Can we get an offline option for Project Cartographer please

[Neonspider]

Hi there, I've been following the progress of Project Cartographer for a while and I'm amazed by how well it's doing. Thanks for the hard work you guys are doing to bring back the glory days of H2V multiplayer (I used to roll online by combatxtreme pre-2010). One request I have is a way to disable the constant connection check that lags out the computer until it connects. On my laptop the framerate becomes unplayable, and it doesn't go away even when Cartographer says "Please check your connection". I can' switch back to original Halo 2 until I get a connection back because I guess some files are replaced, because launching the halo 2 exe directly still brings this up. Can we please have an option to bypass the connection check so we can continue playing offline with Cartographer installed? I also happen to use it because it fixed the slowmo issue I had on all of my computers.

 

[fantasma]

Re: Can we get an offline option for Project Cartographer pl

Hi,
You will need to get the xliveless "xlive.dll" file http://gamecopyworld.eu/games/pc_halo_2 ... 0Xliveless

After you have unrared the file, place it into your halo 2 main directory.
You can now play Single player offline.
To play online again simply remove the file from the main directory.


hope this helped.

oh and one more thing.. If you already have an xlive.dll file in your halo 2 main directory then you may want to copy and paste it into a new folder before replacing it with the new xliveless one. In other words, swap them out for multi and single player modes.

 

[UF ShadowTeddy]

Re: Can we get an offline option for Project Cartographer pl

...Did you not read the topic?
He asked for Project Cartographer to have an offline option. This is a clear feature request, not a 'I have a problem, can someone fix?'


What i used to do in-order to semi remedy this unfortunately doesn't work for Project Cartographer version 0.2.1
I've actually explained as to why halo 2 bugs out like this when playing campaign, if i can find my post i'll re-post it here

 

[fantasma]

Re: Can we get an offline option for Project Cartographer pl

You know teddy, sometimes the game lags for no reason when its launched no matter how good the connection is therefore rendering both offline and online unplayable. The temporary solution for this would be take out all files associated with the new bugged launcher then use xliveless file. Or if that doesn't work, reinstall the game without running the new buggy launcher and use the xliveless file. You won't be able to play online of course but at least it stops the lag if h2online.exe decides to bug out temporarily. I already know there isn't an offline option for pj cartographer yet hence the xliveless method in case it whacks out.

Have you read the topic teddy?

 

[UF ShadowTeddy]

Re: Can we get an offline option for Project Cartographer pl

You know teddy, sometimes the game lags for no reason when its launched no matter how good the connection is therefore rendering both offline and online unplayable.

The game never lags for me (Or for anyone else for that matter.)
Offline is still technically playable on Project Cartographer (The campaign loads so there's that) but this following quote (made by yours truly) clearly outlines why campaign is unplayable:

Its due to Project Cartographer bugging out when the player gets a campaign achievement (Go Ape Shiv, etc)

When you complete a level, the game will try to give you the achievement, but because Project Cartographer doesn't have that function coded properly it will lag the game out attempting to write the achievement to something that doesn't exist. Your best bet is to restart halo 2 and go from your last saved checkpoint.

The temporary solution for this would be take out all files associated with the new bugged launcher then use xliveless file. Or if that doesn't work, reinstall the game without running the new buggy launcher and use the xliveless file. You won't be able to play online of course but at least it stops the lag if h2online.exe decides to bug out temporarily. I already know there isn't an offline option for pj cartographer yet hence the xliveless method in case it whacks out.

This increases work + time required to actually play the game offline. A better alternative (because GFWL is STILL online) is to just outright remove Xlive.dll and play halo 2 w/ GFWL (meaning that people can login with their Xbox Live accounts and get achievements.)
Why would you ever suggest reinstalling the game?
Project Cartographer consists of one file, that being the Xlive.dll. Remove it and you remove Project Cartographer from halo 2.

Not to mention H2online.exe has yet to bug out on me or anyone else. It works as intended (Logs people in and updates Project Cartographer). The only reason why its bugging out is due to you screwing something up (Which im pretty certain is so)

Have you read the topic teddy?

See I don't think you know how to read. Yes the person who created this post did not actually use any punctuation or use any context
But the purpose of this post is a feature request in that said requested feature is an 'Offline mode' for H2PC.
You can read something and take almost nothing from it. It takes a smart educated person to infer and read between the lines in situations like this.

 

[fantasma]

Re: Can we get an offline option for Project Cartographer pl

"The game never lags for me (Or for anyone else for that matter"

Well congratulations. you live in a perfect little world. You and your buddies.

"Offline is still technically playable on Project Cartographer (The campaign loads so there's that) but this following quote (made by yours truly) clearly outlines why campaign is unplayable:

UF ShadowTeddy wrote:
Its due to Project Cartographer bugging out when the player gets a campaign achievement (Go Ape Shiv, etc)"

When you complete a level, the game will try to give you the achievement, but because Project Cartographer doesn't have that function coded properly it will lag the game out attempting to write the achievement to something that doesn't exist. Your best bet is to restart halo 2 and go from your last saved checkpoint."

It's bugged. case in point. moving on..

"This increases work + time required to actually play the game offline. A better alternative (because GFWL is STILL online) is to just outright remove Xlive.dll and play halo 2 w/ GFWL (meaning that people can login with their Xbox Live accounts and get achievements.)
Why would you ever suggest reinstalling the game? "

I know this might be a difficult thought for you but, maybe.. just maybe, Some people if not NOBODY cares about achievements, teddy. Perhaps adolescents who have nothing else going on in their lives might give it a thought.

"Not to mention H2online.exe has yet to bug out on me or anyone else. It works as intended (Logs people in and updates Project Cartographer). The only reason why its bugging out is due to you screwing something up (Which im pretty certain is so)"

You really don't like to admit that you're little "program" tends to bug out quite a bit, do you.

"See I don't think you know how to read. Yes the person who created this post did not actually use any punctuation or use any context
But the purpose of this post is a feature request in that said requested feature is an 'Offline mode' for H2PC.
You can read something and take almost nothing from it. It takes a smart educated person to infer and read between the lines in situations like this."

"See I don't think you know how to read."

I don't think you know how to read nor handle criticism.

"Yes the person who created this post did not actually use any punctuation or use any context"

You forgot to put a period at the end of that sentence.. I'm just saying.

"But the purpose of this post is a feature request in that said requested feature is an 'Offline mode' for H2PC."

An offline mode for project cartographer, which doesn't have any yet. xliveless ftw.

"You can read something and take almost nothing from it. It takes a smart educated person to infer and read between the lines in situations like this."

But in your case you read everything and still gave a mediocre answer then stuck your foot in your mouth while trying to attack me.(see above) It takes a complete goober to come up with such a half witted self-inflicting delusional comeback. I think you are reading outside the lines. :]

 

[Neonspider]

Re: Can we get an offline option for Project Cartographer pl

Hi all, sorry, I meant to reply sooner.

Hi,
You will need to get the xliveless "xlive.dll" file http://gamecopyworld.eu/games/pc_halo_2 ... 0Xliveless

After you have unrared the file, place it into your halo 2 main directory.
You can now play Single player offline.
To play online again simply remove the file from the main directory.

I will try this later tonight, thanks for the suggestion.

Its due to Project Cartographer bugging out when the player gets a campaign achievement (Go Ape Shiv, etc)

When you complete a level, the game will try to give you the achievement, but because Project Cartographer doesn't have that function coded properly it will lag the game out attempting to write the achievement to something that doesn't exist. Your best bet is to restart halo 2 and go from your last saved checkpoint.

Yes to that, but also I actually meant by lag when Project Cartographer is still trying to connect to the master server. If I have an internet connection, it reaches the master server and lag goes away, no problem. This issue is that I think it continues indefinitely trying to connect, and the lag from the connection attempt never goes away since I don't have an internet connection in the area I'm trying to play on my laptop with.

It looks like it times out and I assumed it did, but this lag is only persistent without internet, so I figured the timeout doesn't actually happen and it's still constantly trying to connect, maybe just have Cartographer give up trying to connect after say one minute or so to fix this issue?

Just a thought. Thanks for replying so soon guys. Also didn't mean to start a post war so yeah I'd appreciate if y'all can agree that not all hardware is identical in performance, and some people can have exceptions in normal performance.

 

[Ling Ling]

Re: Can we get an offline option for Project Cartographer pl

I've largely gone back to GFWL because of this issue. Neonspider is correct, the game becomes unplayable whenever you don't have internet, the master server goes down, or on the occasion it simply decides to not function, and as someone who works on singleplayer content a lot, its quite obnoxious. I personally just remove the H2Online dll in Halo 2 Vista's folder when I don't want to play on the H2Online servers, and then replace them whenever I want to play online again (this was all pre-update, but that's how I did it before). Its an awkward transition, and I and at least one other person have reported this issue (or, request?) before.

Teddy, fantasma read the topic correctly, they simply assumed that Neonspider did not have a valid product key (which is needed to access GFWL) and recommended the "vanilla" xliveless as an alternative way of playing the game offline without Cartographer turning their FPS down to 2. Everybody needs to Chill Out.

 

[Neonspider]

Re: Can we get an offline option for Project Cartographer pl

I do have a legitimate retail GFWL box copy activated with my xbox live account, with H2V showing on my profile with achievements unlocked.

STo teddy, this is an issue I'm having, because I can't run the game +15ish FPS on my laptop without internet, but I am suggesting an offline mode to prevent this problem in the future...so right both ways. The reason I would ideally be able to run Cartographer offline rather than using a different method to run the game without lag is that Cartographer fixes the slomo issue in the game for me. I would usually fix this by forcing Vsync, however on my AMD based laptop, this doesn't work and also I have issues applying settings and having them stick with Radeon Settings/Catalyst Control Center (Tried both)

Its due to Project Cartographer bugging out when the player gets a campaign achievement (Go Ape Shiv, etc)

When you complete a level, the game will try to give you the achievement, but because Project Cartographer doesn't have that function coded properly it will lag the game out attempting to write the achievement to something that doesn't exist. Your best bet is to restart halo 2 and go from your last saved checkpoint.

Well that would explain why I always have a restart-fixable lagout after finishing a map. I kept wondering what caused that.

 

[PNill]

Re: Can we get an offline option for Project Cartographer pl

The master connection stuff is in reality not supposed to continue after it times out, that's actually why/when the text turns red... I'll do research for the next update .

 

[Neonspider]

Re: Can we get an offline option for Project Cartographer pl

I appreciate that, thank you! Also great work on Project Cartographer, it's definitely coming along really well!

 

[UF ShadowTeddy]

Re: Can we get an offline option for Project Cartographer pl

Wow dude, Butthurt much?
your little 'reply' thread actually made me chuckle for a bit.

So here's a thing that you probably don't know and to be honest wouldn't surprise me
Project Cartographer is in Alpha. Meaning bugs like this are normal. Having said that, if people wanted to play halo 2 without Project Cartographer, then i'd still recommend them to get GFWL. Why?
Because of nostalgic reasons you literal moron. Halo 2 PC is the only game available that has recent Halo 2 achievements. Yeah some people might not care, but most people are either sentimental or achievement hunt for days. One guy PM'd me saying that he'd buy my Xbox Live account because he was an achievement hunter and wanted the 1000GS. Not everyone thinks in the same mindset as you, probably why you can't have a normal conversation with anyone.

The only time i'd ever recommend Xliveless is if people are trying to run LAN Parties. You probably don't know, but Xliveless is very optimised for LAN play and has done its job well when people are playing LAN parties of Halo 2. People in the past have commented on net performance when using xliveless and its always been positive.

H2online.exe isn't my launcher. Its a program made by FishPhd. I'm still pretty certain that you have fucked something up, because someone I know who's on Linux has 0.2.1 working
Infact, the Lead Dev (PNill) hasn't had any issues with the game + launcher on linux. Only issues he's had is due to him screwing up his sound.

Now I'd assume that the guy whos taking full credit for Halo 2 working under WINE should be able to fix game lag i mean come on?
I'd like to point out that people have gotten Halo 2 working under linux beforehand and haven't gotten any issues with Halo 2, which begs the question:
Why are you revering yourself as some sort of saint for getting Halo 2 working under WINE? (When even then it's not working that well for you)
Many people have done it before you and have gotten Halo 2 working better than you did (Bearing in mind this is with GFWL, so the amount of security around that would have been increasingly difficult to pull off)
The irony of this is that someone in the community has had issues with running Halo 2 using your WINE install guide. (Talked with this particular person in-game)

You forgot to put a period at the end of that sentence.. I'm just saying.

Hah, so in order to actually make your argument any more relevant you start criticising my grammar?
Didn't know I was dealing with a child.

Besides fantasma, if you hate Project Cartographer so much, don't play on it. I mean it works on Windows, Mac (Via Bootcamp/Parallels) + Linux sooooooooooo I still don't see why your having issues. Besides i have better things to do with my time (like making Project Cartographer better for everyone)

A legitimate product key isn't required to access GFWL, just so you know. If you use a modified MF.dll and a random product key off the internet, you'll be able to get access to Halo 2 w/ GFWL (which is how people pirated it back in the day)

Before I end this wall of text and contemplate why I actually spent this time writing this post up, I'd like to mention that the 'Offline Feature' will be implemented (After appropriate research is done)

Just gonna mention that Project Cartographer is in Alpha. If you have any issues please bring this to the attention of admins so we can see it.