Jorpho wrote:Heretic and Hexen both have some kind of source ports, don't they? You could use those instead. Same goes for Quake and Quake II, I suppose.
Yes, but source ports may not be as close as original and even source code releases may not be exactly the same as published code (Quake 3 had some licensing problems and audio system is different). Other source ports may need more CPU/GPU/RAM than original games, so I'd try to make the original code work.
Some time ago, I put the Quake DOS exes in the Steam folder and they worked in DOSBox but they lacked music (because Steam version has no soundtrack). As you said, the datafiles of most steam games works with source ports (I used Quake 1 and 3 data ina Raspberry Pi) but there are some exceptions. When Steam released some Lucasarts adventures, the people behind scummvm choose to not support those releases (I don't know if that releases are supported now). Although first releases of Half-Life were the same as the CD ones, they stopped publishing patches for CD versions (so Steam data was more advanced and, I suppose, data files were incompatible with older executables); some time later they changed the data format (to pack it more?) so definitely datas from Half-Life are incompatible.
I have traveled across the universe and through the years to find Her.
Sometimes going all the way is just a start...
I'm selling some stuff!