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Halo |OT15| Beta-tested, GAF approved

So I got my disc drive working temporarily. I also found out what was scratching my discs. A piece of plastic flash got pulled vertically and was just cutting into discs. I removed it. Thanks to Fyrewulff's advice, I cleaned the spindle magnets and am now leaving a blank disc in it. I'm finally ready to play Halo Wars. Tried Halo 4 and it'll have to wait until I can get it replaced (looking like the end of the school year though because HotS).

You need a copy of Halo 4?
 
If

Bad = Lockout TS
.
X? = Halo 4's maps and gametypes...

What is that X word, I dont think they've made a word that shitty and terrible yet to properly complete that relationship.
 

HTupolev

Member
We'd gain the full HDR range back since they wouldn't be trying to fit everything inside 10MB of RAM.
Cranking up the HDR to those levels would be cheaper than double-rendering everything, but it would still be substantially more expensive on your ROPs and VRAM (and possibly also your computation, as high-precision operations often have slower throughput than low-precision ones; I'm not too familiar with the inner workings of shaders, though) than Reach's more typical levels of HDR.

Now, that looks pretty good as a start. You'd immediately be able to have similar levels of bloom quality and such. But having access to HDR values is only part of the equation. You'd still have to do things like replace Halo 3's unique blending with more standard tone mapping, which as far as I know might work, but I'd have to see it to believe it.
 

Havok

Member
I hadn't realized just how much of an uphill battle blue team has on Exile CTF until today. Spawning in that moronic open field without any cover while red pings you immediately from safe areas. Oh, the Binary and Rockets that dropped into their base mid-match helped a bunch. Why is this a thing?
That's a weird way to spell The Pit and Last Resort.
Last Resort isn't even a good version of the map it's trying to remake, much less the greatest anything.
 

Overdoziz

Banned
No gametypes aside from one-flag and one-bomb should ever be played on Last Resort/Zanzibar. Hell will freeze over the day Halo gets proper playlist management.
 

Madness

Member
I hadn't realized just how much of an uphill battle blue team has on Exile CTF until today. Spawning in that moronic open field without any cover while red pings you immediately from safe areas. Oh, the Binary and Rockets that dropped into their base mid-match helped a bunch. Why is this a thing?
Last Resort isn't even a good version of the map it's trying to remake, much less the greatest anything.

I've always thought it would play a bit better if blue side had a building more to the left. What I mean is, at the very bottom of blue side, there is just an empty space where tank usually goes. If blue had some sort of base/cover there and it was a bit open in the middle where blue turret is, it would play better.

EDIT: Damn I loved Last Resort in Halo 3. Surprising to hear people say it's a bad map, especially since Zanzibar was so popular in Halo 2 as well.
 
Well Silentium Sure Is Really Good So Far.
Did not expect the surprises in it at all.

Don't worry, will post a few spoilers in the other thread.
 

Havok

Member
I've always thought it would play a bit better if blue side had a building more to the left. What I mean is, at the very bottom of blue side, there is just an empty space where tank usually goes. If blue had some sort of base/cover there and it was a bit open in the middle where blue turret is, it would play better.
There's that, which is the open field I referenced (in front of blue turret all the way over to the Ghost spawn and mancannon), there's the fact that they have no safe in-base perch like red does, instead they just have the roof of the buildings which is an easy 5-shot since there's no cover. There's the fact that their ghost spawns farther away from the initial spawns than red side. There's the problem where red sniper spawns with full line of sight down the rocket corridor so he can immediately kill any blue guy coming for rockets (red initial spawn is closer to that sniper than blue is to the rocket corridor, so rushing isn't possible). Then red has easier access to Dominion site B (top middle) than blue does, since there isn't a sharp turn letting people boltshot camp at the red entrance.

It's a whole lot of little things that get very frustrating very quickly.

EDIT: Damn I loved Last Resort in Halo 3. Surprising to hear people say it's a bad map, especially since Zanzibar was so popular in Halo 2 as well.
Take a look at the massive, empty interior of that base or the newly-worthless gate and tell me it's good for one flag or bomb...especially when it launched with big ass crates inside that you could knock on top of the flag or arm spot and make it impossible to reach. Why feel the need to replace rockets with the crummy laser up top? Rockets were pretty easy to dodge on Zanzibar if you circled the wheel instead of going straight for it, guy up top can have that laser charged the instant the Hog comes around the corner to the seawall entrance. Froman was made even more powerful since you couldn't trap people there when they had an easy dropdown route, and overall the map was changed from a 4v4 map to this weird schizophrenic size that didn't work well with either 8 or 16 players. It might be fine on its own, but not compared to Zanzibar.
 

Striker

Member
No gametypes aside from one-flag and one-bomb should ever be played on Last Resort/Zanzibar. Hell will freeze over the day Halo gets proper playlist management.
Really all the asymmetric maps fair far better under skirmish gametypes rather than simple slayer. There's very few great slayer maps in Halo so the rest must be either excelling at things like flag, assault, plots, or oddball, because they won't be so entertaining under strict slayer settings. Lockout is best under KotH/Oddball, Zanzibar better with One Flag or One Bomb, Ivory Tower better with Rapid Assault or One Flag, Turf under KotH and Plots, etc.

Though the flag and bomb settings need to be properly balanced and have a HUD that displays return settings, contesting and so on.
 

HTupolev

Member
Take a look at the massive, empty interior of that base or the newly-worthless gate and tell me it's good for one flag or bomb...
The main base interior is probably my least favorite part of the map. It's got an interesting enough design:

gpFiF3i.jpg

...but combat flows sort of awkwardly, and it almost feels like it was pasted to the edge of an otherwise completed map. Like one day someone just decided that the map needed an extra arena to play in, and the base interior should be expanded into that full-fledged arena.

I don't terribly dislike Last Resort, but it has room for streamlining.
 

Dongs Macabre

aka Daedalos42
...Are you seriously trying to hate on them for trying to give an apology for the issues they had with Sim city

No, I'm not hating on them. I just find it kind of funny. First the SimCity fiasco, then their CEO resigns. Now a sale to try and win over players again.

EDIT: Also, Crysis 3 is only 30 bucks if anyone wants to get it. I think you can get it for any platform.
 
Thats been known for like a week or more.

Unfortunately the only game I want IS Sim City and thats still 60$...and the fact they plan to "Sims 3" Sim City means I wont be paying full price and then more and more money to add bigger cities and more buildings...I dont play that way.
 

Madness

Member
Which game should I buy? I don't have any of them.

Mass effect 3 and arkham city should be no brainers. Don't know how invested you are in the mass effect games, but there is only one who thing that is super shitty about mass effect 3.

Arkham city is just flat out amazing.

The Walking Dead game is a definite must play as well.

Battlefield 3 premium if you've got the PC to run it.
 

Ghazi

Member
Mass effect 3 and arkham city should be no brainers. Don't know how invested you are in the mass effect games, but there is only one who thing that is super shitty about mass effect 3.

Arkham city is just flat out amazing.

The Walking Dead game is a definite must play as well.

Battlefield 3 premium if you've got the PC to run it.

I just started this today after buying all the episodes for 800 spacebucks when they were on sale. I have to say that I enjoyed my time with it, but I only got through episodes 1 & 2.
 

Madness

Member
If we get Halo 3 PC first thing I'm doing is ripping the H3 Beta textures and putting them on the H3 Spartans.

Also did some one say LAST RESORT

I'm going to agree with Kyle, I don't think BTB maps should be any bigger than this. Vortex, Boneyard, Spire, Longbow, heck even Wreckage are just too big and artificially made larger. I mean more than half of these maps are hardly utilized at all.
 

Madness

Member
Mass Effect Trilogy $30. Never played them. May be my best option.

Holy shit, you are in for one hell of an experience. I'd say Mass Effect 1 was one of my favorite gaming hall experiences in a long time.

Enjoy the hell out of the first, explore as much as possible, complete as many missions as you can. How you enjoy and interact with the universe will really set the stage for the rest of the series, even though Mass Effect 2 and 3 play quite differently.

Is it that good? I got the first episode for free, but I only played up until
the guy killed the zombie after the crash

Wtf, isn't that only like the first two minutes of the game?
 

Dongs Macabre

aka Daedalos42
I'm going to agree with Kyle, I don't think BTB maps should be any bigger than this. Vortex, Boneyard, Spire, Longbow, heck even Wreckage are just too big and artificially made larger. I mean more than half of these maps are hardly utilized at all.

Longbow, Vortex and Wreckage aren't too bad. Spire and Boneyard were the worst, though. The only reason to go into the outer regions of Spire is to get the Banshee.
 

Computron

Member
ikMZHWXOx5Uuc.png

Does anyone have the Blackmagic Intensity and a beefy PC?



If you want some to play some mostly alias-free Halo 3 (Or any aliasy game really, but Halo 3 is pretty boss...) with some quality image scaling, tryout the PtBi monitoring app.
It's designed to give you low enough latency to play the game on your PC monitor while also adding on some smart post-processing effects like FXAA antialiasing.


...then get FRAPs and record some sweet clips for me, please.
I am curious to see how well this works on top of Halo 3's scaled 640p image...
 

FyreWulff

Member
ikMZHWXOx5Uuc.png

Does anyone have the Blackmagic Intensity and a beefy PC?



If you want some to play some alias-free Halo 3 (Or any aliasy game really, but Halo 3 is pretty boss...) with some quality image scaling, tryout the PtBi monitoring app.
It's designed to give you low enough latency to play the game on your PC monitor while also adding on some smart post-processing effects like FXAA antialiasing.


...then get FRAPs and record some sweet clips for me, please. I am curious to see this...


Just downloaded it, now I need to find Halo 3. I don't have the full version of FRAPS though.. I think I can just use Xsplit for that? Maybe?

The AA options are FXAA, PXAA, and TPXAA. Which one should I be trying to use?
 

Madness

Member
Longbow, Vortex and Wreckage aren't too bad. Spire and Boneyard were the worst, though. The only reason to go into the outer regions of Spire is to get the Banshee.

Oh they play fine, what I mean is, they are pointlessly too large and it makes for dumb moments sometime. Just played a match on longbow where the other team utilized camo. They were just all over the map and it was a game of hide and seek.

The entire lower area of wreckage where the light gets blinding is never utilized in slayer, and only in say oddball when people go there to hide.

I don't know, not necessarily saying I want to shoot fish in a barrel so to speak, but I'd like if maps were more simple, clean sight lines, the only real eye candy I like is skyboxes or color scheme.
 

Computron

Member
Just downloaded it, now I need to find Halo 3. I don't have the full version of FRAPS though.. I think I can just use Xsplit for that? Maybe?

The AA options are FXAA, PXAA, and TPXAA. Which one should I be trying to use?

I don't have X-split, IDK about it's quality, but FRAPS is Lossless.

As for AA: http://blog.metaclassofnil.com/?p=11

That should explain the difference. It's essentially a per-pixel check to see if it's anti-aliasing stuff it shouldn't. (Like the GUI)
 
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