Gamespy discovery

[l Maximus l]

Last night while playing Halo on Gamespy, I had someone who joined the room I created, with the intentions of playing a game, who was in Australia.

After I launched the game, he couldn't find the game that I created...his XBox was searching, and to no avail, he couldn't join.

I think this is because, in Australia, the XBox consoles are encoded using PAL. This is the same case with our Halo buddies in the United Kingdom.

I hope Microsoft thought of this in regards to having North Americans play with or against people in the UK and Australia. What is everyone's thought on this?

[LynxFX]

That is interesting. I didn't think that the way the video is outputed would matter, but I guess it does, unless it is just too far for the Gamespy network to handle.

[Skarp]

Maybe his ping was too high to locate the game. Im sure gamespy games have a max ping when searching for games, maybe 500?1000? Being from down under he probably was over the limit.

[l Maximus l]

Originally posted by Skarp
Maybe his ping was too high to locate the game. Im sure gamespy games have a max ping when searching for games, maybe 500?1000? Being from down under he probably was over the limit.

Believe it or not, his ping was only around 200...not too shabby for being so far away! I'm in Seattle...so, pretty much water seperated us.

[Xtopia]

*cough*xboxconnecter *cough*

[l Maximus l]

Originally posted by xtopia
*cough*xboxconnecter *cough*

lol, Xtopia! I still go to XBC, so, don't worry, buddy! I have noticed that it is working like normal again...It was just acting up that one day, apparently. Ironically, I played a game with version .98 and it worked awesome...and then I remembered you told me about version .99 so I downloaded it...and all I got was a bunch of problems that entire night! But, I find that it works great now!

By the way, XBC will incure the same problem as Gamespy when it comes to playing people that are using PAL encoded XBoxes while playing against North American ones. Atleast, that is what I have discovered so far. Because I only have done this once, perhaps, the Australian guy was doing something wrong...hmmm

[Xtopia]

glad to see your back to XBoconnector! But dude, I have not tried it out yet but I have downloaded ans seen the interface of XBconnect. A program developed by a dude that helped w/xboxconnector. Evidently he got sick of xboxconnector not releasing updates so he branched off.

[Snoopy7548]

dude, i just ordered a switch! i cant wait till i get it, my friend also has 500 feet of cable (he used it to network 3 comps), so hes gonna cut me the lenght i need, its gonna be awesome, i hope i will be playin wit u guys soon. my name will probly be The_Assassinator, cause thats my name on CS

[Crazy Joe]

This was posted by someone who works at Bungie regarding the problems with linking NTSC and PAL Xboxes(which is what you were trying to do through Gamespy):

Okay, I need to explain the differences between NTSC and PAL Xbox Halo because there are some serious misconceptions about what we did and why. Some people seem to think we made PAL and NTSC versions incompatible either as a sneaky, half-assed method of region-locking or perhaps just because we could, and that we actually invested time and energy to cripple net play when it would have worked fine if we'd left it alone. None of this is true.

Those of you who have edited Myth maps will be familiar with the concept of tags. A programmer could come up with a better description of what tags are, but my quick and dirty layman's definition would be "objects that contain and/or reference game data and variables." The Master Chief's running speed is stored in a tag. The speed of the Warthog is stored in a tag. Lots of things are stored in tags.

When we started work on the PAL version, it ran much, much slower than its NTSC counterpart. Basically, Halo always assumed it was running in NTSC (updating 30 times per second) which meant that under PAL (updating 25 times per second) everything took longer. Much longer. So we had to manually adjust the tags, basically compensating for PAL slowdown by making certain things faster.

The problems between NTSC and PAL Xbox Halo stem from the different tags. Because many of the tags we changed are so fundamental to the game (the running speed of the Master Chief, for example) any NTSC-PAL Halo game would go out of sync immediately. We figured it would be less stressful for all concerned if we changed the ports used for multiplayer so PAL Xboxes would not let NTSC Xboxes into LAN games (and vice versa). At least that way no one says "I can join the game, therefore there must be a way to make it work. Let's spend several frustrating hours trying to resolve the problem."

Syncing the PAL tags with their NTSC counterparts is not an option; doing so would impose a 20% speed penalty on the PAL version, which we'd already decided was unacceptable. I suspect dropping the PAL tags into an NTSC version of the game would result in similar speed issues.

Yes, this is a less-than-ideal situation, and yes, future Bungie games will probably be less NTSC-centric. :-)

I hope this explains your problem, Max.

Peace.

[Crazy Joe]

by the way, link to what i said above is here:

http://carnage.bungie.org/haloforum/...pl?read=100138

[Crazy Joe]

bump

[l Maximus l]

Originally posted by Gortholomew
by the way, link to what i said above is here:

http://carnage.bungie.org/haloforum/...pl?read=100138

Gortholomew! Thanks, dude! Now I know I wasn't going insane there for a while! That article makes so much sense.... Well, it looks as if I won't be killing our Australian and UK friends while playing Halo!!! Bummer...I need fresh blood!

[Crazy Joe]

ya, it pretty much sucks. I think if Halo was meant to be played online they would have worked alot harder to make the fix, but since it's only meant for system link, the odds of linking an NTSC and PAL are so slim that there wasn't much point.

[l Maximus l]

Originally posted by Gortholomew
ya, it pretty much sucks. I think if Halo was meant to be played online they would have worked alot harder to make the fix, but since it's only meant for system link, the odds of linking an NTSC and PAL are so slim that there wasn't much point.

Excellent point....I would expect Halo 2 to be played on-line, though...I can't wait!!