Saturday, April 16, 2005

hacked game variants and profiles

in case any modders missed this note in the Bungie.net update...

"Please note that the current "hacked profile" that is circulating around the internet is prohibited on Live and we consider that cheating and a violation of our online terms of use. Anyone using this or any other similar device will be blocked from playing in matchmade games."
Source: http://www.bungie.net/News/TopStory.aspx?story=weeklywhatsapril15th

these hacked game saves include altered game variants. the files are taken off a modded Xbox and transferred to a PC. then they are modified with hexadecimal editing software. after the changes are complete, the files are transferred back to the modded Xbox and then copied onto an Xbox memory card. once they are on the memory card, they can be used on any Xbox - modded or not.

there were two reasons that people used these hacked game variants: they wanted to add illegal characters to the names, and they wanted to use game variants that cannot be created using the Halo 2 game variant options.

the first reason doesn't really make much sense to me. I don't much care if a game is called "slayer" or "**slayer**". however, the second reason makes perfect sense to me. one of the 'illegal' game variants is 'grenades only'. now that's something worth modding for - it's a really cool variant that isn't available in Halo 2. in the game options, there is simply no way to allow people to play without a weapon.

as for banning people, I don't see why it's necessary (or even desirable) to do so. as far as I know, no harm was being done (someone pls correct me if I'm wrong on this point - EDIT: someone did :). I would have much preferred that Halo fans were given the option of creating the variants that they want to play.

2 comments:

Stephen Cawood said...

thanks, for the comment.

I guess the 'hacked' game variants aren't really the issue.

I'm surprised that any such player data is stored in the profile. shouldn't it be in the bipd meta data of the map?

Anonymous said...

Well, I know its been so long since I wrote this...but its just choosing an invalid character model. Usually you just have an Elite or Spartan, but this gives you some kind of messed up Elite model that doesnt have any reload time.