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Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by xp84 on Tuesday July 28, 2026 @08:11PM (#49091733)
More and more, I wonder if projects like this (I assume they're made possible 'all of a sudden' because of AI coding tools) are going to eventually breathe new life into dozens of "obsolete" platforms long ago deemed too costly to keep supporting. Maybe we'll be able to daily drive OS9 with modern browsers and bugfixes. Or for those of us less masochistic, say, Windows 2000 or NextStep!
Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by someperson on Tuesday July 28, 2026 @08:18PM (#49091794)
I feel like the best Beatles songs are yet to be written.

Or alternatively best classic Simpsons episodes are yet to be made.

Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by dosisking on Tuesday July 28, 2026 @10:58PM (#49092931)
> Or alternatively best classic Simpsons episodes are yet to be made.

Yes. This will happen.... when pigs fly

(It's still good, it's still good)

Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by gcanyon on Tuesday July 28, 2026 @08:53PM (#49092060)
I think you're underselling where we'll get to in the next 5-10 years. I'm thinking:

Best Beatles song recorded between Rubber Soul and Revolver, composed mainly by McCartney but Lennon wrote the bridge and Ringo was feeling adventurous and Harrison was angry that day, and it was deemed not commercial enough to include on Revolver.

Best season 3 episode of The Simpsons, really showing the transition to Homer as the lead, written by Robert Cohen with significant musical input from Danny Elfman and featuring seven characters loosely representing the deadly sins, with Homer as Gluttony of course.

Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by soulofmischief on Tuesday July 28, 2026 @08:26PM (#49091843)
I think people seem to be downvoting this because it's not something they like whether true or not, however I think it's a thought-provoking perspective which warrants some consideration.
Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by nonethewiser on Tuesday July 28, 2026 @08:53PM (#49092064)
I think there is real insight but it kinda relies on a rhetorical trick. AI could arguably create a simpsons episode. It absolutely could not make a Beatles song. The Beatles can only make a Beatles song, and they do not exist.
Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by xamuel on Tuesday July 28, 2026 @10:06PM (#49092630)
The Beatles absolutely still exist! They published a new single in 2023 ("Now and Then") and they surgically injected slices from archive footage into new footage for the music video to make it look like young Lennon and Harrison perform alongside elder McCartney and Ringo.
Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by anthk on Tuesday July 28, 2026 @08:28PM (#49091867)
There's already Netsurf with beter JS support than the Duktape one under Unix, Windows and even RiscOS.
Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by russelg on Tuesday July 28, 2026 @08:30PM (#49091882)
This isn't an all-of-a-sudden, the engine has been worked on for over 7 years now https://github.com/fwgs/xash3d-fwgs
Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by Coeur on Tuesday July 28, 2026 @08:53PM (#49092063)
Or even create new platforms where we're not bound by platform owners' imposed artificial limitations.
Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by ColdStream on Tuesday July 28, 2026 @09:39PM (#49092414)
So the entire free software movement? ;)
Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by itomato on Tuesday July 28, 2026 @09:30PM (#49092344)
One of the first things I did with ChatGPT was feed it source for the existing OHCI USB Host Adapter driver to make it work with more common UHCI hardware.

There are many people working to extend NeXT, Openstep and even Rhapsody. Not to mention emulation projects and deep dives into XNU source, early Darwin source and shoehorning kernels and libraries into various places.

The Epson NX was purpose-built to run NeXTStep, for example, and bringing support for machines like that and the Canon object.station into 86box is a pet project of mine.

Join us https://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/index.php?topic=5286.ms...

Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by User23 on Wednesday July 29, 2026 @12:15AM (#49093343)
[delayed]
Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by ColdStream on Tuesday July 28, 2026 @09:50PM (#49092506)
One impressive one to me is the current effort to port Doom to the Neo Geo. Because of its unique hardware setup in that it is entirely sprite based and doesn't have a frame buffer, it is a very difficult challenge to take on. And yet most of the code on these projects is being done via AI and it works pretty dang well.

Considering these coding system probably have almost no idea of the Neo Geo's specifics and with very little reference code directly linked to the system to bounce off, that is dang impressive.

Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by CursedSilicon on Tuesday July 28, 2026 @10:06PM (#49092624)
At least in retro spaces there's a lot of rejection of using AI to do things.

Half-Life (and the later Source engine games such as Half-Life 2 and Portal) were ported without LLM assistance however

(Source: I am in the Discord where the developer has been working and diligently posting updates on the project)

Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by CamperBob2 on Tuesday July 28, 2026 @10:13PM (#49092673)
(Removed inaccurate remark, or rather, removed my reply to an inaccurate remark)
Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by srp-shay on Tuesday July 28, 2026 @10:53PM (#49092906)
Hi there, I'm the developer of this port.

I did use AI to assist me in development and I'm not shy about admitting that. This was still a hands-on effort that took well over 40 hours of development time spread over a couple months. Much like other development tools, AI certainly sped up my development process and allowed to ship something in a couple of months using my free time.

AI is a tool and it isn't going anywhere, I've posted my thoughts about AI extensively in the PowerPC community. I don't proactively volunteer or plaster my readmes with notes about AI because it doesn't really matter.

Speaking for me personally I have no problem using tools in my toolbelt to solve problems faster in my limited free time.

Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by yowzadave on Tuesday July 28, 2026 @10:51PM (#49092894)
I recommend you approach life in a spirit of curiosity—it can be interesting to learn about the different interests and motivations of other people!
Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by hoten on Tuesday July 28, 2026 @10:16PM (#49092688)
"unsustainable" is an odd word to use for a hobby. They aren't trying to hit productivity goals. Maybe they just still like programming.
Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by CamperBob2 on Tuesday July 28, 2026 @10:20PM (#49092714)
I do, too, but I'm feeling increasingly awkward doing it by hand.

NGL, it's not an altogether-comfortable feeling. At least not yet.

Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by CursedSilicon on Tuesday July 28, 2026 @10:28PM (#49092775)
What a bizarre take

Many people refuse to use LLM's for various reasons that I don't need to rehash here

Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by CamperBob2 on Tuesday July 28, 2026 @10:31PM (#49092793)
"Bizarre" is rejecting powerful tools on ... what, religious grounds?

It would be one thing if we were talking woodworking or pottery or another skilled craft, where your personal growth of talent with experience is evident in the product, resulting in something you can look back on fondly and point to with pride.

But moving some legacy code (which you didn't write) from one platform to another? What do you get out of doing that by hand?

Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by CursedSilicon on Tuesday July 28, 2026 @10:38PM (#49092822)
You seem either deliberately or functionally unable to grasp the premise of why anyone would do this (or reject LLM's)

I suggest instead you go read up on why people dislike them and gain a more well-rounded and nuanced understanding of the topic

Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by CamperBob2 on Tuesday July 28, 2026 @11:05PM (#49092978)
And you seem to be operating on a faulty premise (as was I.)
Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by ChoGGi on Wednesday July 29, 2026 @09:03AM (#49096980)
"Use it or lose it"?
Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by CamperBob2 on Wednesday July 29, 2026 @12:36PM (#49099716)
It's an interesting dilemma. I can tell that I will soon start to lose hard-won programming skills to muscle atrophy, just because of how seductive the power of telling an LLM "Deal with this" is becoming.

But what I'm gaining in exchange is the ability to get more stuff done, which (to me) is what it's all about. It doesn't matter whether it's a hobby or professional project: when I start something, there's always a goal or result in mind, and whatever tools get me to that result are going to get used.

I'm not completely unsympathetic to the OP's point of view, though, where the journey itself is all the reward they are seeking. That's one reason why I deleted the comment, as it came across as more negative and critical than I intended.

Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by userbinator on Wednesday July 29, 2026 @02:16AM (#49093971)
At least in retro spaces there's a lot of rejection of using AI to do things.

I suspect the community will fracture, and then once the pro-AI side shows off more and more of the amazing things they accomplished, they'll grow while the anti-AI side will eventually dry up into a few luddites.

I'm old enough to have been on the anti-HLL side when I was handwriting Asm for the PC, but of course HLLs took over because they're "good enough" and became a massive force multiplier.

Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by anthk on Wednesday July 29, 2026 @06:07AM (#49095413)
A compiler and a assembler are predictable enough. An LLM will never be reproducible. Period. LLM base d AI's are doomed from the start.
Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by CamperBob2 on Wednesday July 29, 2026 @12:26PM (#49099571)
You hate to see that kind of ignorance at this level of play. Wouldn't such sentiments be better expressed elsewhere, on sites not populated by users who are actively doing what you say can't or shouldn't be done?
Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by anthk on Wednesday July 29, 2026 @12:28PM (#49099590)
Think whatever you want. Unless you are Donald Knuth level educated, you can't be 100% sure.
Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by asiekierka on Wednesday July 29, 2026 @08:40AM (#49096741)
I think it is more likely that the "amazing" things, as described, will become mundane, thus shifting the definition of what becomes interesting or noteworthy. Even then, I believe people who continue to write by hand will still be appreciated, given this is fundamentally a hobbyist space.

One good example is nocash, who continues to write all of his Windows-targetting emulators in hand-rolled assembly to this very day. For a long time, some of his emulators - most notably NO$GBA - were at the forefront of popularity among homebrew developers due to their unmatched debugging tools; even though one could make them much faster with an HLL, nobody really stepped up to the task. Even now, his work remains relevant thanks to the extensive documentation he maintained alongside the emulators he developed.

Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by TazeTSchnitzel on Wednesday July 29, 2026 @09:19AM (#49097155)
NO$GBA is written in assembly language?! I can't believe it.
Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by asiekierka on Wednesday July 29, 2026 @09:51AM (#49097536)
> All no$gba program code, both emulation and user interface, is all hand-crafted and pure assembler code.

https://problemkaputt.de/gba-dev.htm

Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by ChoGGi on Wednesday July 29, 2026 @09:00AM (#49096947)
Proud to be a Luddite.

Less so in the hobby area, more so in the "they're taking our jobs" area.

Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by CamperBob2 on Wednesday July 29, 2026 @12:40PM (#49099771)
Do you make your own shirts and pants, too?
Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by CursedSilicon on Wednesday July 29, 2026 @03:16PM (#49101758)
Actually, one of the larger youtubers is currently facing massive backlash from his own community because all his projects are done by the slop machine :)

The great thing about retro computing is we want to see what people come up with. Not slop bots!

Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by userbinator on Wednesday July 29, 2026 @08:36PM (#49104846)
To be precise, it's people using AI.
Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by xp84 on Thursday July 30, 2026 @02:14PM (#49113605)
I massively disagree. If someone uses AI to port a whole game engine to $RETRO_OS and that means I can port a great game to that OS by hand that I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise, everybody has won there.
Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by xp84 on Thursday July 30, 2026 @02:10PM (#49113566)
I hope most people are like Obama's energy strategy, famously described as "All of the above."[1] -- the AI-powered efforts don't take away anyone's ability to do amazing "by hand" accomplishments. There's so much in the problem space that there's no chance of all the interesting projects being "solved with AI." I want everyone interested to be building things, with or without AI as they prefer.

[1] https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/doc...

Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by turpentine on Wednesday July 29, 2026 @02:25AM (#49094032)
Yet the dev has posted here on HN saying they used LLMs to do the port, but have a preference not to communicate their AI use.
Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by Jackknife9 on Wednesday July 29, 2026 @02:52AM (#49094186)
Yeah, I’ve definitely seen this sentiment in the retro tech community.

I think hobbiests do not have that much free time to create these tools for retro computers. AI is a great tool for this, as it saves time so people can make projects that would otherwise not exist.

I remember arguing with someone on Reddit who said they’d rather not have the tool if it was made by AI, which I thought was a crazy take.

Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by pelasaco on Wednesday July 29, 2026 @04:23AM (#49094745)
looks like the Author is saying something different https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49092906 (He did use LLM Assistance)
Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by ChrisRR on Wednesday July 29, 2026 @07:41AM (#49096169)
It's the same as every community now. There's a bunch of people endlessly complaining about AI, and there's people using it to create projects that didn't exist before

The fact of the matter is people are going to keep using AI to create projects no matter how much the others complain about it, so I fall on the side of enjoying these new-old retro projects

Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by cellularmitosis on Tuesday July 28, 2026 @11:43PM (#49093183)
Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by user3939382 on Wednesday July 29, 2026 @12:19AM (#49093376)
The big blocker is actually TLS. Without it lots of tools including browsers are blocked. Now with AI I bet it is manageable, before that the effort required resulted in what you see, almost nothing.
Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by userbinator on Wednesday July 29, 2026 @02:19AM (#49093992)
TLS is not really that much of a blocker, nor was AI necessary to clear that hurdle (albeit crypto is fundamentally "just maths" and thus very, very portable): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36486512
Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by user3939382 on Thursday July 30, 2026 @09:31PM (#49118038)
It’s a blocker bc it’s complex and not available. By blocker I mean huge hurdle, not so much saying it’s impossible. Your link shows work has been done there.
Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by Palomides on Wednesday July 29, 2026 @07:56AM (#49096295)
modern tls libraries on classic macs has been available for at least 6 years, and was pretty easily possible sooner if anyone bothered, no AI needed
Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by user3939382 on Thursday July 30, 2026 @09:32PM (#49118049)
A library and working OS utilities including a browser are not the same thing. A year or so ago I was able to get 1 very old browser working but nothing else had TLS. The browser also didn’t have modern JS which is another similar non-trivial issue.
Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by geerlingguy on Wednesday July 29, 2026 @08:55AM (#49096884)
Projects like TenFourFox and PowerFox have ported modern FireFox to late PowerPC Macs running Mac OS X. And some of those Macs are at the bleeding edge (back then) of modern device support (PCIe, WiFi, etc.) so they can also run surprisingly modern hardware and software via Linux. Getting harder with 32 bit support vanishing though.
Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by SkyeCA on Wednesday July 29, 2026 @09:13AM (#49097086)
I'm hopeful it will. Just the other day I got an old webcam I own working on Windows 11 despite there being zero compatible drivers for it on any modern version of Windows.

I might be a developer, but I'm not one who knows how to develop drivers, so I gave Claude the spec sheets for several of the chips inside the camera, stated what my goal was, and after doing some debugging guided by the AI it just worked. So tada, an obsolete piece of hardware is now usable again.

Things like that are what have changed my mind on AI assisted development.

Re:Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9 by bsaul on Wednesday July 29, 2026 @10:08AM (#49097775)
Never developped a driver, but doesn't that require running the OS in some special mode, or in a VM, requiring a ton of time waiting for the thing to reboot over and over again ?