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[FyreWulff]

From most accounts Jason Jones near the end decided the pistol was too weak so he coded it to automatically increase the strength of the pistol over what values they entered for it by a certain amount. Hence the pistol that it ended up with was born. The way he did it prevented them from reverting the change too due to them not figuring out what he had done till too late.

And that was for campaign.

It really didn't matter much though since the entire Halo 1 multiplayer sandbox is broken, and I don't really consider it a bar or a blueprint to build off of. The H1 Pistol certainly doesn't belong in any of the later games.

Shit, if I made an FPS I'd just throw a 2SK pistol in there and call it the Better Than Halo Combat Evolved's Pistol Pistol

 

[Tawpgun]

Halo CE pistol was fine for how little auto aim it had.

Besides, as broken as some of you say it was, could you imagine Halo MP without it? What a trainwreck that would have been. All spray weapons with the only headshot capability being with a sniper.

 

[Kibbles]

I'm still hoping for Halo 4 to start players with an AR and a 5-shot DMR, and have a 4-shot BR with a lower scope as a pick-up weapon on the map that players have to earn. Sacrifice range and accuracy for power and rate-of-fire.

No. Halo 4 needs the BR.

 

[TheOddOne]

No. Halo 4 needs the BR.

I'm with Kibbles.

 

[bobs...onGaf]

I'm with Kibbles.

Im with TheOddOne (and Kibbles)

Halo CE pistol was fine for how little auto aim it had.

Besides, as broken as some of you say it was, could you imagine Halo MP without it? What a trainwreck that would have been. All spray weapons with the only headshot capability being with a sniper.

Agreed, its weird to think that Bungies original intention for the game kinda sucked. Im really glad the Pistol glitch happened and im really glad someone at Bungie thought a powerful precision weapon would be fun in the campaign. At least 1 person there is good at designing games.

And that was for campaign.

It really didn't matter much though since the entire Halo 1 multiplayer sandbox is broken, and I don't really consider it a bar or a blueprint to build off of. The H1 Pistol certainly doesn't belong in any of the later games.

Shit, if I made an FPS I'd just throw a 2SK pistol in there and call it the Better Than Halo Combat Evolved's Pistol Pistol

I thought the Halo 1 sandbox worked extremely well. Vehicle combat especially was a lot more fun than it has been as the series progressed. I understand why you didn't like the Pistol, but say for example on a AR starts game, what was broken?

 

[Striker]

No. Halo 4 needs the BR.

Halo 4 needs hitscan.

Well if maps were actually designed around the sandbox/mechanics of Reach, then it would have been fine, but alas, the maps were not really designed that way, and in the case of BTB, maps weren't designed at all.

Saw this and lol'd, but then I got sad.

 

[daedalius]

Halo 4 needs hitscan.


Saw this and lol'd, but then I got sad.

I'd be fine with a hitscan BR; hell, we had it in Halo 2 already.

I saw that and just sighed, because its so true(the btb maps part anyway).

 

[MooMoo]

I noticed yesterday while playing that certain sound effects are missing (i.e. MC footsteps while walking on ice, no tank movement noise, no ghost movement noise, etc.). Anyone else experiencing this? I noticed this while playing AotCR because the entire level seemed so unusually quiet lol.

 

[NOKYARD]

Just got the Tying Up Loose Ends - Kill every Elite on the level “Keyes” on Heroic difficulty or above achievement while doing my first solo Legendary run (no skulls, no shortcuts). Thought i was nearly done when the Banshees landed in the hangar.

Boy, was i wrong.

There are around 15 to 20 more elites to kill in and around the hangar after that point. Toss in the fact that there is only one remaining checkpoint which you can only get on the hangar floor, zero health packs (my health was at 5 yellow bars on my previous checkpoint) and you have a challenging scenario unlike any other in the campaign.

If i were to offer advice i would recommend not using grenades or needler after you drop down the second hole in the floor (the small round one, not the large gaping hole at the beginning where the first 2 Elites are found). You will need every dropped grenade you can find and it is in your best interest to not have them explode on your way to and from the Keyes blob. There is also a group of infinitely spawning flood on the second floor (in a fire-filled corridor 5 corners from the drop hole) which can be lured to the hangar to keep the Elites attention and also provide a source of dropped ammo and grenades. Before you leave you will want to check every possible corridor from the drop hole to the Keyes blob and back, including the monster closet where the Hunters spawn on T&R.

 

[The Xtortionist]

Halo 4 needs hitscan.

Naw man, bullets should be considered individual projectiles to the increase their chances of randomly disappearing. Of course, the game will refund you the lost bullets...AFTER YOU'RE DEAD

*Snaps Halo 3 disk*

 

[wwm0nkey]

Naw man, bullets should be considered individual projectiles to the increase their chances of randomly disappearing. Of course, the game will refund you the lost bullets...AFTER YOU'RE DEAD

*Snaps Halo 3 disk*

Oh how amazing Halo 3 could have been with Hit scan and a few better maps.

 

[FyreWulff]

Naw man, bullets should be considered individual projectiles to the increase their chances of randomly disappearing. Of course, the game will refund you the lost bullets...AFTER YOU'RE DEAD

*Snaps Halo 3 disk*

Because modeling everyone gun as a laser pointer is so much better.

Hitscan trusts the client too much. Bullets in 3 and Reach can't randomly disappear since the host creates them on it's side then simulates them, meanwhile it tells your box to create the bullet shot and go from there. Noplz to sweep sniping and shooting through walls because my reticule was red before you went behind it.

But nobody wanted to learn how to actually lead their shots in 3, much like how nobody wants to actually learn how to pace their shots in Reach, so all we get is people sitting and whining until we get a 3SK zero bloom no-spread BR in Halo 4 and end up with a single-gun game :/ Which gets even funnier when people apparently forgot you had to lead with the Halo 1 pistol, that keeps getting quoted as the pinnacle of skill in Halo. 3 comes around with a headshot weapon that must be lead at distance the same way and apparently people can't wrap their head around it.

Oh how amazing Halo 3 could have been with Hit scan and a few better maps.

If by "amazing" you mean they could delete all the guns from each map and nobody would have noticed in BR start gametypes

 

[The Xtortionist]

I'll let a shooter do many things. Cheating me out of firing my weapon isn't one of them.

Not that everything should be hitscan. Rockets obviously shouldn't. But any ballistic weapon that takes a fair amount of shots to kill should have a 100% chance of hitting, provided the player's aim is on point.

Skill gap in aiming can be increased by more than making the player lead shots. Just increase movement speed and strafe acceleration.

If by "amazing" you mean they could delete all the guns from each map and nobody would have noticed in BR start gametypes

Yep. PP, shotgun, Mauler, Rockets, Sniper, Sword..who needs that shit when you have a BR.

 

[FyreWulff]

I'll let a shooter do many things. Cheating me out of firing my weapon isn't one of them.

Not that everything should be hitscan. Rockets obviously shouldn't. But any ballistic weapon that takes a fair amount of shots to kill should have a 100% chance of hitting, provided the player's aim is on point.

Skill gap in aiming can be increased by more than making the player lead shots. Just increase movement speed and strafe acceleration.

Good thing every bullet you fire was actually fired on the host box in Halo 3, then. If you had bullets refunded, that means your client fired more than the host actually saw you fire and it corrected your ammo count. The same phenom can be seen if you fire a single bullet out of a BR and melee to cancel firing the last two, you'll lost the last two after a moment because the host saw the melee come in after you finished firing on it's side. Host authoritative is good since it makes client vs client battles much more fair. Client authoritative favors the people closer to host massively and allows more avenues for exploits and modding (you can see how much fun CoD has with modding and it's client-authoritative models..)

Not only that, but both Halo 3 and Reach have bullet magnetism when your reticule is red that means even if you're firing at someone's neck or chest or slightly to the right or left, you'll have the game magnetize your shots towards them and their head. If they upped the movement speed and strafe acceleration then they'd just increase the magnetism to compensate for when the host rewinds to figure out if your shot hit.

Networking: How Does It Work?

There's no reason to keep using idtech 2/3 networking models that were intended for old win95 machines when you have gigaflops at your disposal to actually simulate bullet flight time and trajectory.

Besides the fact that you basically have the overpowered broken starting weapon wet dream, the zero bloom Pistol and DMR.

 

[The Xtortionist]

Good thing every bullet you fire was actually fired on the host box in Halo 3, then. If you had bullets refunded, that means your client fired more than the host actually saw you fire and it corrected your ammo count.

Right, because one or more of the packets didn't make it to the host. If I fire 12 bullets on my screen, then by god I want want all 12 of them to be counted in-game.

 

[FyreWulff]

Right, because one or more of the packets didn't make it to the host. If I fire 12 bullets on my screen, then by god I want want all 12 of them to be counted in-game.

So you'd rather lose the entire 3 round burst in a hitscan model, rather than a single bullet? I don't see how hitscan fixes total packet loss, as both models fall apart under extreme packet loss scenarios. You'd probably be amazed at how many things are host-authoritative on Halo, even in Halo 2.

This is also starting with host assuming that you intend to fire the entire 3 round burst when your box sends the request to fire the bullets in both models. The only way for the 3 round burst to NOT be fired in it's entirety is for you to melee cancel it or the host doesn't even see it in the first place, which hitscan wouldn't solve. Guns in Halo 3 and Reach can also fire up to ~2 seconds after you die, so you'd basically have to die on the host box quite a few frames before you pull the trigger on your end for it to not fire your gun at all.

 

[The Xtortionist]

I don't recall any instances of packet loss with the Reach AR or DMR, whereas I saw that shit every game with Halo 3's AR and BR. Especially that AR, good god. The UNSC were high when they made that thing.

 

[FyreWulff]

I don't recall any instances of packet loss with the Reach AR or DMR, whereas I saw that shit every game with Halo 3's AR and BR. Especially that AR, good god. The UNSC were high when they made that thing.

Then you're just seeing things as both games simulate bullet travel the same way, Reach just has the bullets fly so fast that they travel their maximum possible distance in a single frame (source) They did improve the netcode but the game certainty doesn't only attempt to send your firing message once as packet drops are a normal facet of the internet, and even occur on LAN.

On the other hand, Halo 1 Xbox's networking model was "sync the button presses on each xbox, and everyone gets to be the host"

 

[Syringe]

Just realised Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary fell out of the UK charts top 20 in it's second week and peaked at 7. I didn't expect it to do nowhere near Halo: Reach numbers, but this is actually a bit worse than I thought. A shame, it's a great game.

 

[The Xtortionist]

Then you're just seeing things as both games simulate bullet travel the same way, Reach just has the bullets fly so fast that they travel their maximum possible distance in a single frame (source) They did improve the netcode but the game certainty doesn't only attempt to send your firing message once as packet drops are a normal facet of the internet, and even occur on LAN.

Then I suppose Halo 3's netcode was complete ass.

I was just under the impression that hitscan basically says "I hit a guy". No more, no less. And a projectile packet would say "I'm placing a projectile into the world. Here's the entry point; figure it out from there.". Obviously more could go wrong with the latter.

On the other hand, Halo 1 Xbox's networking model was "sync the button presses on each xbox, and everyone gets to be the host"

Input lag?

 

[wwm0nkey]

Just realised Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary fell out of the UK charts top 20 in it's second week and peaked at 7. I didn't expect it to do nowhere near Halo: Reach numbers, but this is actually a bit worse than I thought. A shame, it's a great game.

Well what are you going to do with 0 marketing? I wasnt really expecting this game to pull in huge numbers at all, just give fans a chance to experience Halo with a new coat of paint.

 

[The Xtortionist]

Well what are you going to do with 0 marketing? I wasnt really expecting this game to pull in huge numbers at all, just give fans a chance to experience Halo with a new coat of paint.

And it came out on the same day as like four other games.

 

[FyreWulff]

Input lag?

Since people generally played on a LAN on the same hub or router (no hops in/out at all), input lag was extremely minimal.

This is why you get input lag in campaign/firefight in 3/ODST/Reach and Anniversary, because they use an extremely similiar lockstep networking model where the button presses are being networked, but not any of the in-game objects. You have to wait for the button update to make it's round trip to every xbox before the game will continue.

This is also why Halo 1 just locked up when a box left because it didn't know how to deal with an Xbox leaving the "relay", and why Halo 3/ODST/Reach will just stop when someone is about to disconnect. You also cannot join in-progress to a Halo 1 Xbox game or Halo 3 /ODST/Campaign firefight/co-op sessions for the same reason. You'd have to either send the new joiner the entire state of the game (which could be multiple hundreds of megs.. not doable) or send them a film of the game up to that point and have their Xbox fast foward up to that point in the game (not doable under MS's bandwidth restrictions, and you'd be sitting there quite a while as their Xbox was fast forwarding the film).

You can see a quirk of this networking: if someone quits after you get a checkpoint in co-op, you'll see them quit again each time you revert to the previous checkpoint from dying/selecting the option because the game has to re-simulate the quit to stay in sync. Once you get a new checkpoint though, it'll stop happening.

 

[kittens]

I think the game you're looking for is Call of Duty. That game has incredibly fast kill times, and every starting weapon is headshot capable.

Holy shit. The ignorance, it hurts.

 

[Syringe]

I think the one thing I more than anything would like to see fixed in the Halo series is a more thought through weapon range. I'm tired of BR and DMR being the jack of all trades making all the machine guns useless and I'm even more tired of using the sniper rifle for all ranges.

It just feels cheap to use it close range, but I have to. I really would like the BR and DMR to be more specifically midrange, I want the sniper rifle to be worthless up close and I want to use the machine guns on closer distances.

Then changing weapons would actually serve a purpose and force you to change tactics every now and then.

 

[JohnOfMars]

Was playing Assault on the Control Room last night. Beautiful and just as good as I remember (and just as long). But...

Is anyone else having lots of texture pop-in? I swear, every time I turn too quickly there's a texture that's low res that up-res's immediately. Kinda breaks the illusion. I'm installed to the harddrive.

Any one else?

 

[The Librarian]

The only level that has bad texture-loading problems is The Maw. It's the worst technical problem of the game.

 

[Lima]

The only level that has bad texture-loading problems in The Maw. It's the worst technical problem of the game.

Yep. I have had it occasionally during other levels but it was sooo bad in The Maw. Shit popping in like all the time.

 

[Zeouterlimits]

Was playing Assault on the Control Room last night. Beautiful and just as good as I remember (and just as long). But...

Is anyone else having lots of texture pop-in? I swear, every time I turn too quickly there's a texture that's low res that up-res's immediately. Kinda breaks the illusion. I'm installed to the harddrive.

Any one else?

Installed for me, and yup, plenty of it on AotCR.
Noticed it a tiny bit in previous levels, but the Forerunner architecture, especially the doors, really suffered from it in AotCR.

 

[Photolysis]

There's no reason to keep using idtech 2/3 networking models that were intended for old win95 machines when you have gigaflops at your disposal to actually simulate bullet flight time and trajectory.

Besides the fact that you basically have the overpowered broken starting weapon wet dream, the zero bloom Pistol and DMR.

The problem with simulating bullet physics is that variable latency messes things up big time. Having to predict player movement, flight time, and then adding varying latency into the mix would make things a nightmare for most. Hitscan plus limited client trust has some implications for the sandbox and skill cap, but in the real world I think it probably works better.

 

[ElRenoRaven]

Was playing Assault on the Control Room last night. Beautiful and just as good as I remember (and just as long). But...

Is anyone else having lots of texture pop-in? I swear, every time I turn too quickly there's a texture that's low res that up-res's immediately. Kinda breaks the illusion. I'm installed to the harddrive.

Any one else?

Yup. You'll note that one of my big complaints was this. It of course is still there when installed to harddrive but you'll find it not near as bad as when uninstalled. Trust me because my first play through was uninstalled. Sadly you can't completely do away with it.

 

[squidhands]

Yep. I have had it occasionally during other levels but it was sooo bad in The Maw. Shit popping in like all the time.

There was one instance for me where the textures for one of the reactor tubes never popped in at all while I was standing on it; looked like a blurry mess (I've got the game installed, btw).

However, when the new engine is running like it's supposed to, the new graphics are extremely beautiful. Toggling back and forth really brought out some "wow" moments. I liked the new 343 Guilty Spark swamp a lot more than I initially thought.

 

[erpg]

You guys need a good aftermarket 7200rpm hard drive if the textures truly are that bad.

 

[The Librarian]

Oh yeah. It's especially bad in the engine room. The coolant reactors were the worst of it all.

 

[Syracuse022]

And that was for campaign.

It really didn't matter much though since the entire Halo 1 multiplayer sandbox is broken, and I don't really consider it a bar or a blueprint to build off of. The H1 Pistol certainly doesn't belong in any of the later games.

Shit, if I made an FPS I'd just throw a 2SK pistol in there and call it the Better Than Halo Combat Evolved's Pistol Pistol

Unbelievable. Words, there are none. It's like we have to have this same argument every few months because you can't be arsed to learn from past mistakes. Campaign was not changed - they had the campaign damage where they wanted it. Jones hard-coded the damage tables for multiplayer when it was too late to safely change them back, making a unilateral decision that, for most people, made Halo 1 what it was. I should just bookmark these discussions for when you forget again early next year, Christ.

 

[ElRenoRaven]

Unbelievable. Words, there are none. It's like we have to have this same argument every few months because you can't be arsed to learn from past mistakes. Campaign was not changed - they had the campaign damage where they wanted it. Jones hard-coded the damage tables for multiplayer when it was too late to safely change them back, making a unilateral decision that, for most people, made Halo 1 what it was. I should just bookmark these discussions for when you forget again early next year, Christ.

lol. I just smile and move on. It's not worth arguing with him about.

 

[Steelyuhas]

Because modeling everyone gun as a laser pointer is so much better.

Hitscan trusts the client too much. Bullets in 3 and Reach can't randomly disappear since the host creates them on it's side then simulates them, meanwhile it tells your box to create the bullet shot and go from there. Noplz to sweep sniping and shooting through walls because my reticule was red before you went behind it.

But nobody wanted to learn how to actually lead their shots in 3, much like how nobody wants to actually learn how to pace their shots in Reach, so all we get is people sitting and whining until we get a 3SK zero bloom no-spread BR in Halo 4 and end up with a single-gun game :/ Which gets even funnier when people apparently forgot you had to lead with the Halo 1 pistol, that keeps getting quoted as the pinnacle of skill in Halo. 3 comes around with a headshot weapon that must be lead at distance the same way and apparently people can't wrap their head around it.

In a perfect world, you would have guns where you have to lead your shots and the internet would be perfect. In an online environment for an arena shooter however, hitscan (or nearly instant bullet travel) makes for a much more consistent game online.

 

[Blue Ninja]

The cutscene animations are just incredibly bad. Holy shit.

But, 343 (and Sabre), having played it, I can give you the ultimate compliment: this game still plays like it's Halo. Job well done.

Also, menu controls are yanky as shit and toggle crouch doesn't work like it should. Too bad.

 

[Ecrofirt]

OK, what the heck does 'leading shots' mean?

 

[TheOddOne]

Is it sad that I dread going trough Legendary because I don't ever want to play the Library and Keyes ever again? I'm eventually going to, but I'm gonna procrastinate.

 

[The Librarian]

Is it sad that I dread going trough Legendary because I don't ever want to play the Library and Keyes ever again? I'm eventually going to, but I'm gonna procrastinate.

Get 'em out of the way first.

 

[ncsuDuncan]

OK, what the heck does 'leading shots' mean?

Tried to find the Futurama clip that perfectly answers this, but YouTube has failed me.

Instead, a quote:
"Instead of shooting where I was, you should have shot where I was going to be!"

 

[TheOddOne]

Get 'em out of the way first.

I'll play Assassins Creed: Revelations, hit myself stupid and I'll try to do those two dreadfull levels first.

 

[blamite]

Dammit, the Library just crashed my console. AGAIN.

WHY.

 

[FyreWulff]

Unbelievable. Words, there are none. It's like we have to have this same argument every few months because you can't be arsed to learn from past mistakes. Campaign was not changed - they had the campaign damage where they wanted it. Jones hard-coded the damage tables for multiplayer when it was too late to safely change them back, making a unilateral decision that, for most people, made Halo 1 what it was. I should just bookmark these discussions for when you forget again early next year, Christ.

Yeah, and Jones made the wrong decision. Sorry, he's much better at designing campaigns than he is at designing multiplayer. The less he's been involved with a Halo multiplayer, the better the multiplayer has gotten.

But I'm still of the opinion that he tweaked it for campaign and the change was propogated to multiplayer due to Halo 1's setup.

Tried to find the Futurama clip that perfectly answers this, but YouTube has failed me.

Instead, a quote:
"Instead of shooting where I was, you should have shot where I was going to be!"

OK, what the heck does 'leading shots' mean?

Or basically "This is how guns work". You lead your barrel in front of them if they're moving so that when the bullet arrives, they've walked into it's trajectory. Just like in Halo 1 and Halo 3.

It's not a really hard concept, especially since Battlefield goes further and models bullet drop and nobody has a problem with it in those games.

 

[Ecrofirt]

Yeah, and Jones made the wrong decision. Sorry, he's much better at designing campaigns than he is at designing multiplayer. Should be no coincidence that the less he's been involved with a Halo, the better the multiplayer has gotten.







Or basically "This is how guns work". You lead your barrel in front of them if they're moving so that when the bullet arrives, they've walked into it's trajectory. Just like in Halo 1 and Halo 3.

It's not a really hard concept, especially since Battlefield goes further and models bullet drop and nobody has a problem with it in those games.

Thank you. I thought that's what it was, but I wasn't sure.

 

[FyreWulff]

Thank you. I thought that's what it was, but I wasn't sure.

No problem

 

[Nutter]

Yes lets give everyone a Rocket launcher because I want faster kill times.. *insert rollyeyes here*

All I read from the people who want more shots to take someone down is "I suck at Halo and aiming, so the more shots it takes to kill, the longer I can stay alive".

3Shot Pistol, 4shot BR or the 5shot DMR I can win a fight. I just want the game to finally let us do more damage if shooting at the head regardless of it being an AR or hell even a Spiker. Why should someone who is spraying the AR win a fight versus who is aiming and shooting at the head.

 

[Hydranockz]

3Shot Pistol, 4shot BR or the 5shot DMR I can win a fight. I just want the game to finally let us do more damage if shooting at the head regardless of it being an AR or hell even a Spiker. Why should someone who is spraying the AR win a fight versus who is aiming and shooting at the head.

Spartans concentrate their shields to protect their head. This makes sense for MC cuz he's got Cortana up there but from a gameplay perspective it explains what you describe.

 

[Tunavi]

Why should someone who is spraying the AR win a fight versus who is aiming and shooting at the head.

As much as I agree with you, the answer is that so that newcomers don't get intimidated by a skill gap they don't understand and the population stays as healthy as possible.