Tonight I’m playing Half Life 2 on Linux.
Okay - there, I said it.
The hilarious thing really is that I’ve never successfully managed to play the game on its native Windows. I eagerly, giddily bought HL2 back when it came out in 2004; I thoroughly loved the original Half Life, and couldn’t wait to pick up the crowbar again. Unfortunately, Valve was under a lot of pressure to get HL2 released (it was already a year late), and the production release obviously went out in a crude beta. After about two months of struggling to successfully install and run the thing on W2K - and being disgusted with Valve’s completely retarded support for a problem affecting at least 10% of HL2 buyers - I gave it up. I simply wouldn’t be playing Half Life 2. Oh well.
In the time since, I finally dropped my Windows partition altogether. It had never been my primary work system (I’m a long-time UNIX geek), I got tired of dual-booting, and most non-game apps ran just fine under VMWare. And so life continued - until today.
Being a dedicated Linux user is a very different experience than being a Windows or Mac geek. Microsoft nuts seem to be generally path-of-least-resistance people: most people use Windows, they figure, so you’re best off just blending really well into the crowd. Mac geeks seem to be seeking some sort of spiritual unity with their tech - some sort of mystical fusion of aesthetic and functional ideal. Not a bad goal, at least in my book.
Linux geeks are more like homesteaders in the Old West. We look at the scrubby patch of land and see the cabin that isn’t there, the farm field that hasn’t yet been tamed. It’s going to be a hard haul - we know that - but we see the potential there and know that (if we survive) we’ll come out stronger and smarter and happier for the battle.
I started as a Linux geek back around ‘96 or so, and let me tell you, those were roughing-it days. Linux newbies today complain about having to compile their own software; in those days, half the software didn’t work right at all, and often you had to be a decent C programmer to make it usable. Nothing worked out of the box.. I remember telling a coworker back then that I’d never gotten a Red Hat install to complete the same way twice. Usually, user support meant looking things up on Usenet and kludging solutions on your own. And don’t even think of trying to find commercial software.
So why would a sane, intelligent person bother? Because once you got it working, it worked damned well. It was yours - you built the cabin you wanted, and you tamed the land with your own two hands, and that’s a great feeling.
And now, over ten years later, I’m sitting here playing Half Life 2. Over the last week I’ve installed and played the first three Half Life games, Deus Ex, several classic DOS games, and Tomb Raider.. most of them, flawlessly, and using software that didn’t exist ten years ago. Such as Wine, the UNIX Win32 API reimplementation that enables more and more Windows titles to run natively in UNIX with each new release. And DosBox, an amazing little x86 DOS emulator that has successfully handled every old DOS title I’ve yet thrown at it. And of course we also have mature open source emulators for virtually every older computer and game system platform, from Atari 8-bits to Playstation.
And most of that wasn’t commercial software. It was written by the technology sharecroppers who one day, long ago, set eyes on their scrubby patches of land and saw something more. So they started building.
In ten years, we’ve gone from manual trial-and-error system installs to Half Life 2. It doesn’t run perfectly; frame rates are relatively slow (a lot of config tweaking helps), the mouse focus gets kinda screwy occasionally, and sometimes the game gets caught in these weird resource-lock loops. But it’s very playable. And I’ve no doubt that it’ll continue to get better.
All I can say is, wow. Sure it a fun time to be a Linux geek.
So… do I need to play through HL1 to enjoy 2?
:-)
Left by rocket on April 28th, 2007
Probably not, but I would anyway. HL1 is a great game, and there are story references to both HL1 and Blue Shift throughout HL2. that are valuable to know.
Playing through the original also sets you up for several emotional moments in the sequel, particularly when you encounter old characters in new contexts. Barney the bumbling security guard in HL1 is now a hardened resistance combat veteran; Dr. Kleiner now has a harmless pet headcrab (”debeaked”) named Lamarr. And a whole class of enemies from HL1 - the energy-blasting Vortigaunts - now are actually allies. *That* one freaked me out for the first time, coming around a corner and BOOM, there was one of those damned things.. killed hundreds in HL1.. almost lobbed a grenade at it without thinking.
That effect also fits well with the storyline. In HL2, Gordon is returned from stasis many years (15-20) after the events of HL1, not having any idea what the hell is going on. He’s way disoriented, thrust into a very different world than he remembers. His actions at Black Mesa had MAJOR consequences for Earth, and right from the start of HL2 he’s forced to deal with them.
HL1 was a lot lighter in tone, more humorous than HL2. Gordon was basically an entry-level PhD, in the wrong place at the wrong time; like I said before, it’s basically Office Space with aliens and assault rifles, a story about an average schmuck caught up in bizarre events. In HL2, the legend of the Black Mesa Incident and Gordon’s absence (not to mention his return) seem to have given his reputation an almost messianic air, and so now he’s an action hero and savior. That transition in tone makes it worth playing the original games; the storytelling really isn’t half bad. (It may also help you get through the Galactica hiatus.
)
Oh, and Rocket.. remember when you play HL2: we don’t take the tunnel to Ravenholm anymore. And there *is* a good reason for that.
BTW, here’s what I’m looking forward to: the Black Mesa mod. A bunch of HL fans are remaking the original as an HL2 mod, with graphics/play/music quality similar to HL2. God knows if it’ll ever get done, but damn, I WANT IT!
Left by Rob on April 28th, 2007