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Halo |OT15| Beta-tested, GAF approved

I wish we could just have Halo Reach's Xs and teammate status indicators. Those were pretty much perfect. These Halo 4 Xs are a small improment, and that's nice, but they fall very short of the standard established by the past games.

Well, that's kind of a running theme for H4, no?
 

Nebula

Member
Were they red in Reach? I honesly can't remember

dTMQ2BX.png
 

Tashi

343i Lead Esports Producer
The issue is not they're white instead of red. That seriously doesn't matter unless you're nostalgic about it. They come through fine once you adjust.
 

Tawpgun

Member
The big issue is they don't last long enough and the team indicators, neutral, firing, taking damage, aren't shown clearly enough when they are on screen, and they aren't shown at all off screen.

It just leads to a much more cloudier combat environment.
 
The big issue is they don't last long enough and the team indicators, neutral, firing, taking damage, aren't shown clearly enough when they are on screen, and they aren't shown at all off screen.

It just leads to a much more cloudier combat environment.

You've been fired already? Condolences, bro.

:)
 
People say 120Hz/144Hz monitors combined with 120 FPS are the future. It will take ages, to be standard however.

Thats probably true for gaming. The added detail means you need more frames per second to clearly see all of that added detail. Otherwise you just get blurrrrr and a brain and eyes that hurt trying to understand what its seeing.
 
Excuse me, but I haven't followed this thread lately. So call me out if those are old news:

Polygon has a GDC coverage and they have two Halo 4-related articles online. The first one is about Forward Unto Dawn and how 343i made FUD with a 'threadbare' budget.

I think the most of us aren't really interested in that article, but more in the second one. Remember the slide Duncan posted here yesterday? Polygon put a summary of that talk online. Scott Werner told the audience how they created the Prometheans and what they learnt from them. Polygon gives a bit clarity of the last few notes from the Postmortem slide. You can read it here.
 

orznge

Banned
The issue is not they're white instead of red. That seriously doesn't matter unless you're nostalgic about it. They come through fine once you adjust.

if it doesn't matter I'm sure you wouldn't mind if they changed the RGB values or whatever so they stand out more?
 
K

kittens

Unconfirmed Member
The big issue is they don't last long enough and the team indicators, neutral, firing, taking damage, aren't shown clearly enough when they are on screen, and they aren't shown at all off screen.

It just leads to a much more cloudier combat environment.
Yup. I'm waiting for someone to come in here and say that "we're moving the goal" or whatever, but I feel like the addition of the X in Halo 4 is only a small fix amongst much larger problems with the teammate status indicators. While it's a welcome improvement, it doesn't really feel satisfying.
 
Nah, I'm content with them, not happy but meh. It honestly seems like it was the best they could do given the time and resources they had. As to why it was so hard, we'll probably never know.

Time: About 5 months since release, plus all the time pre-release they worked on it.

Resources: Lots of Millions of dollars.
 

Akai__

Member
Thats probably true for gaming. The added detail means you need more frames per second to clearly see all of that added detail. Otherwise you just get blurrrrr and a brain and eyes that hurt trying to understand what its seeing.

Will aim for that, when the new batch of graphic cards are out. Probably getting two GTX 780's, some weeks after they are out.
 

Dirtbag

Member
343 needs to fire their entire UI team and start fresh.
I mean they were given a complete example to follow, you don't need to re-invent the stop sign.
You don't see city's each with their own street sign designs. You have something that works, stick closely to it.

These jokers had all past halo's to pull UI design from and they still continue to muddy the waters in combat. It seems petty, but I just really dont get it.
Red X, how hard is that?
Fades within a second. You're facing the wrong way? you won't even notice the call out in time.
 

BigShow36

Member
These jokers had all past halo's to pull UI design from and they still continue to muddy the waters in combat. It seems petty, but I just really dont get it.
Red X, how hard is that?
Fades within a second. You're facing the wrong way? you won't even notice the call out in time.

It's almost comical at this point really.
 

Madness

Member
Not to join team salt, but that's a dumb reason. If they couldn't properly implement them, wait to release the TU.

And I don't understand why they were taken out in the first place? It's been nearly 9 years of X on Death. Ignorance of the engine isn't an excuse seeing as how they got firsthand experience with Reach, more than other studios get when developing a sequel of a game or something.

Still glad to see them back though. Will get on shortly.
 

Deadly Cyclone

Pride of Iowa State
These jokers had all past halo's to pull UI design from and they still continue to muddy the waters in combat. It seems petty, but I just really dont get it.
Red X, how hard is that?
Fades within a second. You're facing the wrong way? you won't even notice the call out in time.

I mean, I can agree that the X should have been there all along but saying "how hard is that?" in any kind of reference to adding features to a video game is never going to go well. It was probably very hard, or they would have had it in there. I doubt they just unchecked the "show red X upon death" box in the engine tools.
 

darthbob

Member
I mean, I can agree that the X should have been there all along but saying "how hard is that?" in any kind of reference to adding features to a video game is never going to go well. It was probably very hard, or they would have had it in there. I doubt they just unchecked the "show red X upon death" box in the engine tools.

Seriously.

People need to stop assuming they know how game development works, and get off their ass and try it.
 

IHaveIce

Banned
Seriously.

People need to stop assuming they know how game development works, and get off their ass and try it.
People never should complain about food either if they can't cook.

Dumb.

Of course we can give them shit, they removed a feature that was in the previous games well working, now they can't bring it properly back in a game which is running on almost the same engine.

Same thing with the UI.

Edit: I mean they are paid for that, if I remove something here at work, have to bring it back but fuck it up I also get a slap on the fingers.
 
At pax, Kevin mentioned how insanely hard it was for them to add the x's in. Probably the reason they weren't in the game initially and why they're so bugged now.

Remember pre-release when Halo fans were genuinely hopeful that 343 might be able to deliver a spectator mode in Halo 4? If red X's are 'insanely' hard... I'm not sure about 343, man.

Some gameplay for you all post TU. Recorded live.

Dig what you can from that. Not sure if you can get much though.

Thanks for that. They do indeed seem to fade a little too soon. As I mentioned earlier, the icons showing up when your teammates are off-screen is of equivalent importance. Playing doubles really brings it home.

FFA Forge is really fun to play, maps chosen are far better than Reach's.

I can attest to this, the forge maps in both the 4v4 and FFA playlist have been, on the whole, a really decent bunch. Cartographers are doing a much better job this time around. Bloodthirst (I think it's called) is absolutely awful however.
 

J10

Banned
If implementing death markers in the HUD is insanely difficult, imagine what an undertaking it must have been to render Cortana's new titties. All things considered, I'm not really mad about this.
 
Seriously.

People need to stop assuming they know how game development works, and get off their ass and try it.

Stop it. I am assuming they inherited a perfectly good engine so they didn't need to do that. They outsourced the maps so they didn't do that either. They cut features left and right so they didn't even do that.

The bottom line is these are not dev issues, its the same engine used for years so whatever they had a hard time with they did to themselves. There is no excuse for an entire studio put together for one franchise and they totally bomb when they had 5 other games to reference.
 

Deadly Cyclone

Pride of Iowa State
Armchair devs should make Halo 5. "We would have added colors to the armor, but we have no idea what box to click for that. It is just a check box right?"

I'm talking about making it red. And not white and last for about a second long.
Why is everything always half-assed, and why did simple que's like that need re-inventing at all.

It was white in Reach right? Must be Bungie's fault then.
 

Dirtbag

Member
I mean, I can agree that the X should have been there all along but saying "how hard is that?" in any kind of reference to adding features to a video game is never going to go well. It was probably very hard, or they would have had it in there. I doubt they just unchecked the "show red X upon death" box in the engine tools.

I'm talking about making it red. And not white and last for about a second long.
Why is everything always half-assed, and why did simple que's like that need re-inventing at all.
 

darthbob

Member
Stop it. I am assuming they inherited a perfectly good engine so they didn't need to do that. They outsourced the maps so they didn't do that either. They cut features left and right so they didn't even do that.

The bottom line is these are not dev issues, its the same engine used for years so whatever they had a hard time with they did to themselves. There is no excuse for an entire studio put together for one franchise and they totally bomb when they had 5 other games to reference.

Can you add red Xs to Halo PC? I mean, it's basically the same engine and we've all been playing the game for over 10 years.
 
It doesn't matter how extensive your knowledge of software/programming/project management/professional organizations/etc is. You haven't made a videogame, specifically, therefore fuck off.
 

J10

Banned
Are we comparing 343 to forum posters who don't make games? I thought we were comparing them to Bungie, the people who made Halo games before them. I assume that when someone asks, "how hard is that?", they're saying hey, Bungie did this and it made sense and it worked, and 343 inherited their work, so what did 343 hope to accomplish by breaking it?
 
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