HDD install not recommended for Halo 3
Installing your games on your hard drive is the next best thing after the wheel. Who would’ve thought that the Xbox 360 has a silent mode, just like KITT had back in the days of Knight Rider. Unfortunately this silent mode was not made for Halo 3. Apparently it has the opposite effect on Halo 3, which means the game will load even slower than before. Bungie explains this rather strange effect after the jump.
On the official Bungie Forum Bungie’s Chief Caching Officer, Mat Noguchi explains this strange behavior and answers some questions about this problem:
The Xbox 360 HDD has a section for games to use called the utility partition. Games can use this section for whatever they want to; Halo 3 uses the utility partition to cache maps as they will load faster off the HDD than off the DVD.
So when Halo 3 runs, if a HDD is present, we copy maps from the DVD to the utility partition (on the HDD). Halo 3 doesn’t actually know where it’s running from, so it always assumes it’s running from a DVD. This is an unfortunate consequence of new features (namely, install to HDD) being added to the Xbox 360 after Halo 3 shipped. And as a result, it means that even if Halo 3 is already installed to the HDD, it will still copy maps to the utility partition.
What this actually means is that, after installing the game to HDD, the game will still copy certain parts to the utility partition which causes the game to load from one part of the HDD to the next and so on. So the process to improve loading speed in Halo 3 actually slows it down after HDD install.
Why is Halo 3 experiencing this behavior? Mat explains:
We shipped Halo 3 before Microsoft finalized this particular feature. As a result, we were not able to take advantage of it.
At the moment they are not considering to fix this issue as the focus of the team is on making great games for the future, like Halo 3: Recon and other unannounced projects. They will however monitor the situation and who knows, maybe it will be fixed if the demand is high enough.
So, when you’re thinking of installing Halo 3 on your HDD you might be better off reconsidering it as it will not give you any benefits, unless you’re the patient guy of course.
Did you run into this issue yourself or are you glad you can save some extra disk space for other games, like Gears of War 2 or Bomberman: Act Zero? Let us know below.
I’m amused.
+1
I installed it on mine with no problems. Seems faster to me. *shrug*
Why you would WANT to install Halo 3 at this stage is beyond me. It’s dead in the water now that Gears 2 and COD 4/World at War are on the scene. As well as a plethora of other great titles that seem to be appearing week by week. Why play Halo 3 now in the wake of that?
In preparation of the next Halo game, or because you like it, or because Treyarch has created yet another shitty Call of Duty game.
Actually I think I’ve found my game. While COD4 made leaps and bounds for me as a military shooter, it wasn’t that awesome for me to play it so I kept on H3. Now WAW came out and… I’m actually enjoying myself.
Really? It’s a broken game, as far as I’m concerned. I played it on the PC, though.
+1
CoD=shit anyway you look at it
Its worth noting that I never at any point said that Halo 3 was crap. Halo 3 was great fune for a while. Campaign was good in co-op. The multiplayer was very smooth and rarely had any lag due to its online optimisations.
All I’m saying is its a done thing. For me, and this is only my opinion, Gears 2, COD 4, COD:WAW, Fallout 3, Fable II, Far Cry 2, Saints Row 2 are far more demanding of my attention and raising the bar further in many ways.
In my opinion either of the recent COD games are far superior online to Halo 3. The maps are far better designed, the graphics are awesome, the gameplay is good, as well as no lag like Halo 3. The challenge system is brilliant too and gives you a great incentive to keep playing to unlock more weapons and perks. Very polished and well thought out.
And I agree, you can’t compare Gears with Halo. Halo is FPS 3D space invaders, albeit great fun. Gears is 3PS and a far meatier affair online with a greater focus on team co-ordination and strategy. I prefer Gears personally to play as its darker and more involving to play. Halo is okay for the occasional bit of throw away fun, but Gears/COD are for when you need that hard core kick.
Did you just say that COD has no Lag??????
In both COD 4 and COD:World at War, I’ve experienced next to nothing in terms of lag. Very occassionally, you get the “connection interrupted” and it either gets back quickly, or loses the connection if it takes too long. But like I said already, its almost free of lag. Maybe I’m just one of the lucky ones, but its smooth as a baby’s arse.
Ahh. You weren’t there in the beginning!
A game that has sat in the #1 spot longer than any other game is dead in the water. Whatever you say. You people can bash Halo 3 all you want, but the amount of people that continue to play it seems to indicate that Halo 3 is a GREAT game whether you think so or not.
I never at any point said that Halo 3 wasn’t great. It IS great. It was awesome for a few weeks, but its only good for occasional thrills now with its arcade gameplay.
It’s the more hardcore games like COD and Gears that have my attention now. Those are the ones that keep me coming back for more. Until the next major title comes out. Just my opinion, of course. If you prefer the quick fix of Halo 3 to more in depth hardcore gaming experiences then be my guest. I’m just expressing an opinion here. Nothing for anyone to start crying about.
COD isn’t hardcore. It’s just as arcadey as Halo, except it has perks.
If you want hardcore then play a Battlefield game. That’s as close to real combat as they’ve gotten so far. A game where being a sniper actually involves finding good cover. :/
I tried Skate on my hard drive. The loading times didn’t change. Rubbish.
installing games is a waste of hard drive space unless you care about the noise. I’m sure someone will make a website soon scoring how well games install… but you think bungie could have told us about this before the nxe was released.
If you’ve got an Elite, with 120GB worth of space, what else are you going to do with all that room?
Actually, load times have been proven to be shorter with game installs.
i agree with manodestra on this but i stopped enjoying halo after i beat campaign and played online with 7 year olds, esrb for a reason kids, anyway, see that part where bungie says they dont really care about fixing that part??? shows how much they support their POS game. while noobs be playin their gaylo i’ll be on gears like a real man.
How would you know if something is broken if it isn’t? They weren’t expecting this.
This one makes me laugh. Ha Ha Ha
But seriously though, lets move on people. Gears 2 looks better then Craplo 3 anyways.
But for a real treat, check out Killzone 2.
You meen grayzone flop edition?
This from a guy who’s no doubt seen the gameplay footage and is shitting himself because he cant afford a PS3 in order to get the game. Of course you have to talk shit when you can’t have something you really want, I understand, its reverse psychology. Just keep telling yourself it sucks. Oh and I don’t know what country your from, but here in America “meen” doesn’t mean anything.
I just love how people compare Gears of War 2 to Halo3… like they’re the same type of game or something…
yes they’re both shooters… thats where the similarities finish. 3rd person and 1st person games aren’t the same thing.
On the side… GoW2 sucks, as did the first (flame me all you want, the multi-player blows)
Story is somewhat decent. Halo3 was good… until better FPS came out.
but quit comparing Gears of War2 to Halo3… they’re not even similar.
Just my $.02
Agreed! GoW2 Multi SUCKS bad! just like the first GoW I can’t stand it! Everything to way it handles online its just not made for an online game. Story is good I’d rent it rather fork over $70 for a collectors edition that won’t be used, like come on ppl!! EVERYONE dropped gears 1 after 2 months and beat the story mode.
As for Halo, I don’t understand why people are bashing this game, yes the little kids online ruin the game but you CANNOT say GoW2 doesn’t little brats on it! I’ve installed Halo 3 to my HDD and NO problems/issues at ALL!
As for CoD and Halo, don’t even go there CoD has NOTHING on Halo.
So many exclamation marks, do you actually talk that loud in real life? Example: “im havin toast for breakfast!!!!!”
ha!
Buttered toast!
Marmalade Motherfucker!!!!
You’re obviously too used to playing a multi player game with no sense of teamwork and strategy. Back to the Unreal Tournament Team Deathmatch Dark Ages with you!
I don’t get it.
I remember Halo 1 on the Xbox that had appauling loading screens as it was having to cache the maps to the HDD. THe xbox original version on the 360 has virtually no loading screens - the one that used to take a couple of mins now takes about 1 sec. Why can’t Halo 3 don something similar.
The level of detail in Halo 3 is almost night and day compared to Halo 1. Come on, you can’t be serious?
Hmmmmmm…. maybe you forgot to think about the advancement in technology of the 360 loading and Xbox game…..
fagtits
I really thought this was interesting when I read it over @ Bungie.Net… I mean the internets are the internets and people are going to bitch about everything … But it’s the kind of thing that developers can take advantage of going forward!
Bungie is not going to dedicate a team to redesign their game so that Campaign loads a little faster … that’d be a complete waste of time and resources … Next thing you know people will be demanding that they use their Avatars in H3 multi …
If the multiple projects they’re currently developing take advatage of this feature they would have done their job, imo.
So, bungie says that copying from dvd to hd is faster than hd to hd eh… hmmmm
That is correct. Doing read/write operations on separate disk media is faster than doing everything on a single disk. The hard disk only has one pointer to look at locations on the disk so if you’re copying from disk to disk, the pointer has to jump back and forth on the same disk. Copying from one media to another can be done asynchronously.
Sorry, I’m a developer too as well as a self-confessed geek
NHL 09 suffers from the same problem. Games now take longer to load after installing to the hard drive. I’m sure this will help all 2 of you out there that play NHL, but I’m posting this anyways…
heres how to make it work ,put halo disk into a shredder and get a fucking life
Let them play their Halo. Helps keep some of the sniper noobs away from COD.
Helps my BattleField thats all i care about!
Ahhh I dont care what anybody says about halo. It is and will continue to be the BEST game for the 360. The cod realism that ppl talk about isnt even close to the real thing and gears is just a rip off 3ps with horrible online. Thanks but no thanks im gonna stick with the best and thats Halo.