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Halo |OT18| We're Back Baby!
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User 73706
Banned
Tashi and Jerome could be the best double dragon bodyguard duo ever.
BlueScrote
Member
Yeah, I can't imagine making changes to the H3 playlists would be straightforward. I wonder if there is even anyone at 343i left that dealt with the H3 playlists during its prime time.
aHebrewMenagerie
Member
I'm sure they had to get in touch with Bungie during this process
EDIT: So AGL might be throwing a Halo 3 event.
it'd be nice if they'd pay their players though
It's gonna be free on XBL Gold for the second half of the month, and there may be playlist consolidation, maybe.
Jerome is at Bungie bruh
Does it include all the map packs?
User 73706
Banned
aHebrewMenagerie
Member
They've done sales on the DLC when they've come out, but nothing for free, unfortunately. :/
Silly.Mikey
Banned
Its crazy, they give games every month for live subscribers and that's all fine and dandy but man, the games are so old that the least they could do is include the dlc. God damn.
Ozzy Onya A2Z
Member
I'm curious if you could design around the requirement to go through test pass @ Live altogether?
I don't pretend to know about the XBL/343i processes or the engine itself so I am honestly curious why such development methods are the way they are. I can understand taking over 3/Reach code base and Halo 4 being a 360 title plus 343i's first full engine game so redevelopment of projects such as playlists is most likely not top priority or a full dynamic build etc. I'm also confident 343i put in great work to streamline what they could hence the faster sustain cadence, so a big thank you to the team.
To me it seems next gen Halo could have a new engine or at least sub-projects rebuilt to remove such requirements. Is there something stopping a fully dynamic system for playlists? One that wouldn't require Live certification and only internal 343i Q&A? I envisage a player toggle system that feeds into dynamic playlists and then filtered dynamic maps/gametypes to vote on. There are a lot of ways to retain flexibility in the database design which should side step the Live certification post release e.g. API/WSDL, XML/SOAP, named value pairs, Azure Queues etc.
I agree it would be a great topic for bulletin or forum chat direct with playlist managers/developers.
lybertyboy
Thinks the Evil Empire is just misunderstood.
I think you misunderstand. Playlist updates do not require a Live cert test pass. These are internal test passes using our own internal test teams. They are in place to ensure all modes and maps work as designed.
Ozzy Onya A2Z
Member
Ah, thanks for the clarification mate. So it's literally the feedback, create, test, iterate, pass, deploy that has all the slow down in it? I would have moved from weekly to fortnightly too
xxjuicesxx
Member
That's probably not that easy either. Hiring more testers or sustain team members costs money and I'm sure they have to work within a budget like any business. So using a few team members to do one thing takes them away from other things. Lots of opportunity costs. I like to think that it most probably doesn't make sense to have a bunch of testers or a large sustain team when the next project is always around the bend.
That's what external, contract-based testing agencies are for!
Except they're dead-end, low paying jobs.
Orochinagis
Member
But he does it for free and actually use the map design against a whole team.
#HireTashi
FUNKNOWN iXi
Member
Cool, thanks for the responses. Going forward, hopefully you guys have all these things in mind before/during the development process.
You got to understand, from our point of view it looks like such an easy job (updating playlists in general), so when it takes weeks, months, years to update playlists whether for a past or current game, we start making our own conclusions based on whatever information we think we have.
I believe one of the most important things for a franchise like Halo is transparency. Bungie kept us out of the loop during Halo's development, but had they told us how they were designing the Halo 3 BR then we might've been able to have an influence on its design. I don't see a problem with that as it also builds upon community interactions and makes the fans feel like they're being included in something special, even if in reality you don't listen to a single thing we say.
#CamoPowerup2014
I'm excited. My brother's disc is so scratched up it's a miracle I managed to finish the campaign. Will be nice to not worry about freezes.
xxjuicesxx
Member
I'll test from home. No need to go into the office to play video games.
So updating playlists is purely an internal thing? No outside cert or input required?
aHebrewMenagerie
Member
#FireNeighbor
#HireTashi/Juices
#HireTashi/Juices
lol
Gag, if you've got finishing touches to add to your map before submission do it now. The deadline was supposed to be at 12pm PST but I talked to Bravo and he said he's locking the submission thread at the end of the night. That should give you a few hours to tweak whatever you wanted to tweak if you thought you were out of time.
Also, shout outs to Certain Affinity for always being down to help the CC's test maps for this contest. Shout outs to Erin Maiorino the Community Manager for setting everything up too! Oh and Mike McCarthy!
Shout outs to shout outs. Shout outs.
Gag, if you've got finishing touches to add to your map before submission do it now. The deadline was supposed to be at 12pm PST but I talked to Bravo and he said he's locking the submission thread at the end of the night. That should give you a few hours to tweak whatever you wanted to tweak if you thought you were out of time.
Also, shout outs to Certain Affinity for always being down to help the CC's test maps for this contest. Shout outs to Erin Maiorino the Community Manager for setting everything up too! Oh and Mike McCarthy!
Shout outs to shout outs. Shout outs.
gAg CruSh3r
Member
I finished it and I submitted yesterday as Blurtle. Did you get a chance to play it?
Not yet lol. Tonight I'm going to download the rest of the maps that have been submitted(including yours) and just do a quick run through of them to make sure that they're eligible. Might sound weird but there are a few maps that are just open football fields or complete remakes of other maps. Tomorrow night we're having a big play test so yours will definitely get tested then. I can give you the film afterwards, just message me on Twitter or XBL to remind me. Otherwise, I'll forget.
gAg CruSh3r
Member
Alright sounds great and yes it should be eligible. I will message you tomorrow. Also I saw all of the people that summitted football maps; it made me laugh a little bit lol.
OMNOMNOM
FUNKNOWN iXi
Member
Correct.
ambush vs classic scrimming h3 right now, beyond quad-stream link - http://bit.ly/1e7r9Ht
They have an internal test pass. You generally don't want to fuck up a playlist deployment when possible as you have to push that update out to an untold amount of boxes (in Halo 3 and Halo Reach at least, your box actually stores the playlists locally). If it breaks, then you have to bring everyone back in to fix it. It's still less of a clusterfuck than a full MS cert pass for title updates, but you still don't want to waste your time.
. Add in the fact that matchmaking data doesn't work like our gametypes. They have to send them through a conversion process to make them usable for matchmaking, and you have to test that things came out the other end correctly.
They've had multiple issues with conversion in Reach and 4, so it's not a perfected process yet. There was that update in the Bungie Reach era where MLG became impossible to jump in, a 343 Reach era update where Grifball lost it's lame duck round detection, and 4's process has resulted in parts of maps being deleted and the inability to use Trait Zones, hence why the Cartographers always ask people to remove trait zones in maps being considered for matchmaking.
The reason you don't see playlist updates after the next Halo updates, from my observation, is time and money. Even before the next game actually releases, they take manpower and time away from the current sustain team to update their game, as getting the new game out the door is more important budget wise than updating the old one.
Halo 2 never updated after 3 came out - the Halo 2 sustain position simply ceased to exist (and I imagine MS preferred to finally start to mothball their OXbox processes). Halo 3 actually stopped updating a month before Reach came out; all of those Double EXPs we saw post Reach were already implemented in the backend, and some of those updates before that were more bugfix than new experiences. Reach updates started competing for resources with 4 and suddenly stopped updating 3 months before 4 came out. And as Ellis said, each time you go back a game the process gets more obtuse to update it. Halo 2's was so duct taped together that when they pushed updates out, you'd enter Team Slayer and end up in a BTB match.
Ozzy Onya A2Z
Member
Quad-sexy-time, nice touch Beyond.
Again I don't pretend to know the processes or methodologies at work here but this just seems crazy, legacy programming crazy. If you really have to push things locally why not use an XML or flat file or a live API service for the playlist/gametypes etc? If the player is connecting to play online playlist games then why not do that download live as they start matchmaking? Or background load it if they're online as the game boots up?
Do they convert and push download things for performance gains? Playlists/gametypes to me don't seem like they require performance scenarios as by the time you're actually playing the game that's all decided and loaded. Surely the compiled version of a game or the xbox 360 platform itself doesn't force development to always have this conversion process? I hope this is removed for next gen, it would save a helluva lot of fucking around.
Prinz Eugn
Member
Jeez, fingers crossed for total rewrite of matchmaking for Halo Xbox Onefive.
Ozzy Onya A2Z
Member
I'd hazard a guess with new X1 Live platform a new build or a near complete re-write of matchmaking systems is required. I wonder what high level changes Halo X1 is going to have e.g. Destiny seamless matchmaking or Ghosts hybrid dedis/P2P hosts? Beyond that you have all the background matching of the X1 to consider, Azure pipeline and new X1 TrueSkill etc.
They might be doing this with Halo 4, because Halo 4 uses Azure (hence the fallback playlists when Azure blinks out).
Otherwise, what you're actually seeing when you matchmaking is you're joining HaloPlayer's Xbox in a session. HaloPlayer's Xbox selects the voting options stored on their Xbox.. By having everyone download the playlists once, you save bandwidth by not sending map variants and gametypes down the wire each time a game configures.
I don't know why they do it. They just build on top of the playlist backend as they go, which is safer and more constructive than nuking the entire backend and starting over.
Halo 2 was their first go round. It had issues during updates and was easily hacked - people could modify their local playlist store and make it so Team Slayer would only select Warlock (which they had modded to make them invincible)
Halo 3 added security to stop that, added the ability to have playlists automatically turn themselves off and back on, and added the option to flag content as optional. Playlist categories were also added. The ability to keep parties together on the same team was also added.
Reach added the ability to enforce a minimum rank for a playlist (only used for Campaign Co-Op), added multiple voting options and multiple voting screens. The playlist limit went from 16 to 26. They added the ability to restrict the max local players that could join a playlist. They added the ability to bar guests from a playlist without having to make it ranked. They added the ability to limit the max party size that could join a playlist. They added the ability to look for DLC owners while matching. They added the ability to fine tune the TS matching parameters.
There was also a post-release backend change they made where Invasion could be put into other playlists. Internally, Invasion is actually 6 teams of 2 people It was actually not possible to put Invasion anywhere but it's own list until they did a bunch of work to make it possible after release. Bungie did that change without a title update, btw
4 added the backup hoppers and Join in Progress.
If you were to throw out the existing system, they'd have to re-implement all those features, and all of those features would not have the same amount of battle-testing as those have. They can totally do it if they want, they just have to consider the risk:benefit.
Thanks for the info. It would be nice if they shared this with their fans instead of leaving it up to more knowledgeable fans to do it for them.
Makes total sense. But also a total bummer.
Wow, Halo 2 must have been the biggest pain in the ass.
Edit: Even more info. Fascinating read. I would love it for them to be more transparent and share stuff like this with us.
Ozzy Onya A2Z
Member
In matchmaking (ignoring customs host pushing content to clients) doesn't everyone already have the gametypes and variants e.g. map packs or updates are pre-downloaded? Sure the bandwidth and matching times are saved but surely the playlists and vote options can be provided server side and thus are infinitely more dynamic without all the Q&A or conversion required? I'm surprised the host box provides the voting options, never knew that one.
Great information and recap, thanks. Sure but with dedis and new X1 Live they'd be forced into a major rewrite/version anyhow so I speculate we're going to see some new shiny matchmaking systems obviously. Taking the danger of assumption surely dedis/Azure for Halo X1 implies far more dynamism than conversion or deployment processes. *fingers crossed
Completely understand the iterative nature of development instead of complete new version from the ground up. It seems like the perfect storm with next gen for these systems to make leaps and bounds of improvements for developers and Halo gamers alike.
Example like Killer Instinct, GAF source thread: I hope 343i have their wizard thinking caps on nice and early in the dev of Halo X1, I'm sure there is plenty of cloud based stuff we're not privy to yet. Matchmaking and player choice/toggles would be a great one IMO.
Ever seen the vote countdown skip numbers or freeze while voting, or a map win with less than the majority of the vote? It's because the host was lagging. You're essentially already in a game together once you're at the vote screen.
FUN FACT: The reason Firefight and Campaign matchmaking tend to be 3 or 4 options on the same map was to help hide the longer load times for maps in those modes. Reach actually starts preloading the top option on everyone's Xbox in all playlists, and they intentionally put popular modes and maps in that top slot. This is so once voting completes, the map is mostly loaded already or is likely to already be loaded. Since FF/Campaign have much longer loads, they make all the options the same map to help disguise it. They only have to stat loading a new map if it's veto'd entirely.
You can see it for yourself in Reach. Watch the map loading bar at the bottom of it's picture when playing the playlists. It'll restart once the game decides to start preloading a different map. Also, playlists that are mostly Forge World will rarely have to load after your first game, like Grifball, because they cache the map being loaded. Or go into Anniversary Firefight with a full party. After the first game you never have to wait for Installation 04 to load again.
Heh, that's actually based off what Bungie did with Halo. After Bungie started the idea of separating playlists from game code, more developers have started making part of their game parameters a server side file they can change without a title update. 343 expanded on that by starting to include deep balance stuff in the playlist data instead of just maps and gametypes. Bungie actually created Forge not because they foresaw Sandbox and Forgeworld, but because they wanted to be able to change weapons and spawns after ship without a title update.
So where Bungie had everyone's Xbox pull down the playlist data and use it, other developers had their game pull down from a central server, but had game parameters in it instead. Super Monday Night Combat did this for game balance parameters, Rock Band Blitz uses this to determine the cost and payouts of powerups and stars. It requires a bit of initial investment to get the dynamic system working, but the payoff is easier updates at much less cost. Bungie just had to show other developers it was worth it. Developers that did patches tended to come from the PC world where you just put out a whole new exe and replaced entire datafiles when you wanted to change something about the game. Can't do that on console.
Ozzy Onya A2Z
Member
Always noticed the latency on countdown timers and the loading bars, just never put 2 and 2 together. Nice succinct info mate and much appreciated. Also it's nice to know 343i/Halo 4 with Turbo made weapon tweaks and such dynamic in this fashion, points to a bright X1 future.
I would love to see a full editor on PC or tablet alongside/replace Forge with a CC's type process to get them into official playlists and the patch downloads etc.
Watching halo 3 years after and it still feels like I'm "watching halo". 4 and reach still look foreign to me.
Yeah, 343 has done pretty neat stuff with that, although it was confusing as to why Halo 4 didn't include the ability in the first place and why they waited so long to add it and why they waited so long AFTER adding it to actually use it.
A notable exception to all the above is DICE. They refuse to learn how to do console updates, hence their gigantic 2-3 gigabyte patches and downloads on Xbox and PS3. Because they just send everyone a whole new copy of every map changed in the game when they update. Some day they'll figure out how to make deterministic patches.
A notable exception to all the above is DICE. They refuse to learn how to do console updates, hence their gigantic 2-3 gigabyte patches and downloads on Xbox and PS3. Because they just send everyone a whole new copy of every map changed in the game when they update. Some day they'll figure out how to make deterministic patches.
BUT IT IS NOT THIS DAY
Ozzy Onya A2Z
Member
Forge gives me that detached feeling too mate, has since watching pros in Reach or 4. 2 & 3 had the developer made maps which provide that Halo feel when spectating for me.
I still have this feeling that Halo 4 was being developed in parallel to next gen and that 4's version branch suffered resource or time to complete features wise. It's always a pain in the ass to learn a code project someone else created.
LOL @ DICE, there's always one who refuses to change with the times.
Steelyuhas
Member
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