Godot for exporting games on the web. It's really easy to do and you can host it on Itch.io

Isn't Godot kinda flawed for deploying to the web? For example, no C# as of now, although there have been plenty of efforts to make it work. Or AFAIU audio being forced to stay in the main thread which can cause glitches. I just mean that it's not all fun and games as soon as you want to make a more ambitious game and not just a quick demo or game jam thingy.

I found GDScript to be quite powerful in terms of functionality. I don't have experience in professional game Dev to be aware of the benefits of C# beyond it being the industry standard for Unity.

Single threaded audio is a big concern. I haven't implemented music in my game yet to know if it is a deal breaker.

The main problem that I have run into is shader compilation stutters on the compatibility render. Makes the game basically unplayable. My work around was to spawn certain objects on the main menu out of sight to force compilation. I believe the forward renderer has some pre-compilation.

Re: Half-Life 2 in a Browser

#96

Post by crote »

foldr wrote: post #69
crote wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

It was available for free as part of its 20th anniversary update: https://overclock3d.net/news/software/half-life-2-is-availab...

Re: Half-Life 2 in a Browser

#97

Post by bpye »

crote wrote: post #94
dminik wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GoldSrc (HL1 engine) is very much not open source (or even source available). There's at least one open source remake (which is possibly illegal due to using the SDK) but no official release.

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/halflife is the HL1 engine, is it not?

That's just the SDK - which does include the game code but not the engine. Xash3D is the reverse engineered engine alluded to above.

Re: Half-Life 2 in a Browser

#98

Post by charcircuit »

shakna wrote: post #90
Klonoar wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think Apple may have burned a lot of developer bridges with Metal, deprecating OpenGL, and ignoring Vulkan.

To be fair Microsoft ignored Vulkan with Windows leaving it up to 3P to implement.

Re: Half-Life 2 in a Browser

#99

Post by [deleted] »

doublerabbit wrote: post #91
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your timeline doesn't make sense. Steam launched in 2003. Scully was forced out of Apple in 1993.

So, your right. But the still holds true, that seed was what was sown not to encourage games for the Mac. If you watch the YT video they go in to depth that they attempted to port the game and was axed by apple.

[deleted]

Re: Half-Life 2 in a Browser

#100

Post by foldr »

crote wrote: post #96
foldr wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It was available for free as part of its 20th anniversary update: https://overclock3d.net/news/software/half-life-2-is-availab...

That was a special promotion with a defined end date. The game is not free. The only legitimate way to obtain it currently is to pay for it. Together with the false claim about HL1 being open source, you're really adding a lot of misinformation to this thread.
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