They said the tricks would all still be possible...

[Mator]

It was stated many times in interviews, at PAX, and elsewhere by 343i employees that all tricks in Halo: CE Anniversary would still be possible. The reasoning was that "they didn't change anything save putting a new graphics layer over the game".

 

I've been doing tricks in Halo: Combat Evolved since 2006, and haven't actually played anniversary yet but from what I've heard from other trickers it seems that all tricks are not possible in Halo: CEA. In fact, it seems the mechanics of every trick have been changed, some fatally.

 

The first casualty I will present to you is getting outside of levels:

According to Devin Olsen, an old Halo: Combat Evolved tricker, getting outside of one of the lifepod bays on "The Pillar of Autumn" resulted in the entire level, all HUD elements, and everything else on the screen being derendered. For those of you who aren't familiar with technical terms, this means that everything on the screen disappeared. While this doesn't make the trick entirely 'impossible' per say, it does make it entirely pointless. The entire reason people get outside of levels is so they can explore and see the level from a different perspective. You'll still be able to do this on open levels, like "Halo", but on other levels like "Keyes", "The Maw", and "The Pillar of Autumn" this will no longer be plausible, as you will not be able to see anything once outside of the level. This kills off a couple dozen tricks.

 

 

 

 

 

The second casualty I will present to you is ledging:

In Halo: Combat Evolved a large though not as renowned section of tricking was known as ledging. This involved getting on top of ceilings or inside of walls on levels and moving about on the edges of solid objects. (E.g. a light in a ceiling would be solid. See my video

for an example of this type of trick.) Because ledging occurs outside of a levels geometry it too will result in the de-rendering of the HUD and everything else. Ledging isn't possible if you have no objects to aim at and move around relative too, so it will be entirely impossible to do any ledges in Anniversary. This kills off an entire section of tricking which goes all the way back to 2003-04. Countless tricks are no longer possible in CEA because of the de-rendering of all objects when outside of level bounds. Hundreds of tricks are gone.

 

 

 

 

 

The third casualty I will present to you is that of bumps and warps:

The widely proclaimed claim that Halo Anniversary would have the same campaign just with a new graphics overlay is false. I always doubted this, but now it is clear that things have changed. In making the textures of objects prettier 343i also remodeled their collision geometry (else you'd be walking through all the stuff they added and running into invisible barriers on everything else). This makes bumps (techniques which push you outside of the map) changed, if not nonexistent. In Halo: Combat Evolved bumps were an integral part of ledges as well as warps (a recently developing region of Halo: Combat Evolved tricking). Now they may no longer exist. This kills tricking in anniversary even more.

 

 

 

 

The fourth and final casualty I will present to you is that of launches, the tricks most renowned in Halo: Combat Evolved:

You all know of the addition of skulls to anniversary. Well, one skull in particular dramatically alters the mechanics of launches and will be used by everyone (save maybe a handful of die-hard original trickers). The bandana skull. This skull makes it so whenever a player dies, even if they just spawned, they drop a plasma and a frag grenade. This removes the need for collecting grenades save in single player (and even then it'll dramatically alter grenade needs.) This basically makes every launch, including the infamous T2T, extremely easy to setup. Now some of you may be thinking "that's a good thing!" Let me tell you as an experienced tricker that it's not. The entire point of tricking is to overcome challenges and accomplish things which no one could imagine you accomplishing. In the realm of launching collecting and setting up grenades was a large part of the challenge. Now that players don't need to collect anymore, and have no limit on the number of grenades they can have on any level every single launch is possible and easy to set up. This is stupid, and ruins the entire dynamic of launching.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So there you have it folks, a tricker's look at Anniversary. A big disappointment.

 

 

Thanks 343i. It was bad enough that you didn't remake the multiplayer, but now that you killed off pretty much all of campaign tricking, lying about it the whole time to bring our hopes up, you've made anniversary something pretty close to a flop for all of us trickers.

 

 

-Mator

[Absolute Dog]

I see one simple, yet very obvious potential flaw in your post. I am not flaming you, just pointing out that those tricks may still be possible in the "original" mode of the game. I am no expert on the technical aspects of the game, but playing in the "modern" mode would obviously alter the surface and mechanics. All you have referred to is in the "modern" mode, unless I misunderstand you, so I would like to hear from others who have attempted them in the "original" mode and failed before I accept your referred quotes as actual facts.

 

Appreciate the OP. Great subject.

 

 

Please offer links that show 343ind. indicated that the same tricks would be available in the remastered mode.

 

This edit was made after his initial response to me.

Edited November 16, 2011 by Absolute Dog
Edited in a question intended originally, but left out

[Mator]

I see one simple, yet very obvious potential flaw in your post. I am not flaming you, just pointing out that those tricks may still be possible in the "original" mode of the game. I am no expert on the technical aspects of the game, but playing in the "modern" mode would obviously alter the surface and mechanics. All you have referred to is in the "modern" mode, unless I misunderstand you, so I would like to hear from others who have attempted them in the "original" mode and failed before I accept your referred quotes as actual facts.

 

Appreciate the OP. Great subject.

 

Obviously skull effects will still be present in original mode. As for the de-rendering issue, that probably isn't. But that's still not the point. If I wanted to play the original mode I would be playing on the original game, which I already have. I want to be able to trick on the improved graphics mode, but I can't because all of the tricks have been devastatingly modified, as said in the OP.

 

And the point remains: they lied to us.

[Giofosho]

Point made^

[Absolute Dog]

 

Obviously skull effects will still be present in original mode. As for the de-rendering issue, that probably isn't. But that's still not the point. If I wanted to play the original mode I would be playing on the original game, which I already have. I want to be able to trick on the improved graphics mode, but I can't because all of the tricks have been devastatingly modified, as said in the OP.

 

And the point remains: they lied to us.

As I asked before, present a link to the actual 343ind. statement or video that made the statement the tricks were available in the remastered version.

 

Again I am not disputing what you are saying, just want the link for members to see for themselves.

[Mator]

http://halo.bungie.org/misc/foconnor_haloanniversary_qa.html

 

 

I have some more direct statements as well, which I'll have to dig up. But there's two statements they made that are now proved false.

[Absolute Dog]

This is a copy and paste of the pertinent part of the interview with HBO that refers to the "tricks".

 

 

HBO: You've said that the new graphics are an overlay, running on a separate engine; are these purely visual in nature, or do they alter the collision geometry of the scenery? (For example, in Silent Cartographer, some standard pillars in the first structure you get to had been used for jumping - they've now gone from fat pillars to curved, narrow structures. Does this change how you interact with them?)

343i:

Every jump we've tried so far has worked.

We haven't looked at every existing trick, but what you're talking about SHOULD still work, because of how the collision model overlays - but in a worst-case scenario, you can switch to classic mode, make the jump, then switch back to see the results in the new engine.

One of the big tests for next week is the Tower to Tower jump that was just completed last week - we hadn't thought that was possible, so we didn't try it out, but now that we've seen it, we're going to give it a shot. The tops of the towers are still flat, so there's no real reason it shouldn't work.

HBO: Did you add any soft barriers to keep people from getting to spaces they were able to get to in the original?

343i

:

We added no soft barriers at all. If you could get there in the original, you can get there now.

HBO: Some tricks relied on exploiting bugs in the original code - are those bugs still there? (Examples might be overloading the engine to remove geometry, or using the timed blasts from the Forerunner towers to get past dead zones.)

[indent]343i: We're emulating the same RAM space as the original - but the 360 DOES have more memory than the original Xbox did. It's POSSIBLE that some bugs that used to be exploitable are no longer available - but we consciously tried not to fix anything that had been 'broken' before. We understand that a significant chunk of our audience for this product will be using it for these kinds of tricks, and we made sure that they'd be able to do most, if not all, the things they could do on the original.[/indent]

 

I have highlighted in blue the specific statements being made relative to this topic. This interview was posted here in the forums months ago. I was curious if this was one of the sources. I encourage members to elect his link and read the entire interview for themselves, I pasted what appeared relevant to this discussion.

 

Thank you for the links Mator. The video is long and time does not allow me to watch it right now. I will in the evening.

[Mator]

This is a copy and paste of the pertinent part of the interview with HBO that refers to the "tricks".

 

 

HBO: You've said that the new graphics are an overlay, running on a separate engine; are these purely visual in nature, or do they alter the collision geometry of the scenery? (For example, in Silent Cartographer, some standard pillars in the first structure you get to had been used for jumping - they've now gone from fat pillars to curved, narrow structures. Does this change how you interact with them?)

343i:

Every jump we've tried so far has worked.

We haven't looked at every existing trick, but what you're talking about SHOULD still work, because of how the collision model overlays - but in a worst-case scenario, you can switch to classic mode, make the jump, then switch back to see the results in the new engine.

One of the big tests for next week is the Tower to Tower jump that was just completed last week - we hadn't thought that was possible, so we didn't try it out, but now that we've seen it, we're going to give it a shot. The tops of the towers are still flat, so there's no real reason it shouldn't work.

HBO: Did you add any soft barriers to keep people from getting to spaces they were able to get to in the original?

343i

:

We added no soft barriers at all. If you could get there in the original, you can get there now.

HBO: Some tricks relied on exploiting bugs in the original code - are those bugs still there? (Examples might be overloading the engine to remove geometry, or using the timed blasts from the Forerunner towers to get past dead zones.)

[indent]343i: We're emulating the same RAM space as the original - but the 360 DOES have more memory than the original Xbox did. It's POSSIBLE that some bugs that used to be exploitable are no longer available - but we consciously tried not to fix anything that had been 'broken' before. We understand that a significant chunk of our audience for this product will be using it for these kinds of tricks, and we made sure that they'd be able to do most, if not all, the things they could do on the original.[/indent]

 

I have highlighted in blue the specific statements being made relative to this topic. This interview was posted here in the forums months ago. I was curious if this was one of the sources. I encourage members to elect his link and read the entire interview for themselves, I pasted what appeared relevant to this discussion.

 

Thank you for the links Mator. The video is long and time does not allow me to watch it right now. I will in the evening.

 

Blue makes it hard to read, but whatever.

 

Also, as I said before, I have a few other sources I'll have to dig up that are more direct in their statements.

 

The point remains: they either lied to us or took advantage of us. If I had been at PAX or in some other position where I could ask more direct questions I would have, but the point remains: the tricks aren't all the same. Hell, whole sections of Halo: Combat Evolved tricking are no more. They made clear that that was not their goal, and they told us they tried to preserve that part of Halo in Anniversary.

 

But it's gone. And I'm angry because I was looking forward to doing tricks with the new graphics, and perhaps seeing an overall resurgence of Halo tricking.

[Absolute Dog]

Mator I will give you this. There is a very specific reason I am interested in your OP. I was never shown tricks in Halo CE. It wasn't until Halo 2 that I became aware/interested in the "tricks" of the game. I knew that some were intended and others exploitations of the game design. I am by no means an avid trickster, but do like knowing all the ones available just for fun or use in MM. I would very much like to see a listing someday of the tricks available in HCEA's original and remastered versions. I too had read and heard statements, but had a different take on what was said.

 

I understand your grief at the loss of tricks in the remastered version of HCEA, believe me. I too wanted to try them. it may be a good topic for a thread in the Halo 4 forums that the "trick" aspects of the game be included in the newest Halo coming next year.

[Mator]

Mator I will give you this. There is a very specific reason I am interested in your OP. I was never shown tricks in Halo CE. It wasn't until Halo 2 that I became aware/interested in the "tricks" of the game. I knew that some were intended and others exploitations of the game design. I am by no means an avid trickster, but do like knowing all the ones available just for fun or use in MM. I would very much like to see a listing someday of the tricks available in HCEA's original and remastered versions. I too had read and heard statements, but had a different take on what was said.

 

I understand your grief at the loss of tricks in the remastered version of HCEA, believe me. I too wanted to try them. it may be a good topic for a thread in the Halo 4 forums that the "trick" aspects of the game be included in the newest Halo coming next year.

 

Your interest warms my shattered heart.

 

Edit: Also, "trick" aspects of games cannot be included on purpose, else they're no longer really "tricks" (unless you have some really crazy-advanced game designers from the future...)

[Snipeside]

If you play the game how it was 10 years ago style; then everything should be fine. I highly doubt anything would change at the sight of graphics. It shouldnt...

[Mator]

If you play the game how it was 10 years ago style; then everything should be fine. I highly doubt anything would change at the sight of graphics. It shouldnt...

 

This has been said and responded to about 6 times now. Please refer to a previous post for your response.

[Twinreaper]

I can help shed a little light on this subject. The collision models for standard and remastered mode are the same. The only thing they changed is the bsp geometry mesh and it's shaders. Now according to how the 2 engines run in parallel, there is no coding difference between the 2 modes besides the shaders, particle effects and material effects. Weather falls into the particle effects catagory. Now I may be slightly off here, but speaking from a modders perspective, it is possible that by using the new shaders with material responses, that some parts of the maps with new shaders that have newer material effects, changes slightly the amount of force or ability to trick jump.

 

Although it is doubtfull that is what happening, it would be one possible explanation. the only reason i say possible, is because even though CEA is running both reach's waterdowned variant of Blam! and CE's original Blam!......the basic physics and collision handling is still being driven by the original on both states of the game. The only other conclusion I can come to as to why the tricks don't work...is because your eyes are fooling you.

 

Whn you play thru on remastered mode, you tend to think a little different when presented with the visual geometry, and you kinda don't pick up or consciously remember that the collision is the exact same as the original bsp's were. This could lead to many miscalculations in placement and execution of trick jumping tactics. Although not perfect...it is at least a few ways this stuff could be failing.

[Tommy]

One thing with the Remastered version is that some of the walls and whatnot look higher/bigger than normal. I noticed that throughout the game, but when I switched to classic the gap or indent or whatever wasn't there. I feel that it would be harder to jump/trick on something that isn't the normal scale of which you're used to.

[Ardent Prayer]

So the food nipple grunt on the maw isnt there anymore?

[Tommy]

So the food nipple grunt on the maw isnt there anymore?

 

HE ISN'T?!?!?!

 

He should be! They didn't take anything out or put anything in! I haven't got that far yet because of the obnoxiousness of Legendary.

[Mator]

I can help shed a little light on this subject. The collision models for standard and remastered mode are the same. The only thing they changed is the bsp geometry mesh and it's shaders. Now according to how the 2 engines run in parallel, there is no coding difference between the 2 modes besides the shaders, particle effects and material effects. Weather falls into the particle effects catagory. Now I may be slightly off here, but speaking from a modders perspective, it is possible that by using the new shaders with material responses, that some parts of the maps with new shaders that have newer material effects, changes slightly the amount of force or ability to trick jump.

 

Although it is doubtfull that is what happening, it would be one possible explanation. the only reason i say possible, is because even though CEA is running both reach's waterdowned variant of Blam! and CE's original Blam!......the basic physics and collision handling is still being driven by the original on both states of the game. The only other conclusion I can come to as to why the tricks don't work...is because your eyes are fooling you.

 

Whn you play thru on remastered mode, you tend to think a little different when presented with the visual geometry, and you kinda don't pick up or consciously remember that the collision is the exact same as the original bsp's were. This could lead to many miscalculations in placement and execution of trick jumping tactics. Although not perfect...it is at least a few ways this stuff could be failing.

 

The problem has nothing to do with the actual collision geometry of the level (which I'd be surprised if it is exactly the same, someone should verify that with rigor, because far as we trickers can tell it's not because bumps don't work the same anymore). It has to do with how the new engine decides whether or not to render polygons. The new engine is very picky about your location when rendering things. Soon as you leave the level everything, including the HUD (this makes it seem like it's on purpose...) derenders entirely.

 

Also, I'm not trick jumping, I'm tricking/glitching. They're two very different things. The elasticity/materials have no effect on tricking/glitching.

 

I'm not doing little "tactics", per say, I'm getting outside of levels, on top of ceilings, etc. And I'm finding everything is derendered in new graphics mode. Please, read the OP and watch the video I linked to "Completing the Pillar of Autumn in a Ledge" to see the type of trick I'm concerned with.

 

One thing with the Remastered version is that some of the walls and whatnot look higher/bigger than normal. I noticed that throughout the game, but when I switched to classic the gap or indent or whatever wasn't there. I feel that it would be harder to jump/trick on something that isn't the normal scale of which you're used to.

 

Not doing jumps. Scale has nothing to do with this, this has to do with the rendering engine and changes in collision geometry (which are unverified, but suspected, this area really needs to be looked into!).

 

 

So the food nipple grunt on the maw isnt there anymore?

 

That's an Easter Egg, and is entirely different from tricks/glitches. Some Easter Eggs were removed by the developers with respect to the original developers (The Meg Egg is a great example of this, the heart of blood is still there but the M is gone.) I don't think it's been verified yet whether or not Big Grunty Thirst is still around, but you can search YouTube and find out.

 

 

EDIT : Someone recently tried out the Cryo-bump on POA and it seems the level is rendering fine with that ledge. It's possible that ledging will still be entirely possible and working, and that the de-rendering only occurs in certain areas. Will update over weekend.

[Mator]

UPDATE:

 

Last weekend I experimented and found that textures seemed to load fine on most ledges. This was a very happy discovery that has lead to me to feel a need to retract the OP. I now respect anniversary as it doesn't seem to have majorly altered tricking.

 

I still dislike certain aspects and feel that 343i wasn't entirely honest/clear in some of their statements. But that's trivial at this point.

[iTz KeeFy]

UPDATE:

 

Last weekend I experimented and found that textures seemed to load fine on most ledges. This was a very happy discovery that has lead to me to feel a need to retract the OP. I now respect anniversary as it doesn't seem to have majorly altered tricking.

 

I still dislike certain aspects and feel that 343i wasn't entirely honest/clear in some of their statements. But that's trivial at this point.

I wouldn't mind seeing some more of your trick videos. If you make anymore and it isn't to much trouble post em.

[Mator]

I wouldn't mind seeing some more of your trick videos. If you make anymore and it isn't to much trouble post em.

 

I have rarely received requests to share my tricking videos, this makes me very happy!

 

Below are links to all of my Halo tricking videos. In addition, I made a topic in the style of the video archives found on HIH... http://www.343industries.org/forum/topic/4642-mators-halo-tricking-videos/

 

Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[iTz KeeFy]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Awesome, thanks. The links are not supported by mobile devices so I will check them on the pc after work.

[Absolute Dog]

Mator appreciate all of the information and your work to bring it here.

[Mator]

 

Awesome, thanks. The links are not supported by mobile devices so I will check them on the pc after work.

 

You're most welcome!

 

PC is better viewing experience anyways, so I think that's a good thing, eh?

 

Mator appreciate all of the information and your work to bring it here.

 

My pleasure. I'll see what else I can bring to this community regarding tricking. I'm sure there's quite a few other topics I can make.