Why was there no PS1 and N64 port of Half-life?

[hardcore_gamer]

The N64 had a Quake port which uses the same engine as Half-life (though I hear half-life's version of the Quake engine was considerably modified) and it ran with a decent framerate, albeit with lower res textures. The N64 and PS1 also had Quake 2 who's graphics were even more advanced than Quake 1. By the time Half-life released the PS2 wasn't even out yet so why did they not port half-life for N64 and PS1? Sure the PS2 was not far away but most people still had a N64 and PS1 where as nowhere as many people would have had a PS2 even after it's launch. I remember back in the day that me and most of my friends would spend more time playing the N64 and PS1 games for a considerable amount of time even after the PS2 launched, in many cases because not everybody even had a PS2 yet. What was stopping Valve from releasing a half-life port for these consoles albeit with somewhat more limited graphics?

[wildweasel]

The Dreamcast had a port of Half Life that got cancelled (but leaked to the net anyway). It barely manages a stable frame rate.

[hardcore_gamer]

Interesting. What made the Goldsource engine more demanding than the original Quake engine or even the Quake 2 engine?

I know this isn't related but I guess it makes more sense to ask here rather than creating an entirely new thread about it: What was the first game to ever feature modern rendering methods such as bumb/specular instead of merely using a single texture map with all the details baked in? Doom 3 is the most famous example of a early game like that I think, but was it technically the first? I think there are some games that featured at least bump maps as I know Halo 2 did it, but I don't think Halo 2 actually had any specular maps (for those who don't know, specular maps basically make textures look more like plastic or metal, which is why games like Doom 3 looked so realistic compared to earlier games).

[SouthernLion]

The Dreamcast had a port of Half Life that got cancelled (but leaked to the net anyway). It barely manages a stable frame rate.

The cool thing, though, is Blue Shift got released officially for PC along with the updated models/textures that were planned for the DC port.

[Kinsie]

Interesting. What made the Goldsource engine more demanding than the original Quake engine or even the Quake 2 engine?

Skeletal animation's a big one. The enhanced character AI probably doesn't help much either. And of course, the characters and environments were generally more detailed than in the first two Quakes.

I know this isn't related but I guess it makes more sense to ask here rather than creating an entirely new thread about it: What was the first game to ever feature modern rendering methods such as bumb/specular instead of merely using a single texture map with all the details baked in? Doom 3 is the most famous example of a early game like that I think, but was it technically the first? I think there are some games that featured at least bump maps as I know Halo 2 did it, but I don't think Halo 2 actually had any specular maps (for those who don't know, specular maps basically make textures look more like plastic or metal, which is why games like Doom 3 looked so realistic compared to earlier games).

Doom 3 was far from the first to use bumpmaps. Jurassic Park Trespasser was the poster-child, but there were also a few other things around the same time like Slave Zero.

[Graf Zahl]

The PS1 was one of the most horribly limited systems I've ever seen. By the time Half Life was made, the memory requirement of such a game vastly exceeded the measly few megabytes the PS1 had to offer.
I do not know how much the Quake games had to be stripped down to make them work but it would have been significant.

[leileilol]

Quake2's PSX port was a new engine built by Hammerhead and the content is pretty much adapted to it with all new missions. Considering PSX has huge depth issues, half-life's pretty much a no go for that system

N64 on the other hand would probably choke on rendering just ONE character (such as the hgrunt) too easily.

[Kinsie]

I do not know how much the Quake games had to be stripped down to make them work but it would have been significant.

Quake 1 Saturn was a remake using the Slavedriver Engine created for Powerslave. The PS1 port would have been the same, but it never managed to get publisher funding so it never happened.

Quake 1 N64, I wanna say it used the actual Quake 1 engine in some form, though I'm open to being corrected. It fits with that Midway team's modus-operandi at the time, though.

Quake 2 N64 was based on the Quake 1 N64 code, a weird back-port of sorts. It was completely original levels as a result.

Quake 2 PS1 was, as Leilei said, a custom engine built specifically for the PS1 hardware. I wanna say it used a mixture of N64 levels and adapted bits of PC levels, but it's been a while.

A "Half-Life 64" or whatever would have likely had to be a complete rebuild with much smaller levels, much lower character detail etc. and would have hardly been worth it since it was pretty late in the N64's life.

[Cacodemon345]

I would hve expected such issues on the first-generation 3D consoles, considering the issues on the consoles. H64 would be totally different.

And I never buy any game that uses a completely different engine than from what it was ported. Would be full of problems; see GBA Doom 2 as an example.

[Project Shadowcat]

I would hve expected such issues on the first-generation 3D consoles, considering the issues on the consoles. H64 would be totally different.

And I never buy any game that uses a completely different engine than from what it was ported. Would be full of problems; see GBA Doom 2 as an example.

I don't remember there being many issues from the GBA ports of Doom and Doom 2?

[Kinsie]

I don't remember there being many issues from the GBA ports of Doom and Doom 2?

Doom 1 was still on the Doom engine, and used the cut-down Jaguar maps.

Doom 2 used Southpaw, a GBA-centric FPS engine used for Duke Nukem Advance and Ice Nine. Some of the physics, monster behaviors etc. are a little odd as a result, some maps have some extra one-sided lines to cut down rendering of open areas, and MAP15 and MAP24 are split in two for technical reasons.

Also, they're both censored to try and achieve a "T" rating due to the perceived younger handheld market of the time, but that's not a technical issue...

[Project Shadowcat]

Kind of odd to name your game engine after what is basically another name for a left-handed pitcher or boxer. But thanks for the information, now I know. I guess I didn't (quite) notice.

[wildweasel]

Also, if you want an idea of how much Half-Life would need to be sacrificed to work on Nintendo 64, you need only play Kemco's "port" (probably not even a port) of Daikatana.

[Kinsie]

Also, if you want an idea of how much Half-Life would need to be sacrificed to work on Nintendo 64, you need only play Kemco's "port" (probably not even a port) of Daikatana.

Are you perchance implying that Daikatana 64 is anything less than a diamond in the rough?

[Clownman]

Didn’t the PS1 struggle to even run Duke Nukem 3D?

If the lowered framerate, additional slowdown and non-animated fire from far away enough are any indication...