VOGONS


half life 1 and voodoo2

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Reply 20 of 38, by Scali

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FFXIhealer wrote:

I just opened my copy of Half-Life Source on Steam and there's nowhere I can select a renderer. It just assumes you have DirectX now. It's using 9.0c.

That's because Half-Life Source is the port of HL to the new Source engine of HL2 at the time. Which was a DX9-only engine. On Windows it still is, afaik, although there's an OpenGL wrapper for linux/OS X.

http://scalibq.wordpress.com/just-keeping-it- … ro-programming/

Reply 21 of 38, by FFXIhealer

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Well, PowerISO would cost me $30, so I dunno about bin/cue files. Without paying, there's a 300MB limit in the software. It won't let me do an image of my Half-life CD.

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Reply 22 of 38, by Deksor

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CDBurnerXP is fine for me
I also know another program that can even copy the anticopy protection X) (but I can't recall it's name for now. But it's not useful in this case as half life isn't copy protected)

Trying to identify old hardware ? Visit The retro web - Project's thread The Retro Web project - a stason.org/TH99 alternative

Reply 23 of 38, by Jorpho

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Scali wrote:

That's because Half-Life Source is the port of HL to the new Source engine of HL2 at the time. Which was a DX9-only engine.

Maybe it is now, but back in the day there was definitely a DX8 renderer available via a command line switch.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthr … d.php?t=1421458

FFXIhealer wrote:

Well, PowerISO would cost me $30, so I dunno about bin/cue files.

Who suggested PowerISO..? imgburn will do the job nicely.

Reply 24 of 38, by FFXIhealer

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Google suggested PowerISO. 🤣

And the last time I tried to find a free program to burn a bin/cue file...the CD wouldn't write properly. I had to use WinImage to OPEN the damned file and burn the data files directly, hence why I usually prefer ISOs. Then I had to download all the music files from the disk in MP3 format and configure and burn a separate music CD. It actually works, by the way.

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Reply 25 of 38, by SPBHM

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Scali wrote:
FFXIhealer wrote:

I just opened my copy of Half-Life Source on Steam and there's nowhere I can select a renderer. It just assumes you have DirectX now. It's using 9.0c.

That's because Half-Life Source is the port of HL to the new Source engine of HL2 at the time. Which was a DX9-only engine. On Windows it still is, afaik, although there's an OpenGL wrapper for linux/OS X.

source engine supported DX6-7-8-9
newer revisions dropped some older DX support (I think DX6 was never official at the final release but it worked, with some lacking stuff like glasses, I played a portion of the game with a voodoo 4), DX7 support was official and worked well, this for Hl2 at least (but keep in mind with some updates I think they removed some old DX support), TF2/Portal only had DX8 as the lowest, and I think Portal 2 the lowest was DX9.

still HL Source is not going to be ideal, I think it uses more vram and so on, not a good option for old hardware.
but I would think HL source supports DX7, or at least it did in the past.

Reply 26 of 38, by Scali

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SPBHM wrote:

source engine supported DX6-7-8-9

Pretty sure it doesn't. At least, I'm talking about the API. It only uses the DX9 API as far as I know, in any version ever released.
It does however have renderpaths for DX7 and DX8-class hardware, so it runs fine on a GF2, GF3, original Radeon or Radeon 8500.

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Reply 27 of 38, by SPBHM

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Scali wrote:
SPBHM wrote:

source engine supported DX6-7-8-9

Pretty sure it doesn't. At least, I'm talking about the API. It only uses the DX9 API as far as I know, in any version ever released.
It does however have renderpaths for DX7 and DX8-class hardware, so it runs fine on a GF2, GF3, original Radeon or Radeon 8500.

well yes, but it supported DX6-7-8-9 feature hardware levels
I used a -dx6 or whatever was the launch command to play with a voodoo 4
http://www.3dfxzone.it/enboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=11627

and used to force -dx8 with a 6100 for better performance on TF2.

Reply 28 of 38, by Scali

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Jorpho wrote:
Scali wrote:

That's because Half-Life Source is the port of HL to the new Source engine of HL2 at the time. Which was a DX9-only engine.

Maybe it is now, but back in the day there was definitely a DX8 renderer available via a command line switch.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthr … d.php?t=1421458

Pretty sure they're just talking about which shaders the game should use.
DX9 was backwards compatible with DX8 and DX7 hardware and drivers. And therefore you could run the game using the DX9 API, with DX8 level shaders, or no shaders at all.
But it was still the DX9 API. Pretty sure there's no support for any other API in there (making an engine multi-API is no small feat).

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Reply 29 of 38, by Scali

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SPBHM wrote:
well yes, but it supported DX6-7-8-9 feature hardware levels I used a -dx6 or whatever was the launch command to play with a voo […]
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Scali wrote:
SPBHM wrote:

source engine supported DX6-7-8-9

Pretty sure it doesn't. At least, I'm talking about the API. It only uses the DX9 API as far as I know, in any version ever released.
It does however have renderpaths for DX7 and DX8-class hardware, so it runs fine on a GF2, GF3, original Radeon or Radeon 8500.

well yes, but it supported DX6-7-8-9 feature hardware levels
I used a -dx6 or whatever was the launch command to play with a voodoo 4
http://www.3dfxzone.it/enboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=11627

and used to force -dx8 with a 6100 for better performance on TF2.

Yea, the screenshot there proves it: It shows an error on IDirect3DDevice9::Present(). Clearly it is using the DX9 API.
I was talking about APIs, not about feature levels. I thought it was common knowledge that Half-Life 2 had many feature levels. There was a huge amount of fanboy rage over the fact that only Radeon 9500+ cards ran the game well with SM2.0 (DX9-level) shaders, and GeForce FX was so hopeless that there was a special path included that used mostly PS1.4 (DX8.1-level) shaders to speed things up.

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Reply 30 of 38, by SPBHM

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the relevant bit is that HL:S should work with DX6 hardware, at least considering Hl2 did, but you might have to use an old version cracked, because they update/change stuff on steam, update HL2 as far as I know no longer works in DX6 mode as it did in 2009.

but as I said, for old hardware I think the CD Hl1 is the best solution (also the quality of the soundtrack is way better than on Steam)

Reply 31 of 38, by RJDog

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FFXIhealer wrote:

I just opened my copy of Half-Life Source on Steam and there's nowhere I can select a renderer. It just assumes you have DirectX now. It's using 9.0c.

That, and if memory serves, Source games also require Windows XP minimum, which doubly makes it useless for retro gamers looking to build anything older than 2003ish. To take advantage of the 3Dfx or other OpenGL cards on Win9x platforms, you would need the original, non-Steam versions of the game (I ended up finding a Halflife: Game of the Year edition which works well).

Reply 32 of 38, by leileilol

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except the op isn't looking to run HL Source. that's just some stupid false "latest version of hl = hl source" assumption going on, misinterpreting scali's screenshot possibly.

HL2 at launch (2004) could play on Win98SE at the least, just fyi. The "requires XP" was more due to Steam itself dropping 2000 then 98 as a supported platform for relying more on certain kernel functions that existed on XP at the earliest. Today's Steam still requires XP, but also a SSE2-having processor this time around (due to the chromium-based browser component), making the minimum to be a Pentium 4 or an underclocked Pentium M

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Reply 33 of 38, by SPBHM

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yes I think I remember a friend playing Hl2 on w98 back then (with a p3, steam was very different in 2004), so a cracked vanilla copy should work, I think the same would apply to HL:S
it's a shame steam doesn't offer older versions of the games, it's always auto updated, and the client ignores older machines, that's why something like GoG is far better, DRM free, but still their games are normally patched for newer OS/hardware.

in any case, it shows the value of cracking those .exe to remove DRM for games preservation,

another thing is that Hl1 on steam runs with forced anti aliasing and anisotropic filtering, so you have to force it off on the graphics card driver (if you are running a modern card at least), and as I said the soundtrack is terrible (64kbps mp3), or maybe with some command (which I don't know) you could disable AA,

Reply 34 of 38, by MrEWhite

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FFXIhealer wrote:

I just opened my copy of Half-Life Source on Steam and there's nowhere I can select a renderer. It just assumes you have DirectX now. It's using 9.0c.

Half-Life Source is running on a completely different engine than Half-Life.

Also

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Someone SHOULDN'T PM me a pre-Steam copy because the Steam copy definitely DOES NOT suck.
pls help me steam sucks

Last edited by MrEWhite on 2017-01-01, 01:49. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 35 of 38, by Scali

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Yea, for me anyway, I *need* the original Half-Life, because I want to run it on a PowerVR PCX2 with a MiniGL driver. Which implies that I need a version that runs on MiniGL. Which the Source engine does not. Only the original HL engine does.
I think the same goes for the VooDoo2, although there are some 'homebrew' drivers/hacks for VooDoo cards that allow you to fake your way through newer versions of D3D.

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Reply 36 of 38, by gdjacobs

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You don't even necessarily need a BIN/CUE file as long as you've got the contents of the ISO (better the ISO itself) and the audio tracks. I don't believe there's any monkey business to authenticate the disk.

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Reply 38 of 38, by kalloggs40

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I had a Packard Bell Pizza Tower 166mhz Pentium 1 (Non mmx) and i had issues with getting games to work under the voodoo card. Some motherboards just dont like them. Ran fine with the Cyrix 166GP so it was defintelty the motherboard in my case. What computer is it?