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[JC 2K3]

Is there any way PAL and NTSC Xboxes running PAL+NTSC copies of Halo can play against each other on Xbox Connect(i.e. System Link).

Can you patch your game to make it NTSC from PAL or PAL from NTSC?

[SEHF]

No, I don't think that's possible, but maybe it is...

Maybe you could buy two copies of the game(PAL and NTSC), but you would need two different xboxes(PAL and NTSC) or one modded xbox.

This post has been edited by SEHF on Jul 22 2004, 06:55 PM

[JC 2K3]

^I know I could do that but I want an easier way, can you patch the xbe or something?

and I have a modded xbox

This post has been edited by JC 2K3 on Jul 23 2004, 01:52 PM

[RcbUK]

They are totally different games, NTSC runs much much smoother and faster with better and sharper graphics.

[fahrenheit]

Yes the NTSC version runs faster, 30fps as compared to 25fps for PAL but PAL has a higher resolution than NTSC, 576 vertical lines of resolution as oposed to 480 lines for NTSC. Both PAL and NTSC versions of the game will run at 480p (High Def) resolutions as long as a console is in NTSC mode.

Here is a post from Bungie explaining the incompatibilities:

Okay, I need to explain the differences between NTSC and PAL Xbox Halo because there are some serious misconceptions about what we did and why. Some people seem to think we made PAL and NTSC versions incompatible either as a sneaky, half-assed method of region-locking or perhaps just because we could, and that we actually invested time and energy to cripple net play when it would have worked fine if we'd left it alone. None of this is true.

Those of you who have edited Myth maps will be familiar with the concept of tags. A programmer could come up with a better description of what tags are, but my quick and dirty layman's definition would be "objects that contain and/or reference game data and variables." The Master Chief's running speed is stored in a tag. The speed of the Warthog is stored in a tag. Lots of things are stored in tags.

When we started work on the PAL version, it ran much, much slower than its NTSC counterpart. Basically, Halo always assumed it was running in NTSC (updating 30 times per second) which meant that under PAL (updating 25 times per second) everything took longer. Much longer. So we had to manually adjust the tags, basically compensating for PAL slowdown by making certain things faster.

The problems between NTSC and PAL Xbox Halo stem from the different tags. Because many of the tags we changed are so fundamental to the game (the running speed of the Master Chief, for example) any NTSC-PAL Halo game would go out of sync immediately. We figured it would be less stressful for all concerned if we changed the ports used for multiplayer so PAL Xboxes would not let NTSC Xboxes into LAN games (and vice versa). At least that way no one says "I can join the game, therefore there must be a way to make it work. Let's spend several frustrating hours trying to resolve the problem."

Syncing the PAL tags with their NTSC counterparts is not an option; doing so would impose a 20% speed penalty on the PAL version, which we'd already decided was unacceptable. I suspect dropping the PAL tags into an NTSC version of the game would result in similar speed issues.

Yes, this is a less-than-ideal situation, and yes, future Bungie games will probably be less NTSC-centric. :-)

-Matt