HL1 For other platforms?

[Lazy]

I've been wondering why no one has decided to upgrade the old quake engine so linux/macos users can play hl1 natively.
It seems possible, you'd need to strip out the quake virtual machine and replace it with HL's interface along with a few other major changes but it looks possible.

I think it would be pretty cool to see HL running natively on my powermac 7500 ( G4/450 upgraded ).
Does anyone know of any legal/technical reasons why this hasn't been done yet?

[stefanhendriks]

in that case i would say upgrade that engine and make it look better. HL2 style or something, but then free

[Lazy]

I was thinking about something along the lines of tenebrae for those stencil shadows and per-pixel lighting features but a generic renderer would have to be re-added for those video cards that have no shader capability.

But I think the first steps would be:

1. Decide to use either QuakeWorld or GLQuake
2. Seperate the server from the client
3. Implement the HL engine functions server-side
4. Re-compile the half-life mod for the target os/machine
5. Run it and use debug output to verify its working correctly

The client would be fairly simple...

- Strip out ALL vgui code from the hl client source
- Recompile hl client for target os/machine
- Modify quake to use the HL bsp format
- Test by having it load a hl map and noclip around
- Add client-server networking

A lot of work but it seems possible, I just wonder why no one has started already.

[Whistler]

use the HLSDK without Valve's HL engine is illegal as it has strict non-free license. You also have to write all MOD codes yourself.

Valve's main purpose to release the HLSDK seems to be get some people working for Value for free (just think about the early age of CS), rather than serving the hobbies or contributing to the community.

edit: this one seems can render HL maps: http://fteqw.sourceforge.net/

[Lazy]

Well that sucks, although it shouldn't be hard to replicate HL's entity behaviour - it may even be better to leave it alone and do it in QuakeC and just upgrade the client.
I'll have to look into that quakeworld engine later on, if it can render hl maps then the client is half way there already.

As far as the legal issues, is it illegal to use the sdk for referencing things like constants?
I can live without it but it would make things so much easier ( thats even if I decide to start it ).

Still, the hardest thing would probably be getting hl mdl support working.
I'll have to go out and buy an opengl book and learn it before touching any quake code.

[Rick]

Wouldn't it be better to use the q3 engine instead?

[Lazy]

Could be, but the problem remains that if the hl mod code has to be re-written from scratch it won't "feel" the same as the original.
It could be close, but those who would play it again under a new engine would notice a difference.

Though quake3 would have a lot of bugs fixed since quake1 it would really increase the system requirements, that and having to rip out the md3 code and put in hl's mdl system.

Either way its a lot of work and I'm starting to wonder if its possible to re-write the game code close enough to feel like the orignal hl.

[Rick]

Better use one of the existing, free engines and mod those than (Sauerbraten!)

[Lazy]

I'm going to grab the quake3 engine source sometime today and see how difficult it would be to get a half-life bsp loaded.
Even with standard q3 game rules a loaded hl bsp would be a great start.

[Lazy]

Ok, so how legal is it to use HL BSP file information contained in bspfile.h?
A lot of code to render this stuff is already in quake3 so making it render a hl bsp shouldn't be too hard if I make 2 seperate code paths for both formats.

I still have to write a tool to extract all the textures from HL wads but the information about the format is near non-existant.
Still have no idea how to handle models though, I could either add a hl model renderer or just write/use a tool to convert them all to md3s.