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ironknee · Jun 6, 2002, 10:15 PM

My PC friend keeps telling me it's great...just wondering

MindFad · Jun 6, 2002, 10:26 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by ironknee:
My PC friend keeps telling me it's great...just wondering<hr /></blockquote>Nope. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Frown]" src="frown.gif" />

alphamatrix · Jun 7, 2002, 12:46 AM

Nope, from what i remember they started to port it over but stopped 'cause it was costing too much. I think i remember hearing that most of the graphics and animation for it where done on macs.

SteveJobs · Jun 7, 2002, 05:50 AM

Yeah, Half Life was almost done, but Sierra cancelled it because of variuos reasons.

voice- · Jun 7, 2002, 06:27 AM

I heard it was built around the Windows system, and the entire game was done so, not just then engine so it would cost too much to port...but just for the record, it's not so great, only good thing is CS and that's just good for its many users, it does little that Q3: Urban Terror can't do.

a2daj · Jun 8, 2002, 07:45 PM

Valve was responsible for the cancellation.
Here's a link to a message from Valve's Gabe Newell

<a href="http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/9910/19.halflife.shtml" target="_blank">http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/9910/19.halflife.shtml</a>

Various other details can be found with google. The Mac game sites usually have better details than the PC game sites.

[ 06-08-2002, 08:46 PM: Message edited by: a2daj ]

Chimpmaster · Jun 9, 2002, 06:33 AM

If you are interested in that type of game, why not try Return to Castle Wolfenstein, or the newly released Medal of Honour : Allied Assault.

They are much newer games than half life and offer wicked gameplay.

rm199 · Jun 9, 2002, 07:49 AM

As a long time HL (and all the upgrades and mods) player I can understand you guys wanting to see it on the mac, however RTCW and allied assault leave it for dead. HL was basically a combo of quake 1 and 2 with some upgrades. The graphics and sound were very in tune however and the story unmatched IMHO. If you really want to play this get the PS2 version its quite good.

"Good Morning Mr. Freeman"

RM

goMac · Jun 10, 2002, 03:20 PM

Personally, I think they should release the code they have as open source. Just my 2 cents. Half Life is pretty old anyways.

echoes · Jun 10, 2002, 09:12 PM

It wouldn't make much sense for them to open source it as Valve is still milking money out of the game. I wouldn't be surprised if HL still has more players online than all the other FPSs combined � maybe even double (and around 20,000 servers to boot... a figure that is hard to ignore). Because of that fact and because of Valve's endless updates with funky new features people will still be purchasing the latest re-release in decent #'s for some time to come (the next soon to be release version being CS Condition Zero).

HL's popularity stems from many things. It is very forgiving of older systems and latent connections to the internet (HL has some of the best netcode around though a few people hate the allowances it makes for high ping players). It also doesn't hurt that it has some of the most popular mods in existence: Day of Defeat (my fav), TFC, Firearms, Frontline and of course CS.

Jeff Binder · Jun 10, 2002, 09:25 PM

Just because it's open source doesn't mean that they stop making money from it. They don't have to release the assets if they release the source, so you'd still need a CD to play. That's what Id does.

echoes · Jun 10, 2002, 10:07 PM

I'm not positive, but I think all the assets for the mods that make HL so popular are self contained so if you had a Mac OS X client binary you wouldn't need to buy anything... no wait, I'm forgetting something... players would still need the CD Key for Wonnet authentification so what you're suggesting might work...

There are some problems though... Valve somewhat practices security through obscurity... releasing the source would make the lives of developers of exploits and bots far too easy.

Also I'm not sure if Valve would be comfortable selling the PC version of HL to Mac buyers who they can't support. No tech support and no concurrent updates. The latter being a pretty big issue... every time a new version of the HL client would come out Mac players would be shut out of updated servers until a Good Samaritan brings the open source ver up to speed and recompiles for OS X.

Also I wonder if each of the various mods would need to be compiled to an OS X version...

G Barnett · Jun 11, 2002, 07:14 AM

Plus, Half-Life, as I recall, uses DirectPlay for its networking instead of raw TCP/IP, so even if they DID open-source it, Mac users wouldn't be able to play on the same servers as PC users.

G Barnett