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Gearbox Announces Halo Custom Edition PC Add-On

Posted by simoniker on from the cut-out-middleman dept.

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."

6 of 34 comments (clear)

  1. If you're anything like me... by Mish · · Score: 4, Interesting
    ... Then here's the bit you're looking for:

    GameSpy: Gearbox has consistently expressed a desire to bring cooperative play to the PC version of Halo. What work has Gearbox done in this regard, and do you foresee co-op coming in any future updates?

    Marc Tardif: The team has done quite a lot of work towards bringing co-op to the game. We, like most gamers, have lusted after a networked cooperative feature in Halo PC (since the Xbox version did not have that feature). We don't think that split-screen Halo on the PC is the right answer, and it's troublesome for a lot of reasons to rewrite all of the game code to support single-player networking. Our position now is to launch HaloCE and the HEK and see how the community takes off and then make a decision about how to work with the community to prioritize what it wants most out of the game.
    Which really boils down to, "Well, Ummm, Maybe.".

    Sad really, I enjoyed Halo on the PC and would have loved to go through it with a few friends in cooperative mode.
    1. Re:If you're anything like me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Sad really, I enjoyed Halo on the PC and would have loved to go through it with a few friends in cooperative mode.

      I would have preferred a coop mode for the single player game over all of the competitive modes. Halo online largely sucks.

      The Editing Kit is good news, though maybe it should have been released with Halo PC considering the game at its core is 6 years old now - it was in development before the Xbox was even conceived of.

      Halo has less players online right now than Tribes 2, and that game is *dead*. Halo 2 is anticipated. I think the HEK may be too little, too late.

    2. Re:If you're anything like me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      What I'd like is the ability to play (and make) custom single-player maps.

      One of my complaints about single-player Halo was that the quality was a bit uneven. Some sections were just plain awesome (Silent Cartographer must go down as the most beautiful map for any game ever), while others were plain horrid (the Library, anyone?)

      The plot, universe, AI, enemies and other assets are just too good to waste, though, and it would be almost criminal to let such an opportunity pass. Gearbox have been virtually silent on this issue, and HaloCE apparently won't include the original Halo PC's single-player content, but it's really something I'd like to see at some point.

      Yes, single-player Halo mapping is something I've been waiting over four years for. I suppose I'll have to keep on dreaming...

  2. A different perspective by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I was not in the on-site beta testing for Halo on PC. But I am in the closed but external testing group that MS uses to test their games. What I find amusing is that Gearbox seems to keep blaming MS for the initial poor technical quality of Halo and the state of patches. In actuality, during this phase of beta testing it was exactly opposite. There was a horde of bugs that Gearbox just would not fix. Easy stuff to, really. For a long time, we wondered what the hell they were doing if not fixing bugs, because most every build we got had bugs. I've beta tested at least two dozen games in the MS closed beta group, and while not the worst in terms of developer activity Gearbox's ranks in the bottom 5. It might have been that they just weren't used to Microsoft's beta schedule or what, but for a long time it was a disaster.

    They got a little better, near the end, but from the comments I read by the beta lead, my guess is that someone at MS gave them the slapdown. Gearbox's Pitchford has been saying that the patch process in Microsoft takes too long. Well, part of that was this internal 300-500 non-hired person beta test that I am in. It's a good thing MS has this, because the patches Gearbox was putting out were subpar at best and often created more problems than they solved on many of the beta testers' home PCs.

    Gearbox had this onsite testing prior to the wider internal testing that I am a part of. I have a feeling that this was Gearbox's way of giving MS the finger, because they were obviously not pleased with the way MS tests their games. In fact, they posted the request for on-site testers on their own website well before distributing it to the testing group, many of whom did live in the same city and could've worked but did not get in because they were not informed of this in time. Naturally, on site testing has many advantages to the 300-400 person group that MS usually uses. But what this large external cum internal work group does is create a wide spectrum of possible PC problems. My guess is that Gearbox just didn't want the extra work that 300-400 PC configurations caused.

    I don't want to pretend that I know all the inside story here, because the beta group isn't some secret chamber testing group inside Bill Gates' office. But it is a group that has been used by MS on every single PC game for several years now. It's part of their embedded production process, and it usually works very well. Ensemble is great at it, Digital Anvil was fantastic, and generally the groups that have problems with the process are the external ones MS contracts out. Relic's forgettable "evolutionary RTS" comes immediately to mind as a beta testing disaster (at least with gameplay mechanics) that was worse than Halo PC. But not much worse. From the vantage point of an internal beta tester for Halo PC much of the fault for the patches lies in Gearbox's lap, not Microsoft's.

    This HaloCE (CE!) makes Gearbox look the good guys. I'm not so sure that's the truth. I think this is just Gearbox raising their other middle finger to MS.

    1. Re:A different perspective by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      You have an interesting story. I have worked in an ancillary capacity with Gearbox before (I work at a game publisher) and my impression of them became pretty negative after a while. They had the same problems you mentioned: they couldn't fix bugs, they whined and complained about everything, they thought they were really good, when in fact... well. The point is, I believe it.

  3. Increased FOV? by CoreyGH · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Will this "Custom Edition" include the ability to change the FOV? Or at least increase it to 90? I stopped playing Halo when I realised the field of view was only 70 degrees.