Emulated Half Life

EHL Information

What is EHL?

Half Life, until now, has been primarily a Windows-based game. A port of the server-side of the game has been available since its conception, however a client has never been written that natively supports Linux.
One of the most popular ways to run Windows-only applications in a native Linux/Unix environment is to use WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator,) which acts as an intermediary between the Windows application and the Unix X windows system. The instructions on how to run Half Life under WINE were scarce and hard to find. What little information there was was incomplete and sketchy, and usually took some time to find. Also, there was no forum or other method to ask questions pertaining to running Half Life under WINE.
To get Half Life to work correctly, a variety of exotic hacks were required. This process could be very slow and difficult and not one for the uninitiated. I wrote EHL primarily to automate the process of applying and running the necessary hacks to get, at least, a semi-functioning game.

How does it work?

EHL consists mainly of an engine script. This script does things such as preparing the game directory, setting the resolution in X windows from values in the Windows registry, and maintaining and killing WINE processes. It also provides meaningful and clear feedback when something goes wrong to assist in fixing problems.
One of the main features of EHL is that it doesn't run on your normal X desktop. Rather, it starts its own desktop for the exclusive use of Half Life. It matches the size of the desktop to the size of Half Life to ensure the game runs in full screen. Also, the lack of other applications running aside the game means the game can be run exclusively on the computer. Your normal desktop can be shutdown to save memory, and EHL will still run. I have nick-named this "MaxScr33n" technology, and I hope to apply it to other games in the future (see the Extreme Gaming for Linux page.)

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