Half-Life Possible on the x50/1v?

pmcizhere · 12-22-05, 02:09 AM

I know this is totally doable after seeing how smoothly Quake can be done on these, I was wondering if it would be possible to play Half-Life or even Counter-Strike on the x50/1vs. I believe it would be pretty simple, since even my old laptop with a meager 2 MB of video memory could manage it. And what's more, look at this:

http://www.3dgamers.com/dlselect/gam..._half.zip.html

Would that driver be compatible with the video chip in the axim???

Just curious. It would be very cool to "pwn sum n00bz" over my PDA!

G Wing 0 · 12-22-05, 12:23 PM

I dont believe it will work. The ppc processor, although 624mhz, is a very simple processor. A laptob processor even if it only works @ 300mhz would probably be much faster. The ppc processor wasnt built with gaming in mind, but rather for simple programs. You can try, but I dont believe it will work.

Atticus · 12-22-05, 12:48 PM

No reason why it shouldn't work. Of course there is probably some serious effort involved.
But if Quake 3 can run on a X50v, then Half-Life (which has the older and simpler engine) should run even better.

d0pefish · 12-22-05, 12:51 PM

Of course it is possible - theoretically possible. Half-Life is far less demanding than Quake 3, yet we've got that running...well, walking, on our X50vs. It runs, slowly, and that's with 3D acceleration, but it's a work in progress. Half-Life is only slightly more demanding than Quake 2, and Pocket Quake 2 has worked on older Pocket PCs reasonably without 3D acceleration.

You can't just copy Half-Life to a PPC and expect it to run, though. Half-Life is a Win32 application, not a Windows CE/Windows Mobile one. It would need to be PORTED and RECOMPILED to the Pocket PC platform and to do that you need SOURCE CODE and a lot of skill and time.

It won't happen. It CAN happen but it won't, at least for a very, very long time, because Half-Life most likely won't be going open source - Valve, the makers of the game, seem against open sourcing their older products, and I'll be damned if they'll be taking interest in Pocket PCs any time soon. Their market is in desktop PC games - there'd be litle to no benefit of them going out on a limb to create a game exclusively for our X50/51vs, which are probably the only PPCs capable of running something like half-Life reasonably well.

That driver won't help at all, either - again, it's a driver for Win32 and the desktop PowerVR card - and PowerVR cards in desktops are not the same as the cut-down PowerVRs in the i2700G chips inside X50vs and X51vs.

Abandon all hope for any of Valve's games being made for handhelds. When newer devices come out, and Direct3D Mobile becomes more widespread and begins to take off, developers will realize there's an opportunity for money to be made.

Until that distant future time comes, give up hoping and look forward to other, smaller companies that make Pocket PC games releasing lots of new stuff for us in 2006.

**PocketBrain** · 12-22-05, 03:41 PM

Why not port a little bit of swim-swim-hungry to the PPC?
Yes, half-life could be ported, but it might be a tad stripped. Of course, the RISC architecture used in the PPC is not ideal for such an application. QII does look nice, however.

d0pefish · 12-22-05, 04:27 PM

I already play Commander Keen on my Axim with pDOSbox

woohoo!

pmcizhere · 12-23-05, 03:49 AM

Haha I loved Commander Keen. It's okay if HL for the axim never sees the light of day, since there are so many other games out there right now for this PDA. Just seeing if it would be possible!