Why? It was just a PC on the inside with a slimmed down Windows 2000 variant as the OS. Storage concerns aside, it was probably a very straightforward port, just rip out the Steam bindings, and it probably ran pretty immediately.
No, this would make it much simpler. No translations, differing architectures, or OS bindings to struggle though. Asset and compilation tweaks, and controller bindings, and that’s a large portion of the work.
Semi-related, but to this day I remain impressed they got Half Life 2 ported to the original Xbox.
Why? It was just a PC on the inside with a slimmed down Windows 2000 variant as the OS. Storage concerns aside, it was probably a very straightforward port, just rip out the Steam bindings, and it probably ran pretty immediately.
Noooo, it was not that simple. Search MVG hl2 port on YouTube and watch and see why the port is actually very impressive
Right, architecturally it was probably pretty simple. But the minimum system requirements for HL:2 versus the Xbox’s hardware is pretty stark:
Half-Life 2 minimum requirements for PC:
CPU: Intel Pentium 4 2.00GHz Memory: 512 MB Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce 6100Xbox System Specs:
CPU: Intel Pentium III 733 MHz Memory: 64 MB (shared with GPU) Graphics: Custom NVidia based on Geforce 3Edit: Definitely meaning the original Xbox and not the 360. Was one of the last games I bought for the original and still have it :)
As a point of comparison, 360 has 512MB RAM. HL2 was targeting PCs comparable to PS3/360, but somehow they got it working on an Xbox.
Makes you wonder what corners they cut to get it functional.
https://youtu.be/c66hfqw4SKc
So playable frame rate was the main corner cut.
That’s not at all how porting a game works.
No, this would make it much simpler. No translations, differing architectures, or OS bindings to struggle though. Asset and compilation tweaks, and controller bindings, and that’s a large portion of the work.
You have zero idea what goes on when porting a game, do you? It’s ok, not everyone does. Understanding you can learn is a good thing.
Watch this before replying, here:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=c66hfqw4SKc&pp=ygUHTVZHIGhsMg%3D%3D