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About Damn Time: Halo 2 Vista does not require disc/install to play
FyreWulff
YouRegistered User, ClubPA regular
YouRegistered User, ClubPA regular
Note: This thread isn't about Halo 2 Vista, specifically. It's just the first game to use this technology they have made.
Over at the H2V blog, they posted about a new feature called 'Tray and Play'
http://blogs.ign.com/MGS_HiredGun/2007/04/05/51370/
In short, once you buy the game, you put it in, and within two minutes you are playing. Finally, the 'console experience' on a PC!
Basically, what they're doing is making the game install itself (with a % visible on the main menu) as you play. It does have an option to do the full install the usual way.
And once you're done installing.. it doesn't need the disc anymore. About damn time. If a game is going to require me to install from now on, it better not require the CD anymore if it's just going to be reading from the HDD anyway.
And since they have a fancy name for it (Tray and Play), it looks like they're going to market this as a technology to other developers. It does require the game to be engineered correctly in the first place to use it.
So.. about damn time. Thoughts?
Over at the H2V blog, they posted about a new feature called 'Tray and Play'
http://blogs.ign.com/MGS_HiredGun/2007/04/05/51370/
With a PC game it’s a radically different process: unwrap the game, put in the disc, start clicking ok, figure out where to install it, make sure my DirectX version cuts the mustard, start watching the install progress, flip through the manual a bit, whip up a bologna sandwich, check on progress, start eating bologna sandwich, play the game – you get the picture. With Halo 2 for Windows Vista, you’ll put the disc in, click play, and then you… start playing. Yeah, I couldn’t figure out when to make my bologna sandwich, either.
In short, once you buy the game, you put it in, and within two minutes you are playing. Finally, the 'console experience' on a PC!
Basically, what they're doing is making the game install itself (with a % visible on the main menu) as you play. It does have an option to do the full install the usual way.
And once you're done installing.. it doesn't need the disc anymore. About damn time. If a game is going to require me to install from now on, it better not require the CD anymore if it's just going to be reading from the HDD anyway.
And since they have a fancy name for it (Tray and Play), it looks like they're going to market this as a technology to other developers. It does require the game to be engineered correctly in the first place to use it.
So.. about damn time. Thoughts?
FyreWulff on
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I kinda wonder how restrictive this new product activation is. I remember steam was a complete and utter pain in the tits when it was released, let's hope they've learned a little.
Of course, I think the bottom line though is, who cares about Halo PC?
Hopefully soon serial numbers will be abolished too. At least for games that require no developer input after release/patching (so not mmorpg's basically) or at least release a patch to remove serial requirement after, say, 12 months.
Well, if they're going to use DRM, they might as well use it to let us not have the disc in all the time.
And once again, this thread isn't about Halo.
Battle.net: Fireflash#1425
Steam Friend code: 45386507
With rampant piracy of games, this will never happen.
1. There is not one single player game that hasn't been cracked within 12 months of release. Not one.
2. Anyone who wants to pirate a game will be easilly able to within 12 months of release, after that point serial protection is utterly pointless.
3. People who have lost CD keys/cases because they keep discs seperate from packaging currently have two options - Piracy or don't play the game. Removing serial protection stops this.
4. Reselling, whether publishers like it or not, it is perfectly legal to resell PC games. romoving serial protection after a given time period makes this easier.
The only argument agaisnt it is that maybe people will pirate more because they don't have to worry about serials, they'll just wait for "gameiso.torrent" in 12 months time, but judging from the mentality of pirates I know, this is unlikely.
So it will work fine until your internet dies and you cant connect then you cant play halo pc.
I never asked for this!
Is there any reason that you would want to play Halo without an internet connection?
Or, y'know, it has an offline mode like any sane system would, and you can.
I'M A TWITTER SHITTER
Anyway, the title should say "does not require [installation] to play"
Steam Profile | Signature art by Alexandra 'Lexxy' Douglass
GalCiv2 doesn't allow you to play while installing...
did you even read the OP?
PSN: super_emu
Xbox360 Gamertag: Emuchop
Topic title does not match OP though..
I never asked for this!
There are two main points to the OP:
1. You can start playing immediately upon inserting the disc, because it "installs in the background" as you play.
2. Once that's done (and things have been activated online) you no longer need the disc to play.
Therefore, I fail to see how the thread title of "does not require disc to play" is inappropriate for the OP which states that the disc is not required to be in the drive for you to play. Obviously it has to be in the drive for the installation procedure, the data has to get onto the computer somehow. Where's the confusion?
Because playing with out the disk is hardly impressive or innovate where as playing the second you pop the disk in has never been done before?
I never asked for this!
thats why I asked if he read the op..
I mean, if he is just reply after reading the thread title, he should stop knee-jerk replying after thread title. always read the OP..
PSN: super_emu
Xbox360 Gamertag: Emuchop
Weren't a lot of the early CD-based games playable without an install? Of course, they almost certainly needed fewer resources to run.
I think this kind of setup could have been done at any point (though not necessarily with any efficiency), but they were the first ones to bother. It seems to be kind of like a combination of the direct from cd execution of the earlier CDrom games and the content streaming that's been used by some MMOGs for a while.
Yeah a good number of the first generation CD games were disk only and then that sort of stopped after a while. I always thought that running off the CD was cool and I wish we would of stuck with it. But it's nice to see everything coming around full circle and back to CD running games.
I never asked for this!
Yeah, it's really cool to have extra long load times. Gee I wish we could have more of that.
Yeah, sure. Most were DOS games.
IIRC, Earthworm Jim Special Edition would automatically add something to your Add/Remove Programs list and then DEMAND the disc to remove it!
It would be just like consoles and would be better off for it if they are going to require the disc anyway. Installing to the hard drive sure didn't eliminate load times due to compression to conserve HDD space.
Obviously it can be done with out massive load times.
It's just annoying that we have to install games and even then we still need to pop disks in and out. It's no disk and install or no install and disk. Pick a side we're at war.
I never asked for this!
Remember when games gave you a "Maximum," "Minimum," "Normal," and "Custom" install option? The choice should be yours and always should have been.
Most people wouldn't be willing to suffer load times. The load times for Far Cry on the Xbox made me want to kill somebody. Any load times more than 10 seconds are extremely annoying.
I do. Kinda.
While I haven't yet read this entire thread. Allow me to interject here.
By any chance have you ever installed C&C The First Decade? (which curiously enough I am currently reinstalling)
I dare you to say the same thing after installing it.
---
I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
Ok I'll admit it, First decade is awful for that. You have a cd-key for every single game and expansion in the box set. But I think serials are a good incentive to pay for games that have an online mode, and I'm not talking about mmo's here. Little Timmy the pirate may download all his computer games instead of buying, but if he wants to play Warcraft III online, he's gonna need a legit cd-key that is not being used by someone else. He thus has to purchase the game legally.
Battle.net: Fireflash#1425
Steam Friend code: 45386507
I think that bit in bold is actually wrong. The compression generally helps speed up the load times not the other way around. I remember there being something about this back when people were trying to optimise doom 3 and some bright sparks thought the game would run faster if they uncompressed all the pak files or whatever they were, but this has the opposite effect.
And as for disk space, it's what 25c a gigabyte these days? I think if you're struggling for disk space you either have too much porn/warez or just too poor to be a pc gamer.
Nope. Remember the whole "RAID 0 is pointless for gamers" revalation that happened a few years ago? The basis was in fact: You are waiting for your CPU to decompress the level for all major games, not for your drive to load a level limited only by the sustained transfer rate. Considering that most people did not have gigs of RAM and therefor the load times were also precaching data on the HDD, I stand by my statement that most games would only be some percentage faster off of the HDD (like, 40-60%). Nothing so significant to mandate HDD installs for console ports that never intended to have the speed of a HDD.
Oh, and this is CZroe BTW (brother's PC)
Now these are all pretty fast drives so I'd hate to see what limiting access and seek times to DVD speeds would be.
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My three (three) legally purchased copies of Half-Life beg to differ. I can't use any of them online because Steam claims that all of those serial numbers are in use. To get them reset I apparently have no recourse other than sending the physical packaging for the game to the States.
Yeah. Fuck that. And fuck serial numbers.
Could this be the most over-exaggerated statement ever?
1. Unwrap game and put in disc? wtf? you don't do this with console games?
2. Figure out where to install it??? When was the last time you actually cared about the installation location and spent more than a second on that screen before hitting next and accepting the default? the vast majority of us probably use nothing but default locations. And if you don't, you've probably got that figured out all in advance anyway.
3. DirectX version? please! There hasn't been anything but minor revisions to DirectX for a long time now. If you've got XP, you're pretty much set.
4. Its not like consoles don't have their hangups either. Why do I gotta hit select so many times to select a storage device for my 360 games? Can't you just have an option to just "store elsewhere" if need be, otherwise detect that the HD is there and use that by default?
The rest of that, I guess the author is just trying to be funny at that point, but damn. There is nothing chaining you down to that computer and forcing you to experience the boring install routine. Put down the sandwich you lazy fucker and go outside for a bit, check your mail or something. Spend time with the wife and kids...for christs sake.
I'm glad they're going to get rid of CD checks, but the rest of this is BS
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Grammar nazi time!
This phrase is almost completely pointless, as exaggeration implies overstatement. "Over-exaggerated" is a waste of breath/keystrokes. The phrase is only really appropriate in some very specific cases, which very rarely come up.
the more you know
I don't think you get this tech.
Under the old system, you have to wait however long for the game to load the setup, find the directories, test the computer, install for 30 minutes... and hope the game works.
This system? You take the disc out of the case, put it in the drive, and you are in a game and playing under two minutes. Your disc won't be trashing because they won't be running the drives at full tilt. If you have a computer good enough to be running this game, you shouldn't have trashing drives anyway. I actually haven't heard a drive trash since I got WindowsXP, actually. You don't hear the disc thrashing on Halo 2 Xbox, either, and it's basically using the same idea.