Gearbox Announces Halo Custom Edition PC Add-On

Thanks to GameSpy for its interview with Gearbox Software's boss Randy Pitchford regarding Halo: Custom Edition, a "Gearbox-created add-on that includes a little of everything: editing tools, tutorials, technical updates, and more", and will be "free to Halo PC customers." Following previous controversy over alleged "Bungie/Microsoft testing and approval delays" of Halo PC patches, it seems Gearbox has arranged a direct route, and "will provide [technical] support", for the content, which includes "'Fast Shaders' (improves performance up to 60% on pixel shader hardware), improved network code (reduces the incidence of player 'warping')", as well as the Halo Editing Kit (HEK), a "package of tools, source material and tutorials that will allow modification makers to bring their own visions to life within the Halo engine", all due out "very, very soon."

Comments

Better performance?

[n0mad6]

The new "Fast Shaders Engine" (as we call it here) has been measured at providing as much as a 60% performance increase on some configurations.

That alone (if true) will make this worth the time of download (or however else they choose to distrubute this). Is it just me, or did Halo PC have terrible performance? On an AthlonXP 2500, 512MB RAM and Radeon 9500 pro, I get much better frame rates with Far Cry running at 1024x768 than I do with Halo running at 800x600 (both on mediumish detail settings).

Re:Better performance?

[Chris_Jefferson]

Just one little thing.. before you say Halo is "nothing cutting edge or new", just remember how long it's been out now on the X-box. It was one of the best FPSes available when it came out.

Re:A different perspective

[UnknownSoldier]

Part of the problem of porting Halo over to the PC, is that the game was written to make use of X-Box specific features, such as loading to specific memory addresses, unified memory, etc., that just aren't available on a PC - so the codebase had to be reworked. The fact that the engine was written in C probably doesn't help either, since the game ended up emulating some basic C++ behaviour. Chris Butcher (lead on Halo 2, and was the rendering/simulation guy on Halo 1) has posted a few snippets about the codebase on one of the game alogrithms mailing list, so anyone interested in the Halo engine, should check those archives.

People complain about low frame rates usually forget that the rending code was written for a 640x480 screen doing multiple passes on a GeForce 3. Even on the X-Box, the game dips below 30 fps in some places, so it is no surpise that trying to run it at 1600x1200 on a PC is just begging to cry uncle.

I agree that CO-OP was a major selling point of the X-Box version, and is rather unfortunate that it is simply igored on PC -- but there is a reason for that: keep in mind that the co-op code wasn't designed to run over a network -- but running on 1 CPU where it is easy to keep everything in sync. Anyone who has worked on a multiplayer game knows what I'm talking about. Sure the game already supports multipler, but co-op wasn't designed to run over a network. To convert it over to a server/client modal is non-trivial. Gearbox does have a point that it would introduce a lot of bugs. Hopefully the user community will prove them wrong.

As a developer I know all to well that co-op is simply "excused" as not being worth it (development cost vs profit), compared to the single player game, or the multiplayer game. How many more sales are you going to get because your game supports co-op? Marketing keeps saying the numbers are still too low, so co-op is not made a priority :(

It's a problem with the industry in general - players WANT (co-op) multiplayer games, but there just aren't that many, because the industry priced themselves right ouf of the market, with dev costs. Doesn't mean it can't be done. Heck, even "bad" games, such as Guantlet Legends are a ton of fun with 4 players.

If you want more multiplayer games, buy those, and support the others less.

Cheers