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

how about coop?

[gl4ss]

because that's what made the xbox version fun.. ..and lack of which made pc version boring.

it's not a 'big' thing but it matters a lot!

-

Re:how about coop?

[SphericalCrusher]

Lack!? It's called Multiplayer. You can NETWORK PCs just as you can XBox's, OR you can play ONLINE.

At least there is a Banshee in the PC version's coop. ;)

If you're anything like me...

[Mish]

... 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.

A different perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

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

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?

[obeythefist]

The humble truth is that Halo got such great reviews for XBox because it's the closest thing the XBox had to looking like a PC game. On the PC, Halo looks just like all the rest.

Re:Better performance?

[the_greywolf]

the current shader code is very, very slow. that's why such a huge boost is expected. but if you use -useff you'll see how fast the engine is. it's actually not all that hot on its own. it's the shaders that make it so interesting.

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.

Mod tools.

[Roshin]

Mod tools coming 'very, very soon'? Gearbox has actually been saying that since *before* Halo PC was released, so I'll take this with a pinch of salt and see it another attempt to get some attention for a dead title.

I guess...

[MMaestro]

all due out "very, very soon."

Well I guess thats better than 'when its done.'

Increased FOV?

[CoreyGH]

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.

*deep sigh*

[__aafkqj3628]

And the mac players just sit, giving the evil looks out.