- elmicker
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Posted by: Iggwilv
Posted by: elmicker
Unfortunately, it's a near impossibility, cross-platform gaming is hell. I very seriously doubt it would happen. Anyway, WLA (windows live anywhere) is just a cross-platform messaging and friends service, not a gameserver tracker.
I agree with you on any current Windows OS but I think Vista may change that. Vista is "supposed" to treat games like the consoles do, sending the info directly to the video card instead of having go thru a app-link to the OS first. This may make it easier to pull-off cross-platform. In fact, M$ may use the 360 OS or something similar as the game subsystem in Vista.
It's got nothing to do with the OS or the way it utilises the graphics card for the general os now, basically, what -blam!- up H1PC was the crappy netcode, because they pretty much ported the H1Xbox netcode, meant for a 100mbit lan, and added the gamespy protocol. Since bungie have a hand in it this time, they'll have proper hosting protocols, none of the P2P or ad-hoc crap older games and console games use. The 2 systems are a nightmare to co-ordinate due to the massive differences, i.e. Halo 2 is designed to keep running when the host drops and will jump to and find a different host. Doing this on the PC would be -blam!- stupid due to the fact that if this game is to be a success it will be relying on proper gameserver hosting, and not domestic line hosting like H1PC.
Then of course there's the actual hardware and software differences between the xbox and the PC. The xbox has a unique OS that is distantly related to windows but is not designed to do anything other than run xbox games and communicate with other xboxes running identical OSs. on top of that you have to take into account the lag compensation the xbox uses; it assumes everyone is running on the same hardware and software, with identical access times and hardware glitches. Throwing random-spec machines into this mix will make the host machine go crazy trying to keep up with all the data.
There's just so many incompatibility and network issues that it's not practical, or as far as i know, even possible!