Project: Unify Halo Custom Edition

[Rentafence]

Someone get a fucking job at Bungie and take over for Sawnose holy shit

[jcap]

Ok, I just copied over that file. The good news comes in already: sapp is able to "unload" now. Before, if I tried to unload it, nothing would happen. I think this is definitely going to work now.

[jcap]

Someone get a fucking job at Bungie and take over for Sawnose holy shit

Kornman tried.

[Patrickssj6]

Perfect, gonna go ahead and update the version on my site.

[Cortexian]

E: Has anyone ever tried getting a hold of Sawnose to try and get him to implement certain features in a new patch?

I had a good 150+ private message conversation with him back at the 1.09 release about adding different things, including some way for the client to download maps directly from the server. He asked me to bounce ideas off of him for features that the community wanted. I remember asking for more admin control in the dedicated server, similar to what SAPP, Rec0, and other server apps offer. I also asked about the server lists, trying to get the client to bring in servers from all the versions of the game since there's no compatibility issue between 1.00 and 1.09. Obviously asked about downloading maps directly from the game server to the client, however he never really got back to me with anything on this except the usual "good idea, I'll take a look at it and talk to my co-workers" type response.

If the client auto-downloaded maps it needed from game servers, that would put a lot of bandwidth strain onto the game servers themselves. We would need a way to limit how fast a player can download map files from game servers, as well as put a limit on the bandwidth allowed for map transfers in a month or something. I don't think professional hosting companies like GameServers.com would take lightly to Halo servers suddenly quadrupling in bandwidth costs a month... Downloading the maps from a repository like hce.halomaps.org would be THE BEST solution. I really have no idea why Dennis would be against such a thing, after-all, if this all happened in a custom client, how hard would it be to replace that "power by gamespy" logo with a "powered by halomaps" logo?

[jcap]

The best way to handle map downloads would be to do what I said. If Modacity acted as the central host for auto map downloads, there would be no strain on the Halo servers when a client wants to join.

In Counter Strike Source, it defaults to downloading the map from the game server. The server limits the download speed to prevent lag. Alternatively, you can specify an auto map download URL in the server's config file, which will point to a web server for downloading the maps to the client. That's basically what I'm suggesting here, except it would be a hardcoded URL into the OS dll.

Also, I don't think you'd be able to replace the Gamespy logo UNLESS ui.map was modified. Me, ShadowSpartan, and Timo were attempting to replace UI bitmaps in memory (for custom map images), but it didn't work. You can only change the reference to a bitmap in memory.

[Patrickssj6]

All these ideas would be far easier if we had source code and GameSpy Server control.

I would have something like a map server reservoir (a dedicated webspace), where the dedicated server uploads all the maps it will use before it starts.

[Kornman00]

Thanks Pat, I'll look into making an OS based solution for it later today.

I agree with Pat, this downloader idea would be implemented far better with the source...it could become quite the hack job with an external solution (but still possible). I'd like to bring up the fact that halo has 21 unused gamespy query fields...I'm not sure off hand how large the return buffer is for a query but this could be used to our advantage with an external server query tool. I haven't researched gs query fields in a while but it appears that you can only get one player at a time, so a query may be able to have parameters. If that's the case, you'd just need two queries: custom map count, and custom map (the index of the custom map is used as a parameter). In the custom map return data, you'd have a map name, possibly scenario name, and then a checksum of the map.

Oh and you could also add a "open sauce" query heh. What happens when a stock server would get these queries is unknown at the moment (like say, been a long time).

[Rook]

Anyone who would pirate an 8 year old, 20 dollar game is a worthless cunt.

So no.

Or they have half a brain.

[staticchanger]

Wow, its been awhile, but this caught my attention. It'd be nice to have an update that would allow clients to download the map. as far as where to download from, add a string to the init.txt where the admin can add a URL to a .zip file containing the map file (for obvious bandwidth reasons). Then we could have our own mirror of maps people could use, as well as have the ability to self maps. As far as removing the cdcheck thing goes, don't do it. The cool solution would be MS giving away keys. At least then everyone would swap to 1.09 and we could keep track of people. I'd like to see a 1.10 update with lots of cool features and then basically MS giving the game away free by having people sign up and get a key. Maybe even have a halo pc key come with other games via insert. That'd get some interest.