Twinreaper

My concerns may be over reacting yes, but remember, this is the footage they decided to rleease and the words that went into it during the video were carefully crafted and chosen to make the cut. I know that many things may get changed, even textures and possibly speeds at which players move etc... but there are core things that cannot be changed that I have pointed out. I've watched many VidOC's and spent countless years in development of Halo related assets and I know what I see on screen and know how to translate it back into a wip, or real time asset. My main quams are with the speeds at which the players are moving. From what i can calculate, the players in the footage are movign at 1.5 (halo 2) setting speed. Meaning they increased the speed relative to around .5% Not a big deal at all, but for me that is way to big a jump in relative movement speed. The graphics are a big issue with me. Now I don't usually take issue with it at all because i believe in quality of gameplay over quality of visuals. But in this case, seeing as how dated the games tend to look compared to engines twice their age...I have a big problem with that. The hardware of the 360 is not what is keeping the footage from h4 looking great, it is the engine itself, the post-processessing and compression quality. Fact is, UEK and Cryengine 2 both beat Blam! hands down any day in terms of handling and processessing on the 360. Crysis 2 came out in march 2011. Thats almost a good solid 2 years of development prior. Halo 4 is slated to come out in 2012 Holiday season. it has been talked to be in development since 2009 at it's earliest. Halo 4's version of Blam! should at this point in it's development cycle and maturity, at least be able to surpass lighting, shaders, particle effects etc, of at least UEK and Cry2. What I see in the video is nothing more than something a little below the UEK and Cry2 standard that you can see today. I'm not saying that the game doesn't look great...because it does. it looks a millio times better than Reach graphically, but from a hobbiest dev standpoint the engines graphical layer doesn't make the cut compared to others older than it. That's all I am saying. Again, I think the game does look great, but because the GL is a core engine code part, it will not be changed and cannot be changed. Now yes it may simply be an issue with shader settings or bitmap compression, but we will have to wait to see. When I talk about animations, I am referring to the same old cut and paste "stick up your ass" positions that seem to follow every title. Animations to me, should evolve along with the title and characters as they progress along the timeline of games. Jumping, running, croutching etc... have all been the same old animations time and time again. When a Spartan is running, I would like to see the aniamtion show him/her running with the gun lowered. It's very easy to have the animation snap to the firing aniamtion when you actually pull the trigger. Jumping is another one. Besides the feet and legs...nothing moves. How about we have them raise their arms up over their head or kinda peddle their arms like someone actually would look like jumping? Give it a fresh feel for christs sake. Overall I am not impressed enough by the teaser or released information thus far to make me want to commit to putting out $60+ for a title in this economy. Again, this is only a first look and many more things may come to light, but the longer 343i waits, and the more they stay tight lipped on important things, the more they push players away into looking at other new titles coming out around the same time.

I care nothing for your dedication to a fractured and poor country like the US. Just because you served doesnt equal anything. my great grandfather, grandfather and Uncle all have served the german military. This isn't about your ego or "your" miltary awareness or experience. This is about how people interpret poorly, what they see on screen in Halo and the age old tired debate of bloom, what it is in all actuality, and how lag plays the biggest part in the game in Reach, more than the previous titles. I knew some of you would get offended by my words, but that's not my concern. My concern is trying to educate people on the game mechanics and how they work based on actual decompressed and decrypted engine data...not what you see on screen due to many varying factors that effect gameplay.

Surfice to say it left me on the fence. I will not bother to explain it further. I need to see more to make a solid opinion.

Not one single one of you have any idea of how "error angles" work. IT IS NOT CALLED BLOOM!!! It is called "error angles" and they are clearly defined in the weapon tag. Error angles ahve been in every Halo game since 1. Reach was the first to make use an expanding reticule to show players on the HUD, where their shots were limited to in terms of error. Now on to the important one, anytime you have adverse effects or any other mechanic that inhibits your aim, response time or even pace.....the player has to be skilled in order to cope or overcome these challenges. "Zero Bloom" gametypes mimic no other Halo game at all. There is not one weapon in the entire eries that ahd anything close to a setting of "0" for the error angles. That is a fact. Removing bloom makes it so that simply the first person to shoot will win. No deviation in firing...like the BR or magnum. Just a simple shot hitting the same exact spot everytime with no decreased firing speed or ejection recovery time. As I said, saying ZB takes more skill with DMR's and the magnum...is equivilant to saying that no error with a BR would take more skill than opposed to it's default settings. As for you MLG losers...your all mostly basement dwellers with no real world experience or usable skills so you hopelessly flock to MLG hoping that something you do in life will impress someone. Look mom, I can use my thumbs!!! Being in MLG is not cool, a usable talent nor does it have any real world benefits. Even if you did manage to get signed...big deal. You get maybe 2 years worth of my current salary...and when it ends, your back at your moms house eating hotpockets for the next 50 years. Next time your uyp for that huge General/Project manager job...be sure to tell them how you went 30-0 ina slayer match or some ****...I'm sure that will land you the promotion. Do me a favor, keep your lame ass MLG talk out of it...that was not the point. The point was, how full bloom take more skill than 0 bloom.

After just watching the video about halo 4, I have some very dissapointed feelings and am very worried about the future of the franchise and it's development team. As with standard format and tradition I will limit my rant to numbered order of things, and as time allows, I willa nswer for my griefs in more detail as needed... 1. Engine (core settings) The graphics are not anything as I imagined. fact is, they barely look any different from what you can find in UEK or Cryengine, under the hand sof a good SDK user. All this time, and the Blam! engine just now comes to almost a par level with 2 to 3 year old engines? Yeah, way to suck Wolfkill and Yu. 2. Competative map designs. Frank never minces words, and he rarely ever says anything unless he has a conviction or the words have meaning. When they say "built for competative", it means just that. every map is thought out and planned with the competative game in mind. 3. Perks. They touched on the fact that certain types of "perks" would be available. Couple that with my #2 griope...and you have a MM that seems straight out designed for MLG and FFA/Arena style gameplay...leaving us casual and fun lovers at much of a dissadvantage. 4. Animations. Sorry, but I'm calling lazy or bull**** on this. The movement animations yes were touched up a bit, but the same old ones used series after series. Even the jump animation under closer look, had pretty much from what i could calculate, the same marker and node placement as Reach animations. even the in air postures were nearly identical. 5. Vehicles. The warthog model had 34 different part/model permutations. That's it? Really? You increased the amount of poly's and parts by 6?!?!?! I expect way more in terms of detail and permutations for a new engine and new trilogy...not a water downed lazy version. Hell i could go and add 23 new different parts to a warthog in halo2 easily.... 6. maps. Both maps look exaclty inspired by previous ones in the series...yet they have the balls to say they are all brand new made from scratch and not reused?!? 7. HUD. I have grown acustom to seeing my grenades on the left side of the screen. So why is now they have a 3 teir icon set for the grenades on the right. And yes...those are grenade placeholders. If you watch one of the HUD gameplay screens...you clearly see a plasma grenades occupying one of those places. 8. Player physics. The physics seem to be exactly what I would expect coming out of Reach into H4. The same physics system is in place. This is not good for players. The movement speed in Reach was to slow and the jump height/gravity increased too much. What we see now in H4 is too fast of movement....for the love og god...IS IT THAT HARD TO GET IT RIGHT?!?!? 9. Weapons. The dmr is coming back. Frank said it. He said the DMR is in, and also some other single shot weapons. What purpose does pitting a BR and a DMR in the same title serve? That would be including the bruste shot and grenade launcher together. 10. Spartan IV's. Ok I know this is gonna sound dumb, but I agree with however said the suits look like a nanosuit from Crysis. In fact, on the one level they showed, the giant mech being constructed looked like a giant tachikoma from GITS. I get MM being changed and blah blah blah...but really? We need Spartan IV player models with aweful looking armosa and a whole RvB backstory? My god...... Well there you have it. A good old fashioned 10 point reason why I will not be buying Halo 4, but instead renting it just to see and maybe finish the campaign.

Ranking systems don't make games competative. The individual player makes a game competative. There are many other great games out there that make better use of many different systems. We all love Halo, but don't go overboard and say it is more competative by nature, because it is not.

Now that I go back and read what I posted about the hunters...it just sounds wrong. I think I was typing to fast or didn't really re-read what I put. What I meant to say was that Hunters would be great additions to the flood, IF they were able to be infected or used in a way that provided the same combined armour form. What I also meant to say was, that there is not enough tissue mass or nutrients for them to be any use to the flood, outside feeding purposes. Good catch on that Kurt.

Still such a dumb ass. Just because you can see a car move or because you drive on, doesn't mean you know how it owrks. Get it *******? There are no factors beyond your control when playing with 100% "error Angles" in effect. The layout functions of the [weap] tag allow players to pace their shots in a way that control where their shots may land. I have yet to ever have a problem landing shots nor have I ever had what could be caled a lucky shot. Lag is another factor you failed to mention on this. Lag is not only highly visible in Reach, but in every Halo game. CoD has a much better netcode system as every match I have watched my son play, there is no vosoble lag. What data? Just because you had someones face in your sights, doesn't mean that both consoles or host, agrees that the enemy player was in your sights. again, it's netcode....and you can't see netcode, you have to decompress and decrypt engine data to get to it....again, you know jack ****. Playlists on 100% error settings will always require more skill than weapons with no error at all. How is conscidered skill, when the weapon has no deviation from it's aiming path, and fires quickly with the same damage modifier? So next your gonna tell me that in halo 2 and 3, it would take more skill to use the BR on ZB than at it's default settings? Get real kid, you obviously have a lot to learn about the Halo engine, it's settings, and how to differentiate what you see on screen versus the engine code and explinations for what you see. Just because you see it, doesn't make it true or right.

Yeah it helps a lot. It would suck to fire off a shotgun and have all the spread end up one one side or bypassing the target when aimjng....talk about raging on something like that! lmao

Boy.....Three Bad Boys sure do equal one idiotic post. You quite obviously have no working knowledge of the bloom mechanic as you call it. You really should have done search on the site for other bloom threads before trying to pass off your completely idiotic view on bloom or even calling it logical. There is nothing logical or even remotely data specific to backup anything you said. Just the simple.fact that you called it bloom and not "error angle" is proof of that. To make.my post shorter than it needs to be ....go search around for the other threads and find my relevant data in which i have posted about the subject.

The terms you are looking for are indeed "camera snap" and "3rd person camera". Unfortunatly taking the snap effect away from armor lock is not.possible. Armor lock forces and only includes a 3rd person pov when used. Inherently when in armor lock and coming out of it, your character faces which ever direction you have that camera pointing too. Unless there is some way to have Megal use a specific hook to override this, your stuck with it. I agree about the animation trigger during animations. You should have the optikn via a button, to stop the assassination animation to prevent mishaps such as accidental assassinations. Ibwas going to suggest hitting random buttons during the sequence...but I am sure people have already tried tbis before with no luck?

Not gonna happen. Obviously everyone just bypasses everything I ever say about Forge for some strange reason. Perhaps the truth is too painfull. verything you are asking for is impossible to do on the console with a game specifically like Halo. Skyboxes are predefined in the scenario tag, and must be edited with the inclusion of additional sky items. Altering the sky would not alter the lightmap, making it pointless to do so if you wanted to go from night to day.....the lighting would be the same. And ighting based on time of day, requires per-pixel realtime lighting. The only items that use such a system are stand alone light scenery items. Usually placing more than about 10 of these items causes lag in fp's and slows down or nullifies half of them rendering. Making terrain is impossible since the collision and phmo for the map is calculated and stored via bsp raw during level compiling. Unless they find a way to give you "sandbox" quality tools on a console, needing well over 6 gigs of RAM....which the 360 does not have...nor the processor horsepower (at least quad core at 3.7 ghz) PLANETARY TRAVEL IN A Halo game....via one map or layout?!? Are you mad or just dumb. BSP's are broken down into various standalone bsp's. Everytime you see a "loading done" text flash across your screen, you are entering and playing on a new bsp level inside the map. BSP's are connected by "trigger volumes", and you cannot see thru or past or even into another bsp section. Every bsp section is self contained and contains only that BSP's objects, spawns, etc... Having a Solar system to play in would be pointless since you would have to wait till enemies crossed over to the bsp you were in...again making it stupid becuase you would not see them coming. They would just magically appear next to you all the sudden. I applaud your creative thinking, but when it comes to wanting things in a Halo game, it is best to do your homework about the egnines to see what can and cannot be done. Or you could just ask me.

Sure, count me in. GT is B4M Twinreaper. Not.as a tive as I used to he but.im.around and available.

Sorry Dirwctor, the whole thing was not aimed at you. It was aimed at the whole.given the various ideals that have been floating around. The graphics layer to which CoD uses has not changed from Black Ops to MW3. That part of the engines code is still pretty much the same. The main reason for thw graphics being much better is due to the wxtreme levwl in which CoD's game engine post processess data. Halo does not use it very well. Im hoping to see a huge leap with this in Halo 4.

AlwYs being spanks for letting the truth flow..lmao thanks Dog

I'll be the first to say it...It's completely awefull! The Halo 4 "leaked" pic of the menu looks like a TV spot image for a Halo saturday morning cartoon. If thats the type of style they were going for...then ok I get it. But if thats really supposed to be what they truely are putting off as a possability...then I have to say 343 just lost some serious street cred with me. But then again, I'm calling total BS on this. One thing stands out...the version data at the bottom. The first image has a different font color and is not visible in it's whole form. Version stamping does not chnage color to stand out from it's gameplay. It's always there...in one solid color and font period. That plus the missing "." between "Halo" and "4" yet they put one to seperate the V from the 3? Not convinced. When it goes up officially on waypoint then it's real.

The main point to this argument was already made. If your a stupid enough player to keep walking into the trap or camped spot to begin with, then who is to blame? Oh what...it's the other guys fault your teammate walked into his shotgun?!? Please. We have all camped and trying to contradict it is useless...you all know you have done it at one point or anther. I find it extremely sad and hilarious that it's fine when everyone else does it and benefits them, but the second it's done to effect you negatively...the "f-in camper" comments come flying out. Camping is a strategy. Defeating a camper takes a greater strategy. Case in point...do you think real soldiers go around talking about how it's unfair their lost the Vietnam War because the Koreans would camp in ditches and tunnels? Nope...they were looked at as smart, and intuitive for using their environment to their advantage. Camping is and always will be around...get used to it, or go home crying!

Captain, please don't quote me and try to argue a development and engine technical fact. I would rather not have to embarass you. Surfice to say I have extracted and compared textures from Reach and MW3. MW3 uses 18,764 individual texture files. The total texture file size is somewhere around 8.64 gigs. Reach from my last count uses the ballpark of 12,000. The point you are trying to make about being killed is called "physics". In this case, more specifically Ragdoll physics. Activision at my last game decrypt, does not use Havok for it's physics simulation. This is why there is a drastic difference. Also depending on how the engines are coded to interact with core data schemas, you will always see varying results. Your comments about lag are just god aweful. You quite obviously don't understand lag or why it happens...otherwise your comments would not be as half assed as they were presented. Lag is everywhere. As long as people connect to others across networks from varying locations, it will always be around. And lag is not a one time little hick-up in data transmition and interpretation. Lag occurs at a constant. The big jumps in framerate are largely due to either heavy processor load or usually a larger spike in ping. While CoD may not be your cup of tea Director, it is for far more than casual FPS players. Halo or any other FPS cannot be properly compared to eachother due to the immense difference in which the games play out and what they offer. As far as vehicles go, I have never liked any vehicles outside campaign gameplay. And as for realistic ballistics, CoD does not try to say they are "realistic", but they do take a more realistic approach. I could count the ways Halo is a bunch of BS. One in particular is the shield system. It blocks shots by absorbing damage. Physical projectile damage...yet an assassination with a knife....mysteriously goes right thru the shields and kills instantly? And lets not get started on the insane buggy Havok coding that went into the phmo responses for objects. Point being, each FPS game on the market brings something new or improved to the table. Rather tahn bash a bunch I take a higher path, I learn and evolve as a gamer and learn to appriciate each's own attribute.

The graphics department is actually better than Reach. MW employs a vast library of textures and shaders...much more than Reach does. Factor in the almost limitless LOD the engine yields compared to Blam! I can go on...but ill spare you all.the novel sized post.

Ok so you have Reach inserted on startup of the xbox meaning that you are not actually going into games to.execute the disk. The only thing I can think of is that you may need to rewrite the Reach disk to your hard drive. just turn outo launch off and copy it over again. That should fix the intermitent bug. If not, reply back and.we can try something elae.

Forge actually opened up the doors for those whom in the past did not have enough skill or money to get involved in the Halo HEK's for Halo 1. Forge gives many people the ability to.tweak.stock maps to.create unique new experiences. But I guess its all.too cokplicated for you since you think its silly and ruined Reach. Oh and BTw thats a halfbassed stupod **** of a statement seeing as how Halo 3 had forge first......so I take it Halo 3 was also ruined by it right? And ty Jester. Hit me up on XBL sometime will yah mate?

No, it's not. turns out it might just be unethical.

Sorry Azaxx....I couldn't resist. i love you even if you are a Crapple fan. i mean hey...nobodys perfect right? lmao

Halo 2 and halo 3 both had bleedthru. Why is now people are bitching? isn't it the same people bitching now, that bitched about reach not being like Halo 2 or 3? And do not, anyone for one second to try to pass off one sided perspectives about playing a lot, to try to pass off you have any above average knowledge about how the game operates. Infection has and always did pit players with shotty's and pistols against sword weilding zombies. The pistol is overpowered in the TU, and in a zombie match with ZB, it gives the zombies almost no chance at all. remember, the zombies dont have shields. I have not played zombies since prolly the first couple of months when Reach came out, can anyone confirm the zombies gametype the guy above me is complaining about uses ZB, or some of the TU settings? As for the comment about the match involving you both dying from a melee close combat....why did you decide to rush in and melee him? Was there no other strategic path to take? Sounds to me like it was an unexpected encounter first off, seeing as how the other guy didn't drop your shields or choose a more strategic path him/her self. Lag will always be an issue no matter what kind of connection is used, wether it be host or dedicated server, it's something you have to get used to. If you played a lot of Halo PC back in the day and now, you should be quite adept to dealing with lag, and should be leading and thinking 1 to 2 seconds ahead in battle. As for the maps, yeah all the maps suck, both forge community ones and Bungies. 343i does a great job with layout but goes overboard on the astetics. That's just my stance as a seasoned veteran of custom bsp work, and it won't ever change.

Completely possible. We have done similar to that with Halo 2 in the past. basically all it takes is tweaking the settings right, and spawning multiple bombs via Netgame equipment. I have a similar setup right now for my custom Grifball gametype for halo 2 PC.