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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.
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)
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
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.
I would have to disagree....
gaming peaked with Space Invaders, that was the lounge table. You know where could sit down, and the screen was in the table...man that was sweet
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -Tom Waits
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?
Maybe MS is trying to get the PC gamers to play the nearly 2 year old version of Halo, and if they like it they'll need to buy an Xbox to enjoy Halo 2.
Either way, I don't think it'll affect Xbox sales negatively at all. If people were going to buy Xbox for Halo, they would have done it in the 2 years before the PC version came out...
The only drawback is NTSC consoles cannot play against PAL ones.
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!
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
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_.
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
well, it wasn't that it was going to be difficult or take a long time... It's that M$ wanted to MILK the game for everything they could so they could get people to by their X-Box..
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.
Pretty much, the people who wanted an Xbox originally have already gotten it. The people who were waiting for a price drop have already gotten it as well (or may by Christmas, but everything game-wise gets a Christmas boost). Microsoft ought to be looking to expand into the casual gamer crowd/those of us who don't like, don't care, or actively dislike the Xbox.
The preception remains, true or not, that "Halo is the only reason to get an Xbox". They just removed that reason by announcing it's release, ever. If people have waited for this long, they'll wait another year, and not bother with the $200 for the Xbox.
Personally, I don't care about Halo, and I'm one of those actively against the Xbox, for reasons beyond its pathetic library of games (PC ports, PS2 and Dreamcast ports, and crappy games, with the odd good one hidden here and there under the massive piles of crap) its crappy controller, and the fact that unless you have an HDTV, it doesn't look any better than a PS2 or Dreamcast. It's Microsoft trying to dominate another industry and that's worth fighting against actively in my opinion. Microsoft, if their Xbox people were at all thinking straight, should never have allowed a PC port of Halo to exist, ever. Even 2 years after the fact. As one of the meager few games that were both worth anything, and original to the system, their shooting the Xbox in the foot allowing others to play it. That's like Nintendo releasing Mario Sunshine for the PC, stupid.
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.
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
Well even in Operation Flashpoint you have team members who assist you and you can drive a few vehicules. Still that game wasn't great.
My favorite XBox games are Hunter: The Reckoning and Outlaw Golf.
What I'm saying, is that you have to shoot the guy plenty of times and even reload and shoot again before he dies.
I'm sorry but Halo doesn't impress me and it even gives me headaches. Maybe it's because I've never played an FPS game on a console before, maybe because it sucked or maybe because FPS games aren't made for consoles.
I thought they were dead.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Ya, but playing a multiplayer game on a console is awesome. You can yell at your buddies in the room, the game is social, and it is not exclusive to LAN adn 'net geeks. This is why GoldenEye did so well a few years ago. Nothing can beat a smart first person shooter with good multiplayer games and a hand full of controllers.
Futhermore, Halo 2 for the xbox will probaby be out a good year before it comes out for MacOS and Windows....that is, if it -ever- comes out for MacOS and Windows. Remember, Bungie only promised a Mac and PC verion of 'Halo'...not it's sequels.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
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
I think the backlash (at least from my point of view) really centres around Halo on the Xbox for a number of reasons.
Firstly, it is one of only about 2 or 3 games I could ever see myself buying an Xbox for. I made the same mistake, buying a PS2 exclusively for Gran Turismo 3 - the game totally lived up to my expectations, but in the end I had my fun with it and sold it on, at a loss - you can only play one game for so long.
Secondly.. PC people are especially pissed that Microsoft effectively stole Halo away from us. We waited and we waited (I can still remeber flicking through a PC magazine some 3 or 4 years ago) and then we heard the news that it would be an exclusive for Microsofts new console.. and I was determined not to waste my money on an Xbox, but rather wait for it to come to the PC.
Thirdly.. you pretty much hit the nail on the head in your post (unless it was an accident) - you only mention Halo. Its the game that got your friends interested, and its the game you spend the evenings playing. I too have played Halo on the Xbox many times and I love the game.. but I dislike the Xbox, and I hate trying to play an FPS on a joypad! Bleugh!
At least we have a date.. I can wait those 12 months.
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
"Oni was produced by the half of the company that was purchased by Take Two. Microsoft had absolutely nothing to do with it."
Microsoft had nothing to do with it with the exception of taking the large pool of talent that was known as Bungie and leaving a half finished game to be finished by a third party.
Let's face it.. talent has a big part to do with a games success... and Bungie had a LOT of it!
Let's also face another fact. Timelines for games won't be at Bungie's discretion any more. They will be on MS time.. and Halo, as good a game as it is, was still rushed and it shows. To me that's a little tarnish on Bungie's name as a direct result of their acquisition by MS.
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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!
. . . I could get a PC version of Dead to Rights I'd be all set. . .
How interesting that the parent has been moderated a troll by someone. I personally think that this way of making a game is brilliant. Halo was coded in C, with a static allocation model...perfect for a console system. It was an excellent design decision.
However, the point still stands that it's portability is somewhat lower. For PCs with more memory, you want something more dynamic, since you've got so much more to take advantage of, and PC configurations change from box to box. It's the big win of the console: all of them are the same, so you can do that kind of thing.
Then I can teach my Warthog to jump.