How to Install Half-Life 2 on Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi

In this how to guide, we’ll explore how to install and run Half-Life 2 on the Raspberry Pi. This is an ARM64 native version of the game, giving us the best possible performance with zero emulation overhead.

What You Need

To get started you need:

  • A Raspberry Pi (Pi 5 is best) with Ubuntu installed
  • A copy of Half-Life 2 (e.g. from Steam)

Step 1. Install Build Tools

Open up the Ubuntu terminal and type the following to install the necessary build tools:

sudo apt-get install build-essential gcc-multilib g++-multilib pkg-config ccache

Step 2. Install Dev Libraries

Next, we need to add our dev libraries:

sudo apt-get install libsdl2-dev libfontconfig1-dev libopenal-dev libjpeg-dev libpng-dev libcurl4-gnutls-dev libbz2-dev libedit-dev

Step 3. Download Source Engine Code

Run the following command to download the Source Engine source code:

cd ~/Downloads
git clone https://github.com/nillerusr/source-engine.git --recursive

Then navigate to the downloaded files with cd source-engine.

Step 4. Configure the Build

Type the following to configure your Source Engine build for Half-Life 2:

python3 ./waf configure -T release --prefix=hl2 --build-games=hl2 --disable-warns

As a side note, we can also configure with different parameters to build other Source Engine games (see “Other Source Engine Games” below).

Step 5. Build Half-Life 2

With that done, we’re ready to build Half-Life 2 with:

python3 ./waf build -p -v

This will take some time on the Pi’s power-sipping CPU. Be prepared to wait!

Step 6. Install Binaries

Once the build is done, run the following to install Half-Life 2 to the hl2 directory:

python3 ./waf install

You should now have an hl2 folder with the hl2-launcher executable inside. Navigate and check this with:

cd hl2
ls

Step 7. Download Game Assets

Last but not least, we need to download the Half-Life 2 game assets to the Pi.

To do this, we’ll use DepotDownloader. First, download and extract DepotDownloader:

cd ~/Downloads
wget https://github.com/SteamRE/DepotDownloader/releases/download/DepotDownloader_2.7.4/DepotDownloader-linux-arm64.zip
unzip DepotDownloader-linux-arm64.zip

Next, use the following command to download Half-Life 2. You’ll need a Steam account with a purchased copy of the game:

./DepotDownloader -app 220 -depot 221 -manifest 3666218991449795038 -username <steam_username>

This will download the Half-Life 2 games files to the depots directory.

Step 8. Copy Game Assets

With the game files downloaded, copy them to your source-engine folder:

  • Copy the depots/221/16557524/hl2 folder to source-engine/hl2
  • Copy the depots/221/16557524/platform folder to source-engine/hl2

You might be prompted to merge files. Press Yes if prompted.

If you want to do this in the terminal:

rsync -ah --progress ./depots/221/16557524/hl2/* ~/Downloads/source-engine/hl2/hl2
cp -r ./depots/221/16557524/platform ~/Downloads/source-engine/hl2/

Run Half-Life 2

You’re ready to play! Back in the Raspberry Pi terminal, type the following to launch Half-Life 2:

cd ~/Downloads/source-engine/hl2
./hl2-launcher

Enjoy!

Optimized Graphics Settings

For ~60fps gameplay:

  • Change all settings to low
  • Change the resolution to 1280x720

For ~30fps gameplay:

  • Change settings to medium
  • Change texture and shader settings to high
  • Change the resolution to 1920x1080

Anti-aliasing and filtering should always be turned off.

To check the framerate, use cl_showfps 1 from the Half-Life 2 console.

Other Source Engine Games

These instructions are for building Half-Life 2, but you can also build other Source Engine games with the following parameters:

  • hl1 = Half-Life 1: Source
  • hl2 = Half-Life 2
  • episodic = Half-Life 2 Episode 1 and 2
  • hl2mp = Half-Life 2: Deathmatch
  • dod = Day of Defeat
  • cstrike = Counter-Strike: Source
  • portal = Portal

On YouTube

I covered this setup on YouTube. The response was great and more than 60,000 of you tuned in (Thanks!).

Enjoy the video here:

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