Half-Life 1 engine based games

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/halflife?utm_source=explore-newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=daily&utm_campaign=explore-email

by ekianjo • 12 years ago

101 49 12 years ago

github.com

voltagex_• 12 years ago

Look at the number of issues! https://github.com/ValveSoftware/halflife/issues

DigitalSea2• 12 years ago

It is always fantastic to see companies opening up older source code for the public to view. Seeing some of the interesting decisions the developers made to create such an iconic game is very interesting. I always massively geek out on these things.

vomitcuddle• 12 years ago

How is releasing source code under a commercial license considered "opening it up"? All this stuff was already available to modders/third-party devs through the SDK program. The only news here is that they made it available on Github.

DigitalSea2• 12 years ago

I am not a game developer, nor do I have access to the SDK program you speak of... It's considered opening it up because it means developers like myself who don't developer for these games can get a glimpse of what is going on under the hood without needing to register for any developer program.

Opening it up as in making it easier for the general public on Github to view. No need for the cynicism.

hhm4• 12 years ago

Is this really a commercial license? Check the license text:

"You may, free of charge, download and use the SDK to develop a modified Valve game running on the Half-Life engine. You may distribute your modified Valve game in source and object code form, but only for free."

Sure, you can't make commercial products out of it, but you are allowed to re-distribute any modifications for free. This can be used by people who want to make free, open source games, for example.

catmanjan• 12 years ago

Neat! I wish more companies would do this after declaring their software deprecated.

Narishma2• 12 years ago

They did this since the day they released the game, or shortly after. This isn't the source code of the engine, it's just the SDK that people use to make mods.

AdmiralAsshat• 12 years ago

Think that guy who did the Doom/Quake/Duke Nukem source code reviews can do one on Half-Life now?

reubenmorais2• 12 years ago

This is not the source code for Half-Life, nor is it the source code of GoldSrc, it's just the GoldSrc SDK.

comrh• 12 years ago

This was new to me. http://fabiensanglard.net/duke3d/index.php What a great read combining code readability and game design.

Gracana• 12 years ago

Yeah, his site is awesome. He has some other reviews and interesting articles, too. I think "Learning Legendary Hardware" was posted on HN recently.

http://fabiensanglard.net/learning_legendary_hardware/index....

lsh• 12 years ago

An amazing bit of Duke V hidden in the code:

  Cmdr:   "Duke, we've got a lot of scared people down there.
           Some reports even claim that people are already
           slowly changing into aliens."
  Duke:   "No problem, my speciality is in croud control."
  Cmdr:   "Croud control, my ass!  Remember that incident
           during the war?  You created nuthin' but death and
           destruction."
  Duke:   "Not destruction, justice."
  Cmdr:   "I'll take no responsibility for your actions.  Your on
           your own!  Behave your self, damnit!  You got that,
           soldger?"
  Duke:   "I've always been on my own...   Face it, it's ass kickin' time,
           SIR!"
  Cmdr:   "Get outta here...!"
          (Duke gives the Cmdr a hard stair, then cocks his weapon and
           walks out of the room)
  Cmdr:   In a wisper: "Good luck, my friend."

https://github.com/fabiensanglard/chocolate_duke3D/blob/mast...

exogen2• 12 years ago

Assuming Half-Life the game was using this without tweaking the engine parameters much, I have to say this is the only engine that really "felt" 100% right to me. In Quake 1-3 I felt heavy/bulky, like my body didn't collide where I expected it to, Tribes 1 and 2 were very floaty, etc. HL1 was so natural.

wingerlang• 12 years ago

I definitely agreed. Usually when someone asks me about my favourite game I always think of the HL1 engine instead. Bunnyhopping for example is a think I enjoyed, it felt like you could actually 'master' the movement/engine itself. New games are very animation-heavy which, while it looks alright, makes the game more restricted.

The source engine is also an engine that I like.

archagon• 12 years ago

Yes, definitely! I think the feel of the HL1 engine is a large part of what made games like CS, DoD, TFC, Firearms, Action Half-Life, The Specialists, etc. so fun and popular. Even HL1 DM compared favorably to UT and Quake at times. Stock sound effects from HL1 still sometimes appear in Source games, and whenever I hear one, I'm instantly taken back to dodging rockets, gauss shots, and bullets while leaping towards the doomsday button in crossfire. I still miss that thriving multiplayer scene.

visakanv• 12 years ago

Aw, man. That was the best way for a group of friends to bond quickly. I had this funny moment with a guy where both of us ran out of ammunition at the same time while shooting at each other, then we were both killed by a rocket from another guy... memories for life

cclogg• 12 years ago

Haha oh man so true. This is why I've found it hard to really get into modern FPS's, especially the console ported ones... the perfection we tasted from HL1 is very tough to match.

CWIZO• 12 years ago

I thought HL1 used quake 2 engine (or a modification of it), no?

pekk• 12 years ago

Pretty sure they started from Quake 1 and did a lot of work from there

chucknelson• 12 years ago

In Quake 1-3 I felt heavy/bulky...

Quake 2...maybe. Quake 3 is anything but heavy/bulky, that game is 100% twitch and your character flies around (sometimes literally with those jump pads) like they're constantly sliding on a slick floor. Great game.

prawks• 12 years ago

I think it's the "slick floor" feeling that causes the heavy/bulky feel; it's as if your character has a ton of momentum (due to a ton of mass, presumably, though you do move faster in Quake).

ozmbie• 12 years ago

Quake 3 movement is slow unless you take advantage of strafe jumping and other tricks.

It's the only FPS I've played where knowing how to move through maps efficiently is so important.

eg: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aikg9NC3i98

vans• 12 years ago

Quake, a slow game ?! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HUsdNEaKMk

exogen2• 12 years ago

Notice that I never said slow. :)

angersock2• 12 years ago

Don't get too excited...this isn't GoldSrc (the actual engine), but instead the SDK for mod-making.

z3phyr• 12 years ago

Doesn't an SDK automatically includes at least some usable subset of the engine, if not the whole part?

reubenmorais2• 12 years ago

No, just enough for you to plug your own code (gameplay, custom weapons, vehicles, etc). It's essentially a bunch of headers.

stephen_g• 12 years ago

Also, I'm pretty sure that this has been available for more than ten years, just not on GitHub.

angersock2• 12 years ago

It has been--that's where I started learning C++.

erikj3• 12 years ago

There is an open-source reimplementation of the Half-Life 1 engine: http://www.moddb.com/engines/xash3d-engine

ekianjo2• 12 years ago

Has anyone here tried it to see how it runs ? Can you play HL1 from beginning to end with it ?

erikj3• 12 years ago

Yes, you can. It's even compatible with most mods.

galapago• 12 years ago

It's win32 only.

erikj3• 12 years ago

There are several efforts to make it run under Linux, you can find them on Github. I don't know if any of them are functional yet.

notastartup• 12 years ago

this is pretty cool but I Guess we can't use it to make our own commercial games.

brokenparser• 12 years ago

s/engine based games/SDK/

iso8859-1• 12 years ago

If you want to do Half-Life modding, you can come a long way just scripting using AMX Mod X[0]. AMX Mod X has 260K LOC[2]. For comparison, the SDK has 273K LOC, but that's mostly headers. Plugins are written in Pawn (formerly known as Small) which is compiled and then interpreted. AMX Mod X is GPL.

For example, there's the SuperHeroes mod, which is also open-source[1].

Here are two videos demonstrating how radically gameplay was adjusted in SuperHeroes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGmCKQ57z-Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vY7bBhXA0k

[0] https://github.com/alliedmodders/amxmodx

[1] https://svn.alliedmods.net/viewvc.cgi/amxmodx_plugin/trunk/p...

[2] https://www.ohloh.net/p/amxmodx

Half-Life 1 engine based games

Related Stories