Half life 1

super bear

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Since Half life 1 runs on a modified Quake 2 engine, and Quake 2 came out for the PS1 and N64, would it be possible for the N64 and PS1 to handle the game as well in some form?
 
Handle the game in "some form" ? Yes.

Will it be playable without degrading the game on a large scale? No

Theoretically, if you spend enough time optimizing and modifying, you can get anything to run on a Supernintendo, but of course it wouldn't look as good as you might expect ;)
 
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I just wonder if the (for the time) advanced AI in HL1 would even run well on a PS1 or N64, especially when you add in they would also have to run the (at the time) competitive 3D graphics.

Regards,
SB
 
Eh I think it would be possible to do, but the experience would be so downgraded that it wouldn't have been worth it on the Playstation. On the N64 though, I could see the game happening, of course on a lower scale, but doable. The PS1 would have severe limitations on all fronts I'd assume, but looking at a game such as MGS does somewhat make me think otherwise, but then again MGS had to load each new area which does give one an idea of how little RAM it has to store that data, but then again, you have games like Ace Combat 3 and Gran Turismo 2 where you have numerous textures and large static (non-transforming, no elasticity) polygons though I bet even GT1 and 2 and Ace Combat 3 did more streaming other than music off the CD directly. Anyone want to shed some light on this ? :D
 
The Quake 1 engine was heavily, heavily modified for Half-Life. It's not just about the engine, either--it's also about the assets and effects. To take a more recent example, compare almost any Xbox port of a game designed for PC. You get anything from a choppy, severely degraded experience (Morrowind, Unreal 2) to an entire redesign with new levels and assets designed around the inferior RAM (Far Cry).

Any attempt to put Half-Life on a machine with only 4 MB of RAM and a slow CPU would have similar problems. The maps and assets simply weren't designed for such a tiny memory footprint. You'd either have to change everything or severely degrade the experience.
 
They put Quake 2 on N64, in a somewhat different-but-respectable-nonetheless fashion. Anything's possible. :)

Half Life PC has quite a lot of loading, if I recall correctly. Just as Doom3 and HL2 were shoehorned onto Xbox (more impressive than putting HL on DC IMO), I have zero doubt that HL1 could work on DC. Hell, UT99 and Quake3 are on DC and are quite decent.

There is actually an alpha release of the HL DC port out there on the web. I haven't bothered getting it myself, but I have heard that while it works it has long load times. Considering it's quite unfinished, I'm not sure that's indicative of what the final result could have been. If the DC hadn't died off so soon, I am pretty sure that HL would've arrived for it.
 
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The DC port of HL was pretty much finished and damn near perfect sans very long loading times. Its fully playable to completion, the graphics are fully intact, upgraded models and all.

That has no bearing on what the game'd be like on a PSX mind, can't see it have ending up as anything at all worth playing.
 
Yeah for some reason I was thinking the thread was about whether or not DC could run HL, and it definitely could and did.

N64 probably could do HL, if it could manage to store the game's assets somehow. The cartridge is the biggest obstacle IMO, but also the a great advantage because it is a LOT faster than a 2x CDROM. The graphical complexity can be toned down. HL isn't really all that amazing from that angle anyway. If they could put Quake2 and Perfect Dark on N64, a crafty dev could put HL on there too.

PSX is a gimpy little machine compared to N64. Saving grace being CD-ROM storage. The game would be a pixely, perspective-problem disaster like all PS1 games and that's only after it is considerably reworked for ~3MB of RAM and really slow disk access. Heh. Imagine the loading times coming off of that 2X CDROM.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ogm4LTM6Po&feature=related

Half Life on Dreamcast for those who are curious, and haven't seen it.

Oh yes, and someone buy one of those N64 dev kits, and give this a go. :p I would love to see this.

Don't we need the halflife source code first? I know Halflife 2's was leaked, but it may be a bit beyond what even the dreamcast could do.


I'll throw my hat into the "n64 could have done halflife, if memory/storage limitations could be gotten around". I'd say the controller would be a big issue though, halflife was a fairly fast paced shooter, and those just don't work well on consoles.

But halflife itself? It ran just fine software-rendered on pentiums. Strip out the cd music and voices (or heavily compress), perhaps lower textures quality, and run it at 320x200 and you'd be fine.
 
Half-Life wasn't nearly as fast-paced as Quake 1, which worked fine on the N64.

By the way, swaaye, Quake II on the N64 used the Quake 64 engine and didn't have the same maps or textures as the PC version. It felt more "Quake I with Quake II skin," as there was no traveling back and forth between maps, and the maps themselves were not particularly large.
 
I'll throw my hat into the "n64 could have done halflife, if memory/storage limitations could be gotten around". I'd say the controller would be a big issue though, halflife was a fairly fast paced shooter, and those just don't work well on consoles.

But halflife itself? It ran just fine software-rendered on pentiums. Strip out the cd music and voices (or heavily compress), perhaps lower textures quality, and run it at 320x200 and you'd be fine.

Yes a 166MHz MMX Pentium ran it fine in software at lower res.
 
By the way, swaaye, Quake II on the N64 used the Quake 64 engine and didn't have the same maps or textures as the PC version. It felt more "Quake I with Quake II skin," as there was no traveling back and forth between maps, and the maps themselves were not particularly large.
Yeah I remember that it was very different. It does have lots of Quake 2 elements though.
 
Quake 1 and 2 used redbook audio, right? I remember being able to create and play custom tracklists on the PC versions.
 
Speaking of which - has anyone played Half Life 2 on the PS3? I know the multiplayer stuff is catastrophically bad (accoarding to reviews), but I can't quite figur out if the game is worth buying for the single player experience? It's one of the games I always wanted to play, but don't have a good enough PC for it.

It's very cheap at the moment, so I'm wondering if I should go for it...
 
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