Modders Ported Half-Life to Oculus Go via Quake Engine

Butcher79

March 7, 2019

Thanks to the efforts of open source developers and modders, you can now play the original Half-Life on your Oculus Go. Well, sort of. It actually works by importing game files into the Quake engine.

The Half-Life engine, GoldSrc, was really just a modified version of the Quake engine. This engine was written by John Carmack and Michael Abrash in 1996 for Quake itself. Coincidentally, both are now working on VR at Facebook. In particular, Carmack was heavily involved in the creation of the Go headset. The QuakeGVR open source project adds the Oculus SDK to a 2002 modification of the original engine. So modders figured out that you can import assets from Half-Life into the VR Quake app directory and actually play Half-Life. It's not perfect, but it's all similar enough and mostly works smoothly.

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It's a little awkward to move around with the Go's touchpad, but that's just the limitations of the platform. We did not try to play with the gamepad when testing it. Developer QuakeGVR has said it plans to port the project to Oculus Quest - so hopefully you'll be able to play Half-Life on the Quest with full 6DOF head tracking when it releases. The fact that a game released in 1998 using a modified 1996 engine can be played on a standalone VR headset since 2018 speaks volumes about the importance of open source software. Hopefully the VR developer community uses more open source principles so we can play Superhot VR in Holodeck in 20 years.

INSTALLATION

Want to run this on your Go? Since QuakeGVR is not available on the Oculus store (probably due to copyright reasons), you will have to download it. To find out how to do this, follow our guide:

How to download apps and games on Oculus Go:

Download the latest version of QuakeGVR to your computer
Connect your Oculus Go to your PC and use the ADB command to sideload
Launch Quake in the Unknown Sources section of your Oculus Go library.
Make sure it works properly then close it.
Download Amaze File Manager if you don't already have a file manager on your headset.
Download the Half-Life 1 game files from the Oculus browser to your headset. Alternatively, download them to your PC and then drag and drop them into your Go's Downloads folder (but USB transfer may take some time).
Put on your headset and launch the Oculus TV app.
Scroll down and open Amaze File Manager.
In the QGVR folder delete the folder named id1
Navigate to downloaded Half Life files. Click on it and press EXTRACT.
Navigate to the extracted folders. MOVE / CUT the id1 and hl folders to the QGVR folder (where you deleted the old id1 folder).
Copy progs.dat from hl1 folder to id1 folder

When you open QuakeGVR it should now be Half-Life. Please note that the menu will not be different and it may take a very long time to load. But we tried it and it worked, so it should be for you too.

DISCLAIMER: Downloaded apps are, by definition, not reviewed by Oculus. You install them "at your own risk" as they may affect the security or stability of your headset.