[petehammer]

And here they are. Read more on insidemacgames.com:

Mac OS X version 10.2.8 (10.3 or higher recommended)
800MHz PowerPC G4 processor (1GHz or higher recommended)
256MB of RAM (512MB recommended)
32MB AGP Video Card; GeForce 2MX/ATI 7000 or better (64MB AGP Video Card; GeForce 4ti-ATI 9000 or better recommended).
1.4GB hard disk space
Internet or LAN connection required for online play

Having experienced the PC version on low-end specs, you better have the latest and greatest to play this unless the Mac publishers did some MAJOR work.

PC (that I've played it on)
WinXP
1.4Ghz Celeron
512MB RAM
64MB Geforce440

And it runs at about 15fps. Hope a demo clears this up for mac gans. Looks like my B&W is finally dead to games. What a long way we've come since MW1999.

[phillryu]

Damn.... I barely scratch the min requirements with my 800mhz g4 iMac, geforce 2mx.... I guess I'll have to try it out first. If you know what I mean

Time to get a g5.

[sideus]

Wasn't this played on G3's over 4 years ago?

[OwlBoy]

Originally posted by sideus:
Wasn't this played on G3's over 4 years ago?

Yes yes.

And after that Expo, the engine was totally rewritten.

And then it was ported to the XBox, and new Technology was coming around with it, so spiffy stuff to make it look cool was added.

Just compare MacWorld video to the real thing today, and you will see a lot of differences in quality and stuff.

-Owl

[petehammer]

Originally posted by OwlBoy:
Yes yes.

And after that Expo, the engine was totally rewritten.

And then it was ported to the XBox, and new Technology was coming around with it, so spiffy stuff to make it look cool was added.

Just compare MacWorld video to the real thing today, and you will see a lot of differences in quality and stuff.

-Owl

I remember seeing that original video and the one with the Nvidia bit added. Does anybody know where I can find it now?

Thanks!

[redJag]

Originally posted by petehammer:
I remember seeing that original video and the one with the Nvidia bit added. Does anybody know where I can find it now?

Thanks!

http://halo.gameservers.net/

The file is called cgw_1199.zip. I think. That's what IGN called the file, but since I couldn't get it there I searched for it and found this server, downloading it as I post. If it's wrong I will come back and edit this.

[Arkham_c]

Man, I'm just loving my dual-G5/9800 right now.

For once, I don't care about the specs of a game. If it will play well on any Mac, it will play well on mine.

[Turias]

Originally posted by Arkham_c:
Man, I'm just loving my dual-G5/9800 right now.

For once, I don't care about the specs of a game. If it will play well on any Mac, it will play well on mine.

Damn you!

Must... hold out... 'til second revisions are released... next year!

[Boondoggle]

does anyone know if you will be able to play against xBox Live users?

bd

[Beewee]

Originally posted by petehammer:
And here they are. Read more on insidemacgames.com:

Mac OS X version 10.2.8 (10.3 or higher recommended)
800MHz PowerPC G4 processor (1GHz or higher recommended)
256MB of RAM (512MB recommended)
32MB AGP Video Card; GeForce 2MX/ATI 7000 or better (64MB AGP Video Card; GeForce 4ti-ATI 9000 or better recommended).
1.4GB hard disk space
Internet or LAN connection required for online play

Having experienced the PC version on low-end specs, you better have the latest and greatest to play this unless the Mac publishers did some MAJOR work.

PC (that I've played it on)
WinXP
1.4Ghz Celeron
512MB RAM
64MB Geforce440

And it runs at about 15fps. Hope a demo clears this up for mac gans. Looks like my B&W is finally dead to games. What a long way we've come since MW1999.

Well I have been looking for an excuse to sell my mac setup for a while. Maybe this is it, considering I can get a lower-end G5+display for the same price I bought my Quicksilver and display when they were new.

[madmacgames]

Originally posted by petehammer:
Having experienced the PC version on low-end specs, you better have the latest and greatest to play this unless the Mac publishers did some MAJOR work.

PC (that I've played it on)
WinXP
1.4Ghz Celeron
512MB RAM
64MB Geforce440

And it runs at about 15fps.

well no offense intented here, as that is a decent PC setup, but the Celeron processor is not really designed to be a high performance CPU. It is realy designed for things like word processing, internet, emailing, you know normal home use type stuff... and maybe the occasional "light" game. To try to get some comparision between how it runs on a PC and how it will run on a PowerMac, you'd probably want to use the P4 Northgate or Althon XP Barton or better. And even then it's apples to oranges, but will give you a better idea how it will run on a PowerMac than a Celeron will.

[Cadaver]

While Halo looks fun, Unreal Tournament 2004 looks really fun.

[petehammer]

Originally posted by madmacgames:
well no offense intented here, as that is a decent PC setup, but the Celeron processor is not really designed to be a high performance CPU. It is realy designed for things like word processing, internet, emailing, you know normal home use type stuff... and maybe the occasional "light" game. To try to get some comparision between how it runs on a PC and how it will run on a PowerMac, you'd probably want to use the P4 Northgate or Althon XP Barton or better. And even then it's apples to oranges, but will give you a better idea how it will run on a PowerMac than a Celeron will.

Oh, I agree that I do not have a super computer and that the Celeron isn't great. However, look around the net and you'll see people with even 3.0Ghz P4's doggin' it.

My machine can play "Call of Duty," RTCW, GTA 3, GTA: Vice City, and The Thing without a hitch. I can play RTCW at 800x600 at full detail at above 30fps. I play Halo at 640x480 at minimum detail and get around 22. Go above the minimums and it drops to 15. This was a bad port.

But again, I'll take a wait and see approach to the mac version, perhaps it'll be better optimized.

[Truepop]

That dual 1.8 is calling.... H a l o...

My 867 DP is barely there.... it's sad.

[RooneyX]

The X-Box has a 700Mhz PIII and by modern standards a GPU that is now three generations old.

[a2daj]

The Xbox is also heavily optimized to do one thing, and that's play games. It doesn't have to deal with anything else so games can take much better advantage of the hardware capabilities (like any other console).

But keep in mind that Mac Halo uses OpenGL and the PC version uses Direct3D. Who knows, maybe Westlake has been able to do a better job with OpenGL. If you're hesitant, wait for the demo. A G5 will definitely play Halo better. The high detail graphic stuff requires a fast CPU and lots of bandwidth as well as pixel and vertex shader support. Currently on the Mac side of things, only the Radeon 9600 and 9800 can do that. The PS and VS stuff will require a lot of bandwidth. That's where the fast system bus on G5s will come in handy. Phil Sulak, one of the 3 programmers working on the Mac version mentioned that even a Quicksilver with a Radeon 9800 Pro will be much better of playing the game without the PS and VS stuff on since it only has a 133 MHz bus

[hart]

will dual processors make a difference in Halo? Forgive me if this is an idiot question, I'm just not sure when and where dual processors come into play.

[a2daj]

Halo doesn't have SMP support, so dual procs won't help much other than maybe offloading sound processing to the other proc. The Halo engine doesn't support SMP and support isn't something that could easily be added in. Even if support was added, there's no guarantee that it would help performance.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by a2daj:
The Xbox is also heavily optimized to do one thing, and that's play games. It doesn't have to deal with anything else so games can take much better advantage of the hardware capabilities (like any other console).

That's a crock of ****...the Xbox uses stock PC parts (well...with slight modifications).

Let's face it...Halo PC port has some serious problems.

[OwlBoy]

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
That's a crock of ****...the Xbox uses stock PC parts (well...with slight modifications).

Let's face it...Halo PC port has some serious problems.

Well, I think we can agree it has problems, but that is PART of the source of problems...

a console don't have the overhead that a computer with an operating system, has.

They can make it work with that ONE graphics card, that ONE processor, and that ONE Operating System....

-Owl

[Sarc]

Originally posted by OwlBoy:

They can make it work with that ONE graphics card, that ONE processor, and that ONE Operating System....

-Owl

it's Microsoft, remember ?

[dangermouse_197]

Not sure if it will run on my G4 800MHz iBook but I can say that, unless it runs a lot better than the equivalent PC version, you will need a fine system to have it running properly.

I run it on my PC with 2.66 P4, 1024MB RAM and Radeon 9700 Pro. Averages around the 50 - 60fps mark.....

[MindFad]

One of the most pixel shader-intensive games of this generation, and people are wondering why it doesn't run as well as others?

[petehammer]

Originally posted by MindFad:
One of the most pixel shader-intensive games of this generation, and people are wondering why it doesn't run as well as others?

Have you played it? And played it side-to-side with Unreal or RtCW? It doesn't look any better and yet runs much, much worse. I really love Halo, but can't claim that (even on the Xbox) it looks better than some newer games.

[MindFad]

Yes, I've played it, and the games you mentioned. You might not think it looks better�everyone has their own opinion on a particular art style when it comes to games�but that doesn't mean there isn't a whole lot more going on in Halo. Everything being bump mapped alone is one of the reasons it does not run nearly as well as the games you mentioned�those games don't have bump mapping at all, I believe. Look at Halo as a DOOM III without the extra geometry and stencil lighting. You thought Halo ran like ass? Wait till D3.

[OwlBoy]

Originally posted by MindFad:
You thought Halo ran like ass? Wait till D3.

Exactly

-Owl

[a2daj]

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
That's a crock of ****...the Xbox uses stock PC parts (well...with slight modifications).

Let's face it...Halo PC port has some serious problems.

You don't know what you're arguing about. Yes, it uses off the shelf chips but the design is still highly optimized and the software is too. There's no overhead of a bloated OS to slow things down. Everything is geared to play games.

[petehammer]

Originally posted by MindFad:
Yes, I've played it, and the games you mentioned. You might not think it looks better�everyone has their own opinion on a particular art style when it comes to games�

True.

but that doesn't mean there isn't a whole lot more going on in Halo. Everything being bump mapped alone is one of the reasons it does not run nearly as well as the games you mentioned�those games don't have bump mapping at all, I believe.

Have you played it on the PC? Honestly, it doesn't look all that great to me (and yes, I've played it on a real gamers PC as well). The bumpmapping is not as "wow" as it was years ago on the Xbox and it doesn't seem like its graphics requirements are any more special than some of the other games I've mentioned.

You thought Halo ran like ass? Wait till D3.

Yes, but for a game that was unveiled (for mac) in 1999, then shipped for Xbox, what, 2 years ago (at least), you might expect better.

I don't know, I guess I expect a (2-3) year old game to run better than a brand new release. Call me crazy.

It's a bad port, for whatever reason.

[a2daj]

Since the entire Halo engine and even gameplay focus was essentially rewritten after MWNY 99 and included more stuff than the scripted events that occurred in the demo, I'm not surprised it's more demanding. Good physics and AI require CPU power, and the shader support requires lots of bandwidth. Good physics was always going to be part of the game, but because of the focus of the single player aspect the AI needs were also changed. The whole argument that Halo ran fine in 99 doesn't hold up. That was a different game, and mostly a scripted tech demo.

[petehammer]

Originally posted by a2daj:
Since the entire Halo engine and even gameplay focus was essentially rewritten after MWNY 99 and included more stuff than the scripted events that occurred in the demo, I'm not surprised it's more demanding. Good physics and AI require CPU power, and the shader support requires lots of bandwidth. Good physics was always going to be part of the game, but because of the focus of the single player aspect the AI needs were also changed. The whole argument that Halo ran fine in 99 doesn't hold up. That was a different game, and mostly a scripted tech demo.

That wasn't really my argument. My argument is it ran fine on the Xbox (in 2000-2001?). And before people get into the "but the Xbox is soley designed to play games"- what about other ports? Why do they run so much better on lower- and high-end PC systems? The XBox has a 733 processor- when you account for a PC transition what kind of shift do you need to make? 500mhz? 1ghz?

Many games are ported between PC and consoles (both ways) successfully. Why is Halo some magical exception?

I love Halo. I just don't think it's somehow more demanding than many other brand new games out there.

Halo is a crappy port (for PC) of a great game. If you don't believe this, honestly take a look around PC gaming message boards: there are a LOT of unhappy folks.

[MindFad]

Originally posted by petehammer:
Yes, but for a game that was unveiled (for mac) in 1999, then shipped for Xbox, what, 2 years ago (at least), you might expect better.

I don't know, I guess I expect a (2-3) year old game to run better than a brand new release. Call me crazy.

It's a bad port, for whatever reason.

"Demoed" on the mac all right. A bunch off low-quality models with crappy textures running around. It certainly wasn't the game the game in turned into on the Xbox. Considering the technical aspects of the game, I don't see how it's a bad port, really. Meh. I'm more psyched for DOOM 3, anyhow.

[Rev-O]

Console games benefit greatly from the lack of resolution on a TV. Big difference putting nice looking graphics and textures on a 23" TV... (Oh Sweet Jesus! My Two year old just walked up and handed me my cup of warm coffee ACROSS THE KEYBOARD OF MY iBOOK! Thank god nothing spilled... panic attack! Anyways, back to the post)... as opposed to a 23" high def cinema display. TV has much lower resolution, lower color fidelity, etc.

So in some regards, you can take a P3 running at 777MHz (or whatever) geeked for graphics and, sure, it's way inferior. But it can get away with it 'cuz it's on a way inferior display. S'why computer games have such higher demands than console games.

"I'm Rev-O, and I'm an XBox owner..."
"Hi, Rev-O"
"I haven't touched my XBox since I got my G5!"
<applause>

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by MindFad:
"Demoed" on the mac all right. A bunch off low-quality models with crappy textures running around. It certainly wasn't the game the game in turned into on the Xbox. Considering the technical aspects of the game, I don't see how it's a bad port, really. Meh. I'm more psyched for DOOM 3, anyhow.

They weren't that low quality. Have you looked at the video lately?

[MindFad]

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
They weren't that low quality. Have you looked at the video lately?

Couple weeks ago maybe? I doubt they were the same quality that made it into the Xbox version�and they definitely weren't bump-mapped. And it was just an OpenGL demo, not the game, which was mostly my point. Textured models running around isn't a game.

Rev-O makes another good point about resolutions. Halo isn't an "old" game in a technical sense. It may lack the geometry of some of today's games, but it's got effects galore, and they certainly make up for whatever it lacks geometrically. Bah, just play the damn thing, people.

[pelorus]

Originally posted by petehammer:
My machine can play "Call of Duty," RTCW, GTA 3, GTA: Vice City, and The Thing without a hitch. I can play RTCW at 800x600 at full detail at above 30fps. I play Halo at 640x480 at minimum detail and get around 22. Go above the minimums and it drops to 15. This was a bad port.

Um, you have a 1.42 GHz Celeron (a slower and more cache limited version of the P4) and a GeForce440 (which is a MX). Your card is essentially minimum specification and doesn't support DirectX9 technology whih is what is used in Halo.

The other games? CoD? RTCW? All DirectX8 or lower.

This isn't a poor port - just that it, like Mac OS X, isn't designed for yesterday's machines.

Some people with fast processors are ragging Halo but then these people are used to getting frame rates in the hundreds in Quake 3. This isn't Quake 3.

[pelorus]

Originally posted by petehammer:
Have you played it? And played it side-to-side with Unreal or RtCW? It doesn't look any better and yet runs much, much worse. I really love Halo, but can't claim that (even on the Xbox) it looks better than some newer games.

On your machine it would look the same or worse because your GFX card is several generations old (it's GeForce 2 based).

Upgrade!

[Tulkas]

Will my brand new eMac be able to run it at all? Its got a radeon 7500 w/32mb and 640mb ram.

I really want to play this game!

[petehammer]

Originally posted by pelorus:
Um, you have a 1.42 GHz Celeron (a slower and more cache limited version of the P4) and a GeForce440 (which is a MX). Your card is essentially minimum specification and doesn't support DirectX9 technology whih is what is used in Halo.

Oh, my bad, I take it back

Again, as I've said before, it's not a new system. In fact, it's lower-end now. But here is Microsoft's page on Halo

Minimum System Requirements:

Operating System: Microsoft Windows 98, Microsoft Windows Second Edition, Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me), Microsoft Windows 2000, or Microsoft Windows XP.

Win XP

Computer/Processor: 733 megahertz (MHz) processor.

1.4 MHz

DirectX: DirectX� 9.0 or later. (DirectX 9.0b is installed by Halo.)

Yup, installed.

Memory: 128 megabytes (MB) of RAM.

512MB.

Hard Disk: 1.2 gigabytes (GB) of free hard disk space.

About 20GBs.

Video card: 32 MB or 3D Transform and Lighting capable.

64MB.

Can you help me out as to where it says my setup is subpar per Microsoft's specs?

[Kurlon]

I've observed Halo on both a modest box (P3 1ghzish) and a monster, P4 3.06ghz. Based on that testing, and a range of video cards, I've come to the conclusion that Halo is primarily limited by your video card if you're at or above the min cpu specs. The 3.06ghz box would stutter just as hard as the P3 in the same places when the video card was the same.

Halo is a pixel and vertex shader monster. It eats DX 8 class hardware for lunch.

[pelorus]

Originally posted by petehammer:
But here is Microsoft's page on Halo

Minimum System Requirements:
<snip>
Can you help me out as to where it says my setup is subpar per Microsoft's specs?

Min is 733MHz. You have a 1.4 GHz Celeron. Some might debate you're skirting the minimum there.

You run XP. This is the most resource hungry of the MS OSen.

You have 512 MB of RAM - you don't mentions what speed but 512 is a good minimum to have because you're starting to reduce reliance on swap.

20 Gb of hard disk space? Won't make one difference to the game performance.

64 MB graphics? Just because you have 64 MB it doesn't mean you can use it. Your card is a slower card which essentially means they threw a bit of extra RAM on it to make you buy it. It might as well be a 32 or 16 MB because in modern games it'd take too long to fill the 64 MB texture buffer so most of it is wasted.

So, you think that a game should be "excellent" just because you exceed some of the MINIMUM specifications? Here's a hint - minimum specs ARE for subpar machines. What framerate should you expect for a minimum spec machine? This is like someone bringing along a Bondi iMac and bitching that Quake 3 won't run. It's the same issue.

DirectX9 is needed to get the best out of the game. Your graphics card does not support DirectX9 specific features (pixel and vertex shaders) and as we know your card is essentially at the bottom of the pile when it comes to graphics hardware.

Gah - just upgrade your graphics card...it's a PC for the love of god. Halo needs tomorrow's hardware - there's only 2 cards that support all of its features at the moment (Radeon 9600 and Radeon 9800) so it's not surprising that people with minimum spec cards are getting minimal performance.

[MindFad]

Originally posted by Kurlon:
Halo is a pixel and vertex shader monster. It eats DX 8 class hardware for lunch.

Repeat after him!

[TheMosco]

On my Athlon 3200+ w/Radeon 9600 Pro using pixel shader version 2 at 1024x768 i get about 27 frames per second in the time demo. Hopefully the mac version will run better.

[MindFad]

Didn't the developers who ported it say that the time demo was for worst case framerates? It stresses your graphics card to the max, and it's not a marker for what the game runs like in general?

[petehammer]

Originally posted by TheMosco:
On my Athlon 3200+ w/Radeon 9600 Pro using pixel shader version 2 at 1024x768 i get about 27 frames per second in the time demo. Hopefully the mac version will run better.

Min is 733MHz. You have an Athlon 3200+. Some might debate you're skirting the minimum there.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by Kurlon:

Halo is a pixel and vertex shader monster. It eats DX 8 class hardware for lunch.

The Xbox is a DX 8 class machine. Yet it runs Halo rather smoothly.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by petehammer:
Min is 733MHz. You have an Athlon 3200+. Some might debate you're skirting the minimum there.

LOL.

[TheMosco]

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
LOL.

haha, that was a good one.



btw, those results were from the beta for the oc, the later beta so i am not sure how much things changed but i am guess not much.

And about the time demo. Yeah, the time demo is pretty graphic intensive and might not be the best benchmark for performance but it gives other people a chance to compare their machines.

[TheMosco]

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
The Xbox is a DX 8 class machine. Yet it runs Halo rather smoothly.

but i am pretty sure it doesn't run DX 9 pixel version 2 on the xbox though. they re-wrote every shader for the pc version to take advantage of high power hardware. Its not a poor port, its just a demanding game when you update the shaders and graphics and don't run it locked at 30 fps at a tv's resolution.

[MindFad]

TVs are not locked at 30FPS. Ahem. Not to incite another framerate argument of office chair framerate experts.

[TheMosco]

Originally posted by MindFad:
TVs are not locked at 30FPS. Ahem. Not to incite another framerate argument of office chair framerate experts.

I didn't say tvs were locked at 30fps, i said the halo on the xbox was, or atleast thats what i meant to say.