Running the FOSS Half-Life engine with CS 1.6

published on 2022-05-15 by David Heidelberg

Introduction

We liked Half-Life. We loved Counter Strike 1.6.

Now there is a chance to compile the engine xash3d to get Counter Strike 1.6 running.

How good did it go?

Compiling on x86_64 is easy

First you need to grab the sources for the SDK (non-free). ~/hl defines your game directory.

git clone https://github.com/FWGS/hlsdk-xash3d.git
cd hlsdk-xash3d
./waf configure -T release --64bits
./waf build
./waf install --destdir=~/hl
cd ..

Now let's continue with the engine (OSS) itself. The engine needs to be installed in the same location as the SDK.

git clone https://github.com/FWGS/xash3d-fwgs.git
cd xash3d-fwgs
./waf configure -T release --64bits
./waf build
./waf install --destdir=~/hl

Now extract assets from your HL (or/and Counter Strike) directly into ~/hl Feel free to remove the dlls and exe files afterwards.

cd ~/hl
find -name '*.exe' -exec rm {} \;
find -name '*.dll' -exec rm {} \;

... and run the game and create a local server with

./xash3d -game cstrike +maxplayers 2 +map de_dust2

Counter Strike 1.6 screenshot Not perfect yet, but it's something!