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Halo |OT12| Last One Out, Get the Lights

Tashi

343i Lead Esports Producer
I've said it before, but Hypertrooper looks high as fuck in that pic. lol

Maybe because he was?

He was in the bathroom and we were all like, "Hurry up Lars, we don't want to be late"

Bathroom door opens with Lars walking out of a cloud of smoke. Absolutely stunk! Then Lars grabbed some Doritos and Mountain Dew and we were off.
 

Swarmerr

Member
Anyone else find it kinda dumb that teams of 4 and 3 can face randoms in matchmaking?

This has to be one of my biggest complaints with halo 4.
 
Just in case everyone didn't catch it on the HBO news feed, DeeJ had a really good burn on our pal Wu in the Bungie Blog today:

"Bungie's 'Virtual Couch' allowed us to enjoy the Halo 2 LAN experience when a real LAN wasn't feasible. LAN play in Halo gave me a way to connect with friends that nothing that came before it provided. As we scattered to the winds, Xbox LIVE and Halo 2 gave us an opportunity to recapture that magic."

- Louis Wu, Founder, halo.bungie.org, Member AARP

source: Happy 10th Anniversary, Xbox LIVE!
 

feel

Member
Maybe because he was?

He was in the bathroom and we were all like, "Hurry up Lars, we don't want to be late"

Bathroom door opens with Lars walking out of a cloud of smoke. Absolutely stunk! Then Lars grabbed some Doritos and Mountain Dew and we were off.
:lol :lol
 

Omni

Member
If you don't have a boltshot as your secondary outside of BTB you're doing it wrong. Thing is like a power weapon you can spawn with.

I use it in all of my loadouts, but I was just commenting on its sound... Which is incredibly weak.
 

J10

Banned
If you don't have a boltshot as your secondary outside of BTB you're doing it wrong. Thing is like a power weapon you can spawn with.

I don't play close enough to ever be effective with it (or get killed by it). Magnum all day, Plasma Pistol for BTB.

I wish the Magnum had two more bullets in the magazine, by the way.
 

J10

Banned
That, and I wish it was a 5sk. 6sk + 8 shot clip + bloom is too much. Just put the poor thing out of its misery.

I don't mind the six shots so long as I can place a grenade before I shoot. It's fantastic for countering automatics and sprint melees at close range as is. I just want a tiny bit more ammo. It's my second favorite iteration of the weapon after the pre-TU Halo 2 Magnum. Reach's is a close third.
 
Super old discussion, but didn't want to read the last 8-9 pages: NextBox in 2013, Halo 5 in 2014. It will be what the Gears of War release time frame was for the 360 for the NextBox. I would be absolutely shocked if this isn't the case.
 

Trey

Member
Does the menu ever lag for people? When I was playing there were times when I thought my Xbox froze. Could have sworn someone assured us all that it was fast and responsive...

Of course. UI lags horribly. It's easily the worst thing about Halo 4 for me.
 

Omni

Member
Super old discussion, but didn't want to read the last 8-9 pages: NextBox in 2013, Halo 5 in 2014. It will be what the Gears of War release time frame was for the 360 for the NextBox. I would be absolutely shocked if this isn't the case.

Where are people getting Nextbox in 2013 from? Last I heard in an interview with a MS rep was that they were trying to make the 360 last until 2015 at least. Granted it was a while ago now.
 

Petrie

Banned
Would love to find some people to play with. I'm halfway decent, KD is usually positive, down to do Legendary campaign (need the various cheevos as well if anyone is working on them) Spartan Tops, and definitely anything MP, sick of not being able to play objective games because nobody works together.

GT: PetriesLastWord
 
Does the menu ever lag for people? When I was playing there were times when I thought my Xbox froze. Could have sworn someone assured us all that it was fast and responsive...
Of course. UI lags horribly. It's easily the worst thing about Halo 4 for me.

Phew, thought I was in the rare minority..

Just in case everyone didn't catch it on the HBO news feed, DeeJ had a really good burn on our pal Wu in the Bungie Blog today:

source: Happy 10th Anniversary, Xbox LIVE!

Really makes me think of something:

XBC evolved into Matchmaking. Matchmaking evolved into ...? I'm still waiting for a Custom Game/MM hybrid with ideas that'll bring online gaming to a new standard.
 

FyreWulff

Member
Phew, thought I was in the rare minority..



Really makes me think of something:

XBC evolved into Matchmaking. Matchmaking evolved into ...? I'm still waiting for a Custom Game/MM hybrid with ideas that'll bring online gaming to a new standard.

I have ideas on improving that.

Of course, I'm keeping it for my own game, I ain't giving it to Microsoft for free :V

Where are people getting Nextbox in 2013 from? Last I heard in an interview with a MS rep was that they were trying to make the 360 last until 2015 at least. Granted it was a while ago now.

It's pretty much happening at this point.
 

Karl2177

Member
Where are people getting Nextbox in 2013 from? Last I heard in an interview with a MS rep was that they were trying to make the 360 last until 2015 at least. Granted it was a while ago now.

That one leaked .pdf from about 6 months ago or so. Early in the generation, they were wanting it to last until 2015, but around when Project Natal was announced, Microsoft changed their schedule internally. Then the .pdf outlined what the next 8 yeas or so should be.
 
K

kittens

Unconfirmed Member
Damn Dax, I wouldn't have been so blunt if I knew what you were going through, haha. Your dear/pumpkin quips don't bother me that much -- they just come off as condescending to me. But I understand that that wasn't what you were going for.

Sorry to hear about your problems. It's good that you're seeking help, professionally, on GAF, or anywhere. I actually started therapy for the first time ever a few months ago. Feels good.
 
I just realized that Ghosts don't have that secondary explosion anymore. :( When did they get rid of this? Halo 3?

I always loved the whining sound it made right before it exploded, along with the way it jumped and tumbled around.
 
Where are people getting Nextbox in 2013 from? Last I heard in an interview with a MS rep was that they were trying to make the 360 last until 2015 at least. Granted it was a while ago now.
Microsoft can support and make money off the 360 until 2015 while also supporting and making money off of a new system. See also: Playstation 2 and PS3.
 
I just realized that Ghosts don't have that secondary explosion anymore. :( When did they get rid of this? Halo 3?

I always loved the whining sound it made right before it exploded, along with the way it jumped and tumbled around.

They might still have it. Reach had it present, it just didn't make the ghost spazz out as far and heavy enough damage could outright kill it, which made it rare.
 

GhaleonEB

Member
Man. I miss one flag. And those red X's.


Great nostalgia fest. It's easy to forget how much Halo 2 changed playing online. It was the first game I played online for any duration (a couple lousy Dreamcast games didn't really cut it).


It's so strange that with all the UI clutter Halo 4 added, how little utility most of it is. And then things like that get cut.
 
Where are people getting Nextbox in 2013 from? Last I heard in an interview with a MS rep was that they were trying to make the 360 last until 2015 at least. Granted it was a while ago now.

Literally countless sources and/or rumors including leaked presentation slides from an internal MS presentation. It's a done deal.
 

Fotos

Member
Going to play the hell out of Halo 4 for the next 9 days so if anyone wants to play a few matches just send me a request.I will probably be playing it all hours so send me a message anytime.

GT: Fabalon
 

aFIGurANT

Member
Would love to find some people to play with. I'm halfway decent, KD is usually positive, down to do Legendary campaign (need the various cheevos as well if anyone is working on them) Spartan Tops, and definitely anything MP, sick of not being able to play objective games because nobody works together.

GT: PetriesLastWord

I'll add you if you want to play CTF and stuff. Look for Bislane on XBL in like 20 minutes or so. I'll play some mp with you whenever man, I'm in the same boat.
 

Computron

Member
There are some real amateur-hour mistakes that shipped with many of the forge pieces.

Aside from the old poorly matched non-grid-standard size differences as there where in Reach with a lot of pieces, there are misplaced/mis-aligned pivot points , which are sometimes aligned/placed at a completely illogical point (not even the usual point, at the centroid, as it was in Reach and 3, which I maintain was a bad choice for modular assets) and magnets (that are placed on edge centers, again instead of the potentially more logical corner for ideal modular piece alignment).

There are also improperly unwrapped/sized lightmap UVs, some even appear to have overlapping UVs, so if one small part of your object is in shadow, a whole 'nother portion of the piece will have the same lighting, even if it is supposed to be lit the polar opposite way. This would explain why some pieces change lighting drastically when you come near them (Because they are Lerp'ing from the low-res/improperly-unwrapped baked shadow to real-time shadows). Some good examples of this are the entire set of Ravine unique forge pieces, especially the side bases. If this is the case, and it seams to be, it can in some ways be worked around, but I have yet to find the perfect solution.

The instant radiosity they have is also kind of disappointing in terms of completely enclosed interior maps without windows; as it only does one pass.
Any more passes would be prohibitively expensive and time-consuming. Although, it seems like they could have easily adjust a value or two under the hood and have it spend a little longer generating the lighting and in the process render out more shadow maps, which would contribute more samples making their radiosity far smoother.
They have the lightmap resolution for it in most places, and it would just take a bit more time to get the higher quality result. (e.g. 2x longer light generation time = 2x smoother gradients for indirect lighting and so on, linearly, if I’m not mistaken)
Their single pass radiosity only subtracts lighting, and their method has a very short reach. It does not add any ambient light through diffuse interreflectance, or recursivly bounced light, so this is where you get the effect where there is no ambient lighting to give you depth cues and the walls and the floors are indistinguishable similar to that example that I posted screenshots of, back when they showed off that forge map on impact.

So, moving on to…

…Some tips for forgers:

If you have an interior or enclosed map, add some transparent windows, holes in the ceilings/walls, or open-topped high ceilings.
Most importantly, do this even if this doesn't shine any direct/bright sunlight onto your playable sections, since this will still contribute (in a potentially splotchy, low-res and ugly way if done carelessly) to the map's indirect lighting and add some depth and directionality cues.

This should help mitigate the inevitable eye-cancer that we will all develop when forge maps start to make their way into MM as they did in Reach.

It may help to actually block just the direct sunlight hitting parts of your map by using far-off floating coliseum wall pieces. Because the ambient lighting works subtractively,
if your map has good visibility of the sky/surroundings and some complex geometry, this will allow you to play with indirect lighting which can contribute a lot of interesting color.
I can post examples after I play around with it some more, so far I am still brainstorming ideas.

In addition, the color of your indirect lighting somewhat obviously is controlled by the immediate/directly-visible surroundings. So if your pieces are directly over the oceans on Ravine, the under-sides will receive the blueish green indirect light, and if their over the forerunner parts they will receive grey blue indirect lights and so on and so forth. Definitely put some time into deciding on the location of your map, don't just put it all over the ocean way outside of the bounds of ravine like most people do when they start, but experiment with putting half of it over the grassy sections and half over the ocean for the best possible indirect lighting color-range. Remember that to get indirect light your piece needs to be shadowed from the sun, but also at least partially exposed to the sky or other bright surroundings, so don't go making completely enclosed, underground flood type maps that end up with completely flat, grey-brown ambient lighting like I keep seeing on YouTube.
 

u4iX

Member
Gatdamn that video hit me right in the feels.

I miss old school Halo so much.

This Halo is actually really good, and it could be as good as Halo 2, it's like fine tuning an engine... Which I know nothing about so I can't go into that analogy.

They just need to listen to the right people in the community and implement some minor tweaks.
 

CyReN

Member
Why do I get the feeling they forgot it more than cut. Why did this only get mention at release also? I would think someone would have caught that earlier.
 
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