Twinreaper

You are a complete and utter moron Sparticus. You come in here half assed and flaming a thread in which you have no knowledge to do so. Your lack of understanding of anything Halo Engine related makes me laugh so hard I almost pooped myself. None of your comments hold any merit, nor are you MAN enough to supply any key points or engine specific details in which would hold your claims true. Take a suggestion *******, move along before i have to spank your ass with a myriad of game data related information that you could never hope to understand.

I think an easy way to compensate for this, would be the addition of allowing each player to select a "Custom" box instead of the simple "Veto" one we are given. then lets say, the server gives you roughly 5 minutes to discuss with everyone what map type and shiz should be played. If possible, they should have a drop box or secondary menu with checkboxes. And have each player check off what they are looking for. Or if that is too complicated, you could simply have a checkbox of sorts for a custom playlist, where you tell the server what you are looking for, and the server matches people up and displays a list of variants and maps for voting close to or exact to what you want to ply.

all the sections are different. There is a standard vehicle model. Accompanying that model is a different set of collisions that go with every combination of model permutation. Granted yes this is isn't usually an issue, but there would be a lot more going on in terms of spaning decals or perms for player bipeds. Vehicles have a set limit of 5 different perms. each one with a new collision and physics collision that is stored within the rersource maps. Have you ever noticed that after spawning every vehicle you can in one area, and then destryoing them all at the same time, produces a jitter or lag effect? Times that by a zillion when playing a 8 vs 8 or if possible in H4, playing a 16 vs 16, and then apply the same scenario to a bunch of players being hit all at the same time or near the same time by bullets and nades, forcing the engine to process and spawn damage decals or damage perm models.

Correction Mystic, your quote should have been changed to this.... "Classic playlist = True halo. With this playlist now I can remember why I love Halo. Cause I can't aim for crap and all the Halo's after 1 required skill and I hate losing. Hey mom......what's outside these 4 walls, and basement floor and ceiling???"

Memory issues and lag would not be an issue if the idea were applied in a simplistic manner such as decals. Decals are the scorch and burn marks we see as a result of weapons fire against surfaces and objects, and yes, even players. Simply put, all one would have to do is, apply certain types of decals for certain types of weapons. Adjusting the decal "lifespan" value to infinite, or until player death. The only other way to achieve it that I can think of, is memory consuming as Red pointed out. this method requires the developer to create 2 to 3 permutations for each armor piece, to simulate an ever increasing damage effect to the player. The main problem is, that when a new permutation is spawned, especially in-game on player or object interaction things, the game first must destroy, then at the same time, spawn a new object or permutation in it's place. Because of the vast amount of resources already being applied to simple in-game mechanics, the addition of having to spawn new perms every single bullet or even after said amount of damage would amount to lag issues half way or even shorter starting from the beginning of a match. Think about playing a "Rockets" match. Now because you would die instantly from a rocket, the game would detect fatal damage. Because damage or fatal damage has occured, the game switches perms. Then at the same time or within 1-2 ms, the game detects the player dies from the fatal rocket, which now has to unload the perm, and re-spawn a fresh original perm for the ragdoll. You see my point in terms of resources I hope...

The "hosting" passing from Live is what is killing multiplayer gameplay hands down. If there was a regulated stricter "Host" dedicated server controlling the relaying of information, we would all be a lot better off. The main problem with hosting, is you at the mercy of the person who is hosting the match. Said person could be doing all sorts of networking things, effecting the connection for everyone. After many tests...I am convinced that the Live server does not pick "host" based on the strength and availability of networking resources...but rather picks the middle man between all said players. Now I am not syaing that connection strength is not taken into account...but I thinkoverall from tests, it shows that the host is the person in close middle proximity to other players...which brings us back full circle to why said host and host passing is not good.

Said comments about the BR are exactly why they want it returned it so badly. In my opinion people who cry and flame for it's return simply want to just pick it up and fire away at medium to long ranges and score massive kills without having to get up close and get dirty. Seriously, do you people ever listen to yourselves?!? Everything you complain about is the same old tired precision weapons over and over again. Is precision the only style of weapon you can use effectively? I'll stick to my good old fun needler and AR thanks....it presents much more of challenge and skill. And btw, the BR from H2 and H3 are exactly the same. The same values are used for both weapons, there is no difference.

***Attention powers that be! I am in no way holding back with this post...ok I may be a little...but you have been warned. If you do not want to be offended or do not want to see what i am writing below this, than vear away now. You have been notified*********** Answered. I'm just gonna start by calling this guy straight out. Campaign No one cares just make it good. Everyone just beats the campaign, gets all the achievements, and forgets about it anyways. Did you forget that multiplayer itself in halo 1 was a last minute add on?!? The entire reason people loved Halo from the start was it's awe inspiring campiagn.Wow what a complete tool. Without a campaign halo would sell far less copies. Ranking System: First thing you gotta realize is that Halo was always a game that took skill. In Halo 2 if you werent good you would not go up. Thats how it should be as that shows your true skill. Bad kids should never be able to play up against good kids. The good kids never get better and the bad kids never win. You could not be any more of a moron to not understand that no mayyer how many you win or lose does not make you the best player. The simple ranking system as I previously called out from the past titles were a joke. Seriously go take a look at the code behind it. Anyone can play on that certain day and get numerous wins. And no the ranking system did not pair you equally with players simply because your dumb number was the same. Just because I happen to be say a level 40, does not mean I am equally as well rounded and got that level 40 by simply performing in the same manner as you did. Yeah, real proof of skill there...let me tell you. Armor abilities: I am going to start out by saying this: There is no spot for armor abilities in any Halo game. Bungie really got way to ahead of themselves when they put that **** in. I guarantee not one person at Bungie, during the development of Halo Reach, actually took a step back and realized what a huge mistake they were making. Do I really have to answer this dumb one Serene? Oh well. Look man, AA's are no different in changing the battlefield than equipment was in Halo 3. The only difference is that unlike the equipment, it can be used until you die and start off with it. have you really ever delved into figuring out why reach ahs the core feel it does? It is because Bungie engineered the core mechanics behind the fact that AA's would function the way they do, and thus we have the particular map style and play feel we have. Oh wait thats right, you were too busy owning noobs with your vast superiority rather than really figure out why. Ugghhh. Bloom: Why is there bloom in the first place?! Halo 1 didnt have bloom? You had to lead youre shots, but there was no spray element. Halo 2 had no bloom? Halo 3 had no bloom? Why the **** put it in? Dont put bloom into Halo 4 and I will be happy. Hi, my name is GIANT TOOL BAG, I have never played a Halo game in my life. Seriously this one is just balls to the wall wrong and you have no idea what you are talking about. I'm gonna spare your simple mind a bit, and just let you sift around the million other threads about bloom that I have replied to with extracted tag data from each title to explain what bloom is, and that YES it was in every single Halo title since the start. The H1 pistol didn't have bloom........I'm peein myself silly laughing over here! We all need to forget about Reach. In all honesty, I think overall it was a good game. Would I ever spend $60 knowing what I was going to get? **** no I wouldnt Hi, I am also a basement dwelling mommy moocher that has no capacity to read, watch, play or in any other way find out details about a game before it launches. Wow dude just wow. yeah, just forget or ignore the BETA!!!!!!!!! you got to play, or the countless hours of TV and internet footage and interviews they provided to inform gamers of what this game was going to be. Do me a favor take that $60 and pay your mom some damn rent. Seriusly, you actually posted a video about some 2 couch basement dwelling morons who understand nothing about the core mechanics of the Reach engine or how REAL statistical data collection and interpretation works. Good job to you dude, you get the brown stink star of the day. Did you even bother to re-read or proof read what you wrote before posting this insane pile of garbage you call a topic? I could spend a solid 2 weeks writing a novel the size of Goblet of Fire on what you said, how you said it, and why you wrong utilizing a myriad of game data extracted directly from the tag sets adn intercepted netcode data. After all that junk you wrote, you dare say you know what a Halo game is?!? Halo 1 pistol didn't have bloom....god I am still holding my sides at that one. but it's ok man, I will be more than happy to continue to educate you through humiliation if this is the best you are going to have to offer this community.

You have a better chance of having a eight-some with the current line-up of Victoria's Secret Angels, than seeing any type of update to the CEA. It was produced soley with the intention of bringing back the game that started it all for a celebration. Aside from this there was no official plan going forward to support or update the game. Seriously people....does anyone at all comprehend the emense amount of time and resources it takes to develop a full title? Let's put it like this....how would you guys feel about waiting till around spring of 2014 for halo 4, just so they can stop, pour time into TU's for Reach and CEA, then eventually find time to work on Halo4...which by the way, still has no official finished core engine or project name.

well in thery it sounds nice, but theamount of patchwork required for each and every map would be a bit much to write out and distribute. too my knowledge it would be virtually impossible anyway due to the fact that most tag id offsets are different for each map and created during each maps.compilinf process. dont quote me on that....but a lot of allocation occurs during level compiling.

Actually this bill can and will effect a wide majority of all NATO related nations. Given past history, when one country follows a path regarding piracy or stopping it in some way, it isn't long before the rest fall into plaece like dominos. Sad...even our great homeland of Germany, Mayhem.....will eventually follow the same path as well. And Caboose, what is wrong with Fox news? It's currently one of the only last standing news channels that actually serves it's political news with any truth to it. How many times has the government now tried to stranglehold the station and prevent them from reporting?

Just to edit this real quick, I didn't realize at the time of writing that i referrences the wrong location of the map listings. They are located in the [matg] tag, which is the "globals" tag of the mainmenu file. Also some info is insode the [mulg] the multiplayer gobals tag.

To explain the "slots" thing, I will do my best. The resource map that controls maps is the mainMenu.map file. Within this map's scenario file, is a listing of all maps Campaign and multiplayer. By default the campaign has no additional slots dedicated to the expansion of campaign. While multiplayer map types have roughly 20 additional slots and each have a unique identifier number associated with them. When new DLC content for multiplayer comes out, the maps that are given to us, each use one of the unique identifyer numbered slots in the new maps scenario file. This allows the mainmenu map file to recognize the maps and load them into the GUI for us to select. By default, if the value to show the slots was enabled, we would see a myriad of blank map shot boxes or name fields to indicate the map file can't be found anywhere in the gae disk or hdd. By adding the maps to the hdd the mainmenu can find them, ad show them to us after we DLC them. In order to give us a true DLC campaign expansion, it would require 343i to update the mainmenu and shared map files and include them into the DLC. But here si the problem with that. Each individual campaign map file does not contain all the same tags. The campaign uses the shared map file to load certain resources. If they were to add resources to the maps, it would disrupt the file allocation table of certain tags, and thus regular campaign maps would fail to load effected things. In short, releasing campaign DLC outside maybe some MegaloScript magic, would require the entire title to be updated and re-shipped or downloaded.

The problem isn't the map tools themselves when it comes to budgets and map size. Understand that the limits imposed on maps in terms of size and budget is derived from what the engine itself can safely handly without memory corruption occuring. Take the climate idea for example. Currently there is no game engine even capable of handling even a quarter of a real size in-game Halo ring. To make something like that happen would require the map mesh to be broken into sub-sections known as multiple bsp's. This technique is used to "stich" together campaign maps. The main prblem with this, is that even if they made a multiplayer map like this, you would be limited to only being able to fight or see opponents currently present within the same bsp section you are in. Multiple bsp's are not linked in a way that allows each player to interact with another one. This would cause issues of players instantly appearing insie another bsp without warning visually or by the radar. Secondly to add to this, there is not enough ram or GPU power available to allow players to use the toolset 343i will be using, or Bungie has used in the past, on a console. The cpu threads, time and system consuption far outweighs anything the 360 can handle. Also couple that with low RAM and the GPU limits, and crashes a plenty would occur. Think about it like this. I have on my main rig an Asus EVO m488 I think.....with a Phenom II X4 oc'd to 4.1ghz and 8 gig of ram. Also running dual 9800GT's for GPU's. At a medium GUI setting, my stsem still lag spikes like crazy when throwing in a ton of crap into the CryTek 2 sandbox. Now the 360 at max is about half as powerful as my main rig according to system spec comparisons. The Reach engine and any other future itteration of it, will require a rig of comparable size to mine, and the 360 just simply annot do it. Now for the latter part in which I will go over why custom things will never happen. Besides the fact that over 75% of the Halo poulation would be just plain lost with the toolset, ther eis the issue of having to re-compile and compile custom objects and the various animations, shaders, sounds and collisions that would go along withe them. Even simple objects like triangles or cubes would require the engine SDK to compile all relevant needed tags into a central (hlmt) tag and compile collision, physics collision, it's base weight, bounding radius, etc.... Simply put, the tools required to do it take patience and a great understanding to get anything usable out of them. That is unless everyone would be simply happy enough to play ona zillion Mario Bros remake maps. Not to stray too off topic, but I cannot see any viable reason in terms of gameplay mechanics to include any of the OP's suggestions for inclusions into halo 4. None of the ideas have any real positive impact on the core mechanics, nor take any real advantage of them.

First off, Halo was and still is one of the most if not "the most" profitable franchise in terms of length. Halo as a game will evolve constantly as technological bounds are broken and new techniques in graphics and physics handling emerge. Gamers on the otherhand as a norm, do not like change or evolution. They tend to latch on to something they love and fear all other comers in it's wake. Change is inevitable for a game at some point. CoD has a great campaign, it is a fact. the story telling and the repetative mechanics of the quake egnine powering it go hand in hand. People flock to CoD because they have come to kind of "expect" a certain repetative element in the game. Over time, this of coarse will fade and Infinity Ward and Activision will be forced to change it up. I have been a Halo fan since the midnight launch of the console with Combat Evolved. I am for all intent and purposes.....an old school halo fan. But that aside I am also an extreme modder. I rip apart titles to see what makes them tick, and play with engine tweaks and this allows me to see the game in a different ligut than most. Reach is a great game. The campaign is the second best in the series in my opinion. ODST is the best so you know, and from my stand point Reach brought back a lot of drama and unknown frightening moments during the game when you truly did not know what was gonna happen next. The particular version of Blam! running Reach is truly revolutionary. It is and always will be for some time, truly an engine ahead of it's time. Sure it easy to singleout multiplayer and say wether it wa s afailed title, but you have to judge the game on merit and full content. You cannot simply just pluck out one flaw you see and run with it all the way to the waaaaaaambulance. Having been with halo since the beginning, I see and feel no principle defference in handling or core gameplay when I pick up the controller. To date, I have never picked up the pad, started playing and was never able to carryon with my usual style of gaming. The consistency of gameplay flow has never deviated from core principles of the first Blam! engine. I can provide many fields of engine data to show the myriad of equalities in the physics and collision code alone. Now as for silly comments about population. Populations of a game spike and dip. it's the nature of the beast. To illistrate a very strong reason for such dips, one must go back into time and evaluate the "release situation" of games in or around the time of previous Halo's. reach to date had the biggest hurdles in terms of competition. Halo 1 had none being the first xbox title and the only console FPS. Halo 2 had little to no competition because of it's "modability". In fact, Halo 2 is still one of the most modded games on the xbox to date. Halo 3 is where we started to see a push and pull in "real competition". Games like Call of Duty 4, Gears of War, etc... made it all that more important to really hit a homerun. halo 3 only survived in the market due to it's great ranking system and mix of Halo 1 engine code along with portions of Halo 2's game mechanics. Don't bother to argue this, I can prove you wrong with engine code on that, and a myriad of community comments. Halo Reach however has had the most troublesome period. In between ODST and Reach, we saw a gigantic dip in the economy. Jobs were being lost and people were looking towards media entertainment as a much larger investment in one's "daily life". This made it all the more important to make a game that could and would, give the investee a lengthy amount of time to play and replay the product. Trouble is.....every other FPS coming out or in development waited till after reach to debut as a marketing tactic. Clearly CoD, gears, rage, Skyrim and a few others have the upper hand right now. They came in after gamers had some time to play reach, and then came in blowing minds with new features and multiplatform releases...and by that i mean PC. In fact, every title that currently beats Halo right now, is either a PC title or a console exclusive. For Reach, it is hard to compete with a game that is available for multiple systems and platforms. Had Reach been produced along side a PC version....there is no doubt that Halo would be reigning the top of the gaming ladder.

I could go into great lengths why the TU erks me, but it would be a 5 page novel of poor grammar....which I am pretty sure no one here wants to read. Instead here is a list of things I hate about the TU. I make more re-posts about certain tech and mechanic points on why i hate them later if people want.... 1. AA's. AA's are basic core components of the game and as such should not be tampered with. 2. Zero Bloom. Zero Bloom is effectively turning any scoped weapon into a zero error spamming machine. I dont like 5 variations of the BR in my games thanks. 3. Classic.....ok. Classic mode will never feel like Halo CE. No amount of tweaks to the engine or weapons will make it work right. 4. Forcing the TU accross all gametypes and maps regardless of playlist is drastically changing the playing field in which we already took a solid year to master. I said it before, if I wanted to playa title like halo 3 or 2, I would pop in the disc and play it. I play reach for basic core Reach I'm too tired to go on, but as I said, I can site perfectly good mechanic and game engine data to support my opinions...so there it is.

Unfortunatly, I have no expereince in anything 3d tech. I can research the issue but I cannot guarantee a correct answer. I am on it either way my friend.

Why would a 4 year old game receive an update? I'm not putting you down or anything, I am just curious as to your reasoning why it would make financial sense and by what would 343 would stand to gain from shifting engines? To be honest, it's an outdated graphics layer and engine. Not to mention we have no idea what kind of programming sources Bungie left to 343. Chances are, the source code for Halo 3 and the Guerilla/Sapien/Tool toolset was not passed on to them. if it was, then it still leaves the matter of devoting a team to work on Halo 3 updates, instead of having more resources to develop content for Halo 4.

Congrats Egyptian. You truly deserve the honor of being our new MOM...pun intended.

Yeah they got it. No point in posting a duplicate. Good job Adam

Bear, if you can explain to me why Reach is bad, besides the tired old uninformed non-gaming mechanic view of it...I will agree then with your position. Bashing someone for liking games that you do not is not only severly immature, but shows you have a limited mind when it comes to gaming entertainment. I for one absolutely love Reach. I love it because it has proven to be a challenge time and time again inc ampaign and the ammount of replay built into the basic core mechanics hands down beats every other Halo title...my opinion of coarse. On the engine side of things, the Blam! engine powering Reach is a great hybrid variant and really excells at controlling and handling variable content of any type across all the modes. It is really an engine ahead of it's time. I'm gonna go ahead anyway and continue this final post in this thread with a lengthy long-winded response at which I am known for. Feel free to correct, contradict or add to anything I miss... Ok so the thread is about Bloom in particular. For those who do not understand bloom, bloom is the common term used to describe the firing spread of a weapon. In Halo Reach, for the first time, we got an expanding and retracting reticule to show players on screen, the size and resting time of a weapons bloom. The common misconception, is that the reticule itself controls bloom, and that bloom is an entirely new feature they introduced in Reach. Part of that is correct. The correct part is that the firing spread of a weapon was handed down to perc. weapons across the board for the first time. Now bloom itself in a minimalistic sense has always been present even on marksmanship weapons. Halo had bloom on the pistol, but not the sniper rifle. In fact, the Magnum from H1 is to date, the only scoped weapon to ever have it's firing spread, go beyond the confines of the reticule. Halo 2 had bloom on the battle rifle. You can argue this all you want, but tag data extracted from the battle rifle weapon, specifically shows an error cone, but yes the error value is very very small. But this is also why if you slow down the firing, you will see a variation of bullets at different trajectories each firing burst. Halo 3 had a slight bloom in the form of the scope not resetting directly where you had it aimed with the sniper rifle. This was done to force snipers from spamming perfect shots on people. Halo reach simply only added the HUD reticule feature to give every player an even chance of guaging where the shots would land at what particular pace they were firing at. All the TU update did was make every marksman weapon fire similar the beloved BR everyone had missed from previous 2 titles. Even after giving the TU, people still ahve complaints about the 7 float values they changed with MegaloScript to achieve this. COmplaints ranged from overpowered, to too fast firing rates. the thing is, to change certain values, you have to inherintly change others. They can closely achieve BR and h1 magnum firing effects, but it will always feel a little weird or different than the original ones. When things like this happen, it all comes down to how well you adapt to abnormal changes in a game that ahs a completely different gameplay feel. Could you imagine what would of happened if they suddenly thru AA's into a Halo 3 DLC? It would have been hated upon in an instant because it altered gameplay too dramatically for what was already present in the core game. Last but not least is the map problems. maps are very hard to assemble. It may seem like an easy thing to place certain things at a certain place, but it is more invloved than that. Every map that come down at core basics, is layed out to support every default wepaon. Sometimes the designers have no choice but to settle on certain wepaon placements for things, wether they work or not. The same goes for spawn points. Spawn points are a much larger problem. Spawns have a myriad of different settings and groups. Along with basic spawns for individual players, we also have the following... a. Group or "Spawn Zones" b. Respawn points c. Respawn Zones d. Flag Away Zones e. Flag at home Zones f. Proximity Zones It is hard on small maps to fit all these in where it becomes a consistent flow of goodness. There are bound to be poorly placed ones, but it comes down to being able to encoprorate every needed item accordingly. So as you see some things are bound to not work sometimes. Sometimes, you have to take a few steps back and see things from a game mechanic and tool usage perspective.

The day they force TU content on every playlist they have is the day i leave and the Blam! engine for good. I can find other great sources of FPS contwnt than will cater to my needs better.