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How Half Life 1 for Mac Was Canceled At the Last Minute
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Funny how some people forget that this wasn't for OS X... 
But then again that makes me feel old...
Anyway I'd love to see a download of this. The video mentioned they have the code somewhere "deep down", would be fun just to play around with it... *looks at G3 iMac*
But then again that makes me feel old...Anyway I'd love to see a download of this. The video mentioned they have the code somewhere "deep down", would be fun just to play around with it...
*looks at G3 iMac*
Come on -- if you believe Heineman here, the game was in the bag. Don't tell me people lose money distributing a game. Make boxes, send to MacMall, profit, even if it's only a tenth the profit you thought you'd have. The development is, at this point, a sunk cost.
See, there's more going on. Who flubbed? Why? How does this spite help Valve?
That said, that Madden fell on its face and Q3A didn't really do much better (esp on Linux, the "other" AltOS pretending to becoming a gaming platform) just made this another symptom in the long slow fall of Mac gaming to its second death as a possible top-tier gaming platform.
A long while back, Glenda Adams said (I'm paraphrasing heavily) that the only way Macs would have parity with PCs is if Microsoft decided to make things that way, and that they didn't have any reason to. HL1's cancellation is, ultimately, part of that necessarily compromised position.
Anyway I'd love to see a download of this. The video mentioned they have the code somewhere "deep down", would be fun just to play around with it...
Yeah, I can't see any reason it couldn't be leaked and *cough* seeded. It's not like it's going to hurt sales. Perhaps include its download over Steam for those that have shelled out for Orange Box from the Mac... My iMac G3 collection is sitting waiting to try too.
My guess is that there's more to the story. I vaguely recall there being more work to do on HL before it could be released, among other things.
You've obviously forgotten the magazine cover with a B&W Mac with a headline "Could this be your next gaming machine?" or something similar. Quake 3 Test was Mac first and was released concurrently on Mac. You really can't get much bigger than that. Tomb Raider 2 came out on Mac, Madden was released -- it seemed like a pretty big deal. Then everything crashed. Again.
HL1 wouldn't've stopped that.
I'm pleased to say that's not exactly true; I also finished my purchased HL2 + Episode 1 + Episode 2 and wanted more! - Looking at the time still remaining for Episode 3 (For PC) I thought I'd buy all the HL1 iterations in the mean-time and replay those again...
Searched Amazon, Macgames.com but nothing, no versions or ports or anything Mac for me to buy.
So...um...in the absence of light, darkness prevails...
As my Windoze CD's of the HL1 games had long-since vanished I would need to DL copies of the Windoze version to run in Parallels (Or BC) so I proceeded onto the Usenet [and if I'm wrong mentioning this here then please will a Mod edit/delete my post], *BUT* there I discovered that there *is* a Cider port of HL-Source for OSX (And another for Opposing Force, one for Blue Shift, and another for Decay). I've downloaded them and been playing Source on my mid-2010 MBP this afternoon. Brilliant! - Fast, responsive and no crashes, hangs or freezes after 2-hours of solid play.
To the guys at Valve, I *will* buy these games if you make them available for the Mac (+ don't charge silly-money) [Edit: If Phatt4D can Cider them, I'm sure you can too!] - As another poster suggested, stick them in the Mac App Store for a few £/$ each - you'll make a killing! - I know I'll buy the complete set.
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Rebecca Heineman along with Glenda Adams both deserve much gratitude for keeping gaming alive on the mac during those dark years. The Mac today is still not the most ideal gaming platform but if it were not for the efforts of
Heineman, Adams, and a handful of others gaming on the mac would be all but dead.
Heineman, Adams, and a handful of others gaming on the mac would be all but dead.
Me earlier: More recently, I had a Wintendo machine that I played HL1 and HL2 on. But it's now broken, though I scavenged its disks.
A PeeCee for gaming: Windows + Nintendo
Eh. PC Gaming has fallen off a cliff. The number of major PC/Mac-exclusive titles these days is miniscule, consisting mostly of Civilization, MMOGs, and The Sims. And even The Sims has a console port now. All of those have day and date release on OSX now. To say that Mac gaming is significantly behind PC gaming is just regurgitating years-obsolete complaints about Apple.
And then you compare 3d performance in games and cross-platform 3d apps, and realize it still holds true.
Yeah, the story doesn't stick together.
First, why would anyone at Sierra have taken a huge sales estimate from Apple at face value? I've been around sales forecasts (not in the middle of them, as I'm not a sales guy or a business guy, but close enough around them to follow them), and while there is a lot of waving chickens around involved, it's not something that one self-interested company can skew so incredibly high. Long and short: if they were taking Apple's word of 500k units, it was because they had expectations of at least 450k.
Second, while her story may be completely accurate from her perspective, it is told as an outsider, someone who had things done to her project, not someone involved in the actual process of the cancellation; I'm not sure her conclusions are necessarily correct.
Third, remember the unreliable narrator. Every lead engineer on every project I've ever seen canceled has later recounted the project through incredibly rosy glasses. I've done the same, I'm sure. It's human nature, and especially engineering nature; we wouldn't be able to make the risks and lay it all out on the line for the next project otherwise.
Altogether, I'm betting on a much more complex real story here than what she makes it sound like.
Check your Mac Steam accounts. All Half Life on SALE today for Mac, 75% off!
If you own Left4Dead2 you can save 85%. You can buy all the Half Life titles for Mac for like $6.
I could have sworn HL: Source was one of them.
Update: I was wrong. HL1 is Windows only. As are many other HL1 titles. Still a bargain.
If you own Left4Dead2 you can save 85%. You can buy all the Half Life titles for Mac for like $6.
I could have sworn HL: Source was one of them.
Update: I was wrong. HL1 is Windows only. As are many other HL1 titles. Still a bargain.
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It's 13 years old, they might as well release the code and let anybody who wants to have a go at porting it themselves. Myself, I've got a nice Cider copy of the game that works perfectly on Snow Leopard (as well as owning the original, and Half Life Source.)
Pretty much. It's all based on what she remembers being told by other people who had received decisions made by other people.
Either way it's still a sad tale and who knows, it might've helped launch the Mac faster but hey Apple turned out ok in the end!
Classic! Don't forget to play Commander Keen and Bio Menace while you're at it.
I'm still waiting for Commander Keen 7. They said it was coming in Christmas '93
Classic! Don't forget to play Commander Keen and Bio Menace while you're at it.
I'm still waiting for Commander Keen 7. They said it was coming in Christmas '93
It'll come out just after Duke Nukem Forever.
I miss Marathon, Duke Nukem, Shadow Warrior, Quake and Unreal. Those are the games I played on my Macs. Too bad I haven't found an emulator to let me play them again. These titles blow away the new fangled fancy-pantsy stuff of today.
Very unfortunate, Half Life 1 is far better than Half Life 2, it's a shame it was cancelled for Mac
According to your use of grammar, it will happen, and there's nothing we can do about it.
Something worthy of note is Valve's "Portal 2" will be cross platform, ie.. you go out, buy the PS3 version, and you can play with people on the PC and on the Mac. And there is also talk of one license = all platforms too, so you buy the PS3 version.. and get access to the PC version online via the key that came with the PS3 version. However Mac wasn't mentioned in that offer from what I read.
I'd guess that's not the case. I know I've spent more on PC gaming after introducing myself to Steam than I have for years. (Disclosure: I do have a Windows tower.
) Between some PC exclusives (lots of new MMORPGs, Starcraft 2, and TF2) but also real console series like Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty, I'd bet PC gaming is doing as well as it has in a while.I believe you mean that there's nothing we can't undo to stop it.
Great post. I keep doubting some of what Heineman says, wondering if she doesn't know more, but you're right -- even if what she says is completely accurate from her point of view, it's likely a rosy, outsider view. Who at Apple could have told Sierra they'd sell 500k and have had Sierra believe it past Jobs and his group? And, honestly, I never got the feeling he really liked what we'd consider PC gaming. Even iPod touch/iPhone gaming seems like a happy coincidence rather than any real planned marketing thrust. Somebody really screwed up, and we still don't know who that was, and why it'd force no release at all.
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I'd love to have a copy as well, just to play around with it for a bit would be a lot of fun.
You've obviously forgotten the magazine cover with a B&W Mac with a headline "Could this be your next gaming machine?" or something similar. Quake 3 Test was Mac first and was released concurrently on Mac. You really can't get much bigger than that. Tomb Raider 2 came out on Mac, Madden was released -- it seemed like a pretty big deal. Then everything crashed. Again.
HL1 wouldn't've stopped that.
Actually I probably have that magazine sitting around here somewhere
Quake was fun times, Tomb Raider was great too, although I could hardly get used to the keyboard, ...thank you USB gamepad. I know it may not have been as big of a hit as my positive mind would have liked it to be (or changed the whole universe of Mac gaming), but it couldn't have hurt. I would have been very happy to have another Mac game to play that my PC friends could also enjoy online with me. Not to say that the Mac didn't have many titles that could play online VS Windows computers. I just either didn't play them or never owned them. Or in the case of most of them, I got "into" them too late and nobody cared about them anymore. However I still have fond memories of playing Unreal Tournament and Jedi Outcast on my father's G4 AGP 450MHz with the 20" Apple Studio CRT display
! The latter tended to run like crap on the little ATI Rage card.