Minecraft X Half-Life

Minecraft X Half-Life

Play Half-Life as Steve, with real Minecraft running your player. It's a port of SkyCraft (Minecraft-in-Skyrim) to Half-Life.

Half-Life and Minecraft run side by side. Minecraft is hidden: its physics move you through Half-Life's maps, its blocks, items, mobs and arrows are drawn inside Half-Life, and its hotbar, inventory and menus show over Half-Life's screen. Half-Life's monsters and breakables can be hit with Minecraft weapons, and they hurt you back in Minecraft.

Requirements

• Windows 10 or 11
• Half-Life on Steam (the 25th anniversary update), in Steam's default library folder. Set half_life in config.yaml if it's somewhere else.
• Git for Windows, which includes Git Bash
• Python 3.10+ with pip install pillow pyyaml
• Visual Studio 2019 Build Tools with the Desktop development with C++ workload (MSVC v142)
• Minecraft: Java Edition installed and run once. Steve's skin is read from its game files; or set skin in config.yaml to any 64x64 skin PNG.

Setup (once)

In Git Bash:

git clone https://github.com/SawyerTheNerd/Minecraft-X-HalfLife.git
cd Minecraft-X-HalfLife
bash tools/build_tools.sh      # sources, model tools and Java (a few minutes)
python build.py --install      # builds the mod and installs it into Half-Life

tools/build_tools.sh does three things:

• fetches Valve's Half-Life SDK into hlsdk/ and SkyCraft into skycraft/, at pinned commits, and applies the changes in patches/
• builds the model tools mdldec and studiomdl
• downloads a portable Java 25 for Minecraft

Play

python play.py                 # Hazard Course
python play.py c1a0            # or any map

• The first start downloads Minecraft 26.3, which takes a few minutes. Minecraft's window hides itself once it has linked with Half-Life, and it closes when Half-Life closes.
• Click into the Half-Life window and play.
• After changing any code, run python build.py --install again.
• To remove everything that --install added to Half-Life, run python build.py --uninstall.

Controls

Minecraft's keys, played from the Half-Life window:

Settings

Settings are in config.yaml:

• minecraft:
  • dev (default): Minecraft runs from the source in skycraft/, offline as minecraft_name, with no login.
  • account: uses SkyCraft's release with your Microsoft account. This release doesn't include this project's Minecraft-side changes (crawling, mob pathfinding).
• half_life, skin: see Requirements.

How it works

Half-Life plays the part SkyCraft's Skyrim plugin normally plays, speaking SkyCraft's shared-memory protocol (Local\SkyCraft_v1, defined in skycraft/protocol/skycraft_protocol.h). One Minecraft block is 40 Half-Life units, so Gordon's 72-unit height is Steve's 1.8 blocks.

To check the map conversion offline, run link/test/bsp_test.cpp: it converts a map and verifies the collision stream and the clip-brush surfaces.

Known issues

These are tracked in TASKMANAGER.md.

• Some newer pieces haven't been play-tested across the whole game yet: mob pathfinding on Half-Life maps, shared death, and smoothness on every map.
• account mode lacks the Minecraft-side changes (see Settings).
• Steam's overlay shortcut, Shift+Tab, collides with sneak plus the player list. Change Steam's overlay key if it gets in the way.

Credits and licences

• SkyCraft by chasmlol (MIT): the Minecraft mod and protocol this is built on. Its source isn't included here: tools/fetch_sources.sh downloads it, then applies patches/skycraft.patch.
• Half-Life SDK by Valve, under the Half-Life 1 SDK licence. It's also downloaded rather than included, then patched with patches/hlsdk.patch.
• Model tools: mdldec from xash3d-fwgs, and Valve's studiomdl.
• Half-Life and Minecraft themselves aren't included. You need your own copies.