Half-Life 2 Games Released For Linux On Steam

[Yfrwlf]

There is also no real reason to port Lost Coast or old HL1 mods etc., I think Valve will bring L4D1 sooner or later just for completeness' sake.

Lost Coast beta was released for Linux at the same time HL2 beta and all the others were released. Anything based on Source will be easily portable now, probably not much real "porting" involved really. Most everything that is Linux-specific and ties in to Linux like the graphics and audio ABIs are in the engine AFAIK. I fully expect complete Linux support moving forward as well in part to the Steam box of course, but also general Linux popularity will slowly get bumped too no doubt over a long period of time.

More complaints in stores about the retailer trying to force Windows purchases on everyone instead of having a free Linux option. Can't wait!

[Yfrwlf]

From the Black Mesa FAQ:

Will Black Mesa be ported to Xbox360, Mac or another platform?

At the moment Black Mesa supports only PCs powered by Microsoft Windows operating system [9]. No support for Mac or port for Xbox360 (although the Xbox360 controller is supported [10]). Linux will be supported only if developers could port the codebase over easily [11].

Once/if/when Source SDK is out for Linux I doubt very many modifications (if any?) would have to be made to Black Mesa to get a Linux port. I'm having trouble thinking of why any game assets would need "porting" if/when Source SDK is released for Linux.

[philip550c]

Anyone know if we'll ever be able to Black Mesa (Source)?? The mod uses the Source SDK 2007 fyi... That's the one game I am really hoping for!! (Especially since I'm still playing it through on Windows). Btw it's not playable under Wine on either of my systems (loads of stuttering)...

A bit of a long shot I guess...

From the Black Mesa FAQ:

Will Black Mesa be ported to Xbox360, Mac or another platform?

At the moment Black Mesa supports only PCs powered by Microsoft Windows operating system [9]. No support for Mac or port for Xbox360 (although the Xbox360 controller is supported [10]). Linux will be supported only if developers could port the codebase over easily [11].

[Yfrwlf]

Yeah its a bit weird Intel GPU isn't even mentioned in those requirements, since they are more than adequate.

Can't take the requirements listed in Steam too seriously though. It's like the ones that list OS as "Ubuntu 12.04".

Just because you use an entirely different distro doesn't mean you can't run it.

System requirements for programs is like comparing CPUs based on gigglehurtz. It's a crapshoot. Sometimes they get close, but often not really, and since Linux is new and even with the Ubuntu's they are using different compositors and that can slow things down more but get rid of tearing etc, so it's much harder to do. Though I don't know if any games for Windows when they mentioned Vista ever said "recommended: turn Aero off".

[Yfrwlf]

You can only log into Steam on 1 machine at a time. Once you are logged in, i don't think there are any restrictions.

I really hate that DRM. Normally a friend could be gaming on one of my computers with one of my games, and I could be gaming on another computer with a different game. That's okay, I still support games that have non-Steam options, no DRM, and/or are open source, and there is always cracking to rescue to give gamers back their rights, but of course you shouldn't have to do that and open source is the holy grail as usual. I want to see some good games being Kickstarted that will be open source. If you pay to have a game developed, you should have complete and total rights and access to that game in every way.

I'm glad Steam is on Linux though as it allows gamers to quickly and easily play games and donate to those who make them when and if they can afford and feel it is justifiable to do so. My Steam Linux game count is about to hit 60!

[Yfrwlf]

OK, I just never knew you could do that. I'm using the propreitary drivers with my HD 7850 and it's mostly fine, but there are still a few lighting glitches I noticed in HL2, esp witht he flashlight.

Haven't had a problem on nvidia. It's funny how I used to champion amd so heavily, and still do when it comes to CPUs as far as performance and cost go, but experience has taught me that if I want the best gaming experience and don't want driver support pulled out from underneith me after a couple years, I should go with nvidia over amd.

If you're on Windows, you'll face the same problem, just not as severely, but amd said fuck you Linux users by that move so I'll stick with nvidia.

[Yfrwlf]

Anyone know if we'll ever be able to Black Mesa (Source)?? The mod uses the Source SDK 2007 fyi... That's the one game I am really hoping for!! (Especially since I'm still playing it through on Windows). Btw it's not playable under Wine on either of my systems (loads of stuttering)...

A bit of a long shot I guess...

No it's not, Source is their game engine which made cross-platform three years after the Windows release. From OS X to Linux is just a small jump. Now that Source is on Linux, the SDK will be soon too including Black Mesa.

[kernelOfTruth]

Well, its clearly something is wrong with your pc there is no games on windows, that would need to restart to play after installation... Yes, maybe hl2 is in pair with graphics, but thats just with source engine, some other games doesnt even have that On the other way, there is like 80% possibility, that you will fall into many bugs, that wont let you to even start many games on linux And linux is forcing me to restart pc in one day more than windows in like half-year

not sure but he's probably referring to dualbooting

[startzz]

My productivity has dropped by more than 80% since hl2 hit on steam4linux.
The forced rebooting in windows kept me from playing too many games... and now my productivity's gone

On a positive note, these ports are awesome: graphics are on par with windows (triple-head does not work, but that's just nitpicking), saves sync crossplatform and no more freakin' rebooting (ever!).

Well, its clearly something is wrong with your pc there is no games on windows, that would need to restart to play after installation... Yes, maybe hl2 is in pair with graphics, but thats just with source engine, some other games doesnt even have that On the other way, there is like 80% possibility, that you will fall into many bugs, that wont let you to even start many games on linux And linux is forcing me to restart pc in one day more than windows in like half-year

[Yfrwlf]

That would be great, I liked the Half Life 2 games. I have all of those in Steam in Windows.

Maybe someday I'll install a distro that can run the Steam client.

Actually I hope someone ports Black Mesa (it's a source engine mod that is a remake of Half Life). That's my favourite "Half Life" anything.

http://www.blackmesasource.com/

I hope they release a Steam static binary with all dependencies included, that would make things extremely simple for non-Ubuntu users.