releasing the -Blam- Engine source code

Community General Discussion
1

One of the employees at Bungie told me to ask bs angel, so here it goes:

Halo Custom Edition was ported to the PC over 10 years ago, and since then, communities have worked with it to create amazing content for years, however, we hit a roadblock. We are limited by the power of the engine, something that we cannot fix without the source code. Halo CE is no longer supported by Microsoft, and since then it has largely been up to the modders to work around it. given its age, is there a way that the source code for Halo Custom Edition may be made public?

and from one of the nodders at hce.halomaps.org:

Halo PC is not available at most retailers. Seven years from release, this can be expected. What can’t be anticipated, however, is the fact that MS is still sitting on Halo 1 and it’s Custom Edition creation kit like a fat kid and twinkies, despite the fact that the game itself cannot even be purchased directly from stores anymore as none are interested in carrying it.

By all rights, it’s their property, their domains, their patents. But the fact remains that they cannot and will not turn a profit by hoarding it and giving a metaphorical middle finger to modders of the game. Sure, they won’t make any moneys by declaring it abandonware, but they stand to gain on the public relations side of things. They can really only benefit from releasing it under some form of open source license and calling it a day.

Now, we have to consider the ramifications of Microsoft officially ceasing support of H:CE. For one, as mentioned above, we’ll probably see the departure of the Gamespy multiplayer system as presumably they’re getting something from MS annually for hosting an ancient game. In this, until someone can step forward and offer something similar to http://xwis.net, community growth will surely grind to a halt and experience a drastic decline as the only feature of CE is rendered null and void.

But on the pro side, as evidenced by the Open Sauce project, there are experts in the field like kornman who can find time to alter and add on to just this sort of thing. From what I can tell, Halo CE modders have long been halted by artificial restrictions on the engine that modern hardware can surely do without, again, see OS. Imagine if someone actually made a 2.00 update possible, a unified update for all to play on free of charge, and a feasible platform for development as distribution would be in the creator’s fingertips. Microsoft could say, “Hey, look. We enabled that.”

Since Microsoft stands nothing to lose from such a thing, and people with experience have been all too eager to modify the very framework of CE in the past, the only problem lies with hosting. But really, look at projects like SwgEmu where fans have not only managed to tweak a game and distribute it at their own expense, but actually make it better then what they started out with.

I hope that you will allow the release of the -Blam- engine, and thank you for your time

2

You aren’t asking BS Angel, this is a public forum and I doubt she’d see this.

Try PMing her here: bs angel

3

It would be a good idea to send bs angel a PM.

> Now, we have to consider the ramifications of Microsoft officially ceasing support of H:CE. For one, as mentioned above, we’ll probably see the departure of the Gamespy multiplayer system as presumably they’re getting something from MS annually for hosting an ancient game. In this, until someone can step forward and offer something similar to http://xwis.net, community growth will surely grind to a halt and experience a drastic decline as the only feature of CE is rendered null and void.

This seems like a major flaw to me.

I suspect that there is still a decent portion of ordinary, non-techie players in Halo Custom Edition – not many, but enough for their departure to leave an impact. This certainly seemed like the case last time I fired up my CE copy. These people are unlikely to have the know-how needed to attach to a new multiplayer service or to install an add-on that significantly alters the game’s source.

Given the game’s age, if such people suddenly saw their online multiplayer stop working for a long enough period of time, they’d be likely to depart… well, forever. The techies in the community would have one shot at setting up a transition for these players; if they mismanage that, then a huge chunk of the population is gone. Of course, even if the transition is managed well, there are still likely to be a good chunk of players that never hear about all of this, and so there’ll still be a hit to the game’s population.

Now, this is all speculative, but it seems like it’d be a big concern – a deficit that far outweighs the associated benefit. :\

4

I’m not going to lie, I would love to see the source code for Halo CE PC, if only to see how it ticked.

5

Like Cobb said, there is much risk with doing this. Fact is, I wouldn’t have an issue with this, but there is A LOT of Halo games which would stop practically anyone from being able to find a message or truth regarding Halo PC games anymore, if it was put out there for an updated version.

Honestly, I’d follow through with it, but be sure its well planned out.

6

I’ve sent the hosting concern to Gamespy, and hopefully, they will be willing to help.

As for whether the cons outweigh the pros, sooner or later the service will be cut regardless cough Halo 2 cough. The time between then and now is what we have to convince Microsoft to let the Custom Edition community operate independently through releasing the source code, giving the game a chance to prosper irrespective of when, not if, Microsoft finally pulls the plug.

There’s a saying, “If you love something, set it free.” Generally speaking, I don’t believe a Halo: CE modder is going to walk down the street and get mobbed by busty Microsoft employees, but they don’t stand to gain anything by keeping Halo 1 close to their chests. Better to have the chance of the game living on in the hands of fans than just suddenly lynching it and effectively losing one of their most successful PC games.

7

Custom Edition is the best Halo title.

The reason Microsoft wouldn’t do this is because everyone would start playing Custom Edition again. Because if the Source Code was given out to the community then I wouldn’t touch Halo on a console again, and so would most of the community.

8

Maybe in 2022 :stuck_out_tongue:

Especially as the Halo franchise is now abandoning the BLAM technology in profit of the whole new slipsace engine, there’d be not a lot of inconvenients to release the source for H:CE, Bungie did the same thing back in the days with Marathon and it gave the game a great old school niche community that still lives to this day :slight_smile:

If Microsoft and 343i doesn’t do it, the community will at some point, see for example the efforts made to create xash3D a recreation of the Valve goldsrc engine that now allows people to play Half-Life and its mods on many devices with a lot of cool improvements that makes the experience more modern and smooth…

I think it’s also a good sign to make older engines Open Source so that you let the community tinker with it, it’s also an acknowledgment from the corporates that these technologies are no longer of any use for the modern industry and so they don’t fear to see them flow freely in the Open Source community…

9

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Please don’t revive old topics thanks