- DusK
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- Noble Legendary Member
Awesome. Now work with a client that throws a bunch of idiotic mandates at you and do the same thing. Better yet, port a 6th-gen console game that was originally built for LAN play to PC and make it work with 56k.
Posted on Gearbox forums by: Reppyboyo
The 56k decision affected the accuracy and frequency of the network updates. Nothing we could or can do.
I think for LAN play a deterministic, synchronous system is about as fair as it gets. I was once one of the best Doom 2 players in the entire world. I know all about it. But, even with that daisy-chain networking system, we used to -blam!- and moan and whine that the "green" doomguy had some kind of inherant advantage and the reason was locked away in the source code somewhere. Since the source code was released, I still haven't been able to figure it out, but I'm sure it's there. We were all sure it's there.
Halo PC netcode is what it is for a reason. It had to be the way it is and any experienced and capable networking programmer would've made similar conclusions.
I know we don't like the answer - I know *I* don't like the answer - but it's a true answer.
As we got to the end of the project, I pushed hard. I wanted that same feel as the synched/deterministic LAN game on the Xbox. The engineers sat me down and told me the score, drew diagrams about the software architecture, the way the internet works and the challenges that they faced with the specification and they showed me why it had to be that way. The specification dictated the code and vice versa. For the last several months, the Bungie and Microsoft guys were in it just as deep as the Gearbox guys were - writing code, prioritizing tasks, etc. It was a group effort and it was pretty hard-core, non-stop - even bonding, if you can call it that.
The things that changed between the beta version and the final version of Halo PC were *required* in order to fit the specification of 56k. These changes were driven by the bug database and every bit of code change was crosschecked by multiple Gearbox AND Bungie / MS engineers.
The beta code you think was great was actually Gearbox netcode. The fact that it was less laggy is revealing about Gearbox's holding out for a broadband standard. But, the specification was mandated for us. Halo PC is a work for hire and, as professionals, the Gearbox developers did what they were told. After all, it was not their property, it was Microsoft's / Bungie's.
It's really frustrating for us to get the finger pointed at us for decisions we are not responsible for. It's even more frustrating when we try to be diplomatic about it and then we get blamed even more. We don't want to point fingers at Microsoft because we understand their decisions. I'm not sure if I would've made the same decisions if I was in their position, but it's possible.
Gearbox had a lot more on their plate than you think. And they kicked as much ass as anyone could have. But I'll pass your name along to Bungie. If anyone can get H3PC working on 56k, it's you, right Rex?