Halo 2 patch/update
 

as most of you know the 480p flaw in a lot of hdtv sets created a lot of unhappy customers. bungie has now released a patch supposedly correcting that issue as well as unlocking a "foundation" map. anyhow, I've not yet logged on personally so I don't know but here's the link anyhow.

http://www.bungie.net/News/TopStory....y=autoupdateh2

New map? Already?

sounds like it was a map that was there but had to be unlocked. They just decided to unlock it for everyone.

Its a decent map. Pretty fun on CTF.

Ugh. I hope patching to console games does not become the norm. :(

I'm hoping they get that ATV into an update at some point. That was one vehicle I was always looking forward to playing with during the last 2 years of Halo 2 coverage. It would be a nice in between to balance out the fact you can't fire while on the Warthog and I could see it being a very nice addition to Coagulation.

Halo 2 on Xbox = Microsoft game on Microsoft console. Of course it was going to need to be patched!

The funny thing now is that people are bitching about serious lag after the patch.

patch....



it starts :(

It depends...

I think that Bungie made every effort to make sure that the game was without bugs. That is, they didn't rush Halo 2 out the door to meet a deadline, planning to patch the game later. No game will be perfect, and it is nice that the Xbox games have a mechanism in place to fix these errors as they are discovered.

I'm sure you've either experienced or heard about the elevator glitch in Metroid Prime. My copy didn't freeze up when I was playing, but it did once or twice when my brother played it. The next time I play the game, there's nothing I can do but hope I remembered to save before hopping in the elevator.

Man, this makes the matchmaking games hook up much faster. Definitely a plus.

edit: unfortunately, apparently, some people are getting into real laggy games after the update. I haven't really noticed it myself, but some I have played with mentioned it. Also, people are whining over at the bungie.net forums regarding the issue.

Yeah, load times are 100% better. But for the first time I had a couple of lag problems tonight. Never had a prob. before.

The lag last night was killing me...literally. I can't stand for opponents to disappear and then reappear right behind me with a sword. Up until yesterday, I had experienced no lag at all, so this kind of blows. I hope they manage to get this straightened out. I much prefer longer load times if it means no lag.

:up: :up: for Bungie taking care of these problems so quickly.

Wow, something being done quickly with Bengie? ;)

Although I agree....I have to add:

:down::down: For Bungie leaving out those of us who do not have Live or access to their other solutions (borrow a friends account, use the trial sub-of no use when you don't have broadband access..etc..).

I don't buy that they can't do this with a disc.

I just want the 480p fix so I can see the whole game on my TV...

I was wondering why there was lag last night :(, I thought it was my connection. Sucks to be shooting at ghosts.

so this patch definitely fixes the 480p glitch?

yes

But the glitch isn't noticeable on regular 4:3 TVs??

I installed the patch a few hours ago. This is my first time to get online with Halo 2, so I can't compare before and after, but right now the lag is horrible. It was almost completely unplayable.

Odd. I haven't had any lag before or since the auto-update. I wonder whether the two are really connected or just a coincidence.

As for the idea of patching console games, I say bring it on. I'd much prefer things be fixed than be stuck with bugs. As others have said, I have faith Bungie made every effort to ship the game bug free and for the most part, they did. Some things are impossible to catch for the bug testers. They just can't simulate 500,000 gamers all trying to play Halo 2 at the same time. Or test the game on every possible model of widescreen and 4:3 television. It's inevitable that some bugs will always slip through on every game that's released. I'd rather they have the ability to fix those. After all, patching is ridiculously easy on consoles as it's completely automatic. You push one button and it's done! You can't say that about many PC games...

I played almost all day today and only had lag in maybe 2 games. Very annoying when it happened, but was very rare. I assumed it was someon'e connection who was in the game. Joining games is about 10x faster now with the update. :up:

Some games would start quickly before but some would take 5-6 minutes, which is rediculous. Now they are very fast.

You all suck. I am still travelling and wont get to play until the 21

:(

Has anyone had a controlled comparsion of a party game with the same group before and after. This way we would know if the lag is from the patch. I cant see how it would be though?

I don't either, and I believe the reason for it is to keep modded Xboxes from getting the update.

maybe the lag is being caused by all the people who are downloading the patch. perhaps after a few days or weeks, everyone will have downloaded the patch & lag will be less of a problem.

I thought that too, but I'm assuming that once the matchmaking is complete, we're off of bungies servers.

I think that they stopped looking for the best connection between players, and just matched us up with people who are decently connected.

I thought they could just switch the mod off and on. in other words just shut the mod off and update and play online etc then switch it back on when they wanted it. Of course they'd have to have a retail Halo 2 disc in so maybe borrow from a friend or rent it. I dunno though.

Actually, now they are checking the hard drive to see if it is the same one that was originally installed.

In any case, I think they realize that the mod community will find a way to make this update available to modded Xboxes; they just want to make it more difficult for the average user.

Here's your official answer direct from Bungie about why the patch initially caused some lag but should be back to normal soon:

From Bungie.net Weekly What's Update

Chris Butcher on the AutoUpdate...


Game Hydra writes: The patch made the matchmaking faster, one of the positives right? Wrong... This made the game lag... horribly, worse than UC or Rainbow 3 (the laggest of them all). It felt like the server was run on 28.8k, come on, I really couldn't care waiting an extra 20 secs for the matchmaking, but give me my lag free Halo back!!!

We were a little surprised when we saw all of the complaints about the patch causing lag in games since we didn’t change any code that would impact connectivity. A little detective work from our test team and engineers finally hit upon the cause of the problem. Halo 2’s knowledge of who is a good host is not solely dependent on connection speed. A host actually builds a record for himself over time so that the best hosts end up being more likely hosts in the future. We need to do this because there is no reliable way to detect how fast your Internet connection really is, other than just hosting games and recording how good the experience was for the other players in the game. This record was reset by the autoupdate, so immediately after applying the patch host elections were being made based on connection speed alone because there was no history available. This problem will disappear within a few days as the best hosts start to build up their records again. It’s interesting to note how big a positive impact this little historical record of host quality has had, as this is something you can only take advantage of if the game is able to select the best host automatically. If you also make note of how bad a little bit of lag can make the online experience you’ll begin to better understand our motivations for continuing to support and refine our existing matchmaking system.


So, there you go. Mystery solved...

That's actually a cool way of handling the multiplay. All this time I thought Bungie was hosting these games, but it just blindly uses the players.

To all the complainers about patches for console games. Would you rather see a game released with umteen number of bugs and glitches that ruin the experience and never get corrected. True they do have testing phases and QA, but until hundrerds of thousands of people play together, a company won't know all of the bugs the game might have. Take the 480p issue. It only got cut off on certain TVs. Not all HDTVs and not all widescreen tv's revealed this problem. So they find out and quickly update the game to correct the bug. Now people moan and complain about "patches".

We could have given them another 6 months to do more in-depth QA testing, but who wants to wait that long...seriously.

Also this game was made by the wonderful people at Bungie, not Microsoft. MS may own them, but they did not make the game..so your M$ comments do not apply here.

Hey I figure at least they are posting a patch.