this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2024
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Half-Life Was 95% Ready for Dreamcast (timemachiner.io)
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by macstainless@discuss.tchncs.de to c/retrogaming@lemmy.world
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[–] ptz@dubvee.org 28 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Semi-related, but to this day I remain impressed they got Half Life 2 ported to the original Xbox.

[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 9 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Why? It was just a PC on the inside with a slimmed down Windows 2000 variant as the OS. Storage concerns aside, it was probably a very straightforward port, just rip out the Steam bindings, and it probably ran pretty immediately.

[–] ptz@dubvee.org 36 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Right, architecturally it was probably pretty simple. But the minimum system requirements for HL:2 versus the Xbox's hardware is pretty stark:

Half-Life 2 minimum requirements for PC:

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 2.00GHz
Memory: 512 MB
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce 6100

Xbox System Specs:

CPU:  Intel Pentium III 733 MHz
Memory:  64 MB (shared with GPU)
Graphics:  Custom NVidia based on Geforce 3

Edit: Definitely meaning the original Xbox and not the 360. Was one of the last games I bought for the original and still have it :)

[–] magic_lobster_party@kbin.run 14 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

As a point of comparison, 360 has 512MB RAM. HL2 was targeting PCs comparable to PS3/360, but somehow they got it working on an Xbox.

[–] mihnt@lemmy.ca 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Makes you wonder what corners they cut to get it functional.

[–] altima_neo@lemmy.zip 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)
[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 4 points 5 months ago

So playable frame rate was the main corner cut.

[–] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 1 points 5 months ago

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[–] Chee_Koala@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

The 00s Doom reboot shares a similar story, but for the 360!

[–] TheDrunkard@lemmy.world 19 points 5 months ago

Noooo, it was not that simple. Search MVG hl2 port on YouTube and watch and see why the port is actually very impressive

[–] TachyonTele@lemm.ee 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That's not at all how porting a game works.

[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world -1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

No, this would make it much simpler. No translations, differing architectures, or OS bindings to struggle though. Asset and compilation tweaks, and controller bindings, and that's a large portion of the work.

[–] TachyonTele@lemm.ee 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

You have zero idea what goes on when porting a game, do you? It's ok, not everyone does. Understanding you can learn is a good thing.

Watch this before replying, here:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=c66hfqw4SKc&pp=ygUHTVZHIGhsMg%3D%3D

[–] sorghum@sh.itjust.works -4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Half life predates steam

[–] sploosh@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Yes, but HL2 does not.