Modder runs Half-Life 2 natively on a Raspberry Pi 4 and Apple M2 Silicon

TL;DR: We have established that Doom can run on a potato, however what about one thing extra difficult? A modder not too long ago tried working Half-Life 2 natively on a Raspberry Pi 4. The preliminary outcomes look tough however present potential for a theoretical enlargement of Valve’s platform help.

Movies posted on Reddit this week present sections of Half-Life 2 running natively on a Raspberry Pi 4 and an Apple M2 Macbook Air. Redditor zbios mentioned the demo’s main purpose wasn’t to check the Raspberry however to see if Valve’s Supply engine might run on Arm platforms.

Earlier than getting overly excited, know that the microcomputer does not run Valve’s seminal 2004 first-person shooter properly. The sport manages round 15-to-20 frames per second, with the graphics set to a mixture of high and low settings at 720p.

At 1080p, the framerate can fall as little as 10fps. The sport could look barely playable, but it surely’s steady sufficient to show {that a} Supply engine sport can run on an Arm-based Linux system, which was the Redditor’s main purpose.

The undertaking was potential because of the 2018 Group Fortress 2 supply code leak, which led to a model of Valve’s engine changing into freely obtainable on GitHub. That code’s help for each Arm-based system besides Home windows on Arm allowed zbios to port Half-Life 2 to the Linux-based Raspberry Pi 4.

The modder subsequently used the RP construct to mod the sport for Apple’s M2 silicon, unsurprisingly dealing with the sport a lot better. The start of the Revenholm part managed 300-400fps, additional proving the probabilities of porting Supply engine video games to Arm. In line with zbios, changing Portal also needs to be potential, however feedback on the GitHub web page point out Garry’s Mod is out of attain attributable to its modifications to the engine.

These profitable demonstrations elevate the query of whether or not Valve might provide Arm-native variations of all of its Supply engine video games on Steam, like DOTA 2, Counter-Strike: International Offensive (which can receive a sequel or main replace quickly), and Portal 2. Maybe they might be part of the already intensive list of games on Steam that run natively on Apple Silicon. Moreover, Nvidia Lightspeed Studios launched Android variations of Half-Life 2 and Portal for the Nvidia Protect in 2018, proving that the inspiration for Arm help exists.