Bungie: Just say 'NO' to NXE install of Halo 3

by Randy Nelson { Nov 19th 2008 at 6:30PM }

As we reported last week, Eurogamer noticed something fishy about its NXE HDD install of Halo 3 when investigating the performance of titles using this new feature: it was awful. Turns out that, with today's roll-out of the New Xbox Experience, more and more people are discovering this. Bungie has weighed in on the topic, revealing that, because of the way the game's designed, it really shouldn't be installed to the 360's hard disk.

In a post on the Bungie forums, engineer Mat Noguchi explains that the slower loading after a full HDD install is a direct result of how the game was designed to use the HDD in the first place. "When Halo 3 runs, if a HDD is present, we copy maps from the DVD to the utility partition on the HDD," says Noguchi. "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."

The problem: copying from the HDD to the HDD is slow. "Ultimately this is because for the HDD, you read and write through the same mechanism, i.e., the hard drive read/write head, and those reads and writes cannot occur simultaneously through a single mechanism," Noguchi explains. The moral of this story: don't install Halo 3 to the HDD and you'll be much, much happier.

Bungie has no plans to issue a post-NXE launch fix because, as Naguchi writes, "The risks of doing that and the resources required has to be carefully considered against what could really be a rather insignificant change to the player experience."

[Thanks, David]

Curious about the New Xbox Experience? Check out our ridiculously informative nine-video feature, covering everything from Avatar creation, Netflix integration, and the 8-player party system to installing games to the hard drive, the new Marketplace, the Blade-like "Guide" interface, and more!

Tags: bungie, halo, halo-3, microsoft-game-studios, new-xbox-experience, nxe

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

tmmoore_nc @ Nov 19th 2008 6:36PM

I installed Halo 3 to my hard drive ultimately because it is quiet. And maybe they should have figured this out before making these statements, that gamers like to play their games in peace and quiet. Not in a wind tunnel.

knighty (GT: ZeraKnight) @ Nov 19th 2008 6:40PM

Bungie did not know when they made Halo 3 that Microsoft would allow games to be installed to the HDD....unless I misunderstood your.

BxGT @ Nov 19th 2008 6:49PM

When you play halo by any chance are you paying attention to the 360's fan or to the guy shooting you?
Just raise the volume man.

ryan @ Nov 19th 2008 7:27PM

Sucks for the possible damage that could come from letting that thing spin round baby right round. :/

Soulcrux42 @ Nov 19th 2008 8:06PM

I don't get why people complain so much about this. Why are you noticing the exhaust noise? I personally am paying attention to the GAME. Fan noise is just background noise, and its not even that loud. Try playing a modern PC game on a 2004 laptop. THAT'S loud.

SoCoolCurt (PSN: KillaKornbread - XBL: SoCoolCurt) @ Nov 19th 2008 8:08PM

the 360 is loud, that's no secret. but seriously, i tune it out after a while. it's too the point i actually have to listen for it in order to hear it.

im more worried about the wear on the drive than the actual noise now. so if it came down to a performance issue, then Halo 3 just wouldnt get installed to the hard drive.

Vidikron @ Nov 20th 2008 2:14AM

The 360 is indeed loud, loud, loud. Yes, at some point while playing a game you are no longer consciously aware of the noise, but you're still hearing it. Countless times I've stopped playing a game and there was a literal feeling of relief when that drive spun down. Like the noise was getting on my nerves without being aware of it until the source of agitation was removed. The ability to install is quite welcome IMO.

Halwende @ Nov 19th 2008 6:40PM

What they're saying makes perfect sense, I'm surprised more developers didn't something similar. Sure, shame the 360 won't be quiet - but kudos to Bungie for taking the effort to do what they did with that copying to HDD...

Kinsey @ Nov 19th 2008 6:40PM

I wonder if thats the same reason why DLC maps take longer to load than the on-disc maps.

ThornedVenom (Harley Quinn Defense Force) @ Nov 19th 2008 6:42PM

I wonder if Microsoft is going to be issuing a response.

Raikage (Mr. ESC? Mr. ESC? MR. ESSSSSSCCCCCC!) @ Nov 19th 2008 6:45PM

It would be nice if they could fix it... but it seems like it would be a huge hassle... I'm no expert though...

Seph X @ Nov 19th 2008 6:43PM

*Facepalm*
This is a Bungie smokescreen for "we're too lazy to fix it". As much as I like Bungie, they're quite lazy when it comes to things they could update/fix in their game.

Here's my big question then, how do DLC maps work and cant you just apply the same code used for DLC maps for all maps?

knighty (GT: ZeraKnight) @ Nov 19th 2008 6:46PM

No, because the interface through which the installed games work will mask the HDD as a DVD otherwise all games would have to be changed to work. Think of it like an ISO you mount in Daemon Tools or something, sure it's on your HDD but as far as whatever is in the ISO is concerned, it's on a DVD/CD.

Seph X @ Nov 19th 2008 6:51PM

It still doesnt explain how Bungie's DLC maps work. Why cant they program another module of code into Halo 3 that makes the HDD install recognize the disc maps the same as DLC maps?

Its something thats very doable, unless Bungie broke a few of the basic programming laws (*cough*again*cough*). Make the game think all maps are DLC maps... this is assuming the DLC maps dont use the same setup as the disc based maps, and if so then they used a redundant system.

Ringo @ Nov 19th 2008 6:57PM

@knighty: Surely the NXE is able to expose to a suitably patched game if it's content is running from an HDD install/virtual drive, so that said patched game could then decide to copy data e.g. maps, or not.

Honestly, these guys make it sound like there aren't nearly 5m copies of this sold in the U.S.

Cody @ Nov 19th 2008 7:04PM

It's not so much a matter of "can it be done", as it is "should it be done." Imho there are much things Bungie could be doing (like making Halo 3:Recon) than making sure a game will install to the hard drive. You do realize that just adding a small amount of code to fix that could end up messing up the whole game since the game was originally designed to maximize the DVD load times. To make sure it worked right, Bungie would have to make sure it worked with every campaign level and every multiplayer level. Like I said there are much better things they can use their time for. Like BxGT said in his reply to the first comment. "Just raise the volume man."

knighty (GT: ZeraKnight) @ Nov 19th 2008 7:28PM

When I said "no" I was referring to whether they could use the same code, not whether it could be done or not. Anyway, obviously none of us here know how the system works, but yes I'd imagine that games should be able to work out if they're hardware installed, but then again Microsoft may not have wanted to make a differentiation in hardware like that. Who knows, we'll find out with future games hopefully.

krizoitz @ Nov 19th 2008 7:56PM

Uh, no, its not about being lazy, its about where they want to spend their resources. Its not some simple switch they flip, its basically re-writing a major part of the game engine AND the added test cost. Instead they are going to work on things like finishing Recon and whatever other projects they have going on.

DangerMouse @ Nov 19th 2008 8:30PM

From the answer the Bungie guy gave, it sounds like to me that it has a lot to do with core game design, not just simple lines of code. It's not their fault that Microsoft decided to throw this feature out there a year after the game came out, so i don't see why they should have to go back and dick around with it.

aristokrat @ Nov 20th 2008 2:08AM

Nobody around here seems to have thought of compression (or any procedural generation) being the cause? Perhaps they are read off the disc, decompressed, and written to the hard drive (if there is space available) to minimize loading times (read from HDD vs. read from DVD + decompression/assembly). Any decompression inevitable requires writing to memory (and caching to HDD is good for large files, like maps), as could cached procedurally generated stuff. Who knows what kind of space-saving tricks they pulled off? Therefore, it could be worse to try to stop HDD loading because then you wouldn't be caching, and otherwise you have the HDD caching to itself? Seems pretty obvious to me.

Now if they could have a decompress AND install option, you'd get faster load times, but you'd lose vast amounts of space.

Pedobear @ Nov 19th 2008 6:46PM

I don't install games to make them load faster. i do it to not kill by dvd drive and try to reduce the number of dirty disc errors I get for no reason.

ryan @ Nov 19th 2008 7:29PM

That disc drive will eat your discs alive! I'm not even talking about flipping the console while playing either.

Ringo @ Nov 19th 2008 6:49PM

TBH whilst the reason for the problem is right, the excuse for not fixing it is a "WTF?" i mean all its got to do is check (somehow) if it's been installed to the hdd, then carry on as if there isn't one... am I missing something?

Perhaps someone can pass the code on to Bungie:

if( No_HDD_Present || Game_Is_Installed_To_HDD )
{
... do as if no hdd present
}
etc...

Seph X @ Nov 19th 2008 6:53PM

Thank god there's another programmer out here...

Is it seriously that hard to patch in an extra module and variable? A Yes/No variable that gets set to Yes if there's an HDD install, and then the module of code which could treat the maps exactly like it would treat a map downloaded from the Marketplace.

RiccochetJ @ Nov 19th 2008 6:55PM

My god! Bungie must be a bunch of complete morons to not realize that all they have to do is put a simple or statement in their code... :P

Ringo @ Nov 19th 2008 6:59PM

@RiccochetJ: Oh, you spotted that too! :) Cause that's what they sound like...

Premature ejaculation man @ Nov 19th 2008 7:02PM

i think you should work for them! I don't think the people who can create their own games are able to handle something so complicated as an IF statement!

They'd love you! We'd love you for inserting those lines because it'd all work right?

knighty (GT: ZeraKnight) @ Nov 19th 2008 7:30PM

We don't know how the HDD/DVD mapping works. Well done, you know how an if statement works, I bet you don't know how the content loader in Bungie's engine works. If it is just a mapping of the DVD onto the HDD and Microsoft haven't exposed whether the game is installed it isn't possible to program it in.

Abdul @ Nov 20th 2008 7:11AM

Haha, thats exactly what I was thinking Ringo. However the issue may be with the XDK version they are using. I would imagine that only the latest XDK would support checking if a game is installed to hard drive, and Bungie doesn't want to risk introducing new bugs by switching XDKs.

Ichi the One @ Nov 19th 2008 6:54PM

I really hope Bungie changes their minds and fixes this. Like others have said, it wouldn't be TOO hard of a fix really. Bungie was sound proud of the sound effects in Halo 3, and I agree, if I set my sound system to blow my ears out when something explodes, I can hear the awesome subtle effects over the buzz saw running 4 feet away from me.

Please bungie, fix it for the DVD drive, not for the load times.

marcandrer @ Nov 19th 2008 6:57PM

"Ultimately this is because for the HDD, you read and write through the same mechanism..."

Shouldn't a HDD only change the file location in the partition table when it copies (move) files on itself ? If the Xbox partition is not doing this it's kinda weird imo.

stoik @ Nov 19th 2008 10:27PM

You have no idea what you're talking about imo.

marcandrer @ Nov 19th 2008 10:58PM

and you do ?

Markusdragon @ Nov 20th 2008 12:02AM

It's duplicating the files, not moving them.

Lekko @ Nov 19th 2008 6:59PM

I think that back in the old PS2/xbox HDD game iso era, they had an issue with GTA and framerate issues when loading off hard drives for different reasons.

Since the HDD was so much faster than a PS2's DVD drive, it would stream too much data too fast and cause the game's framerate to chug more than usual. Draw distance was better but strained the system more. Quite a few games back then required the option to slow the HDD read rate down to that of a DVD for compatibility issues.

I wonder if they will have speed issues with some streaming games since they may rely on a specific read rate off the DVD drive that could screw with the games loading parts too fast and causing buffer issues.

PS- my PS2 laser died (or was about to), so that's why I put a hard drive mod on my PS2, not for piracy. Yeah, it was an old fatty launch PS2 that still... mostly works to this day. I'm glad my 360 can resort to the same feature without devious hack mods.

Heyyou27 @ Nov 19th 2008 7:25PM

But if the DVD drive in your 360 dies, you won't be able to play games even if they are "installed".

Lekko @ Nov 19th 2008 7:39PM

hey, all it has to do is just register the disc legit so it can switch over to the HDD.

Less wear and tear in the long term, and much easier on drives that are slowly failing.

Jacksons @ Nov 19th 2008 8:03PM

Shit happens.

killacoz53 @ Nov 19th 2008 8:03PM

I don't think its such a big deal anyways. The cd gets the job done for me. Putting it on a hdd would be nice but it doesn't work out with halo, oh well. I'll live.

Edward Dean @ Nov 19th 2008 8:15PM

Dude, you're doing porn wrong. Your link only contains text, you can't even spam right. FAIL.

Titanium_Orchid @ Nov 19th 2008 8:16PM

do you have mime-on-mime porn?

or dinosaur-on-car porn?

because that would be awesome...

lorissimo @ Nov 19th 2008 9:26PM

This is absolutely lame. Did Bungie/M$ not think that this would be one of the first games installed to the HDD? They had MONTHS to come up with a resolution... and here I was hoping that my 360 wouldn't sound like it was preparing for take off whenever I play H3 after NXE. Complete and utter B$...

BPMOmega [gamertag] @ Nov 19th 2008 10:59PM

Someone should make a list of what games work better through HDD than from disc...

Tyrannius @ Nov 19th 2008 11:59PM

Nice, thanks for volunteering Omega.

BPMOmega [gamertag] @ Nov 20th 2008 12:09AM

What? Me?! No way! I'm too lazy for that!

misterbleepy @ Nov 20th 2008 10:53AM

+1 to Bungie for not preventing you from installin to the HDD, they just warn you with a message explaining you'll see poorer performance.

I installed to the HDD for noise reasons - I play late at night and I like to be able to hear sound effects and dialogue within a game without having to turn up the TV so loud as to wake up my daughter. I'm prepared to live with the slower loading (which doesn't seem to bad to me anyway...)