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|___|___||___._||____||__|__||_____||__| |__|____||_____||________||_____|
on Gopher (inofficial)
URI Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI Halo 2 in HD: Pushing the Original Xbox to the Limit
Arrath wrote 1 day ago:
FTA: "The tag data system is designed to be as flexible and performant
as possible, and, in my opinion the inner workings are really a feat of
engineering. I could write an entire blog post about the inner workings
of the tag data system and why I think it makes the Blam engine one of
the most flexible engines ever made, but that isnât relevant to this
post."
I would love to read this article if it ever gets written.
tiptup300 wrote 1 day ago:
me too I was into halo 2 modding when I was young and knew very
little programming at all.
the concepts there blew my mind, almost, I was too green to follow
how it worked even to start. it was so dynamic I fundamentally
didn't understand how something could be like that.
how could a player position be within the same context as a weapon
that had configurations and then effects themselves were in that same
list.
a lot of the stuff I'm interested in very much circles around these
same concepts.
tehsauce wrote 1 day ago:
If you have written something like this somewhere, or know someone
that has, please share!
randomopining wrote 1 day ago:
Why would you waste your time doing this?
Wowfunhappy wrote 2 days ago:
Other than "hacker spirit" (which is completely legitimate), is there a
reason you'd want to play Halo 2 this wayâgoing through the effort of
modding your console to add memory and overclock the gpuâinstead of
playing the PC version?
kjkjadksj wrote 1 day ago:
Its just hacker spirit. You can play halo 2 right now in online
lobbies or the campaign with either the original graphics or
remastered hd graphics from 343.
IntelMiner wrote 2 days ago:
The PC Port of Halo 2 was and is notoriously bad. Even worse than
what Gearbox did to Halo 1
There's tons of videos that go into various levels of detail on its
faults
URI [1]: https://youtu.be/03K2Uz3s1hg?si=zaFO1XdzMcFvI1F6
pipes wrote 2 days ago:
Did the later remastered collections have these problems? (Genuine
question, I'd like to know best options for playing halo games)
Edit , just started the video, I think it goes into this
IntelMiner wrote 1 day ago:
I can only speak to my own (recorded) experiences. But it
was...miserable at launch
URI [1]: https://youtu.be/TttY0ZpwFw8
tiptup300 wrote 2 days ago:
remastered collection was based off those ports.
The mcc collection never felt right to me in terms of game feel.
WorldMaker wrote 1 day ago:
MCC was allegedly an entirely fresh port by 343 without using
either of the previously deficient PC ports. It is said the
port/rewrite was a big part of 343 getting familiar enough with
the engine(s), documenting what Bungie hadn't entirely
documented and 343 hadn't pulled in as headcount in the messy
divorce, and making the engine their own in the path to
building Halo 5. In my experience that seems to track in that a
lot of the "feel" changes from the original Xbox versions seem
to me to align with how Halo 5 feels to me.
ycombinatrix wrote 1 day ago:
i'm pretty sure MCC (on both console & PC) includes bugs from
a previous PC port
IntelMiner wrote 1 day ago:
This is largely incorrect
In order to meet the 2014 launch deadline, the MCC was carved
up game-by-game and handed off to different studios for each
incarnation.
Halo 2 in particular was handled by the "less than stellar"
Saber Interactive
aaronmdjones wrote 2 days ago:
I've played lots of Halo 2 as part of the Master Chief Collection
on Steam. It's a lot better than the box-release version. I
couldn't even play Halo 2 standalone on PC without forcing vsync
on via the Nvidia Control Panel, which is an option the game does
not give you, or it misinterprets and mistimes all of its control
inputs and you can't aim worth a damn.
gloryjulio wrote 2 days ago:
It's still 30fps. So that's an automatic no for me
bluescrn wrote 1 day ago:
Modern 4K games have almost 150x the pixels per frame of Space
Invaders.
And the framerate has increased by... erm, no, decreased by 50%, in
many cases.
Yet the push for 8K resolution, seems to be be getting started,
with PS5 Pro rumors. The imbalance between the push for spatial
resolution and 'temporal resolution' is quite ridiculous. But
likely mostly about selling TVs.
Wowfunhappy wrote 1 day ago:
> But likely mostly about selling TVs.
I think it's because frame rate doesn't show up in screenshots,
or even trailers in many cases since 30 fps or below is still
standard for video.
qwerty456127 wrote 2 days ago:
Whenever an old device is supposed to be unsuitable for doing
something it usually feels great to use it for just that, proving
it's well capable or even better.
This probably is a psychological disorder (usually mild and fun to
have though) - an opposite counterpart of obsession with being among
the first to buy the newest model of the most popular gadget. Both
give a sense of superiority :-)
Narishma wrote 1 day ago:
It's not really the old device anymore when you have to upgrade
memory, CPU and GPU.
ycombinatrix wrote 1 day ago:
console of theseus
qwerty456127 wrote 1 day ago:
Not of Sisyphus hopefully :-)
qwerty456127 wrote 1 day ago:
This is subjective. I personally always loved upgrading the hell
out of old PC (install the maximum possible memory and CPU after
patching the BIOS and soldering the socket, add a SATA card to a
computer which only had IDE etc).
Wowfunhappy wrote 1 day ago:
I feel like there's something different between doing this to a
PC, which is in some sense designed to be upgraded, and doing
this to a game console.
jimmywetnips wrote 2 days ago:
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say no
Agingcoder wrote 2 days ago:
Thatâs pretty sophisticated - kudos to the author. I love this.
Lammy wrote 2 days ago:
> I often get comments saying â[720x480]âs not not a 16:9
resolutionâ or âthatâs not real 480pâ, but â480pâ
encapsulates a range of resolutions and aspect ratios and 720Ã480 is
the resolution the Xbox considers to be 480p (so take it up with
Microsoft, not meâ¦).
Take it up with some ITU dudes in the 1970s actually: [1] âThe
February 1980 note further suggested that the number of samples per
active line period should be greater than 715.5 to accommodate all of
the European standards active line periods. While the number of pixels
per active line equal to 720 samples per line was not suggested until
the next note, (720 is the number found in Rec. 601 and SMPTE 125), 720
is the first value that âworksâ. 716 is the first number greater
than 715.5 that is divisible by 4 (716 = 4 x 179), but does not lend
itself to standards conversion between 525-line component and composite
colour systems or provide sufficiently small pixel groupings to
facilitate special effects. Arguments in support of 720 were provided
in additional notes prior to IBC in September 1980.
[â¦]
As noted above, Rec. 601 provided 720 samples per active line for the
luminance channel and 360 samples for each of the colour-difference
signals.
When the ITU defined HDTV, they stipulated: âthe horizontal
resolution for HDTV as being twice that of conventional television
systemsâ described in Rec. 601 and a picture aspect ratio of 16:9. A
16:9 picture ratio requires one-third more pixels than a 4:3 picture
ratio. Starting with 720, doubling the resolution to 1440 and adjusting
the count for a 16:9 aspect ratio leads to the 1920 sample per active
line defined as the basis for HDTV [9].
Accommodating the Hollywood and computer communitiesâ request for
âsquare-pixelsâ, meant that the number of lines should be 1920 x
(9/16) = 1080.
Progressive scan systems at 1280 pixels per line and 720 lines per
frame are also a member of the â720-pixelâ family. 720 pixels x 4/3
(resolution improvement) x 4/3 (16:9 aspect ratio adjustment) = 1280.
Accommodating the Hollywood and computer communitiesâ request for
âsquare-pixelsâ, meant that the number of lines should be 1280 x
(9/16) = 720.
Therefore, most digital television systems, including digital video
tape systems and DVD recordings are derived from the 4:2:2 basic
standard format. The 720 pixel-per-active-line structure became the
basis of a family of structures (the 720-pixel family) that was adopted
for MPEG-based systems including both conventional television and HDTV
systems.â
URI [1]: https://tech.ebu.ch/docs/techreview/trev_304-rec601_wood.pdf
bestham wrote 2 days ago:
I thought DVD only supported 4:3 anamorphic video with non square
pixels for the correct playback aspect ratio.
jasomill wrote 2 days ago:
Correct: none of DVD-Video's supported resolutions[1] have square
pixels at either of its two supported aspect ratios (16:9 and 4:3).
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Video#Video_data
Lammy wrote 2 days ago:
It's true that 4:3 is also anamorphic on DVD since the 720Ã480
MPEG transport is a 3:2 resolution. I think it's a pretty elegant
compromise halfway between 4:3 and 16:9 so both can look equally
decent. A lot of DVD video has a program area of 704Ã480, and most
DVD rippers don't differentiate so you wind up with 8px pillarbars
and very slightly wrong dimensions: [1] DVD-sourced media can look
great on modern displays if youâ¦
â Encode at 720Ã540 slash 960Ã540 to avoid throwing away that
extra horizontal detail, as most encoders do by crunching 4:3 video
down to 640 (with pillarbars lol) Ã 480. Also to take advantage of
integer-scaling to 1080/2160/etc which is especially beneficial on
cheap TVs with crappy scalers.
â Deinterlace to double-FPS (60000/1001 fields-per-second for
color NTSC) to avoid throwing away the actual benefit of
interlacing in that sweet sweet motion detail. Most rippers crunch
it down to 30FPS like Handbrake leads people to do.
â Convert the video to HD-standard color primitives, again to
avoid cheap displays' poor treatment of SD colorspace.
Chroma-subsampled video is already a little washed out by design
and this can compound to make it look even worse.
URI [1]: https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/269644-DV-to-704x480-o...
seanf wrote 2 days ago:
Link to the video from the bottom of the article: [1] The video
includes side-by-side comparison between the original upscaled 480p and
720p. Around 7:00 you hear about what it takes to get 720p and maintain
around 30fps gameplay. Not only a great article, but also a great video
to summarize the changes needed get the higher resolution.
URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_nk21389u8
bearjaws wrote 2 days ago:
1. Resolders RAM to upgrade from 64mb to 128mb of vram
2. Solders new CPU onto console only to discover its gpu bottle necked
3. Enables OCing the GPU on the original Xbox, only to run into memory
bandwidth limits
4. Reverse engineers Halo 2 source code to set scaling to 720p or 1080p
(output is interlaced to 1080i)
5. Speeds up the hard drive to faster load in textures
My god this man is more dedicated to Halo 2 than Bungie is to any of
their IP today.
chrisfosterelli wrote 2 days ago:
Yeah this is an incredible engineering feat, but I don't think I
could do it knowing I could just go out and spend $500 on an xbox
series X to play the remastered version in 120fps at 4k instead. I
admire this level of dedication.
AlfredBarnes wrote 2 days ago:
Nostalgia runs hard! So many hours spent in that game. I'm happy
someone is also as in enamored with the magic as I am!
strictnein wrote 2 days ago:
> My god this man is more dedicated to Halo 2 than Bungie is to any
of their IP today
Bungie isn't involved with Halo at all any more. Microsoft owns the
IP and it's developed by 343 Industries.
Bungie has Destiny/Destiny 2 now and the upcoming Marathon extraction
shooter.
bearjaws wrote 2 days ago:
As a Destiny player I am more than aware they don't own Halo.
They are also not passionate about Destiny 2 and it shows.
MisterBastahrd wrote 2 days ago:
Most D2 players flat out don't trust Bungie anymore. Not only have
they been mailing in their seasonal content for years now, but
their last campaign was abysmal. Taking an extra 6 months on
development won't change things. I've got a group of 12 friends who
all have been playing since alpha. One has purchased the next
expansion, and nobody else is even considering it. I'm relieved to
finally be done with it, personally.
mrguyorama wrote 2 days ago:
As someone who watched their friend play through Destiny 1 for
hundreds of hours, I don't know what anyone was expecting? That
game clearly did not respect it's players and their time or
money, yet still made insanely good profits, so why would they do
anything different?
Remember how much they paid Peter Dinklage for his voice acting,
and his character sounded absolutely phoned in, and lazy, to the
point that they eventually had to replace it with much better
voice acting by someone else who was cheaper
Uvix wrote 2 days ago:
It was about availability for future recordings, not price. If
cost was a concern they wouldn't have had Nolan North rerecord
all of Dinklage's existing dialogue, just replace him going
forward.
orliesaurus wrote 2 days ago:
that's a lot of work... wow - interesting that your friend "doom" didnt
want to reveal themselves
867-5309 wrote 2 days ago:
Doom9 sprung to mind
nxobject wrote 2 days ago:
Not that it's our place to take speculation seriously, or speculate
at all â but I _plausibly_ imagine working in an industry where I'd
think twice before connecting my real-world identity to XBox
reverse-engineering, just to be on the safe side.
echelon_musk wrote 2 days ago:
It's almost certainly grimdoomer.
landr0id wrote 2 days ago:
Grimdoomer wrote the article but doom is a different person -- and
he's not exactly anonymous. I'm not sure what the other commentator
was implying.
amatecha wrote 2 days ago:
grimdoomer is the person who wrote the article
dako2117 wrote 2 days ago:
yes
URI [1]: https://x.com/grimdoomer/status/1780260482718573055?s=61&t...
selectodude wrote 2 days ago:
This is going to come off as overly cynical - it's a very cool project.
But are you really pushing the original Xbox to the limit when you
replace and overclock the CPU, increase RAM, add solid state storage,
and overclock the GPU?
It's not really an Xbox at that point.
planede wrote 2 days ago:
I would say if it still runs other unmodified xbox games natively
then it's an xbox (and possibly more).
VS1999 wrote 2 days ago:
What's wrong with overclocking the CPU and GPU? People overclock the
CPU and GPU of their nintendo switch and it doesn't become another
console. I have CFW to overclock the 3DS.
landr0id wrote 2 days ago:
You may have missed this (from the GitHub repo):
>You do not need a CPU upgraded console to use this patch and having
one does not provide any additional performance gains that I've been
able to measure during testing.
And this:
>This provided a 10% increase in transfer speeds for consoles running
the stock IDE cable and up to a 300% increase (theoretically, the
actual transfer speeds depend greatly on the size of data being
transferred) for consoles with an upgraded IDE cable.
And this (again from the GitHub repo):
>If your console has 128MB of RAM this patch will utilize the extra
RAM available which will enable use of 720p and 1080i video modes as
well as increase the size of in-memory caches for textures and
geometry. The size increase for the texture and geometry caches will
significantly reduce pop-in issues to the point of being almost
non-existent.
For just 480p you can overclock the GPU on a stock console and use a
different IDE cable. I think the remark about the SSD was
unintentionally misleading -- perhaps he did mean the combo of 80pin
+ SSD though.
It does not require an overclocked CPU (he states that the CPU was
not the bottleneck), and the increased RAM is only required if you
want resolutions of 720p or higher.
I relayed the feedback though, he might update the blog post to make
these points more explicit.
bigstrat2003 wrote 2 days ago:
Yeah, that was my thought as well. They aren't "pushing the original
Xbox to the limit", they are pushing custom hardware to the limit.
The title is super misleading.
mrguyorama wrote 2 days ago:
Even worse, it's a commodity desktop CPU! They aren't running "Halo
2" on an "Xbox" in HD, they are running a heavily modified build of
Halo 2 on a somewhat custom PC.
We had that already, it's called "Halo 2 for Windows Vista!", and
now we have MCC.
Granted, Halo 2 on Vista had way higher hardware requirements to
run at 30fps in 720p I think, though most of that was just Vista
overhead.
Actually it's worse again, they modified the Xbox kernel too!
This is really impressive work but it's also way more niche than
the title wants you to believe.
iforgotpassword wrote 2 days ago:
Err what? The original CPU is a commodity desktop one as well, I
don't see how the CPU swap makes this more of a PC.
shocks wrote 2 days ago:
As per the article, the modded CPU isnât required.
xyst wrote 2 days ago:
Ship of Theseus problem, lol
xen2xen1 wrote 2 days ago:
Getting the most out of existing hardware is a pursuit in itself. See
the retro computer scene. Car "nodding" is similar to that. Some
want a factory perfect Corvette. Some want a model A with a engine 50
years newer. Taking something known and familiar and twisting it to
your will is awesome.
Aurornis wrote 2 days ago:
> But are you really pushing the original Xbox to the limit
This is in the context of XBox modding, where âoriginal Xboxâ
should be interpreted to mean ânot an XBox 360â. Halo 2 can run
at higher resolutions on a 360, so clarifying that this was a modding
project on the original Xbox is helpful.
You have to read it in context. Itâs not literally about an
unmodded Xbox, itâs a modding project and the target for the mods
was an original Xbox.
landr0id wrote 2 days ago:
>Halo 2 can run at higher resolutions on a 360, so clarifying that
this was a modding project on the original Xbox is helpful.
This isn't true. It renders exactly the same as it does on the Xbox
360 but the scaler chip handles the higher resolutions.
landr0id wrote 2 days ago:
oops, typo that I can no longer edit: it rendres the same as it
does on the original Xbox*
Ericson2314 wrote 2 days ago:
I think using the same motherboard counts for something
settsu wrote 2 days ago:
Whether it's an Xbox is arguable, but for the purposes of the topic
and the post, you're mostly arguing semantics.
If one were to "push a Honda Civic to the limits" with an array of
engine and suspension modifications, for purposes of discussion
you're going to sound like you're just splitting hairs by asking "Is
it really still a Civic, tho??", even if you could be technically
correct.
The author has the right to title their content as they desire and
you can just rewrite it as "Modding the OG Xbox to within an inch of
its life" in your head...
Sardtok wrote 2 days ago:
If the only original parts of the car, are the chassis, I would say
it's not really a Honda Civic anymore.
MadnessASAP wrote 2 days ago:
I'm going to rely on ol' Thseuses ship here and say that as long
as you started with a Honda Civic, you get to call it a Honda
Civic.
colesantiago wrote 2 days ago:
Is there any reason why there are comments are in there, it would be
nice if the functions were self documenting.
Other than the comments being distracting making the code hard to read,
this is a great deep dive blog post which is very technically
impressive.
iBotPeaches wrote 2 days ago:
I do really wish the era of Xbox & Halo 2 modding returned in modern
times. I owe that point in time to my career choice and still believe
Halo 2 was the most innovative online game of all time.
Just buying a simple tool to load game saves and you could have a
soft-modded Xbox in minutes. Now consoles blow e-fuses and prevent
downgrades on top of tons of other security enhancements.
Was a great read and trip back in time. Pair this with projects like
Insignia launching Halo 2 support and its a great time for classic Halo
2.
Larrikin wrote 2 days ago:
I think this ignores the fact that technology will continue to march
on and that the tinkering at the cutting edge will always allow for
fun stuff.
In the time period you talk about modding consoles and games was
hacking on the cutting edge. Before that you had the phone phreakers
and even before that you had people who were seriously into radios.
I think its already happening with the current crop of LLMs,
generative AI, and just all the various ML models that have been
developed that and another generation has already started doing the
same. Right now they are attempting to keep that locked behind
corporate doors but we already have Llama locally thanks to a leak.
Thats to say nothing of the budding AR that is also coming.
The idea of putting goggles on my head with a computer that makes up
the story, graphics and projects them onto the real world would have
sounded crazy to me when I was knocking people out of AOL chat rooms
with a concon.
giantg2 wrote 2 days ago:
"and still believe Halo 2 was the most innovative online game of all
time."
I think we can all agree it's multiplayer was better than the current
halo infinite.
wsc981 wrote 12 hours 26 min ago:
I never player Halo 2 multiplayer, but both me and my brother loved
Halo: Combat Evolved multiplayer. Was awesome back in the day (I
played it on a Mac, by brother probably on a PC).
In my opinion it was the best FPS that I played, I'd put it above
Unreal Tournament, Quake 3, Doom & Marathon.
However, at some point it seems there were many aimbots in the
game, which ruined the gameplay for me.
DonnieBurger wrote 2 days ago:
I still play Halo 2 on PC all the time, multiplayer included. There's
an active community thanks to Project Cartographer:
URI [1]: https://halo2.online/home/
MarkyC4 wrote 2 days ago:
(not to be demeaning, but) Why? Halo 2 is playable, with first
party support, via The Master Chief Collection today. They've even
kept the button combinations (BXR, RRX, etc)
AgentME wrote 2 days ago:
It's also still officially supported and popular through the Halo
Master Chief Collection which is available on Steam.
huntedsnark wrote 2 days ago:
> Halo 2 was the most innovative online game of all time
In what ways exactly? Competitive online FPSs with strong modding
communities were already more than a decade in full swing on the PC.
hombre_fatal wrote 2 days ago:
Some things Halo 2 had off the top of my head that aren't related
to gameplay:
- Matchmaking. Almost all games at the time made you manually join
lobbies, and now we take matchmaking for granted.
- Persistent party. You'd invite your friends to your party and
then start the match-making process. During the whole process you
could chat with your friends, and when the game ended, you were
still a party and could talk to each other.
- Chat. Everyone had an Xbox Live headset which came with the
service. So everyone was a participant of party chat, in-game team
chat, and even "proximity chat" with the enemy. With Halo 2's chat
systems + Xbox Live headset ubiquity, it was a highly social game.
- Split screen online. All of the above worked with playing with a
friend in split screen. Your friend could come over and you could
start Team Slayer matchmaking in split screen which was
awesomeâthe game would have to find two more teammatesâ, and
your guest could even chat. Something that could never be done on
PC really.
These dominated the old "look for and join the server" model of
past FPS and, frankly, I could never go back to that.
Gameplay wise, Halo 1 had most of the innovations that Halo 2
capitalized on but Halo 2 moved to the pure
shield-is-your-health-bar system and removed health packs. After
each battle you didn't have this scramble for a health pack just to
get ready for the next confrontation, so the pacing was better than
arena shooters imo.
Finally, Halo 2 didn't need to be the global first on each bullet
point to be innovative. But it was probably the first game to have
all these in one package. There was a lot of UX polish in setting
this standard which you can tell because most games don't reach it
even today.
huntedsnark wrote 2 days ago:
I had interpreted the parent comment to be about gameplay, but
those are all fantastic points about matchmaking and the related
QoL improvements. It absolutely is taken for granted because I
forgot Halo 2 was the first to do _all_ of that well, and in one
complete package.
amatecha wrote 2 days ago:
Don't forget the post-game carnage report, which, while first
present in Marathon, was refined and provided the best
post-multiplayer-game stats of any game I've seen, even years
later.
CYR1X wrote 2 days ago:
The telemetry bungie used to popular stats on their website is
better than pretty much any modern game today outside of like
CS2. I will caveat that by saying modern practices require you
put things behind an api with a paywall of some sort, but they
had freaking action heatmaps in 2004.
kjkjadksj wrote 1 day ago:
One thing that halo and some other games do is let you thumb
through the last matchs stats while the next map loads. Valve
games just throw you a map loading screen youâve seen a
thousand times.
amatecha wrote 2 days ago:
For real, I used to love the amount of detail they put on
bungie.net . It really is still unmatched even today, as far
as I've seen. So good <3
bombcar wrote 2 days ago:
It was not only interesting and fun to look at but also
informative- you could learn things about them maps from
them, in an era before YouTube.
babypuncher wrote 2 days ago:
A lot of people lament the death of community run dedicated
servers, but I'm with you here. I don't miss trying to find a
good deathmatch UT04 server that wasn't either super high ping,
loaded to the hilt with obnoxious mods, or stuck running Rankin
24/7, only to give up after 40 minutes.
Narishma wrote 1 day ago:
At least then you could run your own server with whatever
settings you wanted. Now instead you are left with unplayable
games because the developer or publisher decided to shut down
the servers.
kjkjadksj wrote 1 day ago:
Games like tf2 make parsing community servers pretty easy. You
can do things like set ping cut offs, only look for nonempty
and not full servers, look for certain numbers of people
playing, certain maps or gametypes, and include or exclude
keywords like certain modded gametypes.
panopticon wrote 2 days ago:
Oh wow, I had totally forgotten about server hunting.
I kept a list of "good" servers (based on ping, map rotation,
who played there, mods, etc), but when they were empty finding
somewhere else was a complete pain.
I miss the camaraderie on some of those dedicated servers, but
I know I wouldn't be able to get into something like that these
days.
babypuncher wrote 2 days ago:
I think a lot of that camaraderie and sense of community has
moved to places like Discord and Reddit.
I have a group that regularly plays Overwatch together every
Friday. Whenever more than 5 people show up, we play custom
games. The workshop is surprisingly powerful, so it even
gives us some of the experience we used to get with mods for
games like Quake and Unreal.
When we have 5 or fewer people though, we really appreciate
the game's matchmaking, even though it is far from perfect.
It is a lot better at creating balanced matches than any
server auto-balance feature ever was, while always keeping us
on the same team.
Zardoz84 wrote 2 days ago:
Modding it's pretty alive on PC.
ravenstine wrote 2 days ago:
For better or worse, in a lot of ways, I think the last decade of
developers have done a lot to kick the ladder out from underneath
them.
One of the reasons I'm a software engineer today is because I could
easily examine webpages to see how they work, tinker with the memory
of programs, open up hardware to see what's inside (relatively low
risk of destroying the device), and so forth. And yeah, back in the
day of Halo PC, modding the levels taught me a lot about what goes
into the game. Knowing what a "BSP" is can be a pretty useless piece
of trivia, but it made me feel smart and capable of understanding
more.
It's still possible to get into tech and learn things today, but I
have a hard time seeing how this can be accomplished by genuine
tinkering. Software is way harder to crack/debug today; certainly
not impossible, but the barrier of entry is much higher. Plus
there's a ton of moving parts that go into getting software to work
securely on not just mobile but modern desktops, adding another layer
of hassle. You can still examine what a webpage is doing, but even
that has changed significantly; so many websites today are div soup
(yes, worse than in the early 2000s) to support JavaScript
monstrocities that are also minified and obfuscated. When it comes
to games, you can almost forget it in some cases because they're so
heavily dependent on content streaming from servers. As far as
hardware goes, you've either got to face various security hoops that
can brick devices, use a heat gun to unglue the bezels on certain
things, and face a lot more risk in permanent damage.
All of these changes were made for a reason, but we've also taken the
fun out of everything. Even game modding really wasn't what it used
to be in spite of some of the tools available today technically being
better than those in the past.
anal_reactor wrote 2 days ago:
I think it's also the fact that back in the day shit usually didn't
work, so it was expected to need to tinker with it.
SmellTheGlove wrote 2 days ago:
I agree with you, but would suggest that the thing to focus on is
the next layer of abstraction. The thing that barely works. Our
generation screwed around with the PSX and Xbox, the Wild West era
of the internet, etc. Now the most obvious thing I can think of
that is the same level of not done is AI. Yeah thereâs a higher
barrier to entry, but look at that guy the other day that posted
about improving performance by dynamically pruning a model. Or half
the crazy shit on huggingface. Generative video and image AI seems
to have a lower entry barrier too.
Again Iâm not saying youâre wrong. It just seems like the thing
thatâs always the most prime for screwing around with is the
thing at the bleeding edge. Thereâs still some fun to have.
poisonborz wrote 2 days ago:
I would look elsewhere. SBCs like Pi Zero costing peanuts,
myriads of few dollar sensors enabling all kinds of easy to hop
projects, virtualisation, cheap (if non gaming) x86 hardware,
much better OSS landscape, much more learning resources, GPT to
help with questions... it can be easily seen as paradise as well.
dtech wrote 2 days ago:
I think you're making the classic mistake of thinking that because
your on-ramp isn't available anymore there are no on-ramps anymore.
I read an extremely similar comment two decades or so ago about a
dev saying that no-one would learn computers anymore because
everyone now used GUIs instead of CLIs...
Yes modding might be harder nowadays, but you have things like
Scratch and Hedy, or the freely available Unreal/Unity dev tools
with asset stores.
CYR1X wrote 2 days ago:
To be fair you have to realize how much more dependent the global
economy is on software nowadays. Halo was a Bungie product, and
when Bungie left as Microsoft took it over yeah, the product had
loftier business goals that needed to be protected. Smaller devs
can't really reach critical market saturation anymore like they
used to.
You can criticize where things has gone with MTX but I don't think
that was a choice by the game developers. I also think it's a
generational thing as you and I are now too old to spend all day
fucking around with some game we played a ton. I'm sure the kids of
today are tinkering with minecraft/fortnite/whatever replaced those
games.
Also to me it's a bit of wanting to try and put the tooth paste
back in the tube. When we were teenagers modding Halo we maybe
didn't fully understand the impacts it had on the game's community
and the overall experience. As an adult I just see how games like
Call of Duty appear to be constantly losing the fight against
hackers, and using over engineered matchmaking algos with SSBM to
try and maximize the typical user's gameplay experience. But I
can't regain my naivety and be one of the many younger adults who
probably don't even really notice these issues, the way I didn't
when I played Halo 3 on Xbox Live which had boosting, standby, and
stealth servers.
mrandish wrote 2 days ago:
> It's still possible to get into tech and learn things today, but
I have a hard time seeing how this can be accomplished by genuine
tinkering.
I agree and have the same feeling we've lost something as so much
computer-centric tech has become relatively inaccessible in the
name of 'security' (although much seems like efforts 'secure'
business models or IP). As you observed, the tech has also evolved
in ways which make it relatively undiscoverable through casual
tinkering. Although perhaps we suffer from a generational
perspective bias, I think there really was a 'golden era' of
computer tech hobbyist accessibility and discoverability.
When Did the 'Golden Era' Begin?
I'd peg it as starting around the late Usenet era. Interestingly,
there was definitely a time period in consumer computer tech when
it was too early. I know because I started "too early" and missed
being a teenager in the golden era because I got my first computer
as a teenager in 1981. It was a Radio Shack Color Computer with 4K
of memory, a 0.9 Mhz 8-bit 6809 processor and storage via an
external cassette tape player. Fortunately, the ROM BASIC on that
model was perhaps the most evolved 8-bit ROM BASIC Microsoft ever
made (vs the early Commodore & Atari flavors) and Radio Shack did a
fantastic job on the large, well-illustrated color manuals.
Unfortunately, 1981 was too early because no one in my family's
extended social network had ever touched a computer. So, beyond the
BASIC manual in the box, I was on my own with my new computer.
While there were a few big magazines like BYTE on news stands, very
little in them applied to my computer. I eventually discovered a
couple of zine-style publications at a distant big news stand.
Although they were essentially overgrown stapled newsletters
printed in B&W, they became my lifeline because they had articles
written by hobbyists more advanced than I, as well as mail-order
ads for cassette tape-based software. This was the key that
unlocked the mysterious realm of assembly language for me when I
ordered a $12 homebrew monitor program written by some random guy
who took out a classified ad. The local library didn't have any
books relevant to my new microcomputer, local colleges only offered
computer courses under the math dept and those were focused on
mainframes and COBOL (I think back then 'real' CompSci was limited
to Ivy League and top tier tech unis). Even large bookstores had
nothing useful to me I could order other than Osborne's 6809 CPU
book which was really an architecture and instruction set reference
manual mostly incomprehensible to an isolated teenage hobbyist
starting out.
A few years later 300 baud modems became cheap enough for hobbyists
to acquire but it took another year or so for BBSes to emerge which
were targeted at my computer (most BBSes prior to that were run on
CP/M hardware and focused on one platform (not mine)). So dialing
BBSes focused on my platform involved long-distance charges which
meant short calls. Another year later FidoNet connected larger
BBSes and national-level info began to circulate and my local hobby
scene stayed pretty much like this for a few years. New info
centered around zines, local computer club meetings, mailed tapes &
diskettes and short BBS calls. Info was available but it was scarce
and you had to work at getting it.
That's why I think the true golden era truly took off in the late
Usenet period. That's when anyone could subscribe to a ~$10/mo
service providing 1200 baud access to Usenet feeds in their local
area code. Before that, unless you were at a university studying
CompSci or worked at a uni or large tech company, Usenet was a
magical land you only heard about on BBSes or at user group
meetings. When random home hobbyists got direct access to the
firehose of high-quality, global Nerdverse content that was the
Usenet CompSci feeds it felt like the Enlightenment dawning. From
there the transition to the early web was pretty natural since a
lot of early tech-centric websites were much like a BBS ring. We
didn't need search because they mostly linked to each other and
people were running them as a hobby so few had ads other than maybe
a sponsorship from an ISP or modem company (usually just paid in
free service or hardware). Fortunately, the tech hobbyist web
wasn't impacted much by the 2001 dot com crash since it was never
about revenue. Up until the slow decline gradually started in the
mid-2000s, it was pretty great - flashing BLINK tags and all.
Honestly, we didn't even realize how good we had it, or imagine
that it might someday end.
When Did the 'Golden Era' End?
Having lived through the pre-Golden Era, the early days and through
the end, I think the seeds of the Golden Era's slow decline were
planted when the modern web business began to emerge from the ashes
of the dot com crash. Although things were still pretty
hobbyist-discoverable in desktop OSes and the web through 2010-ish,
troubling signs were on the horizon. For those paying attention,
the rapid dominance of iOS in the late 2000s was ominous. Apple's
business model required a walled garden app store and their concept
of users was not as active explorers but as purely passive eyeballs
for media and app-snacking. Even though a few app developers did
well in the early app store, the fundamental model relegated them
to the role of sharecroppers working Apple's farm with Apple's
tools and selling only to Apple's store (with no access to their
app's end-users).
In all, entry-level, home-based tech hobbyists got almost 20 really
amazing years in the 'Golden Era' from roughly the late 80s to the
late 2000s. It would be wonderful if in the distant future that
period is known as "The First Golden Era" but right now it's hard
to be optimistic. While there is still an enormous amount of
hobbyist info available online and more emerging, it's in a context
of equally increasing locked down areas and ever decreasing
discoverability (though open source and Github-like sites are
notable exceptions).
Maybe this is why retro computing and retro gaming are booming now
with new people who never experienced it the first time. It's a
place where that unique Golden Era ethos, vibe and community still
exists. Last year I went to a local user group meeting for Amiga
computers, which is what I had mid-80s to early 90s. I met a bunch
of enthusiastic Amiga users who hadn't been born when I bought my
first Amiga. It was strange to feel both "old" and "OG Cool" at the
same moment but also heartening to feel that same open community
vibe still beating. :-)
bee_rider wrote 2 days ago:
Theyâve got, with wildly varying levels of skill and investment:
unity, unreal, godot, or Roblox.
Not quite as fun as modding though.
anonymousab wrote 2 days ago:
I think adding your own touch to something you're more intimately
familiar with helps ease people into it. Touching an asset file
to modify a texture and instantly see the results in your
favorite game is a lot more approachable (and appreciate-able)
for someone starting out, I think.
bee_rider wrote 2 days ago:
100% agree
radicalbyte wrote 2 days ago:
I started coding with an Action Replay cartridge. Press a button
and you get dumped into a new context where can fully inspect the
machine and running program, and can modify any of it.
That's easier it was later on Windows (which for 15 years was how
99% of people used computers) and anything after.
pipes wrote 2 days ago:
Action reply on a snes? I use to mess around with this too as a
ten year old
mrguyorama wrote 2 days ago:
CheatEngine exists on modern systems and can still do a lot of
this, though modern game engines are less friendly to the simple
"scan for the health variable and set it to 1000" workflow of
yesteryear. However, newer versions of cheat engine include
C#/monogame decompilers that let you screw around with some unity
games
somenameforme wrote 2 days ago:
I agree with you in general, but I think it has to be said that we
also live in the era of things like the source for Unreal Engine 5
being completely and wholly available, along with a zillion
tutorials and extremely well documented source. This is unlike
anything we had, and better in basically every single way
imaginable. In the hardware world there's Pi's, dirt cheap PCBs
that you can have delivered in < 24 hours, and so on endlessly.
It's like instead of breaking into a trailer, we've all been
granted carte blanche access to a mansion.
But maybe there was something about how counter-culture and
esoteric stuff was itself attractive precisely because of that.
There was also a lot more reward for a lot less work, largely
because so few people were doing it. Now if somebody wants to go
learn Unreal then it's just a pretty mundane and common thing, and
you'll also be largely incompetent unless you're willing to
dedicate years to it. By contrast when I was a kid changing the
text in a shareware installer was enough to wow my friends with my
leet skills, and that's something that took about 5 minutes to do,
and not that much longer to learn. Oh and then creating secret
directories by naming them alt+255, and so on. Dumb stuff, but it
soon enough led me to much more than parlor tricks.
xkcd-sucks wrote 2 days ago:
One consideration is maybe stuff that's "hackable", i.e.
immediately accessible, can be incrementally and reversibly
modified, is more accessible to "play" while stuff that's
extremely capable but has a high activation cost (setting up the
environment, learning all the stuff to make something basic etc.)
is more accessible only to "focused / goal oriented study" and
this has all kinds of implications on who does it, who succeeds,
under which circumstances etc.
e.g. my friend tells me you can open game.exe in notepad + change
this value to walk on lava, then I fiddle with it and tl;dr make
a map of my school, then get frustrated with limitations and
start learning a game engine with some practical background on
what these concepts are etc.
vs. I decide want to make a game because that's cool, I buy a
book on game programming, it depends on these libraries, I
install them, I install a compiler, the libraries don't work with
the compiler/each other, ......... and give up because the grit
in my life is reserved for stuff other than video games.
... like really, what is the overlap of people that are really
mind blowingly creative as artists, and the people that are super
type A driven to go through all this frustration up front? less
friction, more better art
thomastjeffery wrote 2 days ago:
The big difference is that people used to mod existing games.
That allowed modders to leverage the game's engine, gameplay
design, art, and even its existing playerbase.
Having a full-featured open-source game engine is great, but
starting with that means starting at square one.
By obsessively enforcing copyright and "anti-cheat", we
effectively bury the game-making process 6 feet underground.
Every game is declared dead at the very moment of its release.
Every decision its creators made up to then is set in stone. The
game studio itself must exist in isolation, ignorant of the very
world it is creating its games for.
It's no wonder that AAA studios are so out of touch with the
people who play their games. Gamers are explicitly excluded from
the creative process.
BlueTemplar wrote 2 days ago:
That's their loss. Meanwhile Minecraft is the most sold game
ever, and Roblox is probably not far behind. (That one comes
with its own issues, but hopefully children are sick of those
by the time they become teens and are ready to move on to
something more open ?)
ravenstine wrote 2 days ago:
> But maybe there was something about how counter-culture and
esoteric stuff was itself attractive precisely because of that.
There's definitely that element, but I also think something
missed by compartmentalizing hardware "tinkering" to devices
designed specifically for the task. Nothing about a Raspberry
Pi, for instance, is mysterious. If a person is going to buy
one, they already have a significant level of interest and base
knowledge. A kid's not gonna have one lying around and get
curious about it unless their parent is a geek who owns those
things, and even then said kid may have no good reason to even
bother with one. Practically nobody today is opening up their
laptop or their phone to mod it or even just see what's inside.
I'm not saying the modern situation is bad, but a significant
amount of it is artificial in a way that wasn't when the devices
one would play with were the devices actually being used, and
it's not clear to me whether what we have now is actually better
in regard to inspiring future generations. Engaging with one's
everyday hardware is an exercise in the power process that fewer
and fewer generations are experiencing.
coldpie wrote 2 days ago:
I agree with your concern, but I'm quite happy to see what's going
on in the retro emulation & decompilation/reverse-engineering
scenes[1]. A lot of that is being done and is driven by "the kids".
It's an appealing, easy, and low-risk entry point for newer
developers who want to dive into low level stuff, and it even has a
bit of a "fuck the man" bent to it, which is fantastic. You're
right that the environment is different from what we grew up with,
it was always going to be. But I think the kids will find their own
way. [1] If you haven't been tuned in, check this out, it's the
goddamn Super Mario 64 source code in C, reverse-engineered from
the game ROM: [1] Similar projects exist for a ton of other classic
games. It's jaw dropping what they're doing out there.
URI [1]: https://github.com/n64decomp/sm64/blob/master/src/game/hud...
ravenstine wrote 2 days ago:
Yeah, I've heard of that decompilation, and have been more
closely following the complete decompilation and PC port of
Perfect Dark, which is pretty amazing.
Jerrrry wrote 2 days ago:
>and still believe Halo 2 was the most innovative online game of all
time.
this is pretty much the only unanimous, uncontroversial absolute
statement that can be made in the context of online gaming
Andrex wrote 2 days ago:
I'd probably give the crown to EverQuest (1.0) myself.
0cf8612b2e1e wrote 2 days ago:
What novelty did Halo 2 introduce? At a high level, it is just
another shooter preceded by all sorts of experiments: Quake,
Counterstrike, Team Fortress, Unreal Tournament, etc.
Sure, it had tons of polish and was on consoles, but I never
thought of it as genre defining.
fwip wrote 2 days ago:
The online multiplayer (party-based matchmaking, including ranked
mode) was huge.
nfRfqX5n wrote 2 days ago:
halo 2 came out with xbox live and defined the experience. social
lobbies, matchmaking, etc
CYR1X wrote 2 days ago:
Clans, ranked based play, integrated voice chat.
That last one was in other xbox live games before it, but Halo
2's Xbox Live brought online gaming to everyone's television
room whereas before it was only on the computer.
talldayo wrote 2 days ago:
I'm a hardcore Quake/Unreal apologist, but you gotta hand
something to Halo and Halo 2. Gorgeous shader-based graphics for
the time, vehicles, absurd arsenals, wide-open maps, and 16
player(!!!) LAN play. It's a game that would have sold like
gangbusters on PC, and was only that much more successful for
being well-supported on console too.
One might even argue that the success of Halo is what forced
arena shooters like Counter Strike and Team Fortress to evolve or
die. There was more at stake after it released, and outside the
competitive circles there wasn't much demand for the FPS
equivalent of Wheaties.
BlueTemplar wrote 2 days ago:
UT2004 was released half a year before Halo 2 though.
kh_hk wrote 2 days ago:
Battlefield 1942 comes to mind as some predecessor close to
what you describe
talldayo wrote 2 days ago:
Hell, even Perfect Dark before that. I'm not one to defend
Halo as the most-innovative, especially with the
disproportionate amount of funding and manpower that went
into it.
That being said, I think Halo deserves commendation for
bringing a lot to the mainstream without compromise. The same
people that casually enjoyed Halo were probably not also
playing Goldeneye or Arma in their free time. And marketing
be damned, Halo is fun even today. Hopping in a match of CE
makes me lament how little team-based shooters have
progressed in the past 20 years.
kjkjadksj wrote 1 day ago:
Something about halo just feels like such modern game, even
halo ce. Itâs so weird to think this game was
contemporary with golden eye or quake. I think it was the
polish with the animations, sound, and the physics. You
pull out the pistol and do that satisfying pull back and
click on it. You throw a grenade and hear it arm and see it
thrown. You see your teammates throw grenades. You throw a
grenade under a warthog, it flips it and knocks the
occupants out. Even just scoping in and out of the sniper
was satisfying with the sound it made.
kh_hk wrote 2 days ago:
To me it's crazy to think how far ahead of its time in
terms of emergent behavior was Battlefield compared to
other games, besides battle arenas. Probably it wasn't the
first one either, but it's the one that comes to mind.
Picking up a tank or a jeep is one thing, but going for
controlling an aircraft carrier or a submarine? Even if the
controls were really primitive, it felt amazing!
kjkjadksj wrote 1 day ago:
The destructible environment aspect in some of those
games was so cool. Canât breach into the objective?
Take down the building. No other game is or was like
that. Even new battlefield games have walked back a lot
of that behavior.
0cf8612b2e1e wrote 2 days ago:
I have had tons of fun with Halo, but I am fixated on this
âinnovativeâ classification. It feels more like right place
right time. Had Golden Eye been LAN play, would it have been
termed as most innovative?
Edit: I should also give a shout out to Tribes for hitting a
lot of those same notes
kipchak wrote 2 days ago:
Halo 2 was basically synonymous with Xbox Live and everything
that came with it when it launched (for better or worse). For
example popularizing voice chat (including proximity!), rapid
matchmaking, persistent parties between matches and gamemodes
and player ranks and levels. They talk it about it a bit in
the second half of this video.
URI [1]: https://youtu.be/YGSuPZVgxLg?si=cQZRaXJGaGFaKuL-&t=1...
coldpie wrote 2 days ago:
Halo 2's online multiplayer introduced (or popularized?)
party-based matchmaking. So instead of having to coordinate
all your buddies joining the same pre-existing server, you'd
join up as a party and then drop into a matchmaking queue,
which would set up a game against opponents, optionally
taking a skill-based ranking into account. They even did a
bunch of marketing around this, since it was a new concept at
the time:
URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGSuPZVgxLg
Jerrrry wrote 2 days ago:
> was on consoles
> genre defining
you walked right past it
0cf8612b2e1e wrote 2 days ago:
Wouldnât that innovation belong to the original Halo then?
Halo 2 was mostly iterative improvements.
piltdownman wrote 2 days ago:
Starcraft as the first eSport Game?
WoW as the first mass appeal Western MMORPG?
PUBG as the first Battle Royale and catalyst for Fortnite?
Minecraft for defining a demographic as much as a genre?
Dark Souls, Journey or Nier:Automata for redefining what actually
constituted the role of 'online gamer' ?
The path from Quake or Perfect Dark -> Halo 2 was no great paradigm
shift compared to the five above imo
cbdumas wrote 2 days ago:
> PUBG as the first Battle Royale and catalyst for Fortnite?
As I recall, H1Z1 actually came out before PUBG (though it has
since faded into obscurity). A quick search on Wikipedia seems to
back that timeline[0].
[0]
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PUBG:_Battlegrounds#Develo...
sickofparadox wrote 2 days ago:
Wasn't H1Z1 a knockoff of DayZ first, which then pivoted to the
Battle Royale format after the success of PUBG?
Chabsff wrote 2 days ago:
It's worth pointing out that what you are fondly remembering from a
consumer standpoint was an absolute nightmare from the publishers',
and not just for pure greed, though that definitely plays a role.
Game consoles were (and still are to a some degree), by and large,
toys. Toys that parents buy for their children with the expectation
that they can be mostly left to their own devices with them. The
ESRB/PEGI/etc. ratings system was put in place so that parents would
be able to trust that they know what's in the toy without having to
sit over the kids' shoulders every single minute they are playing. In
a sense it's not unlike Mattel spending a lot of energy making sure
their dolls and action figures don't pose any choking hazards.
Allowing modding breaks that system, and by extension the
accompanying trust. This is a big deal for a toy manufacturer. It's
also why Hot Coffee was such a mess despite the content not being
normally accessible. Parents don't want to have to care about
technicalities.
People like to think of this situation as a "think of the
children"-type of hand-wringing, but it's actually more of a "think
of the parents", who happen to be the ones with money.
Again, not discounting the greed and DRM aspects of this, and it
definitely sucks pretty hard for adult users of the systems, but it's
far from all there is to it.
kjkjadksj wrote 1 day ago:
Maybe they could just set mods behind parental controls. The mod
community is a good incubator for what you should maybe add to the
game in the next release.
robin_reala wrote 2 days ago:
Hot Coffee was in GTA: San Andreas, a game that a âMatureâ
rating in the US i.e. only for people of ages 17+. They cut Hot
Coffee to get to Mature from Adults Only (18+). Kids shouldnât
have been anywhere near these games if parents cared about what
they were looking at.
RGamma wrote 2 days ago:
German GTA: SA (and VC) was even more cut. No dismemberment, no
blood, no money from corpses.
Austria imports...
nxobject wrote 1 day ago:
I get the gore, but _no money from corpses_? Are depictions of
pickpocketing illegal?
(I'm being hyperbolic here, but, it's still curious.)
RGamma wrote 19 hours 53 min ago:
There's much more detailed info what was disallowed in Vice
City here (German): [1] My memory is fuzzy but I think you
couldn't be rewarded for killing people according to the BzKJ
[2] .
You'll note that the existence of a site dedicated to
censorship in video games means this was a big thing in
Germany. No longer the case as much.
Manhunt for example was forbidden to be advertised in any way
(put on the "Index"), but you could sell it under the
counter. Some depictions triggered rules that meant games (or
videos, music) could not even present to their corresponding
regulatory body, which is USK for games ( [3] ) to be rated
18+.
I used to know much more about this topic, but it's 15 years
in the past now... Needless to say there were a million ways
to circumvent this including specialised shops, uncut patches
and more.
Some more: For a brief time ragdolls in Counter Strike:
Source were disallowed (defeated enemies lay down instead),
blood could not be red in Halo (alien blood was okay), gibs
were disabled in TF2 (corpses exploded into toys).
Germany had problems with gore whereas the US had problems
with sexuality (Hot Coffee mode removal).
URI [1]: https://www.schnittberichte.com/schnittbericht.php?I...
URI [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Department_for...
URI [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unterhaltungssoftware_...
Jerrrry wrote 2 days ago:
Getting GTA San Andreas from the pawn shop was the happiest
moment in my pre-pubescent life, and it had nothing to do with
the mature aspects of it.
Chabsff wrote 2 days ago:
At the risk of repeating myself. The issue with Hot Coffee was
that it cast a huge shadow on the ESRB system itself.
bri3d wrote 2 days ago:
I've never heard of a parent being concerned about console mods, of
all things, and I (as a parent) don't really buy this angle. The
original Xbox's weak parental controls could be bypassed by
pressing X Y Left Trigger X, a tidbit that was quickly distributed
throughout my middle school to let everyone launch M-rated Halo
discs. Presumably if publishers were actually pressuring Microsoft
to make a child-safe device, they'd have come up with a more
advanced protection mechanism than that.
Modifiability/vulnerability would not affect my game console buying
decision as a parent at all, provided the console had some form of
cursory parental controls. I'd probably choose a console that
didn't have such a simple bypass as the original Xbox, placed head
to head with another console, but if my kid has to go online (!),
learn about exploit development, and run some advanced tool to
bypass parental controls, that's a valuable learning experience,
and they were already on the Internet somehow, a much more
dangerous place than an M-rated game anyway.
DRM and cheating are the drivers for game console secure boot.
Cheating is getting even more important than DRM, really, IMO -
it's one of the places where consoles have a huge edge over PC
gaming.
BlueTemplar wrote 2 days ago:
Cheating is only a concern for a tiny minority of games (which,
admittedly, are played by a not as tiny but still minority of
gamers).
DRM (and similar locks) is a plague over general purpose
computing, and therefore our liberal democracies themselves.
bordercases wrote 2 days ago:
> Presumably if publishers were actually pressuring Microsoft to
make a child-safe device, they'd have come up with a more
advanced protection mechanism than that.
They did. For the next generation. They updated their model of
"child safe".
Rinzler89 wrote 2 days ago:
>Just buying a simple tool to load game saves and you could have a
soft-modded Xbox in minutes
Because that era Xbox was just a PC built form COTS hardware instead
of custom HW. You can still tinker just as well today with a PC, or a
PC based console like the Steam Deck, why bother fighting with a
proprietary console designed to be locked down? What would you gain?
Access to a custom X86 hardware that you can buy for cheap on the
market anyway?
MegaDeKay wrote 2 days ago:
It is a stretch to call it just a PC built from COTS hardware. The
NV2A GPU was a modified version on the NV20 and included the
Northbridge. The MCPX Southbridge was custom. The DVD was
customized for anti-piracy. The CPU is a (slightly) customized
PIII. If it was all COTS, the XBox XEmu emulator would be further
along than it is now.
URI [1]: https://classic.copetti.org/writings/consoles/xbox/
muziq wrote 1 day ago:
Didnât the SouthBridge turn up in some Nvidia ATX boards ? I
recall positively salivating on realising that one particular
Nvidia motherboard gave us a hardware encoded Dolby digital
signal, just like the Xbox..
justsomehnguy wrote 1 day ago:
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoundStorm#Video_game_co...
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