Half-Life for Mac exists!!!
Believe me or don't but thats what a friend told me today.
He is a PC zealot and actually doesnt like MacOS much but here in Belgium, Apple sponsored a sort of technology week at highschools where Apple and 3rd parties (MS was there with a pledge of Office for Mac and Education) showed off software and also gaming (seeing that big crowd is students).
While talking about the various games he mentioned the usual, UT, Q3, etc... then he said "Yeah, and Half-Life for Mac sucks..." I was sure he made a mistake but then asked him at least 10 times again if he was sure that it was HL. He said yes, that it was a bit buggy and was incomplete (only 3-4 levels). He told me that some guy from Apple belgium had installed HL on new (Luxo Jr.) iMacs.
I have asked him, begged him actually, to get me hard, cold proof of this and said he would do the possible to get me a copy.
If this is true (and he had no reason to lie to me) I will provide you with more info.
He is a PC zealot and actually doesnt like MacOS much but here in Belgium, Apple sponsored a sort of technology week at highschools where Apple and 3rd parties (MS was there with a pledge of Office for Mac and Education) showed off software and also gaming (seeing that big crowd is students).
While talking about the various games he mentioned the usual, UT, Q3, etc... then he said "Yeah, and Half-Life for Mac sucks..." I was sure he made a mistake but then asked him at least 10 times again if he was sure that it was HL. He said yes, that it was a bit buggy and was incomplete (only 3-4 levels). He told me that some guy from Apple belgium had installed HL on new (Luxo Jr.) iMacs.
I have asked him, begged him actually, to get me hard, cold proof of this and said he would do the possible to get me a copy.
If this is true (and he had no reason to lie to me) I will provide you with more info.
Comments
initially HL was slated to be released for the Mac OS as well as for PC's. however, Sierra, in their infinate wisdom at the last second decided to nix the mac version.
it was mostly done though, and i'm sure there are copies of it floating around.
the main reason the decided to can it was that they didn't want to support dual platform patches and updates in the future.
At any rate, it exists, it's quite incomplete, and it isn't Apple's fault that it never got finished.
What shocks me the most with all this story of playing HL on a Mac is that someone, outside of Meggs and Sierra, actually have a copy... and that if there had been some available out of these people that they havent been floating around on HL and Carraho.
I remember a few days before HL got axed that meggs was saying that it was working fine on a mixed (Mac PC) LAN.
I still can't believe Sierra axed one of the most successful games in history for Mac.
On the other hand I have a friend at Valve that is working on the maps for HL2 (and was responsible for quite a few of them in HL) that HL2 is almost 100% coming for Mac and that, surprise, they are re-doing HL (original) with the HL2 engine... wicked.
:eek: Your not serious. HL2 seems to be one of the most closely guarded games ever. I think Valve has learned their lesson of announcing the game to early to the public. But HL2 on the Mac, and HL redone with HL2 engine. Oh how orgazmic. <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" />
Hell any word, any word at all, on HL2 is orgazmic.
I hate Sierra, they did this exact same thing with Tribes 2, and I bet they do it with every other major title. Ever since they were bought out...
The scary thing is that the same people who own thme own Blizzard (who I am becoming more and more unimpressed with. BnetD any one?)
the tidbits about HL 2 are interesting, but they have anything in mind to keep the cheats down in future mods?
Vivendi-Universal (French) owns Sierra and Blizzard indeed. Blizzard seems to be totally behind Mac though. Sierra... hmmm... grrr...
Regarding cheating and hacking, I also know Valve has been talking to many 3rd parties and also have been creating home-brew solutions to defeat it. I dont know where they are on it but you can rest assured that they are taking care of it somehow or another.
Personally I just want to see HL 1 on Mac and be able to play Day of Defeat on a Mac. I dont care about CounterStrike. Day of Defeat absolutely, totally owns. (www.dayofdefeatmod.com for whomever may be interested)
<strong>actually, HL was designed to be completely cross platform, much like all the blizzard titles. that was also the problem. Sierra didn't want to have to patch both sides when a problem arose, so they just killed off the mac version.
the tidbits about HL 2 are interesting, but they have anything in mind to keep the cheats down in future mods?</strong><hr></blockquote>
You're correct as to the reason why even if HalfLife for Mac shipped, it wouldn't have played on a network with PCs, but it wasn't the reason Sierra cancelled the port. What's worse is that Sierra balked on paying the folks who did the work up until it was cancelled. it's sort of a sensitive subject for those that were working on it. I'll fire off an email and get an inside view on it...
[quote] Half-Life was in beta when cancelled, pretty much to FC stage. It could
play networked against other mac and windows machines as either a client
or server, and the single player game worked. Beyond that, I doubt anyone
played it anywhere unless it was leaked out by someone at Sierra.<hr></blockquote>
[quote] We expected it to ship with network support. My take on why Sierra
cancelled it was that they were pissed that Apple wouldn't pay for their
advertising the game. The "official" reason initially was that Valve
cancelled it. The "Official" reason after Valve denied it was that Sierra
couldn't figure out how to maintain compatability with the Windows
updates (of which there were many!). Of course, since we had fixed many
Windows bugs, and had our version running under Windows... <hr></blockquote>
So that's the official word from one of the developers :-)
As for Blizzard, not counting their actions on the PC side, I had a LOT of problems with Starcraft. It was at a point where it was perfectly playable and practically bugless about 2 years before it was released. Its almost as if it was delayed.
Mac Diablo 2 was AHEAD of the PC version, yet it took what? 3 months?
Perhaps its just coincidence but...
Too bad I'm getting a PC.
Can't wait to play DoD and CS.
<strong>Are you buying a 'gaming PC' or are you converting over entirely? Did you sell your Power Mac? I always find it kind of silly that people spend a ton of money on buying a gaming PC.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Agreed. The amount of money that "gamers" spend on upgrading their video cards, sound cards and what not every year I would spend on a new console. I don't even think I'll need a new console for awhile seeing as I'm totally addicted to SSX Tricky
<strong>
I don't even think I'll need a new console for awhile seeing as I'm totally addicted to SSX Tricky
Me too