03-10-2003 14:11									#1
	Halo for PC Increase Your PM Length

Just picked it up. Great fun to play this with a mouse and keyboard with higher resolutions as well (well, if you didn't have a HDTV anyway ). I'm having a blast playing it.

Haha, Bill thought he could get me to get an X-Box because of keeping games like this off PCs for a year or so, but I'm patient, I wait (while playing it at friends' houses ).

Any of the rest of you picked this up?

	03-10-2003 14:46									#2
	Increase the size of your Attachments

Not yet, and while I did hear it has great graphics, it has been terribly ported, with constant drops in frames per second, many below 30 fps even in top-notch hardware specs.

Do us a favour:
Go to http://www.fraps.com and run the program before playing Halo. Then tell us how often it drops below 30 fps with your PC specs.
The game doesn't support Anti Aliasing, so don't bother checking its performance with it... Don't know about Anisotropic Filtering, so go ahead and try it please.

Thanks!

	03-10-2003 14:50									#3
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

I'll do it when I play tomorrow . Sleepy time now .

	03-10-2003 17:24									#4
	Tired of ads?

Hadn't even heard it had come out yet, thanks for the heads up.

	03-10-2003 23:13									#5
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

I'll probably pick this up as soon as I get around to doing my upgrade.

	04-10-2003 00:45									#6
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

It actually just came out. It was still in the boxes (not on the shelf) when I went to the Game store .

	04-10-2003 02:23									#7
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

Downloaded a couple of days ago (oops, shouldn't have said that really), and I'm loving it. My graphics card isn't really up to the really fancy stuff (GeForce4 MX), so I can't have things like shadows and specular lighting, and I can only play it in 800x600 before it gets a bit sluggish, but it's still fantastic.

	04-10-2003 03:13									#8
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

quote: Originally posted by Paul Hanson Downloaded a couple of days ago (oops, shouldn't have said that really), and I'm loving it. My graphics card isn't really up to the really fancy stuff (GeForce4 MX), so I can't have things like shadows and specular lighting, and I can only play it in 800x600 before it gets a bit sluggish, but it's still fantastic.

Try it with an ATI Radeon 9600 Pro/XT. Now THAT's a video card!

	04-10-2003 03:22									#9
	Put an end to popups!

quote: Originally posted by Zealot Try it with an ATI Radeon 9600 Pro/XT. Now THAT's a video card!

Have you tried it on said card? I have a 9700 Pro and look forward to testing it out on Halo.

	04-10-2003 03:29									#10
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

quote: Originally posted by Osweld Have you tried it on said card? I have a 9700 Pro and look forward to testing it out on Halo.

No, and of course yours' better. But little more, and much more expensive.
Good buy though, IMO.

	04-10-2003 03:32									#11
	Re: Halo for PC Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

quote: Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui Haha, Bill thought he could get me to get an X-Box because of keeping games like this off PCs for a year or so, but I'm patient, I wait (while playing it at friends' houses ).

If you think about it, it was (and still is) a brilliant business decision.

Bungie had as part of their purchase agreement a guarantee that Halo would be allowed to come out on PC. So it had to at some point.

MS waited until they began giving Halo away for free with Xboxes before it came out on PC, and just in time to get a whole bunch of PC users hooked on Halo 1 because Halo 2 comes out on Xbox, and will never be out on PC, early next year -- and it looks way better.

	04-10-2003 03:34									#12
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

quote: Originally posted by Zealot No, and of course yours' better. But little more, and much more expensive. Good buy though, IMO.

* Asher will try it on his Radeon 9800 Pro overclocked to 486MHz core (Pro is 380MHz, XT is 412MHz).

Now that is a video card.

	04-10-2003 03:37									#13
	Increase the size of your Attachments

For the record, here are the Halo benchmarks: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1890&p=9

It's amazing that the Xbox, with a 733MHz Pentium III and a GeForce 4, gets such great framerates -- this was at a time when no one had programmed for the GeForce 4 yet and the Xbox was in a beta state, too.

Shows you just how much more efficient console hardware is.

	04-10-2003 03:41									#14
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

quote: Originally posted by Asher * Asher will try it on his Radeon 9800 Pro overclocked to 486MHz core (Pro is 380MHz, XT is 412MHz). Now that is a video card.

Congrats on the Overclock, if you have it truly stable you have there a great video card! Hercules?

	04-10-2003 04:23									#15
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

It's an ATI, but I took off the stock cooling and replaced it with a Zalman heatpipe with fan.

	04-10-2003 14:26									#16
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

I didn't install the Frame rate counter, but it seems to go very smoothly. Decent story as well (but nothing too special).

However, I'm getting annoyed at the game. The graphics are great, and the AI is pretty good, and it ain't too hard or easy, but DAMN, couldn't Bungie hire some decent level designers? The worst part of this game is the endlessly same-ish levels. It gets to the point where you are saying 'When will this damn level ****ing end!', which isn't something you want to say.

quote: just in time to get a whole bunch of PC users hooked on Halo 1 because Halo 2 comes out on Xbox, and will never be out on PC, early next year -- and it looks way better.

Guess like I'll never play Halo 2 then, unless one of my friends down here gets an XBox and the game.

Of course the decision is made easier by the poor level design. On first glace, it's a great FPS, as you play it just becomes Above Average.

I have a feeling that Half Life 2 is going to totally blow Halo 2 out of the water if we have the same programmers on that one (though I still have to see if Half Life 2 can beat NOLF2).

	05-10-2003 00:27									#17
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

The level design was subpar due to time constraints -- Halo was supposed to have 30 levels, it ended up with 10 and much of them are just copy/pasted to make them larger.

Halo itself was totally scratched and rewritten in 10 months to meet the Xbox launch date, so the levels were one of the most time consuming things to do and they simply ran out of time.

Halo 2, they've had years for, so it'll be amazing.

quote: I have a feeling that Half Life 2 is going to totally blow Halo 2 out of the water if we have the same programmers on that one (though I still have to see if Half Life 2 can beat NOLF2).

It'll be interesting, both look to be amazing games.
I still think Halo 2 will vastly outsell Half-Life 2 though (both are coming out on Xbox).

	05-10-2003 00:43									#18
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

I'm surprised they can even do Half-Life 2 on the Xbox.

	05-10-2003 01:52									#19
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

You can do incredible things with the hardware when you can "write to the metal".

Look at Halo 2, Rallisport Challenge 2, etc. Simply amazing.

They look better than 99% of the PC games do on Radeon 9800 Pros, with a fraction of the memory and computing power.

Hooray for efficiency and consistent hardware!

	05-10-2003 02:53									#20
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640x480 always looks amazing.

	05-10-2003 03:06									#21
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

It looks surprisingly good on the TV, because it was designed to fit in that resolution.

	05-10-2003 05:46									#22
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

quote: Originally posted by Asher Look at Halo 2, Rallisport Challenge 2, etc. Simply amazing. They look better than 99% of the PC games do on Radeon 9800 Pros, with a fraction of the memory and computing power.

I haven't seen any in-game footage. I heard Halo 2 looks amazing. I just hope you're right.

	05-10-2003 06:31									#23
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

Halo 2 looks sweet, but Half Life 2 looks even better. I need Rallisport Challenge 2 to come out. I destroyed the first one completely and I need new challenges and multiplayer .

	05-10-2003 06:44									#24
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

Halo is an alright game, about as good as Half-Life in singleplayer regards from what I've seen so far. But the multiplayer sucks crap. Maybe it'll get interesting after mods are made, but untill then...

	05-10-2003 11:08									#25
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Have you read about Halo 2's multiplayer modes, Osweld?

Halo's multiplayer was cheaply kludged on to meet the November 2001 release.

	05-10-2003 11:24									#26
	Tired of ads?

quote: Halo itself was totally scratched and rewritten in 10 months to meet the Xbox launch date

So I can blame Microsoft?

	05-10-2003 11:50									#27
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

You could, it'd be a tad misguided.

You should see the budget Bungie gets to play with, compared to what they had on their own.

	05-10-2003 12:22									#28
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Doesn't matter to me, because if Halo 2 is only for the XBox, I won't be playing it.

	05-10-2003 13:04									#29
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

Your loss.

	05-10-2003 13:16									#30
	Increase Your PM Length

Bah, it's no Marathon.