[Diggory Laycock]

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/21816

Mac Halo is now compatible with PC Halo multiplayer games for version 1.02 and 1.03.
A new "NV Shaders" rasterizer path has been added for players with nVidia GeForce 3 Ti, GeForce 4 Ti, or GeForce 5200 fx video hardware and Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther). Players with these configurations will notice a dramatic change in image quality when using this new feature. Earlier versions of Halo only supported advanced shader capabilities on graphics cards made by ATI.
Many Full-screen anti-aliasing (FSAA) glitches have been fixed for use in Mac OS 10.3.2.
Servers now have a complete team killing / banning system that should significantly reduce team killing online.
Servers? name now supports 65 characters for dedicated servers and 32 characters for client-hosted servers and now accepts an extended character set.
Chat text length has been extended to 64 characters.
In-game scoreboard now displays every client's ping.
In-game scoreboard now displays your # of assists.
Teams are now persisted for the next game when map cycling occurs.
Map Reset: It's now possible to restart the current game without requiring the server to map cycle.
Assault: There is now a timer to keep track of how much time is left in your offense / defense round.
Finally, although previous versions of Halo did not require you to have the Halo CD inserted to play the game, illegal online downloading of Halo has forced MacSoft now to require the Halo for Macintosh CD be inserted to play the game in version 1.03 and all future versions.

Has anyone from the UK installed this update? I'm worried by the note in the installer:

This application will update the initial release version of Halo to version 1.03. This Updater is for the U.S. retail (ie, boxed) version of Halo only.

[edit: spelling]

[OwlBoy]

Dang, damn Pirates!

Sweet, it has a bunch of new features to prevent/deter constant team killing.

-Owl

[Tomster]

Well, all I can say is craptastic! Thank you ever so much for adding CD verification. I'm sure whatever warez doodz out there will go through the bother of downloading the entire game but avoid the hassle of burning it to disk. This will not in any way stop illegal copies, but only inconvenience legitimate users.

When I was a desktop user, CD verification was not too much of an issue, but as a Powerbook user, there is nothing more irritating than carrying around a bunch of disks just to use the software one already bought! This just makes legit owners of the game burn backup copies because it really isn't that fun to be carrying around one's only original copy.

I'll take a pass on this upgrade. I really don't use multi-player on the road and don't think the update will do too much for the ATI card in my setup.

[Jaey]

Originally posted by Tomster:
This will not in any way stop illegal copies, but only inconvenience legitimate users.

Totally true. Disk images, anyone?

[kpne1home]

if ur hard drive is big enough make a .dmg of the cd and use that instead of the cds.

[RevEvs]

I give it a few hours/days till there is a No CD crack. And once there is I think it makes their point moot, and everyone should email and complain until the change it back
Then again if there is a NoCD crack the legit people could use that i suppose. But thats not the point.

revs

[joe]

Originally posted by Tomster:
This will not in any way stop illegal copies, but only inconvenience legitimate users.

Damn right!!! It's about time the publishers started using copy protection that hassles the pirates and NOT the legit owners. Personally, I feel this "screw the customer" type of copy protection only encourages more piracy in the long run.........joe

[Jaey]

I wonder -- although this is slightly off-topic -- how you would make "screw the pirates, not the customer" copy protection. It seems impossible. The only way to not screw the customer is to make it free (which is fine by me, but the companies wouldn't make very much money).

[blizzard]

CD keys and company-central servers for multiplayer games (like Blizzard's model) seems to be the only fairly foolproof method I've seen. Most of the others can be beaten.

[mac freak]

Exactly. Online CD-key checks = BINGO! Blizzard games are nearly unpiratable, assuming you want to play online. Offline games are a different story and I don't think will ever be unpirateable.

[beeblebrox]

This is a rhetorical question of course. I had to enter a CD Key just like everyone else who bought the game. If you don't have a key you can't play it online. So the only need for a CD in the drive is to play in the single player mode.

[Diggory Laycock]

To answer my own question - The update works fine on the UK version.

[mfessenden]

After running the update, I can no longer join or create an online game.

Anyone else?

[blizzard]

Originally posted by beeblebrox:
This is a rhetorical question of course. I had to enter a CD Key just like everyone else who bought the game. If you don't have a key you can't play it online. So the only need for a CD in the drive is to play in the single player mode.

Halo doesn't use a centralized server system, though...anyone can start their own game and host others, which means that if they configure the options right, pirates without a valid CD key (or with a known pirated one) can play online anyways.

[Arkham_c]

It's a real shame that these games require the CD in the drive. I love Halo, but I've been playing Jedi Academy lately too. Now I'm gonna have to do the CD-shuffle when I switch between the games (JA already requires the CD in the drive).

I don't think this discourages piracy at all. Pirates all distribute games as CD images, so if they burn the CD then put it in they can play too. They should instead block users who use known pirated serial numbers like Quake 3 does.

[Vash]

Halo doesn't use a centralized server system, though...anyone can start their own game and host others, which means that if they configure the options right, pirates without a valid CD key (or with a known pirated one) can play online anyways.

Could you please tell me how to do this? Its extremely annoying to not be able to play a LAN game with a friend that comes over and use the other G4, or wanting to play my brother and stupid Halo not allowing it.
Oh, and the thing with Quake is, I really don't think id software cares. They want everyone to have Quake it seems, as long as they don't use hacks or cheats online. It is extremely annoying to have to find the CD and put it in the drive to play all sorts of games. Except for id's games, no CD needed there.

[Sarc]

Originally posted by mfessenden:
After running the update, I can no longer join or create an online game.

Anyone else?

same here

[mfessenden]

See my thread below...you have to take your IP address out of the dialog box that comes up when you launch Halo. You can join games, but can't host with a firewall.