Existing users, 
I've tried a few different combinations to get this beast to run smoothly... on a 1.25 Ghz Powerbook with 512 Ram, it runs moderatly well (to flat out pathetically slow say when in the Scorpion tank in the sp) in 10.3.1, and 10.3.2 did speed it up but still left a lot to be desired. So I tried running it in Jaguar 10.2.8 off my external firewire, with default settings, and this runs very smoothly, despite the recommendations of using Panther. In both cases, the Multiplayer always seems to run more smoothly than the single player levels, thankfully.
In general, as a XBox/Halo owner and long time fan, I was disappointed at the speed and quality of this port by Gearbox/Westlake. Using a machine that in effect has twice the firepower of the Xbox, it runs at half the speed... and all the alien fluorescent glowing colors in the original are depicted as flat pastels by this port... too bad Bungie was busy on Halo 2.
Overall having Multiplayer is worth the price... trust me, it's going to be THE universal LAN game for mac... but this should have looked a hell of a lot better, and had more atmosphere.
Halo
epic adventure battle game
Version: 2.0.3
Works in Jaguar
Feedback Type: Troubleshooting Report
Contributed by: Klaw3333 Saturday, December 20 2003 @ 06:28 AM PST
Product Platform: MacOSX
Used Product For: One Week
System Info:
Comments
Pixel shaders - ephica
The "alien fluorescent glowing colours" (and all the realistic lights on walls from the flash of gunfire, etc.) are created using a thing called pixel shaders. On the Xbox they were just hardcoded to work with it, since all Xboxes are the same. But since there are all different kinds of computers, you need a video card that is built to handle pixel shaders, such as an ATI Radeon 9600 or above. Unfortunately you can't upgrade the video card on a laptop :(.Sunday, January 11 2004 @ 08:12 PM PST
Works in Jaguar - fbc
Hi, Remember that a console (xbox ps2 gc etc) only has to display the maximum resolution that a TV can use. A computer's resolution of 640x480 is similar to an NTSC signal, and so a game running at 1024x768 resolution on your Mac monitor has around 4-5 times as many pixels to display than your xbox. Try playing Halo at 640x480 and you should see it run as smoothly as on the xbox (graphics processor and square vs round pixels notwithstanding)Reply to This
Sunday, December 21 2003 @ 06:55 AM PST