Half-Life 2 and Portal Research

[legofan623]

HALF LIFE 2 AND PORTAL NVIDIA SHIELD RESEARCH



The long awaited guide for all this goodness can be found here: https://pastebin.com/mNGD4Q8G (Thanks r3pwn)

INSTALLING DIFFERENT GAMES ON HALF-LIFE 2 (EP1/HL2) CLIENT HERE: http://youtu.be/pd-t2TrDtfU



Eventually I'd like this to help developers familiar to the Source engine and I port popular HL2 and Portal mods to the Shield.

IF YOU MAKE AN IMPORTANT DISCOVERY REGARDING EITHER OF THESE GAMES ON THE SHIELD, PLEASE POST YOUR DISCOVERY AND I WILL ADD IT TO THIS LIST AND CREDIT YOU FOR IT

These references cover the games at versions 23 (APK) & 22 (DATA)

Hopefully you already know how to get these files from your Shield to your PC, because I’m not covering that.

Vocabulary:

main.22.com.nvidia.valvesoftware.portal.obb – Core game data, contains Source engine core and Half-Life 2 data files

main.22.com.nvidia.valvesoftware.halflife2.obb – identical to ^

patch.22.com.nvidia.valvesoftware.portal.obb – Contains all the data files for Portal

patch.22.com.nvidia.valvesoftware.halflife2.obb – Contains only the maps for HL2 and associated files (BSP, PAT, LMP)

These files can be found in sdcard/Android/Obb, you might need to enable the viewing of hidden files in your file browser to get to them. Open them as if they were ZIP files.

Apparently you can't change or replace files directly in the .obb files because of a checksum/signature check, if you do the game will attempt to redownload the .obb file (Thanks nex86)

Custom files can be loaded from "/data/data/com.nvidia.valvesoftware.halflife2/files", but like all good things this will require your Shield to be rooted.

More will be posted when more is discovered.

 

[nex86]

I tried replacing the voice files with winrar but it seems the game has some kind of checksum/signature check and attempts to redownload the obb file..

 

[nex86]

tried rebuilding the main obb file with the jobb tool in the SDK, did not work either.
for some reason that tool does not create zip files, it creates fat32 images.

 

[legofan623]

I tried replacing the voice files with winrar but it seems the game has some kind of checksum/signature check and attempts to redownload the obb file..

Thanks nex86, your info was added into the first post :good:

 

[nex86]

I hope someone knows how to do it,
I'm really tempted to mod the game ^^

 

[Doodle210]

I hope someone knows how to do it,
I'm really tempted to mod the game ^^

I don't have the games, but if it's anything like GTA SA file checking, you don't touch the OBB files

dont touch the obb files...!

each modified file goes in its own/original folder..

example... modified gta3.img:

sdcard/android/data/com.rockstargames.gtasa/files/texdb/gta3.img

in this case you need to add a new folder named 'texdb"

I'll look into it if i purchase the game.

 

[nex86]

I already tried this. The game ignores files stored in

"Android\data\com.nvidia.valvesoftware.halflife2\files"

I could try extracting all obb's into that folder but it'll take ages because it has thousands of files.

 

[nex86]

Just tried that and didn't work.

 

[nex86]

good news.
I managed to load files from "/data/data/com.nvidia.valvesoftware.halflife2/files"
Root is required to do this and it's also not possible to store them on SD card.
Now I'm just having issues with the soundcache because english and german voices getting mashed up.

 

[legofan623]

good news.
I managed to load files from "/data/data/com.nvidia.valvesoftware.halflife2/files"
Root is required to do this and it's also not possible to store them on SD card.
Now I'm just having issues with the soundcache because english and german voices getting mashed up.

Nice work nex! I knew this wouldn't be a very hard thing to crack

 

[nex86]

Thanks. I'm struggling with getting the soundcaches and manifest files from the PC version first.
It seems they must getting created by the source engine first but it's not working as it should...

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Soundcache


update2:
Just replaced some models, works but textures are showing up as pink checkerboard, guess Tegra is using a different compression, I have to look into that.

I can probably load some custom maps too.

 

[nex86]

Also, unpacking both obb files to

/data/data/com.nvidia.valvesoftware.halflife2/files

reduces loading times and ingame loading lags (not fps wise).
Be aware that you need at least 3,8GB free space on your internal storage for Half Life 2!
the original OBB files must be still present otherwise the game attempts to redownload them, but you can move them to an sdcard with foldermount to save space on the internal storage.

having uncompressed obb files would make things A LOT easier. I hope someone manages to do this.

 

[seaking177]

has anyone tried replacing all the PC files with the android ones?

if so, any luck with it?

38,600 files, 792 folders.

well, this is gonna take some time.

it has all the data for achievements, in "portal\resource\portal_english.txt" you can see all the text in the game, could this be why no subtitles are on?
has subtitle files as well.

secret radio noises are also in "portal\sound\ambient", that means all thats needed is the radios to spawn in each room to enable this, i assume.

 

[nex86]

my goal is to get models and voices from other languages working on Android.
I had less luck with that so far.

For models, it seems they use a different format and for voices I still have issues with rebuilding the soundcache...
The game still takes the english voicecache and voices are getting mashed up.

 

[legofan623]

my goal is to get models and voices from other languages working on Android.
I had less luck with that so far.

For models, it seems they use a different format and for voices I still have issues with rebuilding the soundcache...
The game still takes the english voicecache and voices are getting mashed up.

Along with what you're currently doing, you might wanna try and find a way to get the console and sv_cheats running. I'd think it would be done a lot like how it is on the 360 version of the orange box. And who knows, maybe it'll help out your current issue.

 

[nex86]

I edited the config.cfg and tried binding the console on a key, also tried con_enable 1 but it's not working.
I guess it's like on the 360 and the console is completely missing in the GUI.

It would be much easier if we would have a working rcon, but I'm not sure how that's gonna work.

by editing the config, I got a bunch of other things working though like showing fps.

 

[legofan623]

I'll take a look into how the PS3 and original Xbox did it... If Amazon accepted PayPal I could have gotten around to so much, so I'm still waiting for my Shield @[email protected]

 

[nex86]

Where do you live?
You could also get one on ebay since most dealers accept Paypal.

 

[legofan623]

Where do you live?
You could also get one on ebay since most dealers accept Paypal.

Washington but PayPal had an issue with transferring the money to my bank account and it was a huge mess...

 

[nex86]

This might be interesting for you if you still don't own a Shield: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=53119640&postcount=18