7 ms·
Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9
- ChrisMarshallNY 2mo agoThat's nice. Now do MacOS 26, on M chips. [UPDATE] To make it clear, it was a joke (always a faceplant, on HN, where senses of humor go to die). It's actually very cool. I just get cranky that 3/4 of my Steam games don't work on new Macs, and I did like HL.
- altern8 2mo agoI think those guys are about classic Macs
- ChrisMarshallNY 2mo agoI know. It was kind of a joke, which, due to this being HN, fell flat.
- nomel 2mo agoDone. http://www.macsourceports.com/game/halflife http://www.macsourceports.com/game/halflife
- ChrisMarshallNY 2mo agoAwesome!
- parl_match 2mo agoyou do it.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2mo agoNope. Looks like someone already did (look up)
- parl_match 2mo agoif youre not going to do it, then dont complain when others dont do it
- ChrisMarshallNY 2mo agoIf you had read -even the original post, with its update, you would realize that it was a badly-delivered joke. Life’s too short to take seriously.
- Barbing 2mo agoMissing a bounty to go with that directness!
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- ChrisMarshallNY 2mo agoBut, to make it clear, it was a joke. It's actually very cool. I just get cranky that 3/4 of my Steam games don't work on new Macs, and I did like HL.
- lenerdenator 2mo agoNah, that's based. If Apple Silicon ran my games collection I simply wouldn't have another computer other than my M2 MBP. I've run Fallout 3 on it, and while the emulation isn't perfect, it is playable and runs. The fan doesn't turn into a jet aircraft at takeoff, the temps stay cool. The fact that most games won't play on Apple Silicon natively is a crime.
- some-guy 2mo agoTangentially related, there are now "officially allowed" Apple Silicon builds of Unreal Tournament and Unreal Tournament 2004 available [0] [0]: https://github.com/OldUnreal/FullGameInstallers/releases/tag/macos-installers-1 https://github.com/OldUnreal/FullGameInstallers/releases/tag...
- anthk 2mo agoInstall this Wine build for Apple Silicon and then install anything you want, from Steam to GOG games which often will perfectly run in your machine: https://github.com/Sikarugir-App/Sikarugir https://github.com/Sikarugir-App/Sikarugir Next, open Steam and enable the "Steam Play/proton compatibility" in the settings.
- lenerdenator 2mo agoQ: how will the future removal of Rosetta 2 impact things like this? I do have some things that will play now, but I worry about that.
- bombcar 2mo agoI love that simcity4 has an applesilicon and big name recent releases don't. Yay.
- rvz 2mo agoThis is the only site where it is illegal to make a joke.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2mo agoFair cop, Guv
- ofalkaed 2mo agoJokes are downvoted not because of a lack humor but because if we reward making jokes we will have to scroll through dozens of jokes and all of their responses to get the actual discussion. Voting is about keeping the on topic and worthwhile discussion at the top with everything else buried beneath it.
- assimpleaspossi 2mo agoI get cranky coming to HN and seeing 3/4 of the posts about games.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2mo agoSeems 90% AI, these days, with a lot of going into the weeds of AI management and development.
- cs02rm0 2mo agoCounter-Strike!
- pimlottc 2mo agoCleverly done.
- hedgehog 2mo agoFor reference this is roughly period correct for the early iMac models (G3 and DV) that came out in 1998 and 1999, though MacOS 9 didn't ship until later. Impressive porting work.
- mikestorrent 2mo agoAlways weirds me out to see an iMac running an OS older than OS X. The physical design language really ended up dictating the OS X look, didn't it? Still does, in a way, with Liquid Glass bringing back clear.
- mistercow 2mo agoI think the technology also dictated it. It’s easy to forget that in those days the idea of window chrome being full color, full transparency, with live window dragging and visuals not locked to tiling 8x8 or at best 32x32 elements was incredibly novel. And that was as much about preemptive multitasking and expecting and allowing every application to keep its windows up to date as it was about Quartz. Aqua was garish and in your face, but it needed to be in order to be a symbol of what the system had achieved, which I think was especially important because that came at the cost of being a buggy, immature OS that had to run crucial apps in a hideous compatibility mode while it was getting established. Edit: and if I can be a cranky old codger for a moment, I think that Liquid Glass unintentionally serves just as well as a symbol for what Apple has become: a company grasping to relive the memory of innovation without remembering how to innovate.
- hedgehog 2mo agoAt the time there was also a major push to bring desktop computing and the web to the general population, remember this was a time when cutting costs enough to market a $1000 PC ($2000 adjusted for inflation) was considered a major achievement, the very bottom of the market. I get the sense that Apple was trying to distance its design as much as possible from square-cornered beige boxes as possible to signal that the products were for normal people.
- frollogaston 2mo agoPorting AssaultCube should be doable too
- mcfdoesdev 2mo agoThis makes me so happy lol.
- wk_end 2mo agoThe most interesting thing about this link, for me, is seeing that there's an open-source recreation of GoldSrc [0]? That's apparently been around since 2011 [1]? I'm stunned I haven't heard about this before. Very cool. [0] https://github.com/fwgs/xash3d-fwgs https://github.com/fwgs/xash3d-fwgs [1] https://www.moddb.com/engines/xash3d-engine https://www.moddb.com/engines/xash3d-engine
- manytimesaway 2mo agoXash3D is not really open-source. The original codebase comes from leaked/decompiled code, and nowadays still requires the proprietary HLSDK to build.
- CursedSilicon 2mo agoCan you provide citations for this? The original Xash3D engine is listed as open source on ModDB
- manytimesaway 2mo agoExample discussion here : https://github.com/FWGS/xash3d-fwgs/issues/63#issuecomment-916021611 https://github.com/FWGS/xash3d-fwgs/issues/63#issuecomment-9... HN comment from a major maintainer here : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38314427 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38314427 Valve has confirmed that it violates the HLSDK EULA, too. At least for the original Xash3D release.
- sharkjacobs 2mo agoI would have been really excited about this circa 1999. I mean don't get me wrong, I was grateful for Unreal Tournament and Q3A, and I knew I'd be getting Halo soon, but this is the one game I was really jealous of my friends for.
- snapetom 2mo agoHah. When I saw the headline, I said, "Finally! I've been asking for this for almost 30 years!"
- NateEag 2mo agoLikewise. I still remember being upset when the news broke that the port had been dropped.
- jonhohle 2mo ago> I knew I'd be getting Halo soon That’s a deep cut. (And salt on the wound.)
- NateEag 2mo agoI sometimes wonder what the timeline where Bungie didn't write the Myth II uninstaller-can-wipe-your-hard-drive bug would look like. IIUC, the fact that they reprinted all the discs and manually replaced all the boxed, ready-to-ship discs to avoid any chance of destroying someone's data wound up eating most of the profits from Myth II. That, in turn, led to the situation where they were too cash-strapped to finish Halo on their own, resulting in the infamous moment where Apple decided to buy them after all just a couple days too late: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2010/10/jobs-turned-down-bungie-at-first-how-microsoft-burned-apple/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2010/10/jobs-turned-down-bung... I still fantasize about an Oni-meets-Mirror's-Edge freerunning / martial arts game. Maybe there'd have been one if not for that bug.
- ColdStream 2mo agoI was not aware of the Myth 2 bug, but from people I know that have worked with Bungie's code in the 90's early 2000's... yeah that tracks. Not sure what it was like towards the end of the Blam/Midnight/Slipspace engine era but at the beginning it was the dictionary definition of 'Technical debt'.
- amatecha 2mo agoNice, I'm surprised it took this long! My first experience of playing Quake 1 in my home was an unauthorized source port which ran in System 7, I believe was called "HackQuake", ported from stolen source code from CrackDotCom apparently[0][1] .. For me as a kid getting insanely impatient to play Quake, this was a godsend! Even if the performance was brutal and firing a rocket caused the framerate to halve. Played it at 320x200 pixel-doubled just to eke out that extra little bit of performance. Anyway, the point is that HL probably could have been running on Mac since day one, if someone had spent the time to port it! [0] https://www.wired.com/1997/01/hackers-hack-crack-steal-quake/ https://www.wired.com/1997/01/hackers-hack-crack-steal-quake... [1] https://github.com/Jason2Brownlee/QuakeOfficialArchive/blob/main/research/history-macquake.md https://github.com/Jason2Brownlee/QuakeOfficialArchive/blob/...
- EPWN3D 2mo agoI remember when TIE Fighter finally came out for the Mac, I just begged my parents to order it from Mac Warehouse or whichever catalogue it was in. I didn't read the system requirements, which said it needed a PowerPC. I was still rocking a Quadra 610 that I'd upgraded to a 50MHz 68040 and 24 MB of RAM. When I got the game and looked at the box, I was heartbroken. But I decided, why not put in the disk anyway. I did the Get Info on the app, and lo and behold, Lucas Arts had left what was probably a totally untested 68k slice in the binary. Double-clicked it, and I could play without a problem. Sure I had to play it in a tiny 320x240 window, but that extra 16 MB of RAM and extra 25 MHz made it playable.
- metadat 2mo agoThat is an amazing story. I grew up with a weak performa 560 and was constantly browsing the aisles at Fry’s Electronics looking for games. None of them supported Mac, especially 25MHz 68k!
- User23 2mo agoI had a dream as a kid that my parents had finally bought a Color Macintosh. Imagine how heartbroken I was when I woke up. That MacUser issue for the Mac II was basically torture.
- system7rocks 2mo agoWow. This is the golden age for classic Macs.
- purpleflame1257 2mo agoSo will this run through Classic no problem, yes? I almost want to break my powebook G4 out of mothballs on principle to try this.
- srp-shay 2mo agoYep, your G4 will run this through Classic no problem! Use the respective Tiger/Leopard builds for better compatibility.
- ayaros 2mo agoRuns nicely on my iBook G3! Is the OS 9 build supposed to include Blue Shift and Opposing Force, or is that only a reference to the Tiger and Leopard ports? Just tried out the Tiger port on my iMac G4; it also runs fine!
- srp-shay 2mo agoHey, glad to hear it's running on your iBook and I really appreciate the feedback! Hopefully you're not having any mouse look problems, or invisible NPCs... I've got a fix for those issues coming soon, as well as a separate build of Blue Shift and Opposing Force. The current Blue Shift and Opposing Force builds are for Tiger and Leopard only. Cheers!
- ayaros 2mo agoI should note: I ran the OS 9 installer, then was doing a few other things around the apartment and when I got back, it had crashed. So I reopened it, reran it, and it seems all the files had successfully been copied, so all it effectively did the second time was prompt me to create shortcuts. I haven't extensively tested it beyond the initial parts of the training room because I didn't have time. I didn't notice anything odd; it seemed to run just fine.
- xp84 2mo agoMore 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!
- someperson 2mo agoI feel like the best Beatles songs are yet to be written. Or alternatively best classic Simpsons episodes are yet to be made.
- dosisking 2mo ago> 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)
- soulofmischief 2mo agoI think people seem to be downvoting this because it's not something they like whether true or not, however I think it's a thought-provoking perspective which warrants some consideration.
- nonethewiser 2mo agoI think there is real insight but it kinda relies on a rhetorical trick. AI could arguably create a simpsons episode. It absolutely could not make a Beatles song. The Beatles can only make a Beatles song, and they do not exist.
- xamuel 2mo agoThe Beatles absolutely still exist! They published a new single in 2023 ("Now and Then") and they surgically injected slices from archive footage into new footage for the music video to make it look like young Lennon and Harrison perform alongside elder McCartney and Ringo.
- gcanyon 2mo agoGreat, now all I need is (checks the closet) any of the dozen or so powermacs I owned over the years to not have left my possession...
- luciana1u 2mo ago[flagged]
- ColdStream 2mo agoIt's not like they held a funeral on stage in front of a huge crowd of developers, say at WWDC 02 or anything... Yeah, I think Steve took equal part great joy with a little sprinkle of sadness at what was that event.
- ChrisRR 2mo agoHow do you define erase from existence?
- 6stringmerc 2mo ago[R]age Board for the Elites represent! I still send the di clan video around every few months to the Zoomers I connect with in games. Halcyon days of HLDM and AG worldwide. RIP Neo. May you sneak around boot_camp in the great beyond with joy.
- gilgoomesh 2mo agoIn 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/1100-2448672/?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://www.gamespot.com/articles/mac-half-life-canceled/110... Interview with Rebecca Heineman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPTLPXNtb2I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPTLPXNtb2I (skip to timecode 1:36:41 for the Half-Life details)
- nxobject 2mo agoNotoriously after Halo for Macintosh was canned, too...
- joshstrange 2mo agoIt's funny to think that Bungie, a mac developer, created Halo and the original demo was mac-only (as far as I remember) only to get picked up by Microsoft to be the flagship game on the Xbox. I spent many, many hours playing that demo with friends.
- ColdStream 2mo agoOh dear Becky 'Burger' did see both the best and worst of this industry.
- rufo 2mo agoI 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.”
- zombot 2mo agoEverybody knows what a celebrity Gordon Freeman is, but Mac OS 9 has not been graced with his presence yet. So glad to see things change for the better!
- zombot 2mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Freeman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Freeman
- remiminnebo 2mo agoI can finally relive my childhood on a non-inferior OS.
- lloeki 2mo ago> The game was originally planned to be released for Mac OS 9 by Valve in 1999, but was cancelled shortly before launch. The wildest cancel of all was certainly the impressive Dreamcast port, which was fully playable and basically ready to release but got canned a month before release. https://combineoverwiki.net/wiki/Half-Life_(Dreamcast_port) https://combineoverwiki.net/wiki/Half-Life_(Dreamcast_port)
- madhu_ghalame 2mo ago[dead]
- trencedamp 2mo agoWhat's with all the half life ports at the moment? I think this is the third one on HN this month
- philipwhiuk 2mo agoThe GoldSrc engine is fairly open and people have LLMs which are almost designed for translation? Also I guess it's a bit more interesting the DOOM ports which have been done to death.
- trencedamp 2mo agoTrue. I'm not complaining. I love half life. It's just an unusual burst
- KageFX 2mo agothe THIRD one ?
- felixding 2mo agoMaybe it’s because I’m old, but the classic Mac OS user interface looks so good. I’d trade the current Mac OS UI for it in a heartbeat. I’m already sticking with Sequoia because I don’t want Liquid Glass making my eyes sore.
- xkcd1963 2mo agoYou know they do this on purpose to have a novelty effect on the next release -.- customer loyalty really doesn't pay
- ChrisRR 2mo agoI literally thought the same the other day when I was messing around with macos 9. The modern macos is so damn bright that I don't think it would need a dark mode if it just softened the colour choices. That and just generally it feels so soulless nowadays. Mac OS pre-brushed metal felt like a breath of fresh air compared to os9, but it's taken it to its extreme now and it just looks bad
- sgt 2mo agoWhat exactly is bright? I don't disagree with you on pre-brushed metal and so on. I am running Tahoe in bright mode (not a fan of dark mode unless it's an IDE or a terminal emulator), and I can't really say it's screams bright. Even the new transparent menu bar matches my dark grey desktop background now.