Mac Gaming Mods

Let's send a letter to MacSoft requesting the source code for the Halo Universal Binary.

Contact information

There are many reasons why we would want to do this. Our main purpose is to create a demo version for Halo UB. Please submit your letter proposals here and we'll come up with a single revision to send as a letter, and I'll make a follow-up phone call to them when the time comes.

Go ahead and get together over Mumble and use CollabEdit.com to make the letter. I'll propose one here too.

I like the idea, but I doubt they will allow us access to it, as it still makes up to $5 a year .

Dear MacSoft:

Since January 2006, the online community members of Mac Gaming Mods (http://www.macgamingmods.com) have enjoyed creating mods and modding applications for Halo and Halo Demo for Mac. MGM members have had many thousands of discussions about this game on their forum and have released many hundreds of modifications based upon Halo Demo's only multiplayer map, Bloodgulch. They even created a wiki to publish the majority of their content as a separate web site called Halo Demo Mods (http://www.halodemomods.com), where mod authors could find everything they needed to learn how to expand the playability of the original Halo game according to their own creativity and the creative works of other Halo modding community members.

Recently, we at MGM and HDM have endeavored to expand the playability of the original Halo game through making it accessible to those using the latest computer hardware and software; the demo and full versions of Halo for Mac were originally released for PowerPC systems, and MacSoft more recently rebuilt Halo's full version application for Intel processors as a Universal Binary. Our community is very grateful for your contributions. Since then, we have noticed the need and demand for a demo version of Halo that would also be built for Intel processors as a Universal Binary.

Our modding community formed a few projects exploring methods for how we might create a demo version of Halo in the same spirit as the original Halo Demo application built for PowerPC. We have created ways in which this is possible, but all our methods remain nothing more than "hack-ish" attempts to reverse-engineer and study the source code which we do not have. We strongly believe in remaining true to the values of the game's software license agreement and have conveyed to our members the value of remaining legitimate ideologists rather than digress to software piracy. As a community, we do not allow our fellow enthusiastic modders to publish content only available in the commercial version of Halo, so that those who have not purchased the game remain unable to experience the game as it was published; simply, although we have created the tools to allow us to convert Halo Full maps to Halo Demo, we do not condone nor publish Halo Full maps that have been converted to Demo. Nevertheless, we continue to remain creative and inspired by the Halo game engine, and we hope to be able to pursue many of our exciting plans for this game into the future.

On behalf of the Halo modding communities, we would like to discuss with you the creation of an official Halo Demo Universal Binary for Mac.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,
MacGamingMods and HaloDemoMods
(sign your name here)

It's worth a shot. I'll send it.

Mgal, let's discuss this first before we shoot off the letter.

EDIT: I'm waiting for comments before I send this letter.

Not going to happen, they're not allowed to give source code out, and it seems ridiculous for them to anyway.

You could ask them to just upgrade and release the Halo Demo to UB [and show them our efforts], but I doubt that they would want to do that (no real gain). It's better than source code request though. A better request actually is asking for the full version to be released on Mac App Store at a low cost - they should do it, makes little sense for them not to (but then they'd have to fix bugs with newer hardware).

Also they would need to start generating serial's. I emailed them and added a line something along the lines of "If you wish to undertake this endeavor as your own project, we may speak of that as well.

Mgalekgolo wrote:Also they would need to start generating serial's. I emailed them and added a line something along the lines of "If you wish to undertake this endeavor as your own project, we may speak of that as well.

Please don't tell me you wasted your time asking for source code.

If they released Halo onto MAS, there would be no serial keys to deal with at all. Now that I think of it, due to how online multiplayer works, I guess that may be a problem.

Mgal, did you send them my letter as an e-mail already?

Yeah, before we mumbled.

Uhh, no reply I'm guessing?

I would've added a little more heart to it, Modding Halo over the years ended up becoming a passion more than something fun or a hobby. I love you guys, this forum and this engine that we can do so much, but so little with. Heres the random off chance that this works.

If the obvious happens, so be it, I plan on not stopping hacking this game, theres still so much we can do, opensauce, the app that they are using for CMT SPV3 looks epic. CMT"s only problem is they're not a community map team. THey make amazing things, then lock them down for no one to use. That's not very cool...

CMT released all their spv2 tags, and some maps are unprotected.

CMT release most of their stuff when it's finished.

Mgal, what's the situation with their reply?