Slashdot Mirror
No Online/LAN Co-op for Halo 2
BlueMoon writes "It has now been confirmed that Halo 2 will not include support for co-op mode on Xbox LIVE or LAN play. The co-op mode will remain for offline play only. Bungie made all attempts to implement it however with the complexity of the game it was simply impossible to have a worthwhile co-op experience." You may not be able to play together, but as consolation, check out the Halo 2 Ads pointed out by an anonymous reader.
....it's good to play together....
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Well, you have to give Bungie some credit. They at least tried to implement it into Xbox, but complexity got in the way.
Anyways, when I played Halo, I had more fun playing with many people in the room, and with one people as my partner going thru the game. I am sure that actually being side by side would be a better experience than talking via a mic.
You guys still get Co-op in Offline mode, and I am sure everyone will still enjoy for the great game that it is.
The Galatic Freedom Force marches on! Defend!
"Mark my words - they will release a pay-for addon for this... it was all in the plan."
Wow. I mean, wow. That's amazingly ass-backwards. That's like you have your head in your ass in someway that actually makes it look forward, but is still wrong.
Think about what needs to be done to maintain states. In multiplayer, you have a nice, small set of rules on a tiny map. All you need to note is where players go, whether or not X Warthog rolling over Y player will be valid given the physics, etc.
Contrast that with single player. Bunch of AIs running around doing their own thing. Cutscenes (How do you handle this? Play a movie while the other player is running around?) Scripted moments (what happens when the warthog driven by AI drives off with one player, while the other is left standing. Is he to just chase the original?) There's a lot going on, bub.
I don't get it, Bungie never said they'd have online or LAN co-op, just the same type of co-op that the original had. There was a lot of speculation but never a word from Bungie promising this (or even mentioning it, as far as I know). Why is this such big news?
When I was back in school living in the dorms, we weren't allowed to play HALO via the LAN during certain times of the day (office hours mainly) because it did in fact impact the network performance. Granted, our network was nothing spectacular (10/100 switched throughout), but I saw usage charts and even did some data gathering of my own and I saw the hit our network took when more than 2-4 systems were playing via the LAN. Their reasoning doesn't suprise me at all. I think it's perfectly valid. Maybe they do have an "Add-on" in the works, but unless they invent a new ground-breaking X-box communications protocol (XBIP?), I think it'll see the same problems as the original HALO when it comes to network performance.
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." - Patton
Contrast that with single player. Bunch of AIs running around doing their own thing. Cutscenes (How do you handle this? Play a movie while the other player is running around?) Scripted moments (what happens when the warthog driven by AI drives off with one player, while the other is left standing. Is he to just chase the original?) There's a lot going on, bub.
Agreed. There are a lot of modern games that are eschewing multiplayer coop for exactly this reason -- the sheer complexity of trying to pull off all the scripted bells and whistles gamers have come to expect doesn't jive with the ability to add another character, another POV into the mix.
Bioware nixed coop from Hordes of the Underdark for just this reason; it wouldn't make sense from a story perspective, due to the cutscenes and how NPCs talk and interact with the character. Even in the game mods I design, I find coop often means "The main character all the NPCs form relationships with and make pacts with and such... and a bunch of guys who are along for the ride to help with the monster killing." Because anything more than that requires a LOT of special case scenario code for the NPCs alone, much less the puzzles.
Since there isn't really a screaming vast majority for a coop game, it's probably not going to happen unless the game was designed for that experience from the ground up, or has a game formula that works well with it (simple action games with no major scripted events).
What more likely happened is they designed the engine in such a way that on-line, or even LAN co-op would require too much state being sent back and forth. Really their levels aren't that big, nor are there that many enemies that sending AI state would be a huge issue, I mean multiplayer games generally have support for at least 32-64 players simulataneously, and you wouldn't even suffer from bad lag on a couple of them (or maybe all of them if your connection sucks?). Perfect example, Serious Sam often has well in excess of 50+ enemies on the playing field, but it can somehow manage to send the state of those players.
The more likely story is they picked up where they left off with the Halo 1 code and tweaked it to add in the new features and bump the graphics up a notch. Co-op over the wire wasn't supported then, isn't supported now and most likely will never be supported in the Halo series.
Bungie was a much better studio pre-MS.
This is the most horrible news of my day, my roomate who plays only tiger and madden was pumped for this feature. We played split-screen co-op on Halo and it was awesome, the only thing it needed was LAN co-op, just with 2 people... no reason for more. Full Spectrum Warrior does co-op over Live (but not over LAN) so why can't Halo2 !?!?!?!
Red Vs Blue was made in vs. mode, not co-op. There shouldn't be any problem using Halo 2 as a platform for new episodes.
You took it back? How? Did you say "I bought this game on the belief in features not advertised on the box. Those features were not present, so I'd like a refund."
God Bless America. Why? Did it sneeze?
Not only that...but now they will be able to use Covenant Elites, since they are in the vs. mode.
No reason to lie.
The other possibility is that the Xbox hardware isn't powerful enough. But if they can implement deathmatch, et al., why not co-op?
Your second speculation is off the mark. And the first one is uninformed. In order for co-op to work over a network, you need one of two things...
1. Have the game react the EXACT same way on two different PC's at the exact same time under the exact same situation, so the AI does not desync over the two systems. This is how Doom 2 did it, and is also the reasons that demo files are so small, they simply record player movements. I doubt it's anywhere near as easy for games such as Halo or Halo 2.
2. Send ALL of the information related to the enemies over the network to ensure they NEVER desync. I hope you don't like more than 64 enemies in a single level.
I bet Bungie attempted it, after all, it's what Halo fans wanted, but they just couldn't make it work over a network, much less the high latteracy world of the internet. By worthwhile, I personally think they meant that they would have to sacrifice the game in other areas, and it simply was not worth it.
Also, you seem to think that Netcode is some magic bullet that it's either good or it's bad. Wrong, netcode makes sacrifices, either it is extremely fast, extremely secure against errors, or a happy median of both. Let's say that you had to transfer all of the data for all 1,000 of the coveneant (which are not predictable and easy to 'predict' what their next movement is) on a particular stage every 30 seconds, what they were doing at the time, plus the two combatants, and ensure it got there as fast and as securely as possible. A quite daunting task.
I'm the guy with the unpopular opinion
Cutscenes (How do you handle this? Play a movie while the other player is running around?) Scripted moments (what happens when the warthog driven by AI drives off with one player, while the other is left standing. Is he to just chase the original?)
While your other points are valid, these particular issues had to be solved for offline co-op and don't seem to be any harder online.
Yeah, the widescreen support is a pretty big deal, but has been known about for some time. Come to think of it, I can't recall another 16:9 FPS, at least of decent profile, on the Xbox at all. Riddick is widescreen, but doesn't really count, since the splitscreen doens't come into effect, seeing as there's no multiplayer component. That being said, vertical splitscreen in 16:9 racing games is pretty common (see PGR2).
The moment a game engine that can support an AI as good as Halo and more than 4 players online is developed, I'd go buy stock in the company that made it even if the graphics are budgetware. Hell just look at Battlefield 1942/Vietnam. Theres 64 player online co-op mode supported, but the AI is a retarded piece of shit in everything but flying airplanes, the graphics have aged horribly, and theres no real 'wow' factor that hasn't been done better by someone else. You want 64 player online co-op, play that game(s) and tell me its a better experience than 2 player co-op Halo.