Developer gets Half-Life running at 30 FPS on a Nokia N95
Posted by ljf 8 days ago
Comments
Comment by kotaKat 8 days ago
Apparently they've been rebuilding full "new" N95s and other Nokia fare from old motherboards and new spares/knockoff parts. It's like a new legitimate knockoff from the grey market? They've even got things like 'refurbed' N900s...
Mine came with a text message still in the inbox from testing it with a test SMS on China Mobile in 2025 - so even the modem works!
I'll have to give this a shot on my own N95.
https://leoncini.com.ar/proyecto.php?id=xash3d since it's not linked from TomsHardware.
Comment by ndiddy 5 days ago
Comment by kotaKat 5 days ago
OpenBTS/YateBTS/OsmoBTS and friends are useful here to spin up a working network and relive a happier time.
I've been meaning to get one of the tiny SDR cards like an XRTX and place it into a Pi or similar device and build a "mobile mobile hotspot" - LTE/5G in, 2G/3G out for old crap.
EDIT: I almost forgot, too. The N95 has Wi-Fi and a SIP client, so it's not completely useless even in 2026!
Comment by lxgr 5 days ago
Comment by Melatonic 5 days ago
There are some cars that can only access 3G for certain features and it would be cool to test around and see what my vehicle can do and if I want to disable it for reliability reasons
Comment by brewtide 3 days ago
So, thanks for this edit, because I now have the plan -- Dad gets to geek out and they get simple texting / calling but none of the other related phone bullshit. I'm pumped!
Comment by mschuster91 5 days ago
Indeed, but good luck setting something like that up and not upset a legitimate cell tower or other user of a frequency band that can be spoken by LTE equipment.
Comment by rahimnathwani 5 days ago
Comment by lxgr 5 days ago
WEP is where I’d personally draw the line, but the N95 fortunately supports WPA.
Comment by giantrobot 4 days ago
Comment by vitally3643 5 days ago
Comment by joe_mamba 5 days ago
And despite this, it works ok for what I used it: Brave web browsing, youtube via newpipe, Plex and Jellyfin streaming.
Like I'm bummed I don't get the Gigabit and Wifi 6 speeds of the router and my internet plan is theoretically capable of, but somehow 72mbps seems sufficient in most of my use cases of that device so .. yay advanced video codecs I guess!?.
Comment by moomoo11 5 days ago
sometimes if I'm lucky i'll get much higher speeds but I guess being in a city with 100s of thousands of other people within a few miles of me means I have to do with like 40 mbps
Comment by jkestner 5 days ago
Comment by SOLAR_FIELDS 5 days ago
Comment by jkestner 4 days ago
The trick with phones, since the smarts are a core function, is not making them dumb, but more akin to a PC. Less convenience served on a platter, more freedom to develop and install just what you want without compromising on UX. The N95 and other Symbian phones did this for me.
Comment by M95D 5 days ago
Comment by pjmlp 5 days ago
Comment by fsflover 5 days ago
Here you go: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5.
Comment by pjmlp 5 days ago
Comment by ricardonunez 5 days ago
Comment by jkestner 5 days ago
Comment by M95D 5 days ago
I want/need a phone that I can answer with one hand without looking at the screen and can record phone calls automatically so don't have to search for pen and paper all the time. No current phone is capable of these two things.
Comment by geku3 5 days ago
Comment by M95D 4 days ago
Are you sure? I didn't find that option on FP3.
Comment by geku3 4 days ago
Comment by numpad0 5 days ago
Comment by ge96 5 days ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9CFrJnCKqU
At that time I had a flip phone maybe a black berry curve so not aware of it
Comment by geoffeg 5 days ago
Comment by ryukafalz 5 days ago
Comment by burnte 5 days ago
Comment by rainingmonkey 4 days ago
The keyboard isn't as nice as those on phones from ~2010; it's a bit too big for the thumbs to really fly and sliding it in & out is not as effortless as it should be, but nless you count Unihertz's blackberry-likes, there's really nothing else around that comes close!
Comment by vablings 5 days ago
Comment by ge96 5 days ago
I'm complaining even though I'm not writing the drivers myself I get that.
Comment by fsflover 5 days ago
Comment by geoffeg 5 days ago
Comment by lxgr 5 days ago
Comment by yjftsjthsd-h 5 days ago
Comment by ge96 5 days ago
Comment by Maxion 5 days ago
Comment by realityfactchex 5 days ago
As an original N900 user, I got one of the eBay "refurbed" N900s from China I think a few years ago for fun. It was a piece of junk, literally, like arrived with broken keyboard etc. A clear case of false advertising. I got a full refund.
YMMV. I was really thinking I was buying a proper refurbed N900. Maybe they're out there. Buyer beware.
Comment by burnte 5 days ago
Comment by realityfactchex 5 days ago
I liked Maemo 5. Having never used the n810 nor Maemo 4, I suppose didn't know what I was missing.
iPhone did not get copy-paste until mid-2009!
Eventually my n900's microSD jack broke off the board, which I've read was common.
Comment by nickcoury 4 days ago
Comment by jonhohle 5 days ago
Comment by zekica 5 days ago
Comment by therealdrag0 5 days ago
Comment by usr1106 5 days ago
I would need to search the specs, but a N95 has 1 core and well below 1GB. A factor of dozens in the specs, but still you can get good user experience on the old devices if the software is written in a smart way.
The lower resolution of the N95 acts in favor of performance. But admittedly against user experience.
Comment by zamadatix 4 days ago
We're just looking at a single app optimized for a platform nearly 2 decades after release and somehow concluding people don't ever optimize software these days. Some software is always going to be inefficient as can be but there is more well optimized software available now than there ever has been.
Comment by pavlov 5 days ago
Comment by ssl-3 5 days ago
We used to do most of the same things (browse the web, send some email or texts, make phone calls, listen to music, watch videos) with hardware that was positively tiny by comparison.
Comment by jamesfinlayson 8 days ago
Shame Valve still hasn't open-sourced the GoldSource engine yet, though I suppose Nexon and the Sven Coop lead dev have paid licenses that they still want to extract value from.
Comment by skotobaza 8 days ago
Comment by jamesfinlayson 8 days ago
Comment by WorldMaker 5 days ago
I seem to recall a fan project trying to take idTech's open source and recreate GoldSrc's fork from it by trying to reverse engineer from the parts of Half Life that are open source but not having much luck because the divergence was strong enough in some places to be somewhat impenetrable without some other Rosetta Stone.
Comment by mewse-hn 5 days ago
The Doom source code was originally released under a non-commercial license that was weirdly restrictive and it was eventually re-released under GPL. The Quake source code was released under GPL from the beginning.
If Valve really wanted to release HL1/GoldSrc source code, they could re-base to the GPL quake source code and release their changes as GPL as well. This would be a miserable job because the remaining quake code is probably scattered across the codebase in weird orphaned fragments, but afaik it would be completely legal.
e: oh yeah if the shambling zombie that is Sierra still holds any rights over HL1 then god knows what the IP situation is with that property
Comment by ndiddy 5 days ago
> A while back Valve [had] a partner perforce server that had depots of the source files for both gold source and source that were shared with development partners and some mod teams. This server had a major meltdown and those depots were lost. At the time there was no requests and no activity around gold source development. Resources to rebuild the depots did not exist and still don't so that code is just not available. Once a year someone talks about maybe pulling it together to open source it but once again there are not resources to do the actual work need to package it up. The Sven Co-op team was luck in that there was a package and someone to make it available to them, that does not exist today.
Comment by mepian 5 days ago
Comment by jamesfinlayson 5 days ago
Comment by jamesfinlayson 5 days ago
Comment by Fr0styMatt88 5 days ago
Comment by redox99 5 days ago
Comment by jamesfinlayson 5 days ago
Comment by inigyou 5 days ago
Comment by jamesfinlayson 5 days ago
Comment by ljf 8 days ago
I still like to think of a parallel time line where Symbian actually had a good and usable app store, and developers had been supported.
Comment by app134 8 days ago
Went with an iPhone 3GS.
Still think about that from time to time. I don't regret it, per-se, as the jailbreak scene at the time was very exciting.
Comment by tjoff 5 days ago
It ran Maemo 5, and I still miss it even though I never owned one myself. Unfortunately Nokia fumbled everything.
Comment by tosti 5 days ago
Comment by fsflover 5 days ago
Comment by jamesfinlayson 8 days ago
Before my time but I remember an old colleague saying how hard it was to find decent documentation for Symbian development.
Comment by ezst 5 days ago
Comment by p4bl0 5 days ago
Comment by jkestner 5 days ago
Comment by Cloudef 5 days ago
Comment by p4bl0 5 days ago
Comment by stego-tech 5 days ago
As for the HL1 port: I love it, always wanted an N95 (I had an N80ie that I loved), and these sorts of retro experiments are always a joy to read about.
Comment by donkers 5 days ago
Comment by stego-tech 4 days ago
Fweh.
Comment by ghastmaster 5 days ago
Comment by totetsu 5 days ago
Comment by M95D 5 days ago
Comment by M95D 5 days ago
Comment by Reefersleep 4 days ago
No thank you, and I won't be coming back.
Comment by aand16 4 days ago
Comment by varispeed 5 days ago
Comment by itrunsdoomguy 5 days ago
Comment by porphyra 5 days ago
Comment by socalgal2 5 days ago
Comment by CodeCompost 5 days ago
Comment by nness 5 days ago
Comment by steadyw0 5 days ago
Comment by msarrel 4 days ago
Comment by DenisDolya 8 days ago
Comment by inigyou 5 days ago
Comment by deniska 5 days ago
Comment by Apocryphon 5 days ago
Comment by simonw 5 days ago
Comment by bendndndn 5 days ago
Comment by a3w 5 days ago
Then, they added Steam, and my Celeron 300 had trouble running it. Shit by Valve to coule games with a mandatory subscriber agreement. Even breaks EU law to "one-sided change" it again and again later, to keep access to your game library.
Comment by andor 5 days ago
Comment by Sharlin 5 days ago
Comment by Narishma 5 days ago
Comment by HerbManic 5 days ago
Like I remember Doom running fine on my 486 SX 25Mhz, but looking back at it now, it wasn't that great. It took a top end Pentium to really get it into smooth-ish 20fps+ territory.
Comment by __alexs 5 days ago
Comment by justsomehnguy 4 days ago
DOOM wasn't fine on Am486DX4 100MHz and Ziggurat Vertigo was like 5fps at best on it.
Comment by Narishma 3 days ago
Comment by justsomehnguy 3 days ago
Are you happy now?
Comment by system2 5 days ago
Comment by Johanx64 5 days ago
(maybe even Pentium 100)
Comment by iberator 5 days ago
Comment by Sharlin 5 days ago
Comment by HerbManic 5 days ago
"My game froze for 100ms on a one time shader compilation dropping... totally unplayable!"
I get it, shader compilation is a little pain point but it isn't that bad. Some compilation times are less than the frame times we used to play at in the 80's/90's.
Comment by eptcyka 5 days ago
Comment by rightbyte 5 days ago
Comment by HerbManic 5 days ago
Still remember the concern when Quake 3 would require a GPU as they were not entirely ubiquitous then. It was the right more and it helped the industry forward but it was a little pain point at that time.
Comment by iberator 1 day ago
Quake 2 and Half life had pure software renderer for people who didn't have 3D acceleration cards such as Voodoo.
It was slow but worked on ANY graphical card :)