Hi all,
Roger here, Bungie's old Halo PC guy from way back when. I've been in touch with Gearbox regarding the exploit currently being abused to make Halo servers unresponsive, and we've identified a fix. Now, I have no idea what the official support status of this game is, and I don't relish the thought of asking our friends at MGS to spin up a new Halo 1 PC support team and get their copy of the source out of whatever underground vault they keep it in. So, since I still have the official build machine under my desk (well, I put it in storage for a while, but yesterday asked our IT team to "unseal the hushed casket"), I made a fixed build and I'm posting it here. Don't take this as any official change in the game's support policy from MS, Bungie, or Gearbox, but when a problem like this comes along, we do want to help out the fans who have kept the game alive for this long.
So here's the plan: The zip I'm posting today has binaries that fix the particular bug in question. It's gotten only minimal testing to verify that it runs and isn't vulnerable. Over the next couple weeks, we'll watch the community feedback and look through the source a little more to see of we see any similar vulnerabilities we should patch at the same time. Then in about a month, I'll assemble a regular auto-patch so that players will get this fixed build automatically. Until then, the old build 1.0.7.0614 will remain live on the autopatcher, and you'll have to get this fix manually from here. The exe will be version stamped at build 0615, but in-game the version string will continue to say 0613 for compatibility reasons.
This patch contains four EXEs: client & dedicated servers for Halo PC and Halo CE. Drop the binaries into the respective game directories. If you provide feedback here, please focus on items related to this exploit fix; we will not be making other changes related to new hardware support, performance, etc.
Since these files are not codesigned, the MD5 hashes are as follows:
Halo PC
5be538321fd40f52ebdea496f3427bec halo.exe
72502a9f922b9dd5413f76cf9f215b16 haloded.exe
0a84675e9e2af4603dbd2263c7990306 Strings.dll
Halo CE
e3dc00b18f33558fd801b739315bcc21 haloce.exe
0315a461440e7fdf26698bdad4dea2a7 haloceded.exe
d01f8b7e039079d9084470774f5c3377 Strings.dll
The patch is at the following URL:
[url]http://www.bungie.net/images/games/halopc/patch/halopc615.zip[/url]
Gearbox also plans to mirror the patch, I expect that it will be linked from here:
[url]http://www.gearboxsoftware.com/index.php?p=games&game=halo[/url]
Enjoy!
-Roger
[Edited on 07.03.2008 1:35 PM PDT]
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This should help greatly. Thanks, Saw! And some of you say Bungie doesn't care about their PC fans...
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OMG! Finally, another patch that's worth waiting for the "Searching for Patches" screen while uploading an internet menu! Funny thing is, I just DLed a new custom UI for CE and CE Dev Mode. Now i gotta scavange my PC for the original UI... [Edited on 07.03.2008 1:41 PM PDT]
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what exactly was the bug anyway?
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Thanks Saw! I'll Install it ASAP (Btw other Halo PCers this proves Bungie in some way still loves us!)
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Holly wow, people are still on Halo 1, time to go back old school where it all started. [Edited on 07.03.2008 1:38 PM PDT]
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Holy crap. That's great. Thanks.
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Thanks.
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Nice Thanks.
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Much love!
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i would like to play my console against a pc user and see if you pc guys are any good?
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And I was almost sure we wouldn't get any help at all. Thanks to all that were involved.
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Now, can we get a patch that allows full compatibility with the Xbox 360 controller? :D
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Sweet, time to dust off my copy of Halo PC, I'll be playing until the 7th (when I'm not helping to get 7,000,000,000 kills in Halo 3's Campaign, of course).
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Get more people to kill lots of Flood since they can come back to life if not completely destroyed and the infection forms go into the bodies.
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[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] Lord Dragod Now, can we get a patch that allows full compatibility with the Xbox 360 controller? :D[/quote] He already said that there will be no further changes to the game. We are lucky enough to be having this problem fixed, don't pester them for more.
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THANKYOU, now we can play PC without worrying without DDoS'ers. thankyou thankyou
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[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] GaIap what exactly was the bug anyway?[/quote]
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[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] GaIap what exactly was the bug anyway?[/quote] A certain network packet that is missing the normal data message would leave the game stuck looking for the rest of the data. Nothing harmful that would compromise the server.
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Thank you!
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Thanks alot, I'll be sending this to everyone I know.
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I think my feelings about this have already been summed up by two others in this thread: [quote][b]Posted by:[/b] Duardo Holy crap. That's great. Thanks.[/quote][quote][b]Posted by:[/b] Bapabooiee Much love![/quote](Long Live the MAW!)
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Thanks! Applying now...
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Awesome! It's good to know that even though any "official" support is dead, we still have people that care about us in times of need! Thank you VERY MUCH Roger! Now, when can we expect this to be pushed as a mandatory update?! It makes HALO crash when you try and use an aimbot as well! Source: [url]http://www.modacity.net/forums/showthread.php?t=10589&page=5[/url] This could quite possibly be the best thing to happen to the HALO PC/CE community since sliced bread!
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Here's an interesting stat: There have been 96152 unique Halo PC users in online multiplayer in the past 30 days! (That's the number of unique, legit "yellow sticker" CD keys seen online). This game certainly lives on.
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Wow, I don't even have halo PC, but I'm very impressed that you stepped up to fix this problem. Very cool move.
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Sawnose, Im a player of Halo 2 for the PC. If you use a mouse and keyboard while playing, and you are getting high FPS at the same time, your mouse jerks and stutters horribly. Ive sought help numerous times, and the only response Ive gotten was to turn VSYNC on and force 60 fps. 60 FPS significantly hinders my gameplay. I recently paid for a 8800 GTX graphics card. Why should we have to lower our FPS to get rid of that mouse stutter? I expect to get what I paid for, and thats smooth play with high FPS! [Edited on 07.03.2008 4:45 PM PDT]