(H2V Back Online!) - Project Cartographer - Release Date

PNill

Lead Dev
Project Cartographer Staff
Oct 25, 2015
99
2
8
Gamertag
TDxPermaNulled
#1
[highlight=#ff0040]UPDATE:[/highlight]
Cartographer AKA H2V:Online now has a official homepage where the download links for it will be posted in the upcoming days,
Also in other news there's now an official master server which runs dedicated and is hosted through Amazon AWS so far we've seen good results.

Check out the home page at http://www.h2v.online

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Coming out of silence for a minute here...

The progress of Project Cartographer was quite good in my own opinion I even went as far as introducing gun-game and while there is room for improvement.

My final decision on the matter is that I will be finishing up the bits which will allow for everyone to interact with each-other including an more sophisticated method of launching the game ( Allowing for a user login/registration process ), I hate to say that I will not be doing this via H2Vista's servers due to the complications and added headaches with doing so.

I will be providing my own registration page and my own login system as well as my own launcher...

Beyond that once that is completed there will be no further progress contributed from me personally this is indefinitely.

I will however post the source code to the project on GitHub and anyone who would like to improve it or take lead on the situation with whatever community is left is free to do so, and I also hope other games where there is LAN support desired in XLiveless will have their opportunity to learn from this project and get it integrated into their own games as well.

The amount of time until the release of this new launcher is most likely within the month,
I currently don't even have my home desktop setup at the moment and am going through quite a bit of personal life changes in terms of employment and projects.

Initially a few months ago I handed H2V.com staff the source to the server and requested at the very least they integrated their log-in bits and their launcher, this was never done and this is the reason I will be going down my own path and releasing a minimalistic launcher to allow the "community" that's left to play together.

There are some obvious restrictions starting with, you MUST forward ports if you're hosting.

You cannot host a dedicated server and play on it at the same time ( ON some ISP/network configurations this may work ).
There will be problems you will not always be able to connect.
There is no UPNP implementation currently.
GunGame is buggy at best and requires you to manually change the scores, it's no where near ready for release.
There may be some lag introduced by the way connections are being handled.
There's no friends list, there's no achievements, and the lan browser has to be used.

The main broadcast server is entirely broken, I'll need to figure out what I'm going to do about it before this release happens... given everyone will have static XNAddr and other secure information with the new launcher rather then dynamic a lot of these issues would be solved there.

It will crash.... this is alpha code at best.

But this is what I'm willing to do for the community at this point I poured a few months of dedicated work into this and sadly I no longer have the time and was never able to gain the interest of other developers in the community, I received help from some unexpected places which I really appreciated but in the end it just wasn't enough and this just wasn't fun anymore and my personal life is going to take over so much of my time I won't have any left to work on this project.


EDIT:
Here's the main client source before I port it to github and make the necessary changes,
https://gitlab.com/PNill/cartographer

Server:
https://gitlab.com/PNill/Cartographer_Server
 
May 29, 2015
830
14
18
25
Teddyland
unitedfalconclan.roflforum.net
Gamertag
UF ShadowTeddy
#2
Re: H2V Revival - Project Cartographer - Release Date

Its good to hear from you again, PNill.
And I'm glad to see that the code for Project Cartographer is publicly available, People other than yourself can work on it which takes the stress from you. Hopefully more people will contribute to this, as opposed to just one person (being you) working on the game.
 
Nov 13, 2015
2
0
0
Gamertag
Visstnok
#3
Re: H2V Revival - Project Cartographer - Release Date

Thanks for all the work, and hope the life changes work out fine! Looking forward to try this stuff.
 

Himanshu01

Lead Dev
Project Cartographer Staff
May 16, 2013
243
22
18
25
India
Gamertag
Himanshu01
#4
Re: H2V Revival - Project Cartographer - Release Date

Thanks for all your efforts for h2v :)
And thanks too for releasing the source code publicly
 

Logz

Members
Feb 5, 2016
1
0
0
Gamertag
UncleLog
#5
Re: H2V Revival - Project Cartographer - Release Date

How is it installed?

Can we test with direct connections for now?
 
May 29, 2015
830
14
18
25
Teddyland
unitedfalconclan.roflforum.net
Gamertag
UF ShadowTeddy
#6
Re: H2V Revival - Project Cartographer - Release Date

It was installed using a single Dynamic Link Library file and one .INI file. I don't know if that will be changing or not. You won't be able to test with direct connections, the Python Master server needs to be setup first.
 

Idaho

Members
Oct 30, 2015
10
3
3
France
Gamertag
YunZhaelor
#7
Re: H2V Revival - Project Cartographer - Release Date

That's nice to see the project is alive, I hope it'll mature with time and grow to be the main solution to play H2V online :)

Do you think there might be an option in the launcher to let us choose if we want to play on LAN or Online? That would solve the problem of the LAN browser being used for this.
 
Feb 6, 2016
1
0
0
#8
Re: H2V Revival - Project Cartographer - Release Date

Brand new to this forum. I'm looking for ways to connect and play Halo 2 online. After a lot of searching, this seems to be the only viable option. Couple of questions. Is this working now and is there a tutorial to getting connected? If this is up, how can I host dedicated servers?
 

Glitchy Scripts

Lead Dev
Project Cartographer Staff
Apr 9, 2013
122
27
28
GlitchyScripts.com
#9
Re: H2V Revival - Project Cartographer - Release Date

Ok well i'm hosting the broadcast server / listing server currently, the files (updated xlive.dll) to place in the h2v install directory are in the teamspeak or at http://dl.killerchief.net/halo2/

I was trying to host it on my webserver instead but couldn't forward the ports and i dont have sudo / su access. I called them but turns out the dude on the other end cant do anything as it's part of the plan i'm using.
So i'll host it as much as i can on my local machine. It just means i cant use the server list under the same external ip :(
(i'm trying to research the code to see whether i can actually find a work around, tho i fixed the client freeze up i only cause when i try to join games lol)

To answer other questions to the best of my knowledge:

- Can we test with direct connections for now?
No, it has not been implemented at all. Perma said he was planning on adding it but, well, u know, he's busy.

-Do you think there might be an option in the launcher to let us choose if we want to play on LAN or Online? That would solve the problem of the LAN browser being used for this.
Just remove the xlive.dll and keep the MF.dll. A game restart isn't that hard!
 
Aug 17, 2015
413
23
18
Gamertag
SoddyBoi
#13
Thanks for all the effort you have put in PNill and other H2V members in creating a way for the community to come back and play together. Hopefully the community grows and old H2V fans come back. Maybe, just maybe we can repopulate the community and fanbase.
 
May 29, 2015
830
14
18
25
Teddyland
unitedfalconclan.roflforum.net
Gamertag
UF ShadowTeddy
#14
Its quite possible at this point Sod. To obtain a full install of halo 2 people could either:

Use an existing product key, then update like usual using the launcher

OR

install the game, skip the activation and then use an MF.dll file (by coping the file into halo 2's install dir.)
Then use the launcher to get the files necessary to play MP with others and you should be good to go!

Because of the nature of the second option, this means that anyone can get halo 2. Now think about that for a sec, if someone was to spread the word by conveying the same message that i've just given, then Halo 2 could become quite popular quite quickly. I mean its a FREE game and its Halo 2! The one game that was known as legendary for its MP back in the old H2XBX days. Right now, its basic. 3 servers, hosting H2V classic gametypes (Notice how I said H2V classic game types, not Halo 2.)
When more and more people learn of this, they'll start hosting their own variants, dedis, and so on.
So what we should do is advertise this more, let people know that Halo 2 vista is back without the proprietary use of tunngle or hamachi or any of that crap.


It just needs time to grow. And the good thing about it is that the master servers are not run by Mircosoft anymore, which just gives people that added security of knowing that Halo 2 PC is here to stay, and not be lost in history.
 
Mar 20, 2013
535
1
0
42
Hawaii
www.h2mt.org
Gamertag
Kills Alone
#15
PNill, when you have the chance can you throw up a few H2.5 maps on a server and see if they work.

H2.5 maps can have new assets like custom bipeds/vehicles/huds. I wanted to run it on our servers back in the day but we had an issue on the server side, from what I recall the server did not recognize the mod but the clients did, so we could not get it running on a dedi.

See these threads for more details: MAPS - H2MT - Halo 2.5 Collection - Updated & Remixed & MOD - H2MT - Halo 2.5 - Game+ Pack for Halo 2 PC

I compiled a lot of new assets into the H2.5 maps, my plan was to make more based on what the community wanted to play.


Seeing as the H2MT Repository is currently down there seems to be a bit of confusion; I'll re-upload the maps & mods here later tonight: H2MT H2v - OneDrive

I really am curious if we can get H2.5 to work online with dedis. We could create our own ISO, or own installer that came preloaded with Project Lazarus & the H2.5 maps, the standard custom maps, Project Cartographer, some mod/gameplay enhancements, and then make a torrent and get people playing Halo 2 again. That was always part of the plan with capitalizing on stuff like MF.dll; to free H2v from MS/G4WL, make it free/distribute it via torrent thus avoiding any hosting related legal issues, and make it more customization options possible with the maps/tools included OR the ability to remove the map restriction limit.
 

Himanshu01

Lead Dev
Project Cartographer Staff
May 16, 2013
243
22
18
25
India
Gamertag
Himanshu01
#17
SEVENGE said:
How can use the new Halo 2 online launcher without a product key/having to sign in to GFWL?
1.The xlive.dll makes the game Xliveless i.e We gain freedom from Games For Windows Live Service and so we do not require any Windows Live Account to play Halo 2
2.the MF.dll allows us to use Network and Live options without activating halo 2

Therefore we do no require any product key of halo 2 or sign into halo 2 and play the game for free. It is Xliveless
 
Mar 10, 2016
3
0
0
#18
Himanshu01 said:
SEVENGE said:
How can use the new Halo 2 online launcher without a product key/having to sign in to GFWL?
1.The xlive.dll makes the game Xliveless i.e We gain freedom from Games For Windows Live Service and so we do not require any Windows Live Account to play Halo 2
2.the MF.dll allows us to use Network and Live options without activating halo 2

Therefore we do no require any product key of halo 2 or sign into halo 2 and play the game for free. It is Xliveless
Ok thanks, I have both of those files added to my Halo 2 install location and I can get to the main menu without signing in to live, but when I try and go on the Network option the game just keeps freezing/crashing.

Maybe I should try and reinstall?
 
Mar 10, 2016
2
0
0
#19
Hi. I have installed the launcher in game folder. But when I try open the NETWORK option (in game), I can't see any servers. Please help.
 
Mar 10, 2016
3
0
0
#20
I think I've got mine working now. Just redownloaded the .dll files and then restarted my computer.

Denal said:
Hi. I have installed the launcher in game folder. But when I try open the NETWORK option (in game), I can't see any servers. Please help.
Have you got both MF.dll and xlive.dll in the game folder also? Maybe just make sure you have the latest updates for the new launcher and do a restart too :)