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mrtksntoday at 7:35 AM8 repliesview on HN

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.


Replies

gonzalohmtoday at 11:12 AM

How is that possible? 32 bits should be compatible with a 64 bit machine. You can always use less bits for your memory addresses.

Are there any other architecture changes that are preventing 32 bits binaries from running? Does that also mean that old software no longer runs unless there is a 64 bit version?

In windows you can run x32 and x64 executables in a 64 bits machine

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dgb23today at 9:48 AM

Disheartening. macOS seems to get less and less support in a way. For example some of the Blizzard remakes don't run on macOS but the originals do.

Klonoartoday at 9:05 AM

I admit that Valve’s approach to Steam on macOS has never made sense to me.

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freetoniktoday at 1:52 PM

There's a way to compile HL2 on ARM Macs, I've written a guide here: https://rakhim.exotext.com/how-to-play-half-life-2-on-mchip-...

jillesvangurptoday at 8:34 AM

On paper qemu should be able to do this. The hard part is hardware acceleration for the GPU. Without Apple putting effort into supporting this with e.g. documentation, that's a bit hard. That's also holding back linux support on Apple hardware. But it's a fixable problem that will only get easier as hw gets better and faster over time.

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philipwhiuktoday at 12:40 PM

MacOS removing 32bit support was a massive pain. A bunch of Ambrosia Software games no longer work too (e.g. Escape Velocity Nova, Apeiron).

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anthktoday at 1:22 PM

Wine 11 for Mac will run 32 bit binaries without neeeding 32 bit libraries.

iberatortoday at 12:38 PM

wine?