What makes PAL-Halo PAL / NTSC-Halo NTSC ?

Kai Admirer Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 442

yup, like the subject says: What makes PAL-Halo PAL / NTSC-Halo NTSC ?

is it the default.xbe? or is it more than that?

so if i have 2 legally owned retail versions (PAL-UK and NTSC) and back it up to my HDD, i will have to install it in 2 different directories to play PAL or NTSC games?

or can I back up my NTSC version and have the PAL version's default.xbe copied to the same directory (renamed pal.xbe). so when i wanna play NTSC, i run default.xbe and when i wanna run PAL, i run pal.xbe.

Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2004 9:00 am

Switchin xbe's doesn't work for NTSC <-> PAL.

However, I had heard that with the different PAL regions, switching xbe's does work.

Kai Admirer Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 442

cheers for the info mate..

hmm.. so if the different PAL regions would work that way, i assume that switching xbe's will work for NTSC-J <-> NTSC-US as well?

Kai Enthusiast Joined: 07 Jun 2004 Posts: 285

The thing that makes the games diffrent is the tags in the maps, the tags being sections of the data where certain things are stored such as speeds, height of jumps, fireing rate etc. These values were changed in PAL from NTSC which is why switching the xbe dosent work, and Bungie made it use a different port also, to avoid confusion.

All PAL versions use the same ingame tags which is why switching the xbe works fine - so as long as NTSC-US and NTSC-J run the same, there should be no problem. By run the same I mean have the same tags - and I'm pretty sure they do. Long shory short, I'm pretty sure that would work Smile

Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2004 9:45 am

Don't forget the refresh rate... ntsc runs on 60hz while pal runs on 50 hz....

Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2004 10:08 am

[IXS]Porsj wrote:

Don't forget the refresh rate... ntsc runs on 60hz while pal runs on 50 hz....

Thought it was the other way around??

Anyhow, get both Smile

thats what I am in the "process" of doing! And I will run both on my HD Smile

Kai Admirer Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 442

thank you for the replies guys Very Happy

Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2004 7:27 am

My bad... it IS the other way around...

PAL -> 60 hz 24.95 fps
NTSC -> 50hz 29.95 fps

Meaning:

PAL -> Higher Quality, slower
NTSC -> Lower Quality, smoother (faster)

Kai Admirer Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 442

ok.. for anyone who is curious, i tried switching the xbe's between the retail versions of NTSC-J and NTSC-US but it doesn't work. just a blank screen of nothing-ness shows up when i launch the game. even cleared the cache files. was able to IGR though during the blank screen.

Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 0

Normally, to go from PAL <--> NTSC you need the xbe and the map files. You can switch from PAL-GB to PAL-DE etc with just the XBE. As for NTSC-J and NTSC-US - I have no idea.. if switching XBE doesn't work, you probably need the maps too.

Quote:

These values were changed in PAL from NTSC which is why switching the xbe dosent work, and Bungie made it use a different port also, to avoid confusion.

Hmm.. afaik, *all* xbox syslink sames use UDP port 3074 - but I could be wrong... wouldn't bother Kai anyway Razz

TD

Kai Enthusiast Joined: 07 Jun 2004 Posts: 285

Well, I took almost everythig I said in that post from Bungie (not direct quote but in my own words). I could probably find the post on HBO given time...

I may be mistaken, but I'll have a look when I get back from the pub later Smile

Kai Admirer Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 390

I also remember reading about NTSC and PAL halo using different ports somewhere on bungie site.

I think the reason given was so that if an NTSC and PAL box were connected by xover cable, they wouldn't even begin a connection (to avoid problems).

Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2004 3:33 pm

If they took the time to bother with all that, why the heck didn't they just make them compatable!!

Kai Admirer Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 390

DIE-HARD wrote:

If they took the time to bother with all that, why the heck didn't they just make them compatable!!

I've often wondered the same. I did read that they had trouble synching them because of the different frame rates. But why they chose to spend so much effort changing the tags (and port) instead of working on compatibility, i don't know. Rolling Eyes

Maybe different departments were working on different regions of the game and it was too much trouble to get all regions working together. Maybe it was a time thing, so halo would be ready for xbox launch, or maybe bungie just saw it as pointless to make all regions compatible as noone could play online syslink at time (not that it would bother them anyway probably).

Or maybe it was because Halo is a first party title and microsoft wanted to make the most of region protection.

I guess only Bungie knows.

Kai Enthusiast Joined: 07 Jun 2004 Posts: 285

There's a full and really detailed post by a Bungie employee somewhere at HBO that explains it all - why they did it, what they did etc.. After about 10 mins of looking I can't find it Sad

But if you think of it from what their point of view could have been back then - how are any europeans going to play with usa anyway? There was no XBL and nobody knew tunneling apps would be created... It might have just been easier to do it the way they did, since very few people would have noticed had it not been for tunneling apps Smile

Kai Admirer Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 390

3xodus wrote:

But if you think of it from what their point of view could have been back then - how are any europeans going to play with usa anyway? There was no XBL and nobody knew tunneling apps would be created... It might have just been easier to do it the way they did, since very few people would have noticed had it not been for tunneling apps Smile

Very good point. Forgot that there was no XBL at the time.

I guess games are more compatible now because they are made compatible for XBL and so systemlink therefore benefits from it (i guess the networking code is just reused to an extent to save on time - just a guess, i'm not a programmer).

I think maybe Microsoft also had a hand in this though to maximise the effect of region protection. Especially considering Brute Force, which was another hugely promoted MS release has similar region issues.

Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2004 4:31 pm

hehe how could you not know tunneling apps would be created

??

seems obvious to me i mean as programers they should have realized someone at some point would tire of poor VPN's for gaming over the net and build something to optomize it and that it would grow globaly