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Half-Life 2 in a Browser(hl2.slqnt.dev)
170 points by panza 3 hours ago | 52 comments
modeless 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

And Quake 3: https://thelongestyard.link/q3a-demo/

And Unreal Tournament: https://dos.zone/mp/?lobby=ut

There's also https://noclip.website/ which, while not playable, has hundreds of levels from dozens of older games that you can explore freely. Including Half-Life 2, with more accurate rendering than this web port (which seems to be missing many shaders including character eyes).

calebj0seph an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Also The Simpsons Hit & Run! https://shar-wasm.cjoseph.workers.dev/

sho_hn an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

And Tomb Raider

https://eikehein.com/stuff/sabatu

Fan remake of the levels to avoid asset copy, but it's a downstream of the original engine (and loads the original level files just fine), so the real game.

firasd 36 minutes ago | parent [-]

Ha fun--works in my regular laptop in Chrome without any CPU/GPU etc spikes

nadermx 26 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

And CS: https://play-cs.com

plastic-enjoyer an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

What a time to be alive

memoryuns4f3fff 41 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Here is a link to the blog post since I didn’t see it mentioned

https://www.slqnt.dev/blog/hl2-in-web

mrtksn an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Interesting, I am not able to play HL2 on Steam because macOS no longer has 32-bit support and Valve never compiled if for 64-bit but here we are, it’s playable on the same OS in the browser.

BTW IIRC there was some method to convert the 32-bit game binaries to make them run on recent macs. I remember doing it.

AzzyHN 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is cool, and also probably illegal, since you don't own any of this and don't have the right to redistribute it.

crote an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Valve already gave Half-Life 2 away for free, and released the source code of the HL1 engine.

Is it technically illegal? Yeah, but Valve isn't losing out on any money, and there's no way they're going to risk the negative PR blowback they'd get for a takedown.

Besides, IP law is dead. The rise of AI made it pretty clear that you can steal literally anything without consequences.

flordaman 3 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

No no, you can't steal anything without consequences, only big corperations who are making slop machines(tm) can.

dminik an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

GoldSrc (HL1 engine) is very much not open source (or even source available). There's at least one open source remake (which is possibly illegal due to using the SDK) but no official release.

londons_explore 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That is up for the copyright owner to enforce or not to enforce.

Until they decide, we can't know if it's illegal or not - who knows, this site might have a license.

KeplerBoy an hour ago | parent | next [-]

It's not legal just because the copyright owner doesn't immediately sue you.

simondotau 8 minutes ago | parent [-]

If a copyright infringement falls in a forest and nobody is around to hear it, did it make a sound?

rvz an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

It's quite dangerous to make unsubstantiated comments and assumptions on US copyright law without the proper research.

Valve still owns the copyright to the game and just because they won't do anything now does not mean it is legal to redistribute it without their consent, especially when we know that the game is still being sold. [0]

They (Valve) reserve the right to enforce that and this site clearly does not have such a "license" and haven't disclosed as such. Why would you expect Valve to be in discussions with a 15 year old to redistribute the game for free?

So just say you do not know.

[0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/220/HalfLife_2/

Ukv 11 minutes ago | parent [-]

> just because they won't do anything now does not mean it is legal to redistribute it without their consent

I don't think the parent comment is claiming it's legal, other than the (unlikely) chance that this is licensed, just that it's up to Valve to enforce and not really our concern. A lot of cool things (like the similar https://noclip.website/) are prima facie copyright infringement.

0x0 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I just wish Valve could add official macos-arm64 builds of the various hl2 games on Steam :-/

entropyneur 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Whew. Crashed before I sunk my day there.

GL26 17 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Is there a repo for this ? Can we mod it ?

NovaCode37 9 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Looks pretty good

antalis 36 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The screens are missing and the lips don't move, but it's pretty close!

vladar107 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What's the biggest bottleneck you hit - GPU compute, memory bandwidth, or network latency for asset streaming? Curious how it compares to native WebGPU.

LandenLove 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

As much as I dislike webdev stuff, I love the way you can distribute entire programs through WASM. Super cool stuff! For those who are interested, I recommend checking out Godot for exporting games on the web. It's really easy to do and you can host it on Itch.io

schappim an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If they have halflife 2 in the browser, I wonder if this means they can do original CS in the browser too!

panza an hour ago | parent [-]

Yep! http://play-cs.com

ironhaven 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

First half life one in browser now we have half life 2! I guess it’s that time again Mr Freeman

diimdeep 19 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Cary cool "puck up trashcan" experience, but then game hangs in city square.

pelagicAustral an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Ah! Just in time for HL3

el_peaton an hour ago | parent [-]

Along with Team Fortress 3 and Portal 3 ofc. :)

bozdemir 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What a time to be alive :D

rvz 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

While technically impressive, this is also illegal. (unless you have redistribution permission from the authors.)

albertgoeswoof 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yup. I was going to finally buy half life 2 today but now I’ve seen this I guess I won’t need to.

Hard times at Valve, I suppose they’ll have to find more children to start gambling with them.

m00dy 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

looks like you forgot to add /s tag to your comment :swh

fragmede 29 minutes ago | parent [-]

But what about the people who aren't idiots and can read sarcasm without the /s? I reflexively downvote ever comment I come across with a /s. People aren't idiots until you treat them like one.

linzhangrun an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

lmao :)

tmountain an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Someone has to look out for the big guys! /s

haunter 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> this is also illegal

So is unregulated gambling but Valve doesn't care either lol

charcircuit an hour ago | parent [-]

2 wrongs don't make a right.

haunter an hour ago | parent [-]

Ah yeah the famously equal acts of pirating a game VS promoting illegal unregulated gambling for millions of people (and that's just the tip of the iceberg).

That's why corporations can get away with everything.

koolala 35 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

legality != morality

foresto an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In which jurisdiction?

hmry an hour ago | parent [-]

Every signatory of the Berne convention or member of the TRIPS agreement, and most others too.

sudo_cowsay 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Is that why I can't access the site?

AzzyHN 2 hours ago | parent [-]

It works on chromium-based browsers at least

Beijinger 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

play-cs.com

typon an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I remember saving up for a year to buy the ATI Radeon 9600 XT (I think it was $200 MSRP) so I could play the game on high settings. Now we can play it inside a virtual machine on a crappy laptop. What a journey

comprev an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Same here - splashed out crazy money upgrading my PC to play HL2.

After that moment I switched to consoles.

iso1631 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

In a few years todays high end AI models will run on your watch

Of course that assumes we maintain open access to compute that we've enjoyed for the last half century, and I doubt that very much.

Stallman warned about the dangers of software being closed [0] 30 years ago, and the majority of modern IT industry just laugh a that sort of stuff because you can't make a billion dollar startup with that attitude, but I think the restrictions on owning the hardware at all will probably come first.

[0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html

gambiting 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What I find incredibly impressive is that it just loaded in and seems to work fine on my phone. So cool.

globular-toast an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I've played this from the start until around Ravenholm probably close to a hundred times. It's so familiar to me. There's some funky stuff going on for me, though. The characters' eyes are all wrong. G-man had no eyes at all. And the giant screen with Breen on it was missing.

Can't believe it runs as well as it does on my non-gaming laptop without even seeming to struggle. It's funny when you leave a hobby for a while. I haven't played games since the HL2 era so for me this is still state of the art.

I did say a couple of years ago that if HL3 ever came out, and it was good, that it would make me buy another gaming PC. But with current prices I don't even think that would make me do it.

Hamuko an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Tried it on my M4 iPad Pro and was surprised that it works - to a degree. NPCs (Gman and the citizens on the train) seem to be missing eyes and have no mouth animations. FPS was pretty poor too, and it was ass to use the camera on the trackpad.