Halo Comment

[Wingznut]

The performance doesn't bother me at all, because it doesn't take away from the fact that it's a helluva fun game to play. Best multiplayer FPS since the original UT, imho.

I have a pretty stout rig, and I agree... It should run everything out there at max details. But Halo doesn't run well at MAX details. Like I said... It doesn't make it any less fun for me, because it's all about gameplay for me.

I couldn't care less if the textures are at "medium", or the shadows are off, etc... I don't care what the benchmarks report... I just know that it's fun to play.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: Acanthus
ok this is like the 15th thread on this, so im going be very blunt.

reduce your graphics settings. retards.

Also "Buy the game" ... there's a thread in the Video (IIRC) Forum about it, comparing v1.01 to v1.00 to FLT's patch.

Retail 1.01 is a good chunk faster than the l33t l33t ju4r3z d00d version.

- M4H

 

[fyleow]

Wingznut I am hardly running on max settings. I have the ATI control panel set to balanced mode right now which means no AA and no AF. The only thing that is hindering it is probably the resolution, I am running Halo at 1280 X 960. I find it unacceptable that when compared with a lot of games out there Halo has poorer graphics and it runs much much slower. Don't get me wrong, I don't play games for eye candy alone but when it becomes a slide show then it is a large problem.

I think Halo is a good game, but hardly deserving of the title "Best FPS of all time". Unreal 2's single player mission is comparable to Halo and UT2K3 has excellent multiplayer capabilities.

 

[us3rnotfound]

So do you think that there will be another patch that will fix all the performance problems. I am barely getting away @ 800 * 600.

 

[fyleow]

Originally posted by: shminu
So do you think that there will be another patch that will fix all the performance problems. I am barely getting away @ 800 * 600.

As m4h mentioned, the new patch does speed things up. You should also lower everything down to "Low" setting under video controls too. The game is playable at those settings.

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: Dead Parrot Sketch
Hmmm,how do you know how it runs if you didn't buy it ?

Because I downloaded it.

I do that with 95% of the game Im interested in, and if I like them, I buy them, Half Life for example.
Games like this are why I do that, the quality of games is just too crappy these days, if I bought every game I was interested in I'd be shelling out ~$250 every damn month and play maybe 1 of those games.
Of course, there are a few exceptions, games where I trust the company to get it right, War/Star Craft for example.

Real world examples:
Half Life, downloaded it, awesome game, ran fine, buggy, but not enough to make me not wanna play it. So I bought it.
WarCraft III, I loved WarCraft I&II, StarCraft, and Diablo I&II, so I figured they'd get that one right too, so I bought it the day it came out, and I never regretted it.
Halo, didn't know much, cept it's supposed to kick ass, so I downloaded it, it just can't run acceptably on my system, despite having a pretty close to top end rig, it's just not fun to play what could very well be a PowerPoint presentation, so I won't be playing or buying that.

Oh and as for detail levels, Im running it at 800x600x32 with no AA and 8x AF, hardly what I'd call stressful.

 

[onlyCOpunk]

Halo runs fine on my computer. With a GF3 and an XP 2600, I play at 800x600 wither everything on or on high and it never slows down. People are too picky with their graphics these days, if something doens't run at 1600x1200 turn it down. I myself don't need extremely high resolutions and anti aliasing.

But to each his own.

 

[The Sauce]

OMFG, you guys are such SNOBS! Halo is emminently playable on current hardware - so what if it averages 30-40 fps? If its a fun game and it plays smoothly what does it matter if its running 40fps or 100 fps? I'll take the fun game, eyecandy and slower frame rates any day, thank you.

 

[Maleficus]

Snatchface: No its not.

Fact: my machine specs are as follows: 2800+, 512 megs of DDR400 ram, 5600 FX Ultra. My fps in 800x600 with everything off are 20-35.

That is sh!tty, i think anyone can agree with that. The game is fubar'd.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: Maleficus
Halo is a piss-poor performer, & thus I wouldn't base product decisions on it.

Gearbox adressed the timedemo issue saying that debugg code was NOT removed that used more memory than necessary and limited the potential FPS by hogging memory. Then they said that the benchmark was counting the time to load a scene when there were no frames rendered so you essentially got 0fps for your score during those points.

The benchmark was NEVER supposed to give you theoretical performance in game, but just to compare various settings and systems.

Given this it is not uncommon to see 39fps in the benchmark and 60+fps in the actual game

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: Sunner

Originally posted by: Dead Parrot Sketch
Hmmm,how do you know how it runs if you didn't buy it ?

Because I downloaded it.

I do that with 95% of the game Im interested in, and if I like them, I buy them, Half Life for example.
Games like this are why I do that, the quality of games is just too crappy these days, if I bought every game I was interested in I'd be shelling out ~$250 every damn month and play maybe 1 of those games.
Of course, there are a few exceptions, games where I trust the company to get it right, War/Star Craft for example.

Real world examples:
Half Life, downloaded it, awesome game, ran fine, buggy, but not enough to make me not wanna play it. So I bought it.
WarCraft III, I loved WarCraft I&II, StarCraft, and Diablo I&II, so I figured they'd get that one right too, so I bought it the day it came out, and I never regretted it.
Halo, didn't know much, cept it's supposed to kick ass, so I downloaded it, it just can't run acceptably on my system, despite having a pretty close to top end rig, it's just not fun to play what could very well be a PowerPoint presentation, so I won't be playing or buying that.

Oh and as for detail levels, Im running it at 800x600x32 with no AA and 8x AF, hardly what I'd call stressful.

Downloading the game whether or not you intend to buy it is illegal.

Therefor I suggest you quit while you're ahead

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: Maleficus
Snatchface: No its not.

Fact: my machine specs are as follows: 2800+, 512 megs of DDR400 ram, 5600 FX Ultra. My fps in 800x600 with everything off are 20-35.

That is sh!tty, i think anyone can agree with that. The game is fubar'd.

that is your problem...you can't expect the 5600 to run everything maxed. Becides I get solid 60fps with my system

P4 3.2
1GB DDR400
9800Pro

 

[MDE]

Originally posted by: Maleficus
Snatchface: No its not.

Fact: my machine specs are as follows: 2800+, 512 megs of DDR400 ram, 5600 FX Ultra. My fps in 800x600 with everything off are 20-35.

That is sh!tty, i think anyone can agree with that. The game is fubar'd.

It runs perfectly fine on my GF4 Ti4600. IDK what you're smoking, but 30fps is smooth video. Ever notice that GTA:VC is locked @ 30fps by default? I didn't until I poked around the options an double checked with Fraps.

 

[Rogue]

So I am guessing that my Athlon 700MHz w/ GF2Ti card is not gonna run this game. Damnit! I hate playing Halo on Xbox with a controller. I am spoiled with the keyboard/mouse controls on PC. Guess it's time to upgrade.

 

[Jgtdragon]

The engine suck big time. I normally run all my games at 1280 x 1024, but I lower it to 1024 x 768 and it still lags. I got 4aa/8af on and the edge of line still not smooth. The graphic is a disappointment. Glad I am not alone on this.

 

[MDE]

AA doesn't work in Halo braniac. It's an old game, it isn't going to wow you with visuals.

 

[fyleow]

Originally posted by: MonkeyDriveExpress
AA doesn't work in Halo braniac. It's an old game, it isn't going to wow you with visuals.

Uhh AA works with all games....

For the Halo fanboys content playing on 800 X 600, you have to agree at least that the game is poorly coded and not optimized for the PC. If it was built from the ground up it would run a lot faster and look nicer.

 

[Maleficus]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd

Originally posted by: Maleficus
Snatchface: No its not.

Fact: my machine specs are as follows: 2800+, 512 megs of DDR400 ram, 5600 FX Ultra. My fps in 800x600 with everything off are 20-35.

That is sh!tty, i think anyone can agree with that. The game is fubar'd.

that is your problem...you can't expect the 5600 to run everything maxed. Becides I get solid 60fps with my system

P4 3.2
1GB DDR400
9800Pro

Can you not read? 800x600 WITH EVERYONE OFF 20-35 fps? how does this imply im running everything maxed? im glad you get 60fps solid, add yourself to a count of maybe 15 outta 15,000.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: fyleow

Originally posted by: MonkeyDriveExpress
AA doesn't work in Halo braniac. It's an old game, it isn't going to wow you with visuals.

Uhh AA works with all games....

For the Halo fanboys content playing on 800 X 600, you have to agree at least that the game is poorly coded and not optimized for the PC. If it was built from the ground up it would run a lot faster and look nicer.

the game doesn't work with AA PERIOD!!!

for some reason it prevents it from working in the driver level.


On another note AF kills FPS in this game due to all the reflective surfaces...rendering them in the distance liker AF does is a bit tough on any card

 

[Maleficus]

Originally posted by: MonkeyDriveExpress

Originally posted by: Maleficus
Snatchface: No its not.

Fact: my machine specs are as follows: 2800+, 512 megs of DDR400 ram, 5600 FX Ultra. My fps in 800x600 with everything off are 20-35.

That is sh!tty, i think anyone can agree with that. The game is fubar'd.

It runs perfectly fine on my GF4 Ti4600. IDK what you're smoking, but 30fps is smooth video. Ever notice that GTA:VC is locked @ 30fps by default? I didn't until I poked around the options an double checked with Fraps.

No i didn't cause i haven't played Vice City.

30 FPS sucks.
Why FPS matter

 

[MDE]

I really don't care why FPS matters. If the game plays smoothly, it's fine by me. Are you going to tell me that watching TV or playing a console on a TV gives you a headache or puts you at a disadvantage because TVs refresh at ~30fps?

 

[Extrarius]

My system isn't great: 2400+ AMD, Radeon 8500, 640 MB Ram.

I average ~20fps (min 5 max 40) when playing the game in 640x480 without pixel shaders and all options off.
I average ~17fps (min 5 max 30) when playing the game in 800x600 with pixel shaders 1.4 and all options on.

Doesn't seem like much of a drop, and I don't see much visual improvement, so I conclude the 'great graphics'(which remind me of half-life 1) are not the reason the game runs slow.
Note that the above numbers were taken IN GAME, so any problems with the benchmark mode would not influnce the numbers. I turned of vsync so that is not the problem either.

Note also that I get almost the same framerate as some people with much better cards of all brands.

What is playable? A constant 30 fps is playable (not smooth by any means, but playable). Too bad halo offers neither 30 fps nor constant fps. Sure Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 will run poor on my hardware, but at least they will look nice. Also, according to the developers of both, they will run reasonably on old systems if you turn the ugly up. Hopefully they aren't using the same definition for 'reasonably' that the halo developers used - eratic fps averaging out to about 20 does not make for an enjoyable experience.
Don't try to blame it on pixel shaders or advanced DX9 graphics because turning them off doesn't make an appreciable difference.

 

[Maleficus]

Originally posted by: MonkeyDriveExpress
I really don't care why FPS matters. If the game plays smoothly, it's fine by me. Are you going to tell me that watching TV or playing a console on a TV gives you a headache or puts you at a disadvantage because TVs refresh at ~30fps?

did you read the article? it explains the difference between movies, tv, our monitors etc etc.

 

[MDE]

Extrarius, Halo does offer a mode for 30fps, as well as Vsync. Look in the options.

 

[Maleficus]

Originally posted by: MonkeyDriveExpress
Halo does offer a mode for 30fps, as well as Vsync. Look in the options.

how does this fix anything?

my frame rates going to magically go up when i select that option?