Halo 1 & 2 for PC
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Subject: Official Halo 2 hardware discussion.
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Alright, the purpose of this thread is to show bungie that we are just contented with the way Halo 2 looks and plays, we just want to make it clear to them that we don't need them to go knocking up the graphics on the game any more like they did with the first Halo. I have a Pentium 4 3.02 gig processor (no typos anywhere in that) 1.512 gigs of ram, and a Radeon 9250 256 MHz video card, and my pc still has incredible framerate issues with the game. I'm almost certain that all of us whom have played the halo 2 xbox version are looking forward to the PC version as well, right? And I figured that so long as we have the time on our hands, much time as a matter of fact -until windows Vista becomes released- I thought maybe we should all have a discussion of the minimum hardware specifications. I don't want to have to cough up another $300 to get my processor replaced with a 3.5 gig Pentium 4 just so I won't have any framerate issues Halo 2's graphics on the xbox version were amazing. This is what the xbox had that Halo 2 console version had to work with:
733 MHz PentiumIII processor connected by a P6 64 bit @ 133 MHz FSB to a 233 MHz GPU.

This is about the equivalent of a high end Windows 98 gaming PC at its prime, which costed about 800-$1000 with the monitor and all. Lets look at what we all have now. At a minimum you could go out and buy a PC with a Pentium 4 2.4 gig processor, 256 MHz of Ram and a 40 gig hard drive (with monitor again, mind you) for about $400 dollars. Subtract the monitor and your looking at at least $300 or less.
Point in case: We (at least most of us PC gamers anyway...) already have hardware good enough to handle the game in it's original format. Just give us the standard game with all the decals, all the luster, all the texture, and everything the Xbox version's visuals had at a 800x600 resolution and we'll be fine. worry about tweaking it once most everyone can meet the needs of the game itself. We don't want a light show in a disc, we want Halo 2 for the PC in it's untainted format. Just grant us that and we won't be whining anymore.

  • 04.16.2006 5:35 PM PDT
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IMO, if your PC is capable of playing the source engine, it'll be capable of running H2.

[Edited on 4/16/2006]

  • 04.16.2006 5:45 PM PDT
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Posted by: elmicker
IMO, if your PC is capable of playing the source engine, it'll be capable of running HL2.



? you basically said if your computer can run half life 2, then it can run half life 2......Half life 2 uses the source engine.

  • 04.16.2006 5:49 PM PDT
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Um, the only reason it runs crappy is because:

A: The engine was optimized for XBOX not pc.
B: Radeon 9250 is a piece of crap... Get a newer nVidia card and you'll be set; all your other hardware is perfect for even Call of Duty 2...

  • 04.16.2006 5:53 PM PDT
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Ok, good question: how the hell did we get on to the topic of Half life 2? I like counterstrike better (besides the point). we're talking about HALO 2. if you've played halo 1 for the PC you would know it takes really good hardware to run the game, even at minimum specs and resolution.

  • 04.16.2006 5:56 PM PDT
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Your problem is that 9250. Thats a really really old crappy card. Get a better one and you will have no problems. Your memory and CPU are pretty good, but your video card is what is holding you back. You can't expect to play next generation games (or even this generation) on that card well.

  • 04.16.2006 6:15 PM PDT
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Ho boy. Here goes a rant...

You basically started up a thread to get Bungie to lower the system reqs for H2PC. Impossible, for starters. They're not going to capitulate even to a forumwide revolt, and you're not going to get the entire forum to revolt, in any sense. The system specs are up to the needs and demands of the game producers, there's nothing you can really do about it. Besides, they didn't knock up H1PC, Gearbox did. Remember that? And seeing that a bungie-microsoft joint team is personally handling (not just overseeing) the conversion, it shouldn't be too much a problem this time around.

Looking over your specs, to be completely honest, an upgrade might help. Intel processors are known to waste computing power. Hence, an AMD core advertised with the "same" speed as an Intel core will operate at a faster speed than its Intel counterpart. As for your graphics card, I suggest upgrading that thing, especially for the up and coming games. H2PC won't be the only game that requires high-end system specs.

Oh, and as for your point about the Xbox, keep in mind that the Xbox is a computer dedicated to gaming. All other things like firewalls, AV systems, the OS and even things like spyware, etc, etc, all take up valuable computing power, wherase the Xbox runs the game and nothing but the game. So in other words, a computer with the exact same specs as an Xbox would likely run the game slower than its Xbox counterpart, since it's gotta run all that miscellaneous stuff in the background.

Oh, and that comment about not whining anymore. That's also an impossibility. There will always be SOMEONE out there who will complain about any given game, good or bad. Make a breakthrough in Survival games and people will call it too difficult. Create the most breathtakingly realistic flying simulator and people will call it unimaginative and boring. Convert H2Xbx in its original form into H2PC and people will find SOMETHING to complain about. In fact, I can see it now...people wondering why it took so long to convert, why it was meant for Vista anyways, or complaining how there's something wrong with the internet connection...

While I do think that there are unnegligible flaws in games (like H1PC's netcode for example), I also know that there will always be SOME flaw with the final product, and if not, someone will find a flaw with it.

[Edited on 4/16/2006]

  • 04.16.2006 6:55 PM PDT
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EDIT: Whoops. Damn wireless connection lagged, I didn't realize I already posted once.

[Edited on 4/16/2006]

  • 04.16.2006 6:56 PM PDT
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Posted by: MC Enders
Pentium 4 3.02 gig processor
512 gigs of ram,
Radeon 9250 256 MHz video card,

Pentium 4 2.4 [b[gig[/b] processor, 256 MHz of Ram


Please do yourself a favor, LEARN ABOUT COMPUTERS BEFORE YOU TRY TO SOUND LIKE YOU KNOW WHAT THE HECK YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. (eh em.---in order of your mistakes-- ghz, mb, mb, ghz, mb)

also, if anyone agrees with this kid about making halo 2 have minimal requirements or whatever, you should never play halo again.

so basically what you're saying is that newer games that come out on the market shouldn't be made for advancment in computers? And also that you have no -blam!-?

i rest my case.

  • 04.16.2006 7:02 PM PDT
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Posted by: MC Enders
Ok, good question: how the hell did we get on to the topic of Half life 2? I like counterstrike better (besides the point). we're talking about HALO 2. if you've played halo 1 for the PC you would know it takes really good hardware to run the game, even at minimum specs and resolution.


Look, it was 0130, i was tired and i simply put HL2 instead of H2. The reason i made the comparison to the source engine is because they both use the same havok physics as their core and most other things come out similarly.

  • 04.16.2006 7:10 PM PDT
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Posted by: MC Enders
Ok, good question: how the hell did we get on to the topic of Half life 2? I like counterstrike better (besides the point). we're talking about HALO 2. if you've played halo 1 for the PC you would know it takes really good hardware to run the game, even at minimum specs and resolution.


hl2 = half life 2, not halo 2

[Edited on 4/16/2006]

  • 04.16.2006 9:26 PM PDT
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MC enders,

you have to remember that halo 2's graphics were made specifically for one set of hardware (the xbox). you also have to remember that the xbox has libraries in its modified os and directx that even modern pcs do not have. so it is 1. impossible to make a direct port without converting the unavailable libraries to those that are available, and 2. impossible to optimize the graphics for a single pc configuration, as many people have many different configurations.

so there is no way to make your "original, untainted format."

plus, i would hate it if they didnt fix some things. there are aspects of the game that i absolutely hate. one is the fact that it seems to run in 16 bit color, another is the annoying tex pop-up, and another is the incredibly long loading times caused by the game running entirely from the dvd.

not to mention that the gui has to be reprogrammed to allow the use of a mouse. and the entire game has to be reprogrammed to allow the use of mouse/keyboard as a control. and the graphics engine has to be written to run higher than 30 fps. and all these things that you have unfortunately overlooked, because it just seems unusual to you for a pc game to be ENTIRELY DIFFERENT from its console counterpart.

to me it seems like youre the one whining, and youre really saying "just give me what i want and ill stop whining."

as for your video card, its crap. C-R-A-P crap. you'd do well with a new one. i have a radeon 9600XT and its getting really old.

so get it out of your head that bungie is here to serve specifically you, and let them produce the product that they intend to produce. if you need to buy a new computer to play it, and you refuse to, thats not their problem.

  • 04.17.2006 3:12 AM PDT
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Posted by: reidypea

Please do yourself a favor, LEARN ABOUT COMPUTERS BEFORE YOU TRY TO SOUND LIKE YOU KNOW WHAT THE HECK YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. (eh em.---in order of your mistakes-- ghz, mb, mb, ghz, mb)

also, if anyone agrees with this kid about making halo 2 have minimal requirements or whatever, you should never play halo again.

so basically what you're saying is that newer games that come out on the market shouldn't be made for advancment in computers? And also that you have no -blam!-?

i rest my case.


Still. Even if I don't know what I'm talking about, we shouldn't have to go out and buy $50 more in PC hardware just to play a game you've already paid $50 for anyway U_U and watch your mouth next time and you won't be blacklisted from posting in the forums.

  • 04.18.2006 4:15 PM PDT
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Posted by: Heero139
as for your video card, its crap. C-R-A-P crap. you'd do well with a new one. i have a radeon 9600XT and its getting really old.

so get it out of your head that bungie is here to serve specifically you, and let them produce the product that they intend to produce. if you need to buy a new computer to play it, and you refuse to, thats not their problem.


I never said I wanted halo 2 my way, and don't get me wrong, it would be nice if we had a graphics upgrade to it, but the truely hardcore gamers like myself usually don't graduate from high school and thus end up with crappy jobs (which may be me in a couple of years) so I just thought maybe I would make sure EVERYONE can enjoy the game. Visuals have almost nothing to do with the fun in a game, just look at Counterstrike. and as for the Video card, I'm new to PC gaming, as you can tell. I vought my video card from a local computer store, yes that crappy radeon 9250, for $140 plus taxes. Now here I am, looking at pricewatch.com seeing that I could've bought the same one from them for about $30. And my next move is going to be buying an Nvidia Geforce 6600x from them for about $90.(for some stupid reason the numbers always made me think they were better just because they were bigger). At any rate, I'm just saying, keep it affordable. please.

  • 04.18.2006 4:26 PM PDT
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Posted by: MC Enders
We don't want a light show in a disc, we want Halo 2 for the PC in it's untainted format. Just grant us that and we won't be whining anymore.


we all know how bungie, gearbox, macsoft, westlake and co put the flamethrower back into the pc version of H1. we all know that it had been cut from the xbox version of H1. there also was going to be a flamethrower in H2, but that also got cut.
look here: http://haloarchives.net/pages/humans/human-weapons/m7057-defo liant-flamethrower.php
(scroll down to find the H2 pictures)
now, in the PC H2, i would like to see the unreleased flamethrower that you would be able to use in campaign and multiplayer. i also want to have the option of infinite gernades, which was taken out of halo2 xbox. (but infinite gernades was in H1 PC.

  • 04.18.2006 4:45 PM PDT
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You gotta wonder how frigging awsome Halo 2 would look on the source engine with DX10. MOCK-UPS WILL FOLLOW THIS POST I TELL YOU!

  • 04.18.2006 6:41 PM PDT
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Posted by: ROBO LEADER
You gotta wonder how frigging awsome Halo 2 would look on the source engine with DX10. MOCK-UPS WILL FOLLOW THIS POST I TELL YOU!


the source engine can't utilise DX10 as it's built in DX9.

  • 04.18.2006 6:58 PM PDT
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I'm not concerned with Halo 2 PC just as long as it has just as a decent online service similar to Xbox Live, a ranking system, a buddy's list, and more features and an interface and gameplay adapted for the keyboard and mouse. But most importantly a decent netcode, no auto-aim, and better visuals than the Xbox version, with increased high-res imagery, without being so demanding on the beefiest on systems, all at a decent FPS.

  • 04.18.2006 7:15 PM PDT
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The problem with poject offset is that by the time it's finished, it'll be outdated. Almost every feature in the game is utilised in current releases like oblivion, in fact, oblivion will look better because it has the ability to use the new ATI patch that allows for full antialiasing and full HDR lighting, something PO cannot do due to it being based on nvidia technology. I also doubt that many of the features touted by the project will make it into the final product. As much as they'd like to tell us, motion blur does not add an element of realism, it makes it look like a cartoon, and unfortunately, the idea of having every single particle casting shadows on everything (including themselves) is laughable with today's technology. To get an explosion's fragments to do that, you'd have to process the physics of the explosion and come up with how the ground would fragment, change the model of the ground, removing a chunk, then have that cunk split up into millions of bits, each of which has to be dynamically lighted in real-time for every single light source and reflection of light, casting a shadow on every other fragment. at the same time. Doing this with "a single 7800gtx" is laughable. All the demos shown are pre-rendered deelies that take Sun "micro"-system's finest days to render, not real-time ingame video on a single 7800gtx.

[Edited on 4/18/2006]

  • 04.18.2006 7:40 PM PDT
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Posted by: MC Enders

Still. Even if I don't know what I'm talking about, we shouldn't have to go out and buy $50 more in PC hardware just to play a game you've already paid $50 for anyway U_U and watch your mouth next time and you won't be blacklisted from posting in the forums.


No, you don't know what you're talking about and as such you shouldn't,

Firstly, you have a 3GHz (not gigs ) Pentium 4, 1.5 gigs of ram (512 megabytes of ram is exactly half a GIGABYTE of ram, which is 1024 MEGABYTES).

Secondly, you cannot compare a consoles specifications to that of a PC, it just doesn't work that way.

Also, if Halo 2 is going to run on Vista - the minimum specs are already pretty high, and personally if I'm shelling out cash for Vista and any upgrade I need then getting a 2 year old xbox game in it's native form really won't impressed, I've spent £40 on Halo 2 already, I need a REASON to spend money on it again - counter strike 1.6 may be fun but would I pick it up now if I hadn't played it before? no - because it looks like a pile of ass.

If I was Bungie right now, I'd pull out all the stops - throw higher res textures in, make use of the shaders availible with DX10, add in an advanced lighting solution, volumetric smoke - the lot, make me say "whoa" in a Keanu Reeves fashion.

Posted by: MC Enders

truely hardcore gamers like myself usually don't graduate from high school and thus end up with crappy jobs


What? get your priorities sorted, if you're being "truly hardcore" at the expense of your education then don't you think it's time to put gaming to the side for a bit? you've got the rest of your life to play games.

  • 04.18.2006 8:05 PM PDT
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Oh, while we're on the topic of Vista. I honestly think that people are overrating the req specs. Remember that Vista-installed computers will include laptops, from the high-end to the low-end budget laptops.

Being as such, I doubt if Visita's requirements will be THAT high, since laptops are considerably slower than their desktop counterparts. Microsoft's not going to ignore an ever-increasing market in portable computers by not enabling Vista to run smoothly on laptops. I think people are taking the notion of "minimum system requirements" a little too far.

  • 04.18.2006 8:37 PM PDT
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People are under-rating halo's specs, so imagine what itl be like if vista is actually higher. Those halo minimum requirements were probably made by crack whores or something because with that crappy of a computer I'd be surprised if it can get like 15fps on the lowest settings.

  • 04.18.2006 10:25 PM PDT
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we all know how bungie, gearbox, macsoft, westlake and co put the flamethrower back into the pc version of H1. we all know that it had been cut from the xbox version of H1. there also was going to be a flamethrower in H2, but that also got cut.
look here: http://haloarchives.net/pages/humans/human-weapons/m7057 -defo liant-flamethrower.php
(scroll down to find the H2 pictures)
now, in the PC H2, i would like to see the unreleased flamethrower that you would be able to use in campaign and multiplayer. i also want to have the option of infinite gernades, which was taken out of halo2 xbox. (but infinite gernades was in H1 PC.
I hope they put the fuel rod gun in H2PC's multiplayer as well as the single-player. It's not as overpowered as the one in the first game, yet it's still good.

[Edited on 4/19/2006]

  • 04.19.2006 5:34 AM PDT

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