Long story quick: We’ve established that Doom can run on potatoes, however what about one thing extra advanced? A modder just lately tried to run Half-Life 2 domestically on a Raspberry Pi 4. Initial outcomes look tough, however present potential for theoretically extending Valve’s platform assist.
A video posted on Reddit this week exhibits components of Half-Life 2 working domestically on a Raspberry Pi 4 and an Apple M2 Macbook Air. Redditor zbios mentioned the primary aim of the demo was to not check Raspberry, however to see if Valve’s Source engine may run on the Arm platform.
Before you get too excited, know that microcomputers cannot run Valve’s groundbreaking 2004 first-person shooter very properly. The sport manages round 15 to twenty frames per second with graphics set at 720p with a mixture of high and low settings.
At 1080p, the body fee could be as little as 10fps. The sport would possibly look barely playable, but it surely’s steady sufficient to reveal {that a} Source engine sport can run on an Arm-based Linux system, which is the Redditor’s fundamental aim.
The venture was made doable by a leak of the Team Fortress 2 supply code in 2018, which resulted in a model of Valve’s engine being freely accessible on GitHub. The code helps all Arm-based programs besides Windows on Arm, permitting zbios to port Half-Life 2 to the Linux-based Raspberry Pi 4.
Modders then used the RP model to mod the sport for Apple’s M2 chip, which unsurprisingly dealt with the sport higher. The starting of the Revenholm section hit 300-400fps, additional demonstrating the potential of porting Source engine video games to the Arm. According to zbios, changing the Portal also needs to be doable, however feedback on the GitHub web page point out that Garry’s Mod will not work as a result of modified engine.
These profitable demos beg the query of whether or not Valve can provide Arm-native variations of all of its Source engine video games on Steam, akin to DOTA 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (which can obtain a sequel or main replace quickly), and Portal 2. Maybe they may be part of the already intensive record of video games on Steam that run on Apple Silicon. Additionally, Nvidia Lightspeed Studios launched Android variations of Half-Life 2 and Portal for Nvidia Shield in 2018, proving that the foundations for Arm assist exist.
