Widescreen Gaming Forum

[quote]

...I was using 1.08 and the FOV hack worked fine for me in both singleplayer and multiplayer.
Lucky, apparently a lot of other people haven't been having too much luck with it. I miss widescreen :(.

Someone is updating the hack for 1.08 users anyway, I'll post a link in this post when he finishes and releases it.

BTW, just as an FYI - Bitterbanana's FOV hack and most other Halo hacks work by hacking the game client's memory and plugging in values (in this case, changing the view frustum). This stuff is not really a patch, more of a hack or client side addon. Because of this if a hack works in singleplayer it should work in multiplayer and vice-versa no matter what - there is no code that checks what apps are running in the background to block out the app anyway.

If Bitterbanana or someone ever patches YeloBattery for 1.08 then the UI stretching issue should be fixed.

Please do cut Gearbox, Bungie and MS some slack - the game was released in 2003 or 2004, way before widescreen monitors became popular. Halo CE has never been officially supported and Halo PC is probably not supported by now either. The score can stay at whatever it is because that is the way the rules are but please do cut the developers some slack considering widescreen monitors are still a rarity amongst Halo users. They aren't lazy - they just didn't anticipate that widescreen users would become a sizable minority 5 or so years after their game was released. I'd also say that the fact that the community is there to provide tools like this is a pretty good indication that people are into the game, but that's rather subjective isn't it. :P

EDIT: Updated FOV Hack is here.

Please do cut Gearbox, Bungie and MS some slack - the game was released in 2003 or 2004, way before widescreen monitors became popular.

Pfft.

Let me just remind you that The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time when run off an emulator has perfect Triplehead support.

Made in 1998.

So they deserve no slack whatsoever in my book.

[quote]Please do cut Gearbox, Bungie and MS some slack - the game was released in 2003 or 2004, way before widescreen monitors became popular.

Pfft.

Let me just remind you that The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time when run off an emulator has perfect Triplehead support.

Made in 1998.

So they deserve no slack whatsoever in my book.

Original Half-Life works great in widescreen aswell.

[quote]Please do cut Gearbox, Bungie and MS some slack - the game was released in 2003 or 2004, way before widescreen monitors became popular.

Pfft.

Let me just remind you that The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time when run off an emulator has perfect Triplehead support.

Made in 1998.

So they deserve no slack whatsoever in my book.
Assuming you are referring to Project64, the emulator is handling the widescreen support and increased resolution. The original N64 is only capable of outputting at a maximum resolution of 640 x 480 with whatever field of view the game chooses to use - in the case of Ocarina of Time, probably something like 70-90 degrees due to it being a 4:3 aspect ratio resolution. Project64 handles the resolution and field of view changes in the "modern" emulated version.

Anyway, that means that at best OoT only had wide screen support in 2001, when Project64 was released. That also assumes that the developers of the emulator had figured out how to get it to run at resolutions greater then the standard 640x480 res in the initial release. I don't know for sure, but I doubt that it had support for larger/widescreen resolutions in the initial release. If you want to you can look through the project logs and find out when it supported it.

Original Half-Life works great in widescreen as well.

True, but that's just because Valve is cool like that 8) . It still requires an ugly fix to get the FoV set properly (autoexec.bat file needs to have "fov xx" or whatever added, there's an article on this site IIRC). Yes, it would be nice if Halo had a built in menu option to change the FoV but considering neither games are supported I doubt Bungie, Gearbox or MS would take the time to update it because then they would have to put together a support team for a game with a very small community of gamers. The costs of that don't justify something that can be done just as well by simply running a little app in the background that doesn't have any performance overhead at all.

Anyway, the FoV Hack has been updated, link is in my last post.

Nonetheless, even the fact that some little developers making an emulator for a Nintendo 64 and implementing widescreen (if even at a later point) for MULTIPLE games proves the point that it is Microsoft's fault for not updating Halo: Combat Evolved with correct widescreen capability.

It's not difficult, and they can easily release a patch enabling it.

I don't see any reason to not fault them for it.

How can i set it over 1600x900, i need 1920x1080 =/

In the shortcut target you need to add -vidmode 1920,1080,60 to force it to your resolution and refresh rate (assuming 60hz).

For those who don't like the hacky temporary nature of the FOV program, or can't get it to work, there's a permanent solution.

http://forum.macologist.org/showthread.php?t=555

Says it's for Mac, but it's the same files on PC, so it works there too...also works on Halo 2, and probably on the Halo demo.

The directions there are somewhat confusing, though. Basically, open up each MAP in a hex editor (but don't bother with bitmaps or sounds), and replace every instance of AA 61 9C 3F with the FOV you desire. I don't know if it's replacing any important non-FOV numbers by accident, but I tested the first SP map and everything worked okay. The DM maps only have around 73 instances to replace, and the SP maps have upwards in the hundreds (you'll definitely want to click the "replace all" button).

Assuming 1.221730470657349 really does equal 70 FOV (or approx), to find the number, take your desired FOV and divide it by 57.29577978221061839928051578009. You can round the result up to the nearest hundredth or whatever if you like, then convert it to hex. XVI32, the program I use, has an "encode number" option to convert the number to "32 bit IEEE single". That will give you the hex to replace into each map.

Here are some common ones I've worked out already:

AA 61 9C 3F = 1.22173047065735 = 70 (Halo's default, 4:3)
DB 0F C9 3F = 1.57079631941659 = 90 (Quake's default, 4:3)
F3 66 DF 3F = 1.74532924379621 = 100 (16:10)
0B BE F5 3F = 1.91986216817583 = 110 (16:9)

neat thread, just when I bought halo too.

Edit: see below.