There's also https://noclip.website/ which, while not playable, has hundreds of levels from dozens of older games that you can explore freely. Including Half-Life 2, with more accurate rendering than this web port (which seems to be missing many shaders including character eyes).
Fan remake of the levels to avoid asset copy, but it's a downstream of the original engine (and loads the original level files just fine), so the real game.
Interesting, I am not able to play HL2 on Steam because macOS no longer has 32-bit support and Valve never compiled if for 64-bit but here we are, it’s playable on the same OS in the browser.
BTW IIRC there was some method to convert the 32-bit game binaries to make them run on recent macs. I remember doing it.
Valve already gave Half-Life 2 away for free, and released the source code of the HL1 engine.
Is it technically illegal? Yeah, but Valve isn't losing out on any money, and there's no way they're going to risk the negative PR blowback they'd get for a takedown.
Besides, IP law is dead. The rise of AI made it pretty clear that you can steal literally anything without consequences.
GoldSrc (HL1 engine) is very much not open source (or even source available). There's at least one open source remake (which is possibly illegal due to using the SDK) but no official release.
It's quite dangerous to make unsubstantiated comments and assumptions on US copyright law without the proper research.
Valve still owns the copyright to the game and just because they won't do anything now does not mean it is legal to redistribute it without their consent, especially when we know that the game is still being sold. [0]
They (Valve) reserve the right to enforce that and this site clearly does not have such a "license" and haven't disclosed as such. Why would you expect Valve to be in discussions with a 15 year old to redistribute the game for free?
What's the biggest bottleneck you hit - GPU compute, memory bandwidth, or network latency for asset streaming? Curious how it compares to native WebGPU.
As much as I dislike webdev stuff, I love the way you can distribute entire programs through WASM. Super cool stuff! For those who are interested, I recommend checking out Godot for exporting games on the web. It's really easy to do and you can host it on Itch.io
I've played this from the start until around Ravenholm probably close to a hundred times. It's so familiar to me. There's some funky stuff going on for me, though. The characters' eyes are all wrong. G-man had no eyes at all. And the giant screen with Breen on it was missing.
Can't believe it runs as well as it does on my non-gaming laptop without even seeming to struggle. It's funny when you leave a hobby for a while. I haven't played games since the HL2 era so for me this is still state of the art.
I did say a couple of years ago that if HL3 ever came out, and it was good, that it would make me buy another gaming PC. But with current prices I don't even think that would make me do it.
Ah yeah the famously equal acts of pirating a game VS promoting illegal unregulated gambling for millions of people (and that's just the tip of the iceberg).
That's why corporations can get away with everything.
I remember saving up for a year to buy the ATI Radeon 9600 XT (I think it was $200 MSRP) so I could play the game on high settings. Now we can play it inside a virtual machine on a crappy laptop. What a journey
In a few years todays high end AI models will run on your watch
Of course that assumes we maintain open access to compute that we've enjoyed for the last half century, and I doubt that very much.
Stallman warned about the dangers of software being closed [0] 30 years ago, and the majority of modern IT industry just laugh a that sort of stuff because you can't make a billion dollar startup with that attitude, but I think the restrictions on owning the hardware at all will probably come first.
Tried it on my M4 iPad Pro and was surprised that it works - to a degree. NPCs (Gman and the citizens on the train) seem to be missing eyes and have no mouth animations. FPS was pretty poor too, and it was ass to use the camera on the trackpad.
And Quake 3: https://thelongestyard.link/q3a-demo/
And Unreal Tournament: https://dos.zone/mp/?lobby=ut
There's also https://noclip.website/ which, while not playable, has hundreds of levels from dozens of older games that you can explore freely. Including Half-Life 2, with more accurate rendering than this web port (which seems to be missing many shaders including character eyes).
Also The Simpsons Hit & Run! https://shar-wasm.cjoseph.workers.dev/
And Tomb Raider
https://eikehein.com/stuff/sabatu
Fan remake of the levels to avoid asset copy, but it's a downstream of the original engine (and loads the original level files just fine), so the real game.
Ha fun--works in my regular laptop in Chrome without any CPU/GPU etc spikes
What a time to be alive
Interesting, I am not able to play HL2 on Steam because macOS no longer has 32-bit support and Valve never compiled if for 64-bit but here we are, it’s playable on the same OS in the browser.
BTW IIRC there was some method to convert the 32-bit game binaries to make them run on recent macs. I remember doing it.
Here is a link to the blog post since I didn’t see it mentioned
https://www.slqnt.dev/blog/hl2-in-web
The screens are missing and the lips don't move, but it's pretty close!
This is cool, and also probably illegal, since you don't own any of this and don't have the right to redistribute it.
Valve already gave Half-Life 2 away for free, and released the source code of the HL1 engine.
Is it technically illegal? Yeah, but Valve isn't losing out on any money, and there's no way they're going to risk the negative PR blowback they'd get for a takedown.
Besides, IP law is dead. The rise of AI made it pretty clear that you can steal literally anything without consequences.
GoldSrc (HL1 engine) is very much not open source (or even source available). There's at least one open source remake (which is possibly illegal due to using the SDK) but no official release.
That is up for the copyright owner to enforce or not to enforce.
Until they decide, we can't know if it's illegal or not - who knows, this site might have a license.
It's not legal just because the copyright owner doesn't immediately sue you.
It's quite dangerous to make unsubstantiated comments and assumptions on US copyright law without the proper research.
Valve still owns the copyright to the game and just because they won't do anything now does not mean it is legal to redistribute it without their consent, especially when we know that the game is still being sold. [0]
They (Valve) reserve the right to enforce that and this site clearly does not have such a "license" and haven't disclosed as such. Why would you expect Valve to be in discussions with a 15 year old to redistribute the game for free?
So just say you do not know.
[0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/220/HalfLife_2/
I just wish Valve could add official macos-arm64 builds of the various hl2 games on Steam :-/
Whew. Crashed before I sunk my day there.
What's the biggest bottleneck you hit - GPU compute, memory bandwidth, or network latency for asset streaming? Curious how it compares to native WebGPU.
If they have halflife 2 in the browser, I wonder if this means they can do original CS in the browser too!
Yep! play-cs.com
As much as I dislike webdev stuff, I love the way you can distribute entire programs through WASM. Super cool stuff! For those who are interested, I recommend checking out Godot for exporting games on the web. It's really easy to do and you can host it on Itch.io
Ah! Just in time for HL3
Along with Team Fortress 3 and Portal 3 ofc. :)
First half life one in browser now we have half life 2! I guess it’s that time again Mr Freeman
What a time to be alive :D
I've played this from the start until around Ravenholm probably close to a hundred times. It's so familiar to me. There's some funky stuff going on for me, though. The characters' eyes are all wrong. G-man had no eyes at all. And the giant screen with Breen on it was missing.
Can't believe it runs as well as it does on my non-gaming laptop without even seeming to struggle. It's funny when you leave a hobby for a while. I haven't played games since the HL2 era so for me this is still state of the art.
I did say a couple of years ago that if HL3 ever came out, and it was good, that it would make me buy another gaming PC. But with current prices I don't even think that would make me do it.
While technically impressive, this is also illegal. (unless you have redistribution permission from the authors.)
Yup. I was going to finally buy half life 2 today but now I’ve seen this I guess I won’t need to.
Hard times at Valve, I suppose they’ll have to find more children to start gambling with them.
looks like you forgot to add /s tag to your comment :swh
lmao :)
Someone has to look out for the big guys! /s
legality != morality
> this is also illegal
So is unregulated gambling but Valve doesn't care either lol
2 wrongs don't make a right.
Ah yeah the famously equal acts of pirating a game VS promoting illegal unregulated gambling for millions of people (and that's just the tip of the iceberg).
That's why corporations can get away with everything.
In which jurisdiction?
Every signatory of the Berne convention or member of the TRIPS agreement, and most others too.
Is that why I can't access the site?
It works on chromium-based browsers at least
I remember saving up for a year to buy the ATI Radeon 9600 XT (I think it was $200 MSRP) so I could play the game on high settings. Now we can play it inside a virtual machine on a crappy laptop. What a journey
Same here - splashed out crazy money upgrading my PC to play HL2.
After that moment I switched to consoles.
In a few years todays high end AI models will run on your watch
Of course that assumes we maintain open access to compute that we've enjoyed for the last half century, and I doubt that very much.
Stallman warned about the dangers of software being closed [0] 30 years ago, and the majority of modern IT industry just laugh a that sort of stuff because you can't make a billion dollar startup with that attitude, but I think the restrictions on owning the hardware at all will probably come first.
[0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
play-cs.com
Tried it on my M4 iPad Pro and was surprised that it works - to a degree. NPCs (Gman and the citizens on the train) seem to be missing eyes and have no mouth animations. FPS was pretty poor too, and it was ass to use the camera on the trackpad.
What I find incredibly impressive is that it just loaded in and seems to work fine on my phone. So cool.