Halo 2 coming to Vista

Posted: February 9, 2006 @ 9:02 am (4 hours, 18 minutes ago) By: Major Nelson

Not many details (ummm…release date?) but here is the press release that just went out a few moments ago.

Master Chief Dual-Wields His Way to Windows Vista

“Halo 2,” the award-winning sequel to the instant classic “Halo: Combat Evolved” to make its PC debut on the Windows Vista platform

”Halo 2,” the game that redefined first-person combat and multiplayer action for millions of gamers worldwide, is set to explode onto PCs exclusively for Windows Vista. ”Halo 2” for Windows Vista will be developed by a dedicated Microsoft Game Studios team in partnership with Bungie Studios.

Only for Windows Vista, “Halo 2″ will offer gamers both the single-player campaign and multiplayer experience of the original, as well as the additional maps offered in the “Halo 2 Multiplayer Map Pack.” Gamers will also have the exciting opportunity to build, create and customize their own multiplayer levels.

“Halo: Combat Evolved” and its sequel, “Halo 2,” have achieved phenomenal success on the Xbox video game platform as gamers around the world follow the saga of Master Chief in his battle against the Covenant forces. In 2003, the original “Halo” roared onto Windows PCs. In “Halo 2” for Windows Vista, the action picks up where the first game ended. Master Chief, with the help of a small group of marines, has destroyed the religious artifact and artificial world known as “Halo,” and is making his way back to Earth. There, he and the last surviving Earth forces will mount a titanic struggle against the marauding Covenant enemy. To date, the Halo franchise has sold more than 14.5 million games worldwide with over 600 million hours of multiplayer action logged across Microsoft’s Xbox Live online gaming service.

Majornelson.com

It was "accidently" leaked by The BBC on it's website earlier today as shown here(link takes you to Joystiq's Permapage).

2006-02-09

 

GPU:  Fixed rendering of rotoscaled 1D bitmap sprites 

GPU:  Added support for the master char/screen offset setting (text BGs) 

GUI:  Map viewer and OAM viewer now support extended palettes 

GUI:  Map viewer now supports tile flipping 

GUI:  Map viewer now supports viewing of VRAM banks in LCDC mode 

GUI:  Fixed rendering of 16-color OBJs with palette number >=8 in the OAM viewer 

GUI:  Fixed rendering of 1D bitmap OBJs in the OAM viewer

>> Get it HERE

I've released version 0.2.0 of olafnes, my Nintendo Entertainment System emulator, finally. This release is an absolute restart of the olafnes project. This release is based on basicnes v1.5 [debug level 1], previous releases of olafnes were based on v1.5 [debug level 2]. Below are the changes in this version from the BASE up. Also, olafnes has a different homepage now, you can visit it here (http://olaf.efewe.com).

- added various amounts of support for the following mappers: 12, 26, 41, 46, 51, 53, 61, 73, 74, 79, 85, 86, 87, 95, 99, 107, 113, 115, 130, 151, 158, 184, 185, 188, 200, 201, 226, 229, 231, 232, 234, 245, 255

- added more support for the following mappers: 1, 4, 22, 23, 24, 64, 66, 68

- added mapper # substitution support

- added game genie support (6 letter codes only)

- added 2 player support

- added audio channel disabling

- added rewinding (up to 10 seconds)

- added multiple sram support

- added snapshot support (bitmap)

- added higher frame skips (4 through 9)

- added an "auto saver"

- added detection of emulation when close button is clicked, it will now stop emulation if clicked while emulating

- added directory memorization to the 'load rom' dialog, it will now go to the directory last accessed

- added ability to recenter the window on screen

- added command line input support (rom filename only, no switches yet)

- added gamepad support

- added a palette editor

- added a midi instrument configuration window

- added video mode for ntsc (and a switch for ntsc or pal)

- added an automatic frame skip option

- added video layer disabling

- added one screen b mirroring (thanks disch)

- added screen stretching

- added column clipping to the ppu core

- changed key configuration window

- changed configuration loading/saving to windows registry accessing (also, it now saves all configurations, not just controls)

- changed audio output to stop after emulation is stopped

- changed how resets are handled

- changed default palette to my averaged palette (averaged palette of 3 different palettes)

- changed the executable's icon

- changed the way palette selection is performed (it is now a dialog)

- changed default palette to be hardcoded (no.pal file needed)

- changed the rom information window

- changed the way mapper numbers were calculated

- removed execution speed toggling/code

- removed 'new scroll code' toggling/code

- removed 'tilebased' toggling/code

- removed the status bar

- removed the "unsafe" optimization option

- removed compression/decompression of save states

- removed clearing of wram before it's saved

- removed the initializing of the 6502 processor every time a rom is loaded

- removed preliminary support for certain mappers: 5, 8, 18

- removed the black border from the emulated screen

 

thanks to disch for help and code on the following mappers: 1, 4, 22, 23, 24, 26, 66, 85

You can visit the NEW official homepage: here (http://olaf.efewe.com).

2006-02-08

 

Some updates today..

 

CPU: Fixed crashes when using SWIs in Thumb mode

GPU: Fixed colors of extended palette OBJs in OpenGL mode

GPU: Added emulation of the master brightness setting

GUI: Improved the map viewer

 

The updated components are available individually, or as a complete

package with all the latest components.

Well done mic !!

>> Download it HERE