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81% Positive

Analyzed from 3242 words in the discussion.

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#mac#https#com#still#life#half#source#game#games#don

Discussion (125 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

amatechaabout 13 hours ago
Nice, 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...

[1] https://github.com/Jason2Brownlee/QuakeOfficialArchive/blob/...

EPWN3Dabout 12 hours ago
I 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.

amatechaabout 5 hours ago
Ah yeah, the same kind of thing happened to me. I saved up enough money to buy WarCraft 1 from the store, only to find out it required a 640x480 monitor -- I had a Macintosh LC with the standard 12" 512x384 display. Luckily my parents let me play the game on their IIci (or whatever it was they had at the time) with a nice large display. Phew!

That's pretty lucky about the 68k code still being available in the binary! I can just imagine someone on the dev team going "ehh we aren't officially supposed to support it, but someone will be really glad we did even if it doesn't play as well as the PPC version"

metadatabout 11 hours ago
That 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!
amatechaabout 5 hours ago
Oh yeah, I remember being blown away any time I found a Mac game in a store. Usually they just had some edutainment/shovelware stuff at best, though.
User23about 8 hours ago
I 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.
taneqabout 10 hours ago
Having spent a large chunk of my teens playing X-Wing on a 486-DX33 you are clearly my enemy. :P

I didn’t have to data mine a compatible .exe from the game files but I did have to use a special boot disk with a modified himem.sys on it so the game would launch. Good times, haha.

tekchipabout 10 hours ago
You're spot on. Software is infinitely flexible provided time and/or resources.
amatechaabout 5 hours ago
Yeah, I pretty often think of how much we're using today that totally could have been done in the 90's (or earlier), just in a slightly more primitive form (which in many cases would have been a lot better, considering how bloated and ad/surveillance-laden modern tech is)...
felixdingabout 1 hour ago
Maybe 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.
ChrisRR25 minutes ago
I 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

sgt12 minutes ago
What 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.
xkcd196337 minutes ago
You know they do this on purpose to have a novelty effect on the next release -.- customer loyalty really doesn't pay
xp84about 12 hours ago
More 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!
itomatoabout 11 hours ago
One of the first things I did with ChatGPT was feed it source for the existing OHCI USB Host Adapter driver to make it work with more common UHCI hardware.

There are many people working to extend NeXT, Openstep and even Rhapsody. Not to mention emulation projects and deep dives into XNU source, early Darwin source and shoehorning kernels and libraries into various places.

The Epson NX was purpose-built to run NeXTStep, for example, and bringing support for machines like that and the Canon object.station into 86box is a pet project of mine.

Join us https://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/index.php?topic=5286.ms...

User23about 8 hours ago
That reminds me of how I had had to cross compile a Linux kernel with a special USB patch to install a system on my Bondi Blue iMac.
CursedSiliconabout 10 hours ago
At least in retro spaces there's a lot of rejection of using AI to do things.

Half-Life (and the later Source engine games such as Half-Life 2 and Portal) were ported without LLM assistance however

(Source: I am in the Discord where the developer has been working and diligently posting updates on the project)

ChrisRR22 minutes ago
It's the same as every community now. There's a bunch of people endlessly complaining about AI, and there's people using it to create projects that didn't exist before

The fact of the matter is people are going to keep using AI to create projects no matter how much the others complain about it, so I fall on the side of enjoying these new-old retro projects

userbinatorabout 6 hours ago
At least in retro spaces there's a lot of rejection of using AI to do things.

I suspect the community will fracture, and then once the pro-AI side shows off more and more of the amazing things they accomplished, they'll grow while the anti-AI side will eventually dry up into a few luddites.

I'm old enough to have been on the anti-HLL side when I was handwriting Asm for the PC, but of course HLLs took over because they're "good enough" and became a massive force multiplier.

anthkabout 2 hours ago
A compiler and a assembler are predictable enough. An LLM will never be reproducible. Period. LLM base d AI's are doomed from the start.
Jackknife9about 5 hours ago
Yeah, I’ve definitely seen this sentiment in the retro tech community.

I think hobbiests do not have that much free time to create these tools for retro computers. AI is a great tool for this, as it saves time so people can make projects that would otherwise not exist.

I remember arguing with someone on Reddit who said they’d rather not have the tool if it was made by AI, which I thought was a crazy take.

turpentineabout 6 hours ago
Yet the dev has posted here on HN saying they used LLMs to do the port, but have a preference not to communicate their AI use.
pelasacoabout 4 hours ago
looks like the Author is saying something different https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49092906 (He did use LLM Assistance)
CamperBob2about 10 hours ago
(Removed inaccurate remark, or rather, removed my reply to an inaccurate remark)
srp-shayabout 9 hours ago
Hi there, I'm the developer of this port.

I did use AI to assist me in development and I'm not shy about admitting that. This was still a hands-on effort that took well over 40 hours of development time spread over a couple months. Much like other development tools, AI certainly sped up my development process and allowed to ship something in a couple of months using my free time.

AI is a tool and it isn't going anywhere, I've posted my thoughts about AI extensively in the PowerPC community. I don't proactively volunteer or plaster my readmes with notes about AI because it doesn't really matter.

Speaking for me personally I have no problem using tools in my toolbelt to solve problems faster in my limited free time.

hotenabout 10 hours ago
"unsustainable" is an odd word to use for a hobby. They aren't trying to hit productivity goals. Maybe they just still like programming.
yowzadaveabout 9 hours ago
I recommend you approach life in a spirit of curiosity—it can be interesting to learn about the different interests and motivations of other people!
CursedSiliconabout 10 hours ago
What a bizarre take

Many people refuse to use LLM's for various reasons that I don't need to rehash here

ColdStreamabout 10 hours ago
One impressive one to me is the current effort to port Doom to the Neo Geo. Because of its unique hardware setup in that it is entirely sprite based and doesn't have a frame buffer, it is a very difficult challenge to take on. And yet most of the code on these projects is being done via AI and it works pretty dang well.

Considering these coding system probably have almost no idea of the Neo Geo's specifics and with very little reference code directly linked to the system to bounce off, that is dang impressive.

russelgabout 12 hours ago
This isn't an all-of-a-sudden, the engine has been worked on for over 7 years now https://github.com/fwgs/xash3d-fwgs
Coeurabout 11 hours ago
Or even create new platforms where we're not bound by platform owners' imposed artificial limitations.
ColdStreamabout 10 hours ago
So the entire free software movement? ;)
cellularmitosisabout 8 hours ago
somepersonabout 12 hours ago
I feel like the best Beatles songs are yet to be written.

Or alternatively best classic Simpsons episodes are yet to be made.

gcanyonabout 11 hours ago
I think you're underselling where we'll get to in the next 5-10 years. I'm thinking:

Best Beatles song recorded between Rubber Soul and Revolver, composed mainly by McCartney but Lennon wrote the bridge and Ringo was feeling adventurous and Harrison was angry that day, and it was deemed not commercial enough to include on Revolver.

Best season 3 episode of The Simpsons, really showing the transition to Homer as the lead, written by Robert Cohen with significant musical input from Danny Elfman and featuring seven characters loosely representing the deadly sins, with Homer as Gluttony of course.

dosiskingabout 9 hours 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)

soulofmischiefabout 12 hours ago
I 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.
nonethewiserabout 11 hours ago
I 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.
anthkabout 12 hours ago
There's already Netsurf with beter JS support than the Duktape one under Unix, Windows and even RiscOS.
user3939382about 8 hours ago
The big blocker is actually TLS. Without it lots of tools including browsers are blocked. Now with AI I bet it is manageable, before that the effort required resulted in what you see, almost nothing.
Palomides7 minutes ago
modern tls libraries on classic macs has been available for at least 6 years, and was pretty easily possible sooner if anyone bothered, no AI needed
userbinatorabout 6 hours ago
TLS is not really that much of a blocker, nor was AI necessary to clear that hurdle (albeit crypto is fundamentally "just maths" and thus very, very portable): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36486512
wk_endabout 13 hours ago
The 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

[1] https://www.moddb.com/engines/xash3d-engine

manytimesawayabout 11 hours ago
Xash3D is not really open-source. The original codebase comes from leaked/decompiled code, and nowadays still requires the proprietary HLSDK to build.
CursedSiliconabout 10 hours ago
Can you provide citations for this? The original Xash3D engine is listed as open source on ModDB
manytimesawayabout 9 hours ago
Example discussion here : https://github.com/FWGS/xash3d-fwgs/issues/63#issuecomment-9...

HN comment from a major maintainer here : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38314427

Valve has confirmed that it violates the HLSDK EULA, too. At least for the original Xash3D release.

gilgoomeshabout 10 hours ago
In 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/110...

Interview with Rebecca Heineman:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPTLPXNtb2I

(skip to timecode 1:36:41 for the Half-Life details)

intexpress27 minutes ago
It sounds like Valve was misled to believe that the Mac sales would be X which would have justified long term Mac support/updates, but in reality the sales were going to be 10% of X...
rufoabout 9 hours ago
I 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.”

ColdStreamabout 9 hours ago
Oh dear Becky 'Burger' did see both the best and worst of this industry.
nxobjectabout 6 hours ago
Notoriously after Halo for Macintosh was canned, too...
lloekiabout 4 hours 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)

hedgehogabout 14 hours ago
For 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.
mikestorrentabout 12 hours ago
Always 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.
mistercowabout 12 hours ago
I 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.

hedgehogabout 12 hours ago
At 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.
some-guyabout 11 hours ago
Each original iMac color came with an associated default OS9 background that matched it.
walrus01about 12 hours ago
The G3 iMac that came out in this time period had much weaker 3D rendering capability than a contemporary PC gaming video card like a TNT2. Their video ability was closer to the 2D/office oriented video cards sold for non gaming use...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIVA_TNT2

Or a voodoo2...

hedgehogabout 10 hours ago
Yes, but Half-Life was designed to be somewhat playable with software rendering even on a 133MHz Pentium and that would have been the better rendering path on the earliest iMacs. In my opinion in that generation Half-Life's software renderer looked better than most of those cards due to the blurry textures and poor scaling (lack of VRAM basically unless you had cash for the 32MB versions) so no big loss for single player play.
ColdStreamabout 10 hours ago
To bring up an almost three decade old debate, it would be fascinating to see the performance difference between PPC and x86 in software rendering. Probably mostly bandwidth limited at this point still.

PPC ended up being a brilliant design done mediocre, while x86 is a mediocre design done very well.

srp-shayabout 9 hours ago
The 1998 release required a 500MHz processor at a minimum... 133MHz might be pushing it.
sharkjacobsabout 13 hours ago
I 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.
jonhohleabout 13 hours ago
> I knew I'd be getting Halo soon

That’s a deep cut. (And salt on the wound.)

NateEagabout 12 hours ago
I 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-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.

philodeonabout 10 hours ago
And just a few years later, Apple shipped an iTunes 2 installer that could wipe your external hard drives.
ColdStreamabout 12 hours ago
I 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'.

snapetomabout 13 hours ago
Hah. When I saw the headline, I said, "Finally! I've been asking for this for almost 30 years!"
NateEagabout 12 hours ago
Likewise. I still remember being upset when the news broke that the port had been dropped.
madhu_ghalameabout 3 hours ago
This is a fantastic preservation effort. It would be great to document the technical challenges in more detail for developers interested in retro porting.
trencedampabout 3 hours ago
What's with all the half life ports at the moment? I think this is the third one on HN this month
philipwhiukabout 3 hours ago
The 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.

trencedampabout 3 hours ago
True. I'm not complaining. I love half life. It's just an unusual burst
remiminneboabout 4 hours ago
I can finally relive my childhood on a non-inferior OS.
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luciana1uabout 11 hours ago
the real achievement here is getting a 1998 game engine to run on an OS that Apple actively tried to erase from existence. Half-Life outlived both Mac OS 9 and the Performa line.
ChrisRR18 minutes ago
How do you define erase from existence?
ColdStreamabout 10 hours ago
It'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.

ayarosabout 12 hours ago
Runs 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-shayabout 4 hours ago
Hey, 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!

ChrisMarshallNYabout 14 hours ago
That'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.

nomelabout 14 hours ago
ChrisMarshallNYabout 14 hours ago
Awesome!
ChrisMarshallNYabout 14 hours ago
But, 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.
bombcarabout 14 hours ago
I love that simcity4 has an applesilicon and big name recent releases don't.

Yay.

lenerdenatorabout 14 hours ago
Nah, 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-guyabout 14 hours ago
Tangentially 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...

anthkabout 11 hours ago
Install 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

Next, open Steam and enable the "Steam Play/proton compatibility" in the settings.

anthkabout 11 hours ago
https://github.com/Sikarugir-App/Sikarugir

Well, try installing this Wine build for Mac and then Steam for Windows under it.

Then run Steam and enable "Steam Play/Proton compatibility" or whatever it's called under its settings.

ofalkaedabout 14 hours ago
Jokes 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.
drnick1about 13 hours ago
You must be fun at parties.
yhjc2692about 13 hours ago
must?
cs02rm0about 3 hours ago
Counter-Strike!
altern8about 14 hours ago
I think those guys are about classic Macs
ChrisMarshallNYabout 14 hours ago
I know. It was kind of a joke, which, due to this being HN, fell flat.
acheronabout 14 hours ago
We at Hacker News do not have a sense of humor that we’re aware of.
altern8about 14 hours ago
I see. Maybe it was a little random
Barbingabout 14 hours ago
Missing a bounty to go with that directness!
parl_matchabout 14 hours ago
you do it.
ChrisMarshallNYabout 14 hours ago
Nope. Looks like someone already did (look up)
parl_matchabout 7 hours ago
if youre not going to do it, then dont complain when others dont do it
rvzabout 14 hours ago
This is the only site where it is illegal to make a joke.
ChrisMarshallNYabout 14 hours ago
Fair cop, Guv
assimpleaspossiabout 11 hours ago
I get cranky coming to HN and seeing 3/4 of the posts about games.
ChrisMarshallNYabout 10 hours ago
Seems 90% AI, these days, with a lot of going into the weeds of AI management and development.
purpleflame1257about 12 hours ago
So 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-shayabout 3 hours ago
Yep, your G4 will run this through Classic no problem! Use the respective Tiger/Leopard builds for better compatibility.
system7rocksabout 13 hours ago
Wow. This is the golden age for classic Macs.
frollogastonabout 14 hours ago
Porting AssaultCube should be doable too
pimlottcabout 14 hours ago
Cleverly done.
gcanyonabout 11 hours ago
Great, 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...
zombotabout 7 hours ago
Everybody 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!
mcfdoesdevabout 13 hours ago
This makes me so happy lol.
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6stringmercabout 10 hours 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.