3 new prototypes of Half Life Dreamcast

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NeoSnk
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3 new prototypes of Half Life Dreamcast

Post#1 » Mon May 30, 2022 6:29 am

From the Laurent's Facebook page - Sega Dreamcast Info:

I have located 3 new prototypes of Half Life Dreamcast.
-A build about 1 month older than mine
-A build between mine and the 2003 version
-The most interesting, a prototype of 6 months before my build
Impossible to have them especially the one of 6 months earlier


https://www.facebook.com/Dreamcast.Laurent

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fafadou
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Re: 3 new prototypes of Half Life Dreamcast

Post#2 » Mon May 30, 2022 10:00 am

Do you think some new content may be find ?

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NeoSnk
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Re: 3 new prototypes of Half Life Dreamcast

Post#3 » Mon May 30, 2022 10:06 am

Not sure, my hope we can find some online code lost in one of these versions.
For tutorials and homebrews access Titan Game Studios: https://titangamestudioscom.wordpress.com/
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WedgeStratos
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Re: 3 new prototypes of Half Life Dreamcast

Post#4 » Mon May 30, 2022 2:09 pm

Unless we locate a complete src dump in one of these discs (which is rather unlikely) I don't expect there to be anything more we can squeeze out of Half-Life on DC. Assemblr already took great lengths once upon a time to break down and understand the WinCE subsystem and how Half-Life was made to run on it - we know well enough that HL has needed specific recompilation for the Dreamcast hardware, and the idea of switching DLLs with, say, Counter-Strike, to just port that over, would require us having the actual source code to then recompile it with WinCE headers in mind.

MastaG
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Re: 3 new prototypes of Half Life Dreamcast

Post#5 » Mon May 30, 2022 2:19 pm

Speaking of Half-Life, what's the best and most complete version we currently have for just completing the single player campaign?
I believe there was some new dump not long ago which had the original not downsampled?
And they created a final release from that right?

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Anthony817
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Re: 3 new prototypes of Half Life Dreamcast

Post#6 » Mon May 30, 2022 3:21 pm

The latest release was still pretty much the 2003 leak just people got the saves working which originally didn't. It was thrice checked and it was found that the whole "HLDC rip used downsampled audio" was nothing more than a rumor. My friend who actually runs the Combine OverWiki, compared the files in the release we got a few years ago and the original 2003 leak, with identical audio. I think people just naturally assumed that such an early release from all those years ago would have undoubtedly had audio downsampled. But this indeed was not the case, we always just looked at how small the game was, I mean it took up less than 200mb on disc. But no, it really was just wishful thinking us diehard fans were hoping would be true.

About the SDK and stuff for more complex mods, sure that is why it is not possible to get the more complex mods working, not to mention the hard limit on the memory. But that doesn't mean these new betas aren't super interesting for HLDC fans. We know that a Katana build exists out there, something using the official SDK. Imagine if the full source to that was released and we could really optimize the engine on DC. No more Windows CE overhead eating up all that RAM. But that is a double-edged sword as the sheer fact the game was Windows CE, to begin with, made it highly moddable. Doubt we would have seen such a lively and passionate community for the game on DC without the thriving modding scene with that game. Still to this day no other console can really do HL1 mods. You can say sure there is Xash3D port for other consoles but that is not really the same thing. Not to mention it is still in alpha since even on OG Xbox it can not fully fit into the memory. So the fact they were still able to manage to give the game all-new HD content in the form of brand new higher-res models and update environments and still run on a console with 16mb memory is pretty amazing.

Also, one of these days, when I have free time and am not constantly working my ass off every day at my job then I hope to have some free time to make mods or port them from PC to this game on DC. But life just seems to keep getting in the way.

P.S. Oh I almost forgot, there was a version somebody made of the game back at Assembler where they took and ported the original 1998 PC assets over to the game, and it did WONDERS for overall game performance. I always noticed how well early mods like They Hunger managed to run better for the most part than the official game, but it is down to it using assets that work more within the parameters of the original PC engine better. So it is a breeze to run it like that on DC. However, unfortunately that build was lost to the internet and time and I didn't have the hindsight to back that up and all the other mods until around the time Theisozone was getting ready to shut down. In addition to that version that used PC assets, the same person ported over the PS2 assets to see how well they would run in our engine, and the results were as you would probably have expected, it ran considerably worse. But it was cool to see nontheless. Both versions were again lost to time and it was from back before 2018 at least when I got serious about archiving homebrew and community-made content for the DC.
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cloofoofoo
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Posts: 534

Re: 3 new prototypes of Half Life Dreamcast

Post#7 » Mon May 30, 2022 10:30 pm

Anthony817 wrote:The latest release was still pretty much the 2003 leak just people got the saves working which originally didn't. It was thrice checked and it was found that the whole "HLDC rip used downsampled audio" was nothing more than a rumor. My friend who actually runs the Combine OverWiki, compared the files in the release we got a few years ago and the original 2003 leak, with identical audio. I think people just naturally assumed that such an early release from all those years ago would have undoubtedly had audio downsampled. But this indeed was not the case, we always just looked at how small the game was, I mean it took up less than 200mb on disc. But no, it really was just wishful thinking us diehard fans were hoping would be true.

About the SDK and stuff for more complex mods, sure that is why it is not possible to get the more complex mods working, not to mention the hard limit on the memory. But that doesn't mean these new betas aren't super interesting for HLDC fans. We know that a Katana build exists out there, something using the official SDK. Imagine if the full source to that was released and we could really optimize the engine on DC. No more Windows CE overhead eating up all that RAM. But that is a double-edged sword as the sheer fact the game was Windows CE, to begin with, made it highly moddable. Doubt we would have seen such a lively and passionate community for the game on DC without the thriving modding scene with that game. Still to this day no other console can really do HL1 mods. You can say sure there is Xash3D port for other consoles but that is not really the same thing. Not to mention it is still in alpha since even on OG Xbox it can not fully fit into the memory. So the fact they were still able to manage to give the game all-new HD content in the form of brand new higher-res models and update environments and still run on a console with 16mb memory is pretty amazing.

Also, one of these days, when I have free time and am not constantly working my ass off every day at my job then I hope to have some free time to make mods or port them from PC to this game on DC. But life just seems to keep getting in the way.

P.S. Oh I almost forgot, there was a version somebody made of the game back at Assembler where they took and ported the original 1998 PC assets over to the game, and it did WONDERS for overall game performance. I always noticed how well early mods like They Hunger managed to run better for the most part than the official game, but it is down to it using assets that work more within the parameters of the original PC engine better. So it is a breeze to run it like that on DC. However, unfortunately that build was lost to the internet and time and I didn't have the hindsight to back that up and all the other mods until around the time Theisozone was getting ready to shut down. In addition to that version that used PC assets, the same person ported over the PS2 assets to see how well they would run in our engine, and the results were as you would probably have expected, it ran considerably worse. But it was cool to see nontheless. Both versions were again lost to time and it was from back before 2018 at least when I got serious about archiving homebrew and community-made content for the DC.


I checked those models for the supposed ps2 port, they were not up to the ps2 spec. They were slightly better but didnt have fully modeled faces or hands or even same polygon desnsity as hi lod ps2 models. I actually asked about that since i was confused, answer i got well ps2 version wast fully compatible so go remake it yourself. With such a grumpy answer i just left it alone.

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Anthony817
Shark Patrol
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Re: 3 new prototypes of Half Life Dreamcast

Post#8 » Tue May 31, 2022 1:11 am

cloofoofoo wrote:I checked those models for the supposed ps2 port, they were not up to the ps2 spec. They were slightly better but didnt have fully modeled faces or hands or even same polygon desnsity as hi lod ps2 models. I actually asked about that since i was confused, answer i got well ps2 version wast fully compatible so go remake it yourself. With such a grumpy answer i just left it alone.


Damn why did they answer your question so rudely? Do you remember who it was who made those mods? I wished I had the foresight to back them up before they got deleted. :oops:
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cloofoofoo
Dreamcast Swirl
Posts: 534

Re: 3 new prototypes of Half Life Dreamcast

Post#9 » Tue May 31, 2022 1:43 am

Anthony817 wrote:
cloofoofoo wrote:I checked those models for the supposed ps2 port, they were not up to the ps2 spec. They were slightly better but didnt have fully modeled faces or hands or even same polygon desnsity as hi lod ps2 models. I actually asked about that since i was confused, answer i got well ps2 version wast fully compatible so go remake it yourself. With such a grumpy answer i just left it alone.


Damn why did they answer your question so rudely? Do you remember who it was who made those mods? I wished I had the foresight to back them up before they got deleted. :oops:


I dont remember actually, i didnt take offense since i didnt care enough honestly. I was just being curious to why its called ps2 port of the models if they obviously werent. 100% sure it wasnt even this forum.

Sorry couldnt be more help cant even reup since ive long since gotten rid of it.

law56ker
rebel
Posts: 19

Re: 3 new prototypes of Half Life Dreamcast

Post#10 » Tue Aug 22, 2023 12:42 am

Anthony817 wrote:The latest release was still pretty much the 2003 leak just people got the saves working which originally didn't. It was thrice checked and it was found that the whole "HLDC rip used downsampled audio" was nothing more than a rumor. My friend who actually runs the Combine OverWiki, compared the files in the release we got a few years ago and the original 2003 leak, with identical audio. I think people just naturally assumed that such an early release from all those years ago would have undoubtedly had audio downsampled. But this indeed was not the case, we always just looked at how small the game was, I mean it took up less than 200mb on disc. But no, it really was just wishful thinking us diehard fans were hoping would be true.

About the SDK and stuff for more complex mods, sure that is why it is not possible to get the more complex mods working, not to mention the hard limit on the memory. But that doesn't mean these new betas aren't super interesting for HLDC fans. We know that a Katana build exists out there, something using the official SDK. Imagine if the full source to that was released and we could really optimize the engine on DC. No more Windows CE overhead eating up all that RAM. But that is a double-edged sword as the sheer fact the game was Windows CE, to begin with, made it highly moddable. Doubt we would have seen such a lively and passionate community for the game on DC without the thriving modding scene with that game. Still to this day no other console can really do HL1 mods. You can say sure there is Xash3D port for other consoles but that is not really the same thing. Not to mention it is still in alpha since even on OG Xbox it can not fully fit into the memory. So the fact they were still able to manage to give the game all-new HD content in the form of brand new higher-res models and update environments and still run on a console with 16mb memory is pretty amazing.

Also, one of these days, when I have free time and am not constantly working my ass off every day at my job then I hope to have some free time to make mods or port them from PC to this game on DC. But life just seems to keep getting in the way.

P.S. Oh I almost forgot, there was a version somebody made of the game back at Assembler where they took and ported the original 1998 PC assets over to the game, and it did WONDERS for overall game performance. I always noticed how well early mods like They Hunger managed to run better for the most part than the official game, but it is down to it using assets that work more within the parameters of the original PC engine better. So it is a breeze to run it like that on DC. However, unfortunately that build was lost to the internet and time and I didn't have the hindsight to back that up and all the other mods until around the time Theisozone was getting ready to shut down. In addition to that version that used PC assets, the same person ported over the PS2 assets to see how well they would run in our engine, and the results were as you would probably have expected, it ran considerably worse. But it was cool to see nontheless. Both versions were again lost to time and it was from back before 2018 at least when I got serious about archiving homebrew and community-made content for the DC.


Those have to be somewhere sitting on someones cdr collection or on some archive on the internet. Unfortunately even digitial content gets lots on the internet because the servers and hardrives that once hosted the files are no longer existant. It reminds me of the time when I had a several terabyte collection of one of a kind user content and collections that i got from private torrent sites, my girlfriend made me move the hardrive one day and a couple weeks later I tripped on the cord of the hardrive and it tipped over and made a horrible noise. All the content I have found and collected was gone in an instant.

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