Gamer shares 'incredible' hack to play video games on a smartwatch
We've all heard of the myriad of devices that people have managed to get DOOM running on, but one gamer has shared an incredible hack that lets them fully play Half-Life on their own smart watch.
Games are becoming more demanding and more expensive to make as time goes on, with increased power requirements in order to ensure that the graphics are as shiny as they possibly can be.
Sometimes it's worth stripping everything back to what it used to be though, and technology has advanced so much that we're able to do that in the most unlikely of places.
In a marvellous post on the r/valve subreddit, user Damsey_Doo has shared how they've managed to get the original Half-Life running smoothly on a smartwatch - complete with touch aiming controls to prove that it's real, as reported by TechRadar.
Advert
It's usually the aforementioned DOOM that you see running on unexpected screens - and while most of the time these are partly a facade, as it's typically an auxillary screen inserted into something like a pregnancy test or calculator, Half-Life in this case is in fact running natively on the watch.
Reactions in the comments of the post range from "incredible" to "absolutely jaw dropping," and it's simply staggering to see what people are able to achieve on everyday gadgets with the right approach.
When questioned about the actual 'playability' of the game - meaning how easy it would be to run through the story as you normally would - Damsey_Doo had this to say:
"Oh yeah it's actually surprisingly easy to play. One handed is somewhat challenging but still possible, however I recommend removing the watch and using both thumbs for fairly smooth control (as smooth as you can get on a watch)."
Not quite the convenient time killer that you'd expect a game on a smartwatch to be, and you'd probably be best whipping it out on your phone instead, but it's still crazy to see regardless.
If you're wondering how this was possible in the first place, it's all thanks to the Xash3D FWGS game engine, which allows people to run most games made with the GoldSrc engine on android devices.
These include Half-Life and other Valve titles, of course, but you can also port games from other engines like DOOM and Quake, which Damsey_Doo has confirmed also works on the smartwatch.
While the original poster hasn't explicitly confirmed that Xash3D was used to achieve this feat, their interactions with other comments suggesting that they use the engine on a Nokia N900 do seem to suggest that it was the case.