Halo 3 Beta/Errors
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This is a list of Halo 3 Beta errors and fixes.
Release Delay
The Halo 3 Beta was announced by Bungie and Microsoft to be released at 5:00 AM PDT (8:00 AM EDT) for owners of specially-marked copies of Crackdown. However, many players reported to Microsoft that under the "Downloads" section of Crackdown, the option to download the Halo 3 Beta was "grayed out" and unavailable. Bungie found the same problem and relayed the information to Microsoft, who promptly posted that consumers had problems downloading the Halo 3 Beta from Crackdown. At 4:00 PM PDT (7:00 PM EDT), 11 hours after the Halo 3 Beta was supposed to be released, Microsoft announced that they had determined the problem and were creating a fix that would be "most likely in the form of a title update", and that a workaround was expected to be released in 3 to 6 hours.
2 hours later, Microsoft updated its announcement, saying that a fix had been found, and that it was undergoing final testing to ensure its accuracy. An hour later, at 7:00 PM PDT (10:00 PM EDT) Bungie and Microsoft both proclaimed that a fix had been released. Beta players would have to restart their Xbox 360 consoles, and insert the Crackdown disc, when they would get a prompt to download an update to Crackdown that would allow the players to access the Halo 3 Beta. The fix arrived 14 hours after the Halo 3 Beta was supposed to be released. Furthermore, Bungie said that gamers needed to wait up to 4 hours to receive the patch that would fix this bug to allow the fix to circulate all of Xbox Live, making it so that some gamers only received this patch at 11:00 PM PDT (2:00 AM EDT)... 18 hours late. Due to the bug and the subsequent massive public disapproval, Bungie decided that the Beta would be pushed back from the Beta ending date of June 6, 2007 at 11:59 PM PDT to June 10th, 2007 at 11:59 PM PDT, allowing gamers to have four more days with the Beta, compensating for the one day lost in trying to download it from the Crackdown menu.
Eventually, the cause of the bug had been found, Bungie had worked in conjunction with Real Time Worlds, the producers of Crackdown, to test that the Halo 3 Beta would be able to be downloaded from the Crackdown "Downloads" menu. However, several days before the Beta was released, there was an update to Crackdown that Crackdown owners had to download before playing in online Crackdown multiplayer. Apparently, Bungie did not test if the Beta could be downloaded by gamers with the updated version of Crackdown. Those gamers that did not download the newest Crackdown update were able to download the Beta on-time at 5:00 AM PDT (8:00 AM EDT).
- Result: Many Crackdown gamers were only able to download the Halo 3 Beta 14–18 hours later than promised.
- Solution: Crackdown title update
Downloading Problems
The massive amount of gamers that downloaded the Halo 3 Beta via Crackdown at 7:00 PM PDT (10:00 PM EDT) and at later times was reported by Bungie to have overwhelmed the servers, and download times, projected to be approximately 30 minutes for those for fiber-optic connections, were prolonged to 3 hours because of the number of server requests.
- Result: Greatly prolonged Halo 3 Beta download times via Crackdown
- Solution: None
"Game Over"
After some gamers downloaded the Halo 3 Beta, they received a message that the Beta had expired, and that they were not allowed to play it. Fortunately, this message was rescinded automatically after 1 to 60 minutes, or gamers could purge their Xbox 360's server cache and perform memory unit maintenance to manually rescind this message.
Gamers performed maintenance by:
- Going to the "System" blade of the Xbox 360 Dashboard
- Selecting "Memory"
- Selecting "Hard Drive"
- Pressing "Y"
- Pressing X-X-RB-LB-X-X
- Pressing "A" for "Yes"
- Restarting Crackdown
- Result: Inability to play Halo 3 Beta
- Solution: Wait or perform memory unit maintenance (see above steps)
This workaround had worked, but only sporadically. Many had tried it with no results.
Xbox Live File Loading
After gamers downloaded the Beta, many were able to enter the Matchmaking lobby, but were unable to "Start Matchmaking" because Xbox Live reported that it was "Loading files". Therefore, gamers were unable to play Matchmaking. No fix was announced. Some gamers had reported having this error message fade in as little as 10 minutes, while others said that it still had not loaded after over an hour.
- Results: Inability to play matchmaking
- Solution: None
Custom Games Lobby
A malfunction had been exposed in which players could enter a "Custom Game". Bungie did not intend this to be functional or to be open. For some users, the custom game could be started and played like a normal match.
Below is a list of some game settings, a more complete list can be found here:
- Damage Resistance
- Shield Multiplier
- Shield Recharge Rate
- Immune to Headshots
- Grenade Counts
- Infinite Ammo
- Weapon Pickup Disabled
- Player Speed - (25%, 50%, 75%, 90%, 100%, 110%, 125%, 150%, 200%, 300%)
- Player Gravity - (50%, 100%, 200%)
- Vehicle Use (Passenger Only)
- Motion Tracker Range (10m, 25m, 75m, 100m, 150m)
- Appearance
- Vis effects - (black glow, team glow, white glow)
- Active Camo - (Good camo that might fool an Elite, Poor camo that might fool a Grunt, invisible)
- Indestructible Vehicles (Enabled or Disabled)
A Tutorial on doing the glitch can be found here.
- Results: Ability to see gameplay settings of the current Custom Games Lobby.
- Solution: Bungie made no comment on this glitch.
Playing after the Beta ended
Many players could still play the Halo 3 Beta after it's official June 10, 2007 end date by leaving their Xbox 360's on and using the Custom Games glitch (mentioned above). On June 14, 2007, players were stopped from doing so and the Halo 3 Beta was completely shut down, even to glitchers.
- Results: Being able to continue playing the Halo 3 Beta after it had ended.
- Solution: On June 14, 2007, players were stopped from doing so, therefore completely closing the Halo 3 Beta, even to glitchers, forever.
