Halo: PC Version - views and comments (1 Viewer)

[John_Berger]

I didn't take notice of any, but quite frankly I'll take a reduction in some eye candy in order to be able to play the damned thing.

 

[Max Leung]

It "seems" a little worse-looking than the default, but I do have to look carefully. I think the quality difference is in the lighting...the bump-mapping looks good.

 

[John_Berger]

I think the quality difference is in the lighting

...which confirms my suspicion. The abysmal frame rates only occurred when indoors (thereby having light reflect off multiple surfaces) during firefights or with lots of critters in the room, thereby needing more shadows. Obviously all of these require intensive lighting calculations.

 

[Max Leung]

I should try it with -use14 ... I wonder if it will look better yet not be as taxing...

 

[Tom Vodhanel]

Will the use11/14 commands help with lag in online games?

TV

 

[Max Leung]

It should tom...if your framerate chokes, so will your network response!

 

[James_A]

Works pretty good on my P4 2.4 Gz.. Radeon 9500 Pro...

Set it to Vsync, and havn't tried dropping the pixel shaders yet... I have to say that I like the XBox graphics and the force feedback... but I LOVE the keyboard mouse combo. I'm not a die-hard FPS person, but being able to use the mouse (or in my case, Trackball) makes the game so much more fun to me. I guess I'm not able to work two control sticks at the same time... problem that I've had on PS2 as well.

Jim

 

[Scott L]

Will this game work with those force feedback mice? It might be worth it to buy one of those for this game.

 

[Colin Davidson]

Wanted to say "thanks" to all who provided tuning tips for this. Bought it yesterday and the settings changes made the game playable for me.

One annoying thing I found was that you cannot disable the joystick in the configuration settings. Or at least that I could find. I had to go into control panel and disable it there. Seems the game was picking up signals from the joystick and particularily when I was driving I kept getting out of the damned vehicle for no reason. Made for some long drives and some serious road rage! Fortunately there were plenty of bad guys to take my rage out on.

Thanks again.

 

[Derrik Draven]

So, overall...would you guys say the "experience" is better on the 'Box or the pc?

I'm giving the thumbs up to my 'Box. Looks great, runs smooth and, on a large display with a good h.t., it can't be beat.

It wasn't the same on my gf's pc.

 

[Rudi B]

...finished the single player a few days ago.

Nothing breathtaking, with rather dull levels... Waves of same and same enemies (The Flood) killed any fun that was left from vehicles, at least for me...

The most similiar game IMHO, Max Payne, rates much higher with me.

But, looking forward to a 8 player LAN party at my place... We'll see what I'll have to say about Halo then...

Otherwise, Athlon 2500 Barton/R9500, worked quite okay.

 

[Scott L]

I'm still tiffed about no co-op play!!! It would have been so easy for them to put that in there.

 

[Kieran Coghlan]

What about sound? I can't believe this is an HT forum and no one mentioned the sound. One of the coolest things about Halo on the XBox (IMO) is the real time DD5.1. Is the sound anything like this on the PC? I have a surround sound setup of speakers, driven by a yamaha receiver w/ dpl-II for gaming on my computer. My sound card is not EAX or anything, though... just stereo.

 

[John_Berger]

My sound card is not EAX or anything, though... just stereo.

Whoops. I never reactivated my EAX after tweaking the v1.1 pixel shader. :b If I remember, I'll try it tomorrow and let you know.

As for the sound itself, it's not utterly impressive. On my system, which is a 4.1 Sound Blaster Live Gamer, I'm not picking up any distinct directional sound that makes be realize that I'm getting hit from behind. Any clue that I'm getting hit from a different direction is more from the directional arrows on the screen than the sound.

 

[Max Leung]

The sound is quite good on my nForce-based system. Sounds as good as the xbox!

I pity you poor soundblaster people...you aren't getting true DD5.1 surround sound from your games.

I suppose it would sound good on the Audigy though.

 

[John_Berger]

I'm still tiffed about no co-op play!!! It would have been so easy for them to put that in there.

Yeah, don't you just love the arrogance on the part of game designers that people want nothing more than to blow each other up? Screw team play. Who cares if games like Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, the Unreal series, and the Quake series have proven for years that people want and use co-op? Pah! They're minor games! No one pays attention to those!

Major and at Bungie.

 

[John_Berger]

I pity you poor soundblaster people...you aren't getting true DD5.1 surround sound from your games.

Um ... my Sound Blaster Live 5.1 Gamer, as per Creative Lab's own web site and documentation, is a Dolby Digital 5.1 card with six-channel AC-3 through either the SPDIF port or by a combination of the analog center/subwoofer, front speakers, and rear speakers ports.

So, you certainly don't need to pity me, except that I only have a 4.1 speaker configuration.

 

[Rudi B]

What about sound? I can't believe this is an HT forum and no one mentioned the sound. One of the coolest things about Halo on the XBox (IMO) is the real time DD5.1. Is the sound anything like this on the PC? I have a surround sound setup of speakers, driven by a yamaha receiver w/ dpl-II for gaming on my computer. My sound card is not EAX or anything, though... just stereo.

Finished the game with a poor Realtek onboard, a few days before I had gotten an Audigy 2, figures.

When you are low on health and your heart starts thumping... Well, the SVS PB2+, what needs to be said...

My PC is the center of HT, so games get full sound treatment.

IMHO, the best sound experiences in games were Half-Life, Splinter Cell and Max Payne. Max Payne 2 was just just released, gotta grab it... Can't wait...

 

[Romier S]

Major and at Bungie.

You may want to direct your ire towards the correct development house, that being Gearbox Software. Gearbox handled the PC port for Halo as Bungie is a tad busy working on Halo 2 at the moment.

 

[Scott L]

Well the Audigy 2 can pass through DD5.1 but it can't encode it on the fly like the nforce2 chipsets can. Even still there should be no big difference since the mix the nForce2 is getting is from the same source. Creative Labs uses EAX and nVidia uses Soundstorm. It just comes down to which creates a better gaming experience, in fact being Dolby Digital would actually hurt the sound since it's being compressed. Only advantage is less cables and the beingable to use the DACs/DSP features in your receiver or pre/pro.