Halo 1 & 2 for PC
This topic has moved here: Subject: Free legal download halo 2?
  • Subject: Free legal download halo 2?
  • Pages:
  • 1
  • 2
  • of 2
Subject: Free legal download halo 2?
  •  | 
  • Exalted Legendary Member
  • gamertag: Btcc22
  • user homepage:

The easy answer might have been informing him that the site is just an attempt to push spyware onto your PC. Nothing else.

As for the Gearbox port, I've yet to see any proof of them putting heart and soul into it.

Keep in mind that the game did not originally include dedicated servers or custom map support. Heck, even now it doesn't (technically). It was like the precursor to Modern Warfare 2 on PC.

The dedicated server application was needed to keep the game alive for more than a couple of months, and the effort spent on it was clearly minimal. The dedicated server isn't much more than the code used to run the built in game server ripped out and modified into console form.

Quick, inefficient and sorely lacking features. Heck, even displaying pings was clearly too much of a task.

I'll give them props on Ice Fields and Danger Canyon though. ;)

[Edited on 11.18.2009 8:19 AM PST]

  • 11.18.2009 8:17 AM PDT

Posted by: Nessy

The bungie.net community is the halo PC community that is renowned for being unbelieveably sucky.

Posted by: Btcc22


As for the Gearbox port, I've yet to see any proof of them putting heart and soul into it.



Were you reading the Gearbox forums when Halo PC released? They were playing the game, listening to their customers, and making important changes even after the game was released. I don't know what more you could possible ask for from them. Maybe if they had created this cool "custom edition" version as well you would be happy. Oh wait. Gearbox definitely put their hearts into the game. And you know why? Because they were playing the game and loved it too and wanted it to be the best it could be. So much in fact, that they even released a statement blaming M$ for the netcode to set the record straight. Everything is relative right? I wonder how you feel about how much effort Hired Gun or Bungie put into H2v? And finally, Halo PC and Custom Edition are huge successes even after all these years, so Gearbox did something right. People don't play crappy games, especially PC gamers. The proof is in the pudding.

  • 11.18.2009 1:38 PM PDT

Posted by: Nessy

The bungie.net community is the halo PC community that is renowned for being unbelieveably sucky.

Btcc22, I think you are wrong about Halo not shipping with dedicated server support. Remember that you could not play online until you updated to 1.01. 1.02 was the first "real" patch with added features. Read some of this stuff and tell me that Gearbox didn't care...



Halo PC 1.03

Halo PC 1.03 is our first update to address some of the most important issues that have arisen since the game was released. Our goal with this patch was to 1) improve the quality of the online experience for gamers and 2) address the most frequent issues gamers run into. This update is also our first opportunity to improve our networking architecture with some of our learnings from our hours of online play. Here is a summary of what's new in Halo PC 1.03.

Note:All updates to the Halo Dedicated Server are documented in the Halo
Dedicated Server Readme file, which is available here: Halo Dedicated Server 1.03 Readme

Improving the Quality of the Online Experience for Gamers

Addressing Team Killing
Servers now have a complete team killing / banning system that should
significantly reduce team killing online. The concept is simple: team-kill a
number of time and you will automatically be banned from the server for a
period of time set by the server administrator. Because team kills can be
accidental, the concept of grief also exists: following a team-kill, if you
don't team-kill again for a period of time, you are forgiven for your
team-kill. These settings are customizable by the server administrator(s) using
server console commands.

In addition to the system above, players are no longer penalized for being
killed by someone on their team and respawn time penalty for a team-killer is
multiplied by the number of teammates he killed, rapidly leading to very long
respawn times for team killers.

Improving the Quality of the Online Experience
We've made a number of updates and bug fixes to our networking architecture,
the most important one being specifically in how we transfer / predict player's
movement / position as well as the action of reloading your weapon. While going
into the details of these changes is beyond the scope of this document, the
result should be a smoother online game experience across the variety of
connections to
the Internet.

We made the following changes to our user interface:
* Servers name now supports 65 characters for dedicated servers and 32
characters for client-hosted servers and now accepts an extended character set.
* Chat text length has been extended to 64 characters
* In-game scoreboard now displays every client's ping
* In-game scoreboard now displays your # of assists
* Server port numbers are displayed accurately throughout their range

Additional Online Multiplayer New Features:

* Teams are now persisted for the next game when map cycling occurs
* Map Reset: It's now possible to restart the current game without requiring
the server to map cycle.
* Assault: We now have a timer to keep track of how much time is left to your
offense / defense round
* Assault: Alongside this timer, we also have an "Offense" and "Deffense"
indicator to quickly inform you of your role

Addressing the Most Frequent Issues Experienced by Gamers

Many users have reported problems with Halo PC when using 3rd party software to
force the refresh rate of their monitor. We have changed how we handle this
situation in our code to seamlessly fall back to the forced refresh rate.

A significant number of reported game crashes are related to an external
library called keystone.dll. We have updated this library to address the most
common failures. These crashes would usually occur when changing screen
resolution, when starting or quitting Halo PC, when chatting in a multiplayer
game or when using ALT-TAB to minimize Halo PC and return to Windows.

Additional Bug Fixes

* Halo can now be bound to a specific IP address using the -ip command line
agrument. (facilitating multiple NIC support for Halo Dedicated Servers)
* Halo can now read/write data files to a user specified folder using the
-path command line argument. This is particularly useful for Halo Dedicated
Servers but also be be used for users whose "My Documents" folder is remapped
to a UNC path. It is an advanced option and using it will force you to manually
move saved games and multiplayer gametypes.
* Online Multiplayer: Telefrag message is now appropriately replicated.
* Online Multiplayer: Minor fixes to switching teams in kill-in-order games
(scorew will now remain accurate)
* Online Multiplayer: Minor fixes to the end of the game state (new players
now have to wait for the game to be restarted before being admitted to the
server)
* Online Multiplayer: Fix for clients flashlight states when joining games
* Online Multiplayer: Vechicles won't respawn if they have a projectile (such
as a plasma grenade) attached to them. They will wait for the projectile to be
removed.
* Online Multiplayer: Minor fixes to using teleports for high-latency
connections
* Sound: Fix for cinematic dialog being cut out on certain cards when
enabling Audio Hardware Acceleration in the Audio Settings.

Halo PC 1.02

With Halo PC 1.02, we are adding support for multiple instances to our
dedicated server, enabling us and the community to roll out many more servers
for gamers. We are also introducing client support for RCon (Remote Console),
allowing dedicated server operators to have control over their servers running
in data centers. For more information on the Halo PC Dedicated Server and the
Remote Console, please consult the Halo PC Dedicated Server Readme file located
here:

Halo PC Dedicated Server 1.02

We have also released the Halo PC Technical and Performance FAQ, which answers
most frequenty asked technical questions about Halo PC. This FAQ is located
here:

Halo PC Technical & Performance FAQ

Here is a summary of the changes with Halo PC 1.02:

* Halo PC Dedicated Server Support for multiple instances
* Halo PC client support for RCon (remote console) to dedicated servers

Bug Fixes:

* Timedemo doesn't check memory usage consumption with every frame rendered
(see Halo PC Techincal and Performance FAQ for more info)
* After running timedemo, the last saved checkpoint is not altered anymore
* Multiple minor bugs fixed in the Halo Auto-Updater application
* Fixed an issue in keystone.dll that was causing certain configurations to
potentially crash when chatting in multiplayer games
* Fixed minor card specific rendering glitches

Halo PC 1.01

After Halo was released to manufacturing but before it arrived on store
shelves, the Halo team discovered a potential crashing issue when playing Halo
multiplayer online. In order to guarantee the best possible experience for our
customers we have issued an update that addresses this issue. Before you can
play Halo multiplayer online you will need to allow this update to install
through the auto-install feature of Halo or by running haloupdate.exe from your
Halo installation folder.

This is the only issue that was addressed with Halo PC 1.01

Halo PC 1.00

Initial release of the PC version of Halo

[Edited on 11.18.2009 1:49 PM PST]

  • 11.18.2009 1:48 PM PDT
  •  | 
  • Exalted Legendary Member
  • gamertag: Btcc22
  • user homepage:

I was there at the very start and remember each of the patches.

Patch 1.03 is possibly the only patch that's mattered to HPC, and all it did was introduce a lacklustre server that should have been there since release.

Take a look at other games that are far older than HPC yet still receive support and try and say that Gearbox put heart and soul into HPC. How many times did Gearbox mention the possibility of future updates/content and not deliver on their word?

I read the post about the 56k support, and it doesn't wash with me. While I'll admit that I can understand that HPC introduced a few challenges in terms of networking, it was still vastly inferior to other FPS games that were also designed to work around 56k. I was going to say designed around 56k, but then again, most good FPS games can scale somehow.

Check the full patch notes. One patch that made any kind of difference, and that was it.

You're right about people not playing bad games, but how much of the moderate success of HPC was due to Gearbox? I'd wager not very much.

[Edited on 11.18.2009 4:01 PM PST]

  • 11.18.2009 3:58 PM PDT

Posted by: Nessy

The bungie.net community is the halo PC community that is renowned for being unbelieveably sucky.

Posted by: Btcc22


Patch 1.03 is possibly the only patch that's mattered to HPC, and all it did was introduce a lacklustre server that should have been there since release.



1.03 DID NOT introduce the dedicated server. I posted the release notes right there, jeez.

I'm not going to debate this if you can't be bothered to read.

  • 11.23.2009 12:22 PM PDT
  •  | 
  • Exalted Legendary Member
  • gamertag: Btcc22
  • user homepage:

It was an insignificant typo. Everything else still stands.

[Edited on 11.23.2009 3:36 PM PST]

  • 11.23.2009 3:35 PM PDT

Posted by: chrisk1239999
When you click download it brings you to this: http://halo2.filefront.com/file/Halo_Trial;24270

That's Halo trial. They have the same thing for Half-Life 2 and it brings you to a Demo. It's just another stupid site.

pwntpwnt

  • 11.23.2009 4:41 PM PDT
  •  | 
  • Exalted Legendary Member
  • gamertag: JB 199
  • user homepage:

halo 2 still the best game in the series. long live halo 2.

Dam, I miss the old days playing halo 2 with my old brothers in arms. Thank you my old friends for giving me this account, I shall continue our legacy.

Nothing is ever truly free. Always a hidden cost attached to free stuff.

  • 11.25.2009 8:13 PM PDT

  • Pages:
  • 1
  • 2
  • of 2