[HN Gopher] Halo system link still holds up more than 20 years l...
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       Halo system link still holds up more than 20 years later
        
       Author : bookofjoe
       Score  : 76 points
       Date   : 2022-08-17 15:00 UTC (4 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
        
       | Barrin92 wrote:
       | LAN parties are fantastic, I did one recently with a few
       | childhood friends as well and they're exactly as fun as they were
       | back then. Playing over the internet is fun but the dynamics of
       | being in the same room is pretty impossible to replace.
       | 
       | Also made much more comfortable by the fact that monitors have
       | gotten flatter. I still have PTSD from carrying CRT monitors
       | around, they felt like they were made out of cement
        
       | skibz wrote:
       | A fantastic title on a fantastic console. Maybe it's time to dust
       | off the old Xboxes and organise a LAN party!
       | 
       | Sort of related: I found some interesting news about a reverse-
       | engineered Xbox Live service in development, recently:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmvDgNAvdWM&t
        
       | Unklejoe wrote:
       | There were basically VPN services back in the day that would
       | allow you to play Halo CE over the internet with strangers (the
       | game would think it's on a LAN).
       | 
       | This was before Xbox live (Halo CE didn't support live AFAIK),
       | then even afterwards for modded consoles that got banned from
       | live.
        
         | sli wrote:
         | I remember that, but I can't remember the name of it. I used it
         | to play Counter-Strike online on my original Xbox before I had
         | a PC capable of playing modern (at the time) games. It was
         | well-populated enough that I could always find plenty of games.
         | Godsend for a kid that couldn't afford the monthly fee for
         | Live.
        
         | oktwtf wrote:
         | XBConnect and Xlink Kai if memory serves me right, and I think
         | if you got crafty you could use the likes of Hamachi.
         | 
         | At first it was just fun to play online Halo, then we started
         | diving into the files and modding game types and weapons. The
         | Xbox was such a fantastic console. As someone whom had several
         | GameSharks, hackable is so much of the fun.
        
           | tehbeard wrote:
           | Ah, XBConnect. So many fun memories.
           | 
           | Me and my brother connected across the Atlantic to a
           | "server/game" on the east coast, I wanna say upstate New York
           | maybe?
           | 
           | Fantastic bunch of dudes, the main one had a fat fiber pipe
           | so 16 player matches were smooth.
           | 
           | We played alot of "party" style game modes (zombies and duck
           | hunt type games)
           | 
           | And some modded game modes came about that were fantastic
           | fun.
           | 
           | Cat and mouse on the Coagulation map, where the cats were in
           | wraiths, and everyone could spawn in their own warthog to
           | drive using the plasma pistol, wraiths were honour bound to
           | not fire, boost only until the last minute, and hogs had to
           | not hide in bases/caves.
           | 
           | There was also Tremors, with ghosts as the graboids.
           | 
           | XBConnect was solid enough that I could rig a network switch
           | to my desktop, and both our consoles could work with it.
           | 
           | Lost touch with them after Halo 3 when system link above
           | ~20ms got "blocked" :(
        
         | Rodeoclash wrote:
         | And even before that we had services like Kali which would
         | emulate a local network but over the internet for LAN only
         | games. I remember using it to play MechWarrior 2.. poorly, the
         | networking code was never designed to handle large latencies
         | that you would get over modem.
        
       | sylens wrote:
       | Everybody who came of age back then has a story of some huge
       | system link game in somebody's basement for a sleepover/birthday
       | party at some point. It was an era where you didn't need battle
       | passes or constant content drips to keep interest in a
       | multiplayer game
        
         | meowtimemania wrote:
         | My next door neighbors bought a 200 ft ethernet cable, and we
         | ran the cable over a fence to connect our two houses to play
         | system link halo. We had a lot of fun playing halo with all the
         | neighborhood kids
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | twiceaday wrote:
         | Or maybe put another way: it was an era where gaming wasn't as
         | popular as it could be, as it is today, because of a lack of
         | constant content drips.
        
           | kibwen wrote:
           | Or to put it another way: it was an era where the people in
           | charge of producing games cared more about making the
           | experience of playing the game fun and less about diluting
           | the game in favor of squeezing out the maximum amount of
           | profit via dark patterns and psychologically-manipulative
           | Skinner boxes.
        
             | kastagg wrote:
             | What seems sinister or manipulative to you about Skinner
             | boxes? Do you feel the same aversion to training dogs using
             | treats or praise?
        
               | psyc wrote:
               | Do you feel any aversion to locking people in your house,
               | feeding them only on your schedule, and deciding when
               | they can go to the bathroom?
        
       | dark-star wrote:
       | obligatory link:
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZyBuZQ9MEo
       | 
       | We all thought it was pretty darn awesome when the video first
       | circulated some 20 years or so ago... Now, with 5G and always-on
       | devices it's probably not as impressive anymore ...
        
         | TakeBlaster16 wrote:
         | Wow, this is from _way_ back in the day when you were allowed
         | to put actual music in videos. I wonder how this one slipped
         | past Content ID, maybe it 's grandfathered in?
        
           | spijdar wrote:
           | In my (limited) experience sporadically uploading videos for
           | fun the past decade or so, most Content ID matches simply
           | makes a video ineligible for monetization, and enables
           | advertisements on the video. I think copyright owners can
           | still block content, but most seem to allow it (with
           | monetization redirected to whatever corp owns copyright)
           | 
           | It's a hazy memory now, but I remember when the predecessor
           | to the current system wouldn't block the video, but simply
           | remove the original audio, and replace it with something from
           | Youtube's royalty free music library. Did that actually
           | happen, or is it a false memory?
        
             | bombcar wrote:
             | Before (not sure if it's the case now) you had the option
             | of letting YouTube mute the segment that got flagged.
        
       | calsy wrote:
       | Yeah why isn't Epic able to teleport 100 people to the same
       | location with all their hardware included, plugged in and
       | physically connected for seamlessly networking at the press of a
       | button. Damn reality.
        
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       (page generated 2022-08-21 23:00 UTC)