#36820 - tepples - Wed Mar 02, 2005 3:01 am
How would you react if somebody were to claim to have ported Halo 2 to the GBA?
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#36824 - DekuTree64 - Wed Mar 02, 2005 3:28 am
Well you obviously have something up your sleeve to post such a thing :)
But no, I won't believe the port until I see it.
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#36827 - gauauu - Wed Mar 02, 2005 4:22 am
It depends on whether it was supposed to be more or less the same game.
They made Tony Hawk 3 for the GBA, and it was a isometric game, vaguely similar to the real THPS3 in terms of gameplay, but a completely different game when the 3d is removed. But they still called it THPS3.
So, depending on who made this crazy claim, I would tend to think they were doing something like that....making a game LIKE Halo 2, but with a comletely different feel. Top down or something. And then somehow claiming it was a "port" of the actual game.
Of course, I'd even really doubt that. I'd probably just guess that somebody is talking out their cheese-crack.
#36828 - sajiimori - Wed Mar 02, 2005 4:58 am
"Port" is different than "remake". If you aren't using approximately the same code and assets, then it can't be justifiably called a port, and obviously there's no chance of that for Halo.
#36836 - DiscoStew - Wed Mar 02, 2005 7:27 am
Why am I reminded about an article at the GameSpy website when I hear Halo 2 and the GBA in the same sentence?
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#36842 - MumblyJoe - Wed Mar 02, 2005 9:31 am
I have total faith that if it could be done, and tepples was involved, that it would be possible and have an extensive FAQ.
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#36843 - NoMis - Wed Mar 02, 2005 9:44 am
Halo is the biggest Hype in the history of consoles. I don't like it. It's never that good as all the people say it is and there are a LOT more FPS that are much better.
In my oppinion it was just MS's monstrous marketing that sold the game in that hight numbers.
NoMis
#36847 - Lord Graga - Wed Mar 02, 2005 11:58 am
If somebody which I respected claimed to have "something running" with lots of proofs, then I could theoretically be pursued to believe them, depending of the proofs, of course.
#36856 - isildur - Wed Mar 02, 2005 3:38 pm
| NoMis wrote: |
Halo is the biggest Hype in the history of consoles. I don't like it. It's never that good as all the people say it is and there are a LOT more FPS that are much better.
In my oppinion it was just MS's monstrous marketing that sold the game in that hight numbers.
NoMis |
I agree. Unreal 2004 is far better.
#36858 - Abscissa - Wed Mar 02, 2005 4:26 pm
| NoMis wrote: |
Halo is the biggest Hype in the history of consoles. I don't like it. It's never that good as all the people say it is and there are a LOT more FPS that are much better.
In my oppinion it was just MS's monstrous marketing that sold the game in that hight numbers. |
I partly agree. I thought it was certainly a good game, but not even remotely as "mindblowingly incredible" as everyone made it out to be (I have very little intrest in the sequel). I don't think it was marketing though, I think it was just thousands of console gamers that had never played a proper FPS before.
As far as Halo on GBA, my main reaction (aside from, "What is tepples up to, now?" ;) ) would be an instant "red flag", followed by the following suspicions:
1. Is some lamer kid tossing around BS again?
2. Does someone not know the difference between "port" and "GBA remake"? (As in the THPS3 mentioned above)
3. What framerate constitutes "working"? ;) If it was one frame per hour, I could totally believe it.
#36877 - sajiimori - Wed Mar 02, 2005 7:42 pm
| Quote: |
| 3. What framerate constitutes "working"? ;) If it was one frame per hour, I could totally believe it. |
Yes, with infinite RAM (and cart), and accepting the 240x160 resolution, you can run just about anything (eventually). Needless to say, the GBA does not have infinite RAM, and in fact meets less than 1% of the memory requirements.
#36889 - Abscissa - Thu Mar 03, 2005 12:24 am
| sajiimori wrote: |
| Quote: | | 3. What framerate constitutes "working"? ;) If it was one frame per hour, I could totally believe it. |
Yes, with infinite RAM (and cart), and accepting the 240x160 resolution, you can run just about anything (eventually). Needless to say, the GBA does not have infinite RAM, and in fact meets less than 1% of the memory requirements. |
You can do a lot of tradeoff between size and speed. You'd be suprised how much can be packed into a tiny space if you don't care about making the CPU do a trillion times as much work. If you have infinite time, you don't usually need infinite space, and vice versa.
There's the possibility of using really low-quality textures and audio heavily compressed with a lossy algorithm. That wouldn't prevent it from being technically considered a port. Of course, strong compression of low-quality data alone probably wouldn't shrink it down to a normal cart size, but it could be combined with other tricks. Such as below:
If the claim is simply "Halo ported to GBA", nothing about that says the author couldn't have been an EE expert who made a super-high-capacity cart using bank switching, or maybe even a cart with an IDE interface to a hard drive. It would be extremely slow to be swapping so much data in and out of the GBA's tiny RAM (especially over IDE), but if framerate is *completely* ignored...it could work.
Of course, I highly doubt anyone would bother to go through all of this trouble to port Halo to GBA if it meant insanely unplayable framerates (which it probably would). But, I still think it's technically feasable.
BTW, I didn't really mean "one frame per hour" as an exact figure, but just as an example of "insanlely slow". ie. "one frame per hour", "one frame per day", "one frame per month", or whatever.
Ooohh!! Also, another idea: If someone were to say they "ported Halo to the GBA", maybe they didn't mean "GameBoy Advance", but some sort of supercomputer named something like "GreenBriar-Althena". :) Or maybe it means they completely removed all of the red components from all of the artwork, so it's no longer RGBA (Red Green Blue Alpha), but just GBA (Green Blue Alpha). ;)
#36893 - tepples - Thu Mar 03, 2005 3:19 am
Good job Abscissa of tossing out red herrings :)
Concentrate less on the "port" or the "GBA" and more on the "Halo 2".
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#36907 - FluBBa - Thu Mar 03, 2005 9:15 am
So there is no connection to Bungie at all? Only GBA and some kind of game that is named Halo 2?
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#36917 - dagamer34 - Thu Mar 03, 2005 4:31 pm
Everyone is thinking about the graphics. Clearly the most important thing would be the controls. There aren't enough buttons. Period.
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#36953 - Abscissa - Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:00 am
| dagamer34 wrote: |
| Everyone is thinking about the graphics. Clearly the most important thing would be the controls. There aren't enough buttons. Period. |
That's not that as much of a problem. Things can be remapped/adjusted/etc. The GBA has fewer buttons than the SNES, but Metroid Fusion allows more moves than Super Metroid.
#37709 - MiGs - Tue Mar 15, 2005 5:29 am
Well, using the L and R buttons to fire dual wielding weapons would be the tightest thing ever, never done on any FPS on the GBA before that I know of.
#37711 - DekuTree64 - Tue Mar 15, 2005 5:44 am
Hmm, that would be cool, especially if you could have two different weapons. Actually I've been thinking about making a raycaster engine for a while now. Maybe I'll steal your idea if I ever have time to do it :)
So tepples, are you ever planning to tell us what brought up the original question?
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#37712 - tepples - Tue Mar 15, 2005 5:48 am
Be patient. You're going to get what you deserve.
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-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#37783 - QuantumDoja - Wed Mar 16, 2005 2:19 pm
maybe your gonna have an xbox and somehow with a bit of tepples magic use the gameboy screen as the output device? No one said your gonna play the game with the gba did they???
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#37808 - Abscissa - Thu Mar 17, 2005 12:11 am
| QuantumDoja wrote: |
| maybe your gonna have an xbox and somehow with a bit of tepples magic use the gameboy screen as the output device? No one said your gonna play the game with the gba did they??? |
Good call, I like that one :)
#37814 - Mr. Picklesworth - Thu Mar 17, 2005 2:12 am
Who says it's halo 2 the game?
It could easily be a game like pong, that is called halo 2 because the bouncy thing is a halo and it's version number is 2
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#38721 - Wriggler - Wed Mar 30, 2005 10:19 pm
We played halo on the gba when I was at work. We got one of those tv cards for the gba, and saw that it had composite in. So we linked up the demo unit (which happened to be running halo), and it kinda worked. Sorta. Well, it was a halo-esque blur. Was funny that the controller was like twice as big as the unit it was "running" on.
Is that what you're on about?
Ben
#38817 - tepples - Fri Apr 01, 2005 1:31 am
I know it's not the right thing, and I know it's not the good thing, but I have a contact who can leak me an early GBA ROM of Halo 2. He told me that the ROM has pretty good anti-emulator protection; make of that what you will. Maybe it's all messed up in VBA. And no, it's not just TV-out into a TV tuner for the GBA.
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-- Where is he?
-- Who?
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-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#38818 - Wriggler - Fri Apr 01, 2005 1:42 am
It is teh tru3z0r! Bungie is da r0x0r! 8-P
[Images not permitted - Click here to view it]
;-)
Ben
#38848 - sgeos - Fri Apr 01, 2005 11:36 am
I wouldn't think about it. I don't like Halo, don't like 3D shooters, and I don't really like 3D games in general. To be useful, I would not believe it was technically feasible.
-Brendan
#38855 - tepples - Fri Apr 01, 2005 3:35 pm
There's nothing left for me to hide.
http://pinocchio.jk0.org/halo2/
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#38864 - Wriggler - Fri Apr 01, 2005 4:09 pm
I don't get it... :/
Ben
#38870 - Phoenixconsole - Fri Apr 01, 2005 4:17 pm
this isnt halo.
#38932 - Abscissa - Sat Apr 02, 2005 4:05 am
Oh, my god! I can't believe I didn't think of that!!! I feel like such an idiot considering how much of a huge NIN fan I am! Oh my god I'm so stupid! (Forgive me Mr. Reznor, Sir!! ;) )
I'm gonna have to check this out right now, this looks too cool :)
#38934 - Abscissa - Sat Apr 02, 2005 4:22 am
| dagamer34 wrote: |
| Everyone is thinking about the graphics. Clearly the most important thing would be the controls. There aren't enough buttons. Period. |
Heheh, I guess the most important thing turned out to be the sound ;)
#39224 - tepples - Wed Apr 06, 2005 4:19 am
| Abscissa wrote: |
| Oh, my god! I can't believe I didn't think of that!!! I feel like such an idiot considering how much of a huge NIN fan I am! Oh my god I'm so stupid! (Forgive me Mr. Reznor, Sir!! ;) ) |
Given that Bungie's Halo 1 delayed NIИ's Halo 19, I'm sure he would forgive you.
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-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#39254 - Lord Graga - Wed Apr 06, 2005 4:14 pm
Pretty nice compression that you have going on there. Which format is it?
#39261 - sajiimori - Wed Apr 06, 2005 6:24 pm
Ok, I admit, that was pretty god damn funny.
#39270 - tepples - Wed Apr 06, 2005 9:09 pm
The compression is GSM Full Rate, the one piece of code that VBA is notorious for running much slower than on full hardware.
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-- Where is he?
-- Who?
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#39419 - Touchstone - Fri Apr 08, 2005 5:41 pm
So what is it? Pretty Hate Machine by Nine Inch Nails?
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#39514 - Abscissa - Sat Apr 09, 2005 9:44 pm
| Touchstone wrote: |
| So what is it? Pretty Hate Machine by Nine Inch Nails? |
Yes
![[Images not permitted - Click here to view it]](http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ben.ward/h2gba.png){kind=link}