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Halo for the PC and Mac
smelialichu writes "According to this news article, Halo is finally on its way to the PC and Mac. Gearbox is handling the PC version, and Westlak Interactive is working on the Mac version, but it won't be released untill next summer. The official announcement says "Halo for PC is expected to be available in summer 2003. The Macintosh version is also expected to be available in 2003. Additional information regarding game content, features and enhancements will be announced at a later date." We can only assume they have some cool new features up their sleeves, maybe we'll be seeing Halo with even better graphics, optimized for the new Radeon? Anyway, this is certainly a huge relief to many gamers who thought they may never see Halo on their home PC's."
And it only took MS 3 years to get a PC version of a game originally developed for the PC.
This has been a test. Had this been a real emergency, we would have fled in terror and you would not have been informed.
I have heard that Halo is the only good game (ie reason to buy) an xbox - no its out on PC the one reason to buy an xbox is gone.
Sorry gaming peaked with Commander Keen.
Does this mean I can now frag xbox lamers when m$ online net launches ?? Will I still have to subscribe to m$ online network ?
- I came I saw I Conquered
Sad thing is, by the time Halo hits shelves, unless they do some enhancement, it will be Old News, and the Next Big Thing will be here.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Hopefully, halo 2 (which will come out about a month or two later) will be xbox exclusive, that would be a good strategy of MS in my opinion; i'm sure many people couldn't wait another 1.5 years to see halo2 on pc after they have played halo "1".
The guy posting the article link is from the site it's at? Jesus, that story came out about 2 days ago and this guy is pimping his site with. No dignity.
My sig of choice is Marlboro
If they get the multiplayer right. Saying that - multiplayer rocks with vehicles on the Xbox, so I can't see it being worse on the PC/Mac
Mods. Everyone is trying their damndest to make the next Half Life. HL by itself was good, but because of all the mods (especially CS), the game will probably live forever. If you were a game company, wouldn't you want a product on your resume that's 4+ years old and still has 3000+ servers online?
A lot of people have complained about how Halo was transformed over several years into several very different games. They like to blame Microsoft for this.
That would be a mistake, I'm afraid.
I read an interview with one of the Halo team members not too long ago where he explained that the team willingly threw out what they had on several occasions to start over anew because they came up with a better way of doing things.
Few people seem to know Halo started out as an RTS! The warthog (jeep) was something they were playing around with for some time as an extension of that project, and they had so much fun with it, they ended up creating an entire game around it. A 3rd person shooter.
Then, they threw that out and went for first person.
And abandoned the whole "We'll simulate the entire surfance of Halo and let you wander around doing what you wish, ala Morrowind" idea.
These were THEIR decisions.
The one negative aspect of Halo you can blame Microsoft for is the fact they imposed time constraints on the team. Halo needed to be ready and thoroughly bug tested by November 2001. They didn't have all the time they needed to make all the levels as nice as they could have been, and that is why there is some pretty awful repetition.
Give credit and blame where they are due, but don't blame Microsoft for every damn thing you don't like about Halo, or why feature X that was described in 1999 didn't make it into the Golden Master copy 2 years later.
Too bad Halo 2 for the XBox is due out in 2003. They plan to start showing things from the game in August.
Although its a little nasty, its a nice marketing strategy for the XBox.
"Sure we'll give you Halo on the PC... right after we have Halo 2 on the XBox!"
that because the release is set for summer 2003 that they must be adding stuff to it and polishing it.
I doubt that it would be very hard to port from the XBox to PC (there will be some driver issues, but nothing that should take too long). I mean its essentially PC hardware isn't it.
So if they are waiting that long it will be to add stuff to it, or to keep Xbox sales going as long as is possible and try to urge some PC gamers into buying a XBox...
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -Tom Waits
So I could wait a year and shell out $300+ for a new graphics card that would probably be needed to run this game (I have an "old" GeForce2), or get an Xbox and Halo now for $242.
I'm leaning towards the instant gratification bit...
Great, although when news first came out of a game being developed by Bungie called Halo... the PC crowd (including me were so happy), then Bungie got swallowed by everyone's favourite company.
I seriously hope that this PC/MAC version will be how the game was meant to be before it became an X-Buck$ only (initially) fare.. in that the dumbing down of certain game aspects to make it more 'console friendly' will be resolved.
This also reminds me of the Freelancer situation (or lack of it) that was previewed years ago, and the 'buy out' that M$ did, although it 'still' isn't out yet - I wouldn't be surprised if M$ thought 'hey this might be another game to repackage as X-Buck$ only, it MIGHT jump start sales again'... yeah right.
PC and MAC gamers will only be playing second fiddle to the X-Buck$ until it hopefully dies a horrible death.. but then again they're planning on the X-bucks 2.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but there is no Direct3D port for the Mac. In fact, isn't Apple pushing OpenGL accelerationg heavily for OSX? So, is Microsoft going to go to the trouble of porting DirectX 8/9 to OSX or are the going to allow the developers to use OpenGL? To me, neither of those sounds like likely options, but if I had to guess, I'd think that they'd half-ass a port of DirectX. Much like they half-assed the ports of IE to other systems.
Or is there some third option I'm missing?
Oh that's smart. Let's take a 3 year old game and put it up against Unreal 2, Doom 3, and potentially Duke Nukem Forever. Granted, it'll have new content, but how much new content? Will it just be multiplayer compatible with Halo 2 on Xbox, or will it also have an expansive single player campaign that's unique to the PC/Mac version? I seriously doubt that will happen.
and about the multiplayer, did anyone play Quake 3 online against Dreamcast players? it was pathetic. It only helped to underscore the superiority of the mouse and keyboard control scheme over the gamepad. Actually, beyond that it showed that when you have the _choice_ to pick whatever control scheme you choose, that you'll totally rape a console monkey like 3 american servicemembers on a japanese schoolgirl.
I guess if it came out at the same time as Duke Nukem Forever, it'd be fitting. Didn't they both get announced around the same time, originally? That'd be pretty ironic.
So anyway, here's my plan to show my disgust at Microsoft:
First, i'm going to buy an Xbox but no games so that they lose $150, then I'm going to wait for the Macintosh version of Halo to hit the discount bins, and i'm going to buy that version for my G4 rather than the PC version for my P4. That is, unless it gets supported in WineX....
Couldn't this hurt the XBox Live strategy. I mean, if people don't have to subscribe to any services on the PC to play Halo multiplayer, this sounds like it could hurt Microsoft. I guess it depends if the profits from the PC market will offset those lost in the Xbox market.
My other sig is an import.
With how far gaming has gone in the last 12 years, isn't it amazing that id software is still on top?
Commander Keen came out in 1980. id software is still on top with their Quake3 engine, and is poised to re-define real-time consumer-grade graphics with Doom3.
After all this time, the only company to do anything to challenge id's throne has been Epic Megagames, but the best they've done is beat id to the punch with their unreal2 engine that is just an evolutionary step from Quake3, while Doom3's graphics appear to be revolutionary.
I am wondering if the poster has actualy played Halo or if he/she bases their opinion on the horrid .mov files of Halo gameplay. Because if there is one thing that does not need to be improved about the game it is the graphics. That said, I am hoping that the time spend before the PC release is spend on the three things missing/bad about Halo:
- the oft mentioned level repetion (I am willing to swallow this as a time contraint mistake trying to release the XBox version).
- network play. Not a thing you want to try with the XBox version. This will be the biggest issue making the game fail or succeed on the PC.
- user interface / customizing settings. We (the gamers) need mouse input, and we need to be able to mess with settings. Having the FOV (field of view) set to something less then 90 degrees ticked me off pretty badly.
Just in case those great people at Bungee/Microsoft are reading this, I would hope that you guys would consider letting us save the game (quicksave!) when we feel like it. Checkpoints are silly, anoying and show that some of the programmers are just to lazy to figure out how to save gamestate at any moment (instead of the checkpoint right after a horrible battle leaving you with 1% health). No really, I 'broke' my Oni game CD 4 hours into the game after getting so pissed about this lacking feature.
Besides those minor issue *grin* Halo is ofcourse the greatest game ever!
"IF you are serious, Think about the bumbest thing you ever did..."
There's nothing sweeter than when you notice someone describing something as stupid, dumb, ignorant, etc, and they mispell the word meant to degrade.
And no, 'b' is not near 'd'.
"There are no stpid posts, just stoopid people making posts"
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
For people who have been with Bungie since the original marathon, this is totally proof of MS's evil.
Bungie brought great gaming in the dark days of the Mac...they put twists on the FPS that were later imitated by the big boys at id (such as enemies getting mad at each other).
As soon as Bungie got acquired by MS, they rushed the terrible Oni out the door (obviously half-finished) and went Xbox only. I might have to buy one of those hideous green beasts (used, of course) just to play that excellent game called Halo.
On a completely unrelated topic, has anyone noticed that there's something different about the karma? It's now "excellent" on mine instead of a number. Anyone else getting this?
I hope this isn't permanent...I like to keep my karma around 30 (close to my age :). If it got too high , I would burn it, and it would make me feel younger :).
Now I'm stuck with "Excellent," which was great on my first-grade conduct report, but seems a bit off for Slashdot. I need the objectivity of numbers!
What would the Hindus do if their karma wasn't measured in numbers? They'd have no idea if they were being reborn as a flea or a donkey! :)
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
When I first played Halo (on a friend's xbox), it was fun, enjoyable and all that good stuff. It had the ability to amuse me for a couple hours or so, but got old after a couple weeks. If they are planning on doing a 75% recycle (25% new content/features), I do not think Halo will be anything close to what Half-Life was to the PC FPS community. Their only chance to make Halo a massive hit on the PC is to make sure it has extensive mod support and good communication with the mod developers. Gearbox did a great job with Opposing Forces, Blue Shift, and Half-life PS2, so they have that in their favor, but in general console to PC conversions generally seem lacking. GTA3 is a good example of this: I had never played GTA3 before when the PC version came out. According everyone I talked to, it had sweet graphics, awesome gameplay, the interesting music feature, etc. However, once I started playing it I was sorely dissappointed, especially by the graphics and gameplay. I was never a big fan of GTA1 or 2 since the gameplay was way too simple, but I figured they had solved this problem with 3 but I was wrong (though it was greatly improved). The graphics sucked, period. Sorry, after playing Sacrifice (came out in 2000), GTA looks like crap, and the post-rendering filters are just a cheap way of covering up how low poly everything is, along with the lowres textures. Halo has graphics on its side, but my question is whether it's gameplay with retain that 'console' quality. PC games are often more complex than console games these days since there are less limitations in certain respects. I just hope Halo does not follow the direct-port route, since that would be a waste.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
Wasn't Commander Keen done by Apogee? Or did they change their name to ID afterwards?
After all this time, the only company to do anything to challenge id's throne has been Epic Megagames, but the best they've done is beat id to the punch with their unreal2 engine that is just an evolutionary step from Quake3, while Doom3's graphics appear to be revolutionary.
How, precisely, is *either* of these revolutionary?
We've had fully-3D environments with all degrees of freedom of viewing since Descent. We've also had environmental audio, smoke, and complex lighting for a few years now.
We've also had fully scriptable game engines for a while.
What will either of these engines bring beyond slightly more complex models and slightly more polished lighting and environment? We're at the point where there isn't much revolutionary to _add_.
Well, after the disappointment (to my mind) that was GTA3, I really don't hold out much hope for the extras the article seems to portend. GTA3 did have the mp3 thing, but performance/quality were really not much better than the PS2 version... there was no new content... how long after the PS2 version was released? You would think that the code should be reasonably portable as the XBox is effectively a computer? Why wouldn't Microsoft just write an XBOX->DX8 wrapper? -d
-Greg
I don't quite get why it is going to take them a full year to port this thing to the PC. It was my understanding that the X-Box is more or less an x86 architecture computer running a stripped down Windows, with a modified version of DirectX and a controller plugged into it. Shouldn't it be a matter of weeks for them to change the input code to use a keyboard, and plug in some of the original high-res textures? It only took about six months to port GTA3 to the PC from the PS2, and those two platforms have much larger differences than the PC and X-Box. I hope Bungee has some serious overhauls planned, otherwise no one is going to give two craps when the port is finally released.
Rock over London, Rock on Chicago. Wheaties: Breakfast of Champions.
It would be particularly cool if Xboxers and PCers could play together in the same game, but I doubt it'll happen that way.
My deviantArt site
The rules for karma have changed several times in the last year. Originally, there was no karma cap. I was up to almost 200. Then there was a karma cap, but your old karma points didn't go away at once. They just leaked away slowly, because, above the karma cap, you could lose points, but never gain them. Now, I suspect that the numeric values have been capped, and the "Excellent" thing is to hide the karma loss.
Yes, Slashdot management likes to bitch about "karma whores", but from the people behind VA Linux, that's hollow.
Published by Apogee, produced by ID.
'Nother example- Neverwinter Nights, developed by Bioware, published by Atari (i think?)
At any rate, all apogee did was marketing
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
I enjoyed playing Halo on the X-Box, however, I find that using my thumb to look/aim was damn near impossible for me! It'll be good to see Halo come to the PC, then I can use my old trusty mouse and keyboard!
proton != antielectron
I don't suppose I'll be blasting away on my Linux box then. Oh well, back to tribes2!
Read this article about teenage suicide from CNN today. Maybe spelling is not the main point of this discussion. I know this is WAY off topic but just in case the guy is serious I will blow a few karma points.
Help fight continental drift.
Will Loki port halo to Linux?
"Core overlay!" - Vic
they put twists on the FPS that were later imitated by the big boys at id (such as enemies getting mad at each other).
Hmm, unless they did this in Pathways Into Darkness, DOOM beat them to the punch. Enemies would get mad at each other and attack their friends.
As soon as Bungie got acquired by MS, they rushed the terrible Oni out the door (obviously half-finished)
Oni was produced by the half of the company that was purchased by Take Two. Microsoft had absolutely nothing to do with it.
I might have to buy one of those hideous green beasts (used, of course) just to play that excellent game called Halo.
The Xbox is black.
Wherever there's a will, there's a motorway.
I have Halo and an XBox. Halo is probably one of the worst XBox games I've played. It's just an FPS in the long tradition of Doom, Quake, Unreal, etc. Nothing special at all, you aim, you shoot, you keep shooting and reload a few times (so much for realism) until you or he dies.
For me, nothing beats Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault.
We can only assume they have some cool new features up their sleeves, maybe we'll be seeing Halo with even better graphics, optimized for the new Radeon?
;) exists we'll see opimizations for the new radeon. But remember who MS's bed partner is...that's right nVidia.
While you are probbly correct, I do hope that MS's quality will stick out with games being released.
While many people jump up and down with the anti-MS bandwagon(especially the I am Bill of Borg, reistance is futile. You will adapt to service us.), they have a very impressive track record of games released for the PC that are very compatible, and very stable.
On that note, I can say we should expect, higher quality graphics, and higher resolutions. But I will say that a 50/50 chance(can't get much better right
But alot can change in a year. Now take a look at GTA 3, good game, nice port but some very bad issues most noteably sound and that funny no graphics in the menu issue.
Time will tell, and lets hope MS lives upto the quailty of past game productions.
Constructive flames welcome, I will reply.
Om, nomnomnom...
have you seen the screenshots? They're *gorgeous*. The level of immersion in Doom3 will be crazy -- it's all about believing that you're really there. The lighting is really where Doom3 excels. It's able to do things we've never seen before. I have a feeling it'll be the first game to scare me since playing doom in the dark at 2am.
The gameplay will probably be very similar to everything else we've seen, but as I stated in my original comment, the graphics are unlike anything we've seen before in real-time, consumer-grade graphics.
Now we get the announcement that the PC/Mac version will be another 12 months away. Odd that a game which was originally developed for the PC/Mac should take so long to reach it's original target platform.
Such a delay can be interpretted in many ways and unless hanging around on the hbo servers making a nuisance until questions are answered actually has an effect, we'll probably never know precisely why the timeline looks like it does.
My personal rumour mill suggests that moving the project to the XBox opened out the graphic capabilities and closed down the outright flexibility of the game. Given any console controller, there is a limit to the number of controls and options you can present to a player. A mouse is actually the perfect tool for directing strategy on a map. Keyboards allow for many 'fast' commands and more complex controls. So the first thing you cull when moving to a console is the complexity of the interface between player and game.
PC/Macs also offer a more established platform for excessive memory usage, something which tends to be tight on a console. So the next thing to bin on a console is enormous worlds loading in the background as you cross 'tile' boundaries.
So Halo is another year away. And no Linux version either. Lets hope that the restrictions that the console version imposed are loosened/removed from the PC/Mac version. And lets hope that some of the more exotic ideas that originally made Halo sound like the next generation of gaming actually make it back in.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
The Topic was Halo on the PC
Since PC is not an OS this was on topic.
Possibly a stupid comment, but ON topic.
Just out of curiousity, why is there so much backlash against the Xbox? "insert how long I've been playing video games in here and consoles I've owned since I was 5" and I'm having a great time. My not so game suave friends also fell in love with Halo and we've had a few beer n' halo nights all glued to the big screen. Yeah, if I could afford to upgrade my PC every 6 months I would - but I did a lot of research before I bought an X and have not been disappointed once since, it's simply the best bang for your buck you can get.
It's not like purchasing a car, it's a goddamned $200 console. This is a very minor investment in entertainment.
Halo, some FPS on the Xbox, whee. But I really enjoyed Oni, which is available on multiple platforms, but will never have a multiplayer version nor sequels because the same company that made Oni made Halo, and that company is now part of MS.
:(
Go play Oni, it's like $9.00 now new. It's hella fun, but disappointing because as cool as it is, it has no future.
Maybe MS will resurrect Oni as a product and keep it alive? OK, I'm just dreaming. But if they are porting Halo maybe they would make sequels / expansion packs to Oni.
I purchased an Xbox with that same assumption, but was pleasantly suprised at how much time was consumed by the other games. THPS3, DOA3, RalliSport Challenge, JSRF, Max Payne, Genma Onimushi.. etc. It's been the second best console I've ever owned (RIP DC) but it's on it's way to #1 with the amount of four star titles to be released this year. I just rented Morrowind and all I can say is wow.. massive worlds.. non-linear.. not your typical Japanese RPG :)
Gee for a game that originally had a PC version taking for ever to get ported to the PC. What are they doing, rewriting the game from scratch?
I played it and its the best game for what it is, a over hyped FPS with a strong loyal base of rabid fanboys spewing that it is the best thing ever. After Bungie got bought by Microsoft, this is probably the most I can expect of their games.
It took me a while to get used to it as well, but within about an hour or so it becomes like an extension of your own hand, it feels great. On the other hand, those vehicles were a pain in the ass and took me a bit longer, but now that I'm comfortable with driving them I've found that they have an incredible control scheme - it just takes time to get used to.
Halo was cool for a while. Next summer, it'll be just another tired old game.
Calling Halo "just" an FPS is insulting! The amount of immersion into the Halo universe is absolutely stunning. Fighting along side the other marines gave a real sense of realism to the genre - not to mention the seamless integration of vehicles into the game. I've become plenty bored with other FPS in the past, at least Halo has the depth to keep you along for the ride.
What???? No rant about not having it out for Linux? Yet another Microsoft ploy I'm sure.
Never argue with a man carrying a water buffalo
What makes this game so good? I bought GTA III for the PC, and it runs fine at 1024 x 768 x 32 on my Tbird 1.4 and GF3 Ti200. GTA III requires skill, fast reflexes, and street smarts to beat the game. Halo is like an updated Goldeneye from N64....
Now that Halo will be out (or so they say) for the PC we can all go back to waiting for Team Fortress 2... 4 years over due now.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Bungie was working on this game long before the X-box was thought up. Then MS bought bungie (because they knew how good a game it looked) and forced bungie to produce for the x-box (so they would have a good launch game) not really new news that its going to be on the pc.
Great way to make yourself sound like a five year old.
I think gameplay is a lot more important than good looks anyway. Consider Counterstrike: 3? years old graphics but still the most played game. And HL itself, which has equally good graphics isn't nearly as successful.
Fleur de Sel
Please don't port Halo over to the PC/Mac... Then people will never know the joys of trying to play it with a 5-friggin-pound controller bigger than their own heads.
I don't think it's the force-feedback that causes carpal-tunnel... I think it's just caused by holding that damn controller for hours.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Halo uses a purely static memory model. That's right, there isn't an instance of dynamic allocation in the entire game (or so I hear). Advantage: You can keep a tight rein on memory, which is important when you only have 64MB of shared RAM.
Disadvantage: Inflexible. Sure, you know that you'll never have more creatures than you can handle, but it's lousy for portability, since a PC with 1024MB of memory and a video card with 128MB of RAM deserves more than 15 creatures on the screen at once.
They probably have the pc version ready now but they are trying to make the X-Box succeed.
It's a fun comic at any rate... check out the not-so-subtle point about the xbox controllers!
id Software is at the "peak of gaming" like Britney Spears is at the peak of womanhood.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
ooh, even BETTER graphics? will it go 80 FPS and have tesselated-voxel-optimized-mip-mapping and gigapixel-super-flex-capacitor-alpha-blended vertex buffering too?
YAWN
Will it have any new GAMEPLAY features or a well-written STORY or interesting CHARACTERS or a compelling SETTING?
Or will it (more likely) be another overpriced framerate-fest with one more feature on top of the tired FPS design that was new almost TEN YEARS ago?
(ooh look we can drive trucks now!)
Knowing the "game industry" the answer is fairly obvious.
MS had to lie and push it back as long as possible in a pathetic attmept to sell more S-Boxes. Whores.
So, if you want a sequal to Oni, you need to talk to them.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
They are so slow... I think someone will release an emu version before they can release the real one for PC
Fuck Bungie. Fuck them up the ass. Fuck them hard, fuck them deep. Yeah, go ahead, license out development for HALO. Too little, too late. All karma is shot to hell. You're still a pack of sellouts.
Doom3 will be 10 times better than Halo and PC-Halo will be released near the same time than Doom3
Don't the editors ever think to add maybe even two or three words to describe even the category of a random proper noun that some of us might not have heard of?
microsoft wants the xbox to cause game developers for both windows and xbox to get lazy and think they never need to use anything other than MS apis. obviously if they're releasing a mac version their engine coders weren't stupid and they could just as easily release a version for the most popular game platform (PS2!).
When I first heard about Halo, it was supposed to be released on the Mac and PC. I was interested in buying it for the Mac as soon as it was released. (I buy Linux native, WINEX-able, Mac, PS2, and PC, in that order.) When I heard Microsoft assimilated Bungie, I lost a lot of interest. M$ has $40 billion in the bank. Those felons don't need any of my money to support their criminal behavior. When I heard Halo was Xbox first, I lost even more interest, but I was still considering a Mac purchase a little. Now I have to wait another year. Forget it.
Will Xbox even be around next year? Sales have been disappointing and falling off the map. Halo is the only interesting game for Xbox. None of the other titles are competing well against PS2 and Gamecube.
not to note, but this news made it to many other websites at least a week before slashdot decided to mirror it.
Slashdot: News for nerds. Stuff we mirror.
Seriously. I recently started playing it after so many people said it's the greatest. It's okay, but, like quake, it's the mods that make it excellent.
It adds another element of challenge.
I had more fun playing that than ANY PC game recently. Oni was truly an innovative, under-appreciated game.
Sitting next to Doom 3 on the shelf, this thing is going to look like a relic of a bygone era. It's too bad Bungie really screwed this one up. And I'm not even sure it gave X-Box the big boost it was supposed to.
A year ago, I was really jazzed about Halo. Now, I would suggest that Bungie forget about giving Mac and PC users some warmed-over port of a two year old console game.
You really have no idea what you are talking about.
Graphics do not make a better game. Cutting out "inferior" systems does not make a better game. And pixel shaders have absolutely nothing to do with the quality of a game.
HALO is one of the most overrated games of the year. It was such a success because it was and remains one of the only decent titles on the Xbox. The lack of quality software made mediocre games like HALO seem amazing.
If people hadn't spent $300 on an Xbox they COULD have a Geforce 3+. You can get a Ti200 for right at $100.
On a console like the Xbox HALO is an amazing game. On a PC HALO is just a subpar FPS with repetitive graphics and uninspiring gameplay. With UT and Doom coming out I don't think anyone will notice or care about the release of this three year old cookie cutter title.
There's a rumor that a new "Streets of Rage" could be in the works.
Oni was AMAZING.
I *hated* the feature of Oni that made you start off the game with virtually no moves, and slowly unlock moves as you progressed. I can't imagine a more annoying game.
Also, the lack of multiplayer killed Oni. They said, "Screw it, it's too slow over a modem." What about broadband players? What about LAN players? Bungie wasn't thinking too far ahead when they put Oni out.
I agree with another poster, Bungie must have rushed Oni out the door when they were in talks to be assimilated by the Borg cube.
They only make games to sell an engine and allow the mod community to make a good game. Their games out of the box SUCK MASSIVELY. Amazingly dull. They aren't the peak of gaming at all.
Why is everybody obsessed with graphics? It's almost a substitute for gameplay to some people.
The current crop of 'entry' level video is not good enough.
It wont be till 2003, till every cheaps ass machine has gf4mx default or gf5mx or something, but then 20m other people would have updated their crappy tnt2s or voodoos to gf4/5mx too.
It just won't be the same. I mean how can you get the same X-Box experience by playing Halo with a halfway decent controller?
>
Within the marathon engine, they innovated :
1. Actual 3d environments. You could have people above and below you and shoot at either of them. Doom and Doom2 are really 2d environments, but do a good job acting 3d.
2. Cooperative bots. In Marathon 2 I think they were called "bobs". They ran around and killed some of the enemies for you. You couldn't really coordinate them much, but it was cool having them.
3. Interesting storylines.
4. Two pistols firing one in each hand. I don't think any version of Doom had this.
I agree with the people who espouse the belief that Microsoft purchasing Bungie has only reduced the company's innovation rather than assisting it.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
consider this one a victem of UT2 :)
I'm sure with WineX we'll sometime be able to play Halo running off the Xbox disc ;)
Games a game, high schools should do the FIRST robotics competition, had a blast last year (we kicked some ass, our robot could pull 800lbs, tank like with two coupled motors driving each tread)
. . . I could get a PC version of Dead to Rights I'd be all set. . .
Secondly.. PC people are especially pissed that Microsoft effectively stole Halo away from us.
Heh, imagine how the Mac gamers feel, since Bungie started out as a Mac gaming house.
First Bungie flirted with the dark side doing dual-platform games (but at least theirs came in the same box *koff*NeverwinterNights*koff*) then they we bought by MS and became an XBox shop.
So first we lost Halo to Windows, then Windwos and XBox, then it was just XBox.
Jay (=
(Who remembers when Halo was supposed to be an RTS...that's how long I've been waiting to play Halo!)
Yeah, you heard me. The version of Halo that is currectly being sold in little green boxes was developed, from scratch, for XBox and only XBox. The version you saw at MacWorldNY98, was a modification of the Myth RTS engine, and was totally thrown away when Bungie got bought by Microsoft, because they wanted to build a new engine that was designed for Halo, not an RTS. Thus, the XBox version of Halo is the true version of Halo, and it must be ported to be able to be played on PC/Mac. It's not like they had a fully-finished game running on their G4 towers, got bought by MS, coded in some XBox stuff, and released it. The stuff shown at MacWorldNY and e3 by by Bungie before they got bought was barely functioning - scripted animations, nothing more. Most of the real development of Halo has been for XBox and only XBox. Not that I LIKE this, mind you, it's just the Tru7h.
I had two comments in this thread marked as "Troll". Can anybody explain to me how I could possibly be trolling? I was responding to the comment that PC's hadn't caught up to XBOX standards, pointing out that Halo was running on earlier PC hardware. I'm sorry but I don't see how that's negative in anyway.
If my tone was negative or anything, somebody let me know? It wasn't intentional.
They're not just doing a straight port.... control schemes have to be reworked (they were finely tuned for the awkward XBox controller), multiplayer has to be expanded and refined, additional levels and features need to be added, and most of all, MOD TOOLS NEED TO BE ADDED. That's right, Bungie has always planned on shipping mod tools with the game, although there are, as always no promises.
I played Halo on the Xbox, and I didn't really think much of it. Yeah, the vehicles are neat, but what else has it got...?
"Commander Keen [idsoftware.com] came out in 1980"
Wow. I'm impressed. I missed it for 10 years. Great game, but how did they manage to use EGA 6 years before it was invented?
As for Epic? Epic used to be Apogee effectively,
when Apogee were friendly with iD. Take a snapshot of the stuff from the Doom development times, and you'll recognise them as Epic staff now (remember Jay Wilbur? wasnt he the "biz guy"?). Probably far less turnover that id has (1 original worker from those days?)
If the game is optimized for a video card made by ATI, I definetaly won't be buying it.
/.
2002-07-13 07:45:21 Halo finally coming to Mac OS, Windows (articles,games) (rejected)
Remember back to the summer of '99, before Microsoft bought Bungie, and we were all looking forward to Halo, "Coming soon for Windows and Mac OS"? And then, suddenly, a year later, it changed to Halo, "Coming soon to a platform near you". Well, according to this press release, Halo is finally coming (in a year or so) for Windows and Mac OS.
I recently tried Halo on a friend's XBox, and was duly impressed. The graphics aren't _that_ amazing, aside from a few neat reflection effects here and there, but the gameplay was quite solid. I hadn't played a good coop game in a long time, going back to good old Doom 2.
My only quip had to do with driving vehicles: what the hell were Bungie thinking when they invented yet-another-control-scheme ? That thing always had be hopelessly confused, especially since every other driving game on the planet uses one stick for left-right, and the other for accel-brake (at worst they use a pair of triggers).
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Then I can teach my Warthog to jump.
Levels feeling "empty", sensation of too much walking for nothing ("shouldn't I have done anything else in this level? mhm, no, looks like it's complete..."), interesting ideas left half-baked... earlier games from Bungie had a much more solidly thought, polished feeling. :(
I really, really HOPE not having to sorely miss them...
Is there any word on if there will be a port to *nix?