• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

The Official Halo 3 Thread

Status
Not open for further replies.
urk said:
I'm sure there's a lot more to it.

There are definitely some holes in the spawning logic. There's never going to be a perfect system. A speeding Warthog on Rat's Nest is difficult to account for. When the player is incarnated, the area might be "safe" for a few seconds. But even if that player is well away from a Warthog that's just turned the corner of a long hallway, he's still going to be placed in the line of fire. There aren't too many ways to avoid that situation.

But to me it feels like the spawning logic just breaks down from time to time and randomly dumps players into dangerous or advantageous situations, as if no logic whatsoever has been applied. A few of us played a VIP match on Rat's Nest last night, and both VIP's were killed near the same time and both were spawned within steps of each other with full complements of defenders popping into existence. For a second, you could almost read the confusion through everyone's visors.

I can't say why those spawns happen. Maybe packets are being dropped. Maybe the code that drives the spawn logic is breaking down and players are simply being dumped into random spawn points. Whatever it is, I sure hope it gets fixed because it can be downright irritating.
Click to expand...

BTW Urk, you are talking about a problem that is solved by increasing the refresh rate at which the spawning algorithm checks its variables. Also, we could use predictability combined with Area of Effect logic to solve the issues you pointed out. This is why I said that such a spawning algorithm would have to run in its own dedicated processor. I haven't benchmarked it of course, but if we want perfection, that's what we would be asking for. Of course, I am pretty sure Bungie will solve it by thinking outside the box. I am just brute forcing the solution.
 
godhandiscen said:
BTW Urk, you are talking about a problem that is solved by increasing the refresh rate at which the spawning algorithm checks its variables. Also, we could use predictability combined with Area of Effect logic to solve the issues you pointed out.
Click to expand...
Basically what I said in normal-speak:
Cocopjojo said:
In a perfect world, it would keep track of how long it's been since someone was killed in that location, how many people have been killed in that location when they've spawned, are there any vehicles on a trajectory towards that location, are there any enemies facing that direction... and so on.
Click to expand...
And if you haven't benchmarked it, then you don't know if it'd need a separate processor. What it would need for sure is lots of servers that cost lots of money and a team dedicated to developing that system.
 
Cocopjojo said:
Basically what I said in normal-speak:

And if you haven't benchmarked it, then you don't know if it'd need a separate processor.
Click to expand...
It would need more processing power for sure. I am just saying that it seems that Bungie at this point cannot rework the Halo 3 engine to add a spawn system that is so damn complicated. I am pretty sure there are limitations. This is why I bet their solution will not include brute force raw processing, but thinking outside of the box and figuring out ways to do more with the same amount of processing power they are using right now. This is more viable imo. Also, yes I have not benchmarked this algorithm, but I am doing something similar tracing Area of Effects in this project I mentioned, and I still need to optimize my algorithm, but currently I am looking into threading the tasks because it for sure takes more raw power than one single core running at 2.6GHz can give me. Processing power is not always the solution though, so the team that I am working with is looking into using better sensors that give me better data.

BTW, I love Bungie, I am not criticizing shit, it seems you guys are mad at me for my idea.
 
godhandiscen said:
It would need more processing power for sure. I am just saying that it seems that Bungie at this point cannot rework the Halo 3 engine to add a spawn system that is so damn complicated. I am pretty sure there are limitations. This is why I bet their solution will not include brute force raw processing, but thinking outside of the box and figuring out ways to do more with the same amount of processing power they are using right now. This is more viable imo. Also, yes I have not benchmarked this algorithm, but I am doing something similar tracing Area of Effects in this project I mentioned, and I still need to optimize my algorithm, but currently I am looking into threading the tasks because it for sure takes more raw power than one single core running at 2.6GHz can give me. Processing power is not always the solution though, so the team that I am working with is looking into using better sensors that give me better data.
Click to expand...
Bungie should hire you to fix spawns. You get in there and thread that shit from Hell to breakfast.
 
EazyB said:
Bungie should hire you to fix spawns. You get in there and thread that shit from Hell to breakfast.
Click to expand...
Bungie hasn't even looked at my resume I bet. :( Next time I am sending it in coloured paper with pop up drawings in crayon.
I still have a year to graduate, I would love to work at Bungie, their technical papers are fucking awesome. I have a mad boner for Damian Isla, their main AI dude.
 
backflip10019 said:
I liked the flare better in Guardian. I don't really understand why it was ever taken out in the first place.
Click to expand...

It was taken out becuase that and the Radar Jammer had "double jump" capabilities (jump, then deploy the equipment and jump again ON the equipment, taking you higher)

I hope they address this glitch so those pieces of equipment can come back.
 
Cocopjojo said:
In a perfect world, it would keep track of how long it's been since someone was killed in that location, how many people have been killed in that location when they've spawned, are there any vehicles on a trajectory towards that location, are there any enemies facing that direction... and so on.
Click to expand...
That's the thing, though. I think the spawn system does take some of those things into account. Since it's pertinant to the discussion, here's the spawn trap on the Pit from the MLG Top 10 video.

Here was Tyson's analysis of it based on the saved film data from a weekly update in March:

A few weeks ago we pointed users to MLG's first ever ESPN Halo 3 Top 10 and we were interested in Strongside's creation of the Halo 3 Spawn Trap (it's number two on the countdown and in Bungie Favorites right now [slot 14]), was the film an exposure of a bug? Multiplayer designer Tyson Green investigated and sent this info-heavy report back:

"A clip of this film was graciously supplied to us, and we've determined that everything is operating By Design.

What happens here is that Blue lost four players in the shotgun corner almost immediately prior to the spawn camp. This resulted in that corner having an extremely negative weight (-2000), ruling it out as a spawning area. Meanwhile, a red player was crossing the middle to grab the flag, ruling out those spawn points too (-1000, plus an additional penalty from his enemy bias, so probably -1100). Another red player was standing on top of their sniper tower, so those points are also off limits (-1000 to -1100).

The following happens in rapid succession:

One blue player spawns in the spawn trap, and dies. Those points are now -500.

A second player spawns, but because all of the other points are -2000 or -1000, he spawns on the -500 points. He dies immediately. Those points are now -1000.

A third player spawns, but the -1000 points are STILL better than any other available points. However, because he's there, his teammate positive influence is bringing these points up to -900.

A fourth player spawns at a -900 point. The third player dies literally 2-3 frames later, followed by the fourth player. These points are now -2000.

A blue player spawns back in their base, where we'd expect him to. The cycle is broken.
The dead teammate influences have a duration of 20 seconds, so they are starting to decay towards the end of this episode, and I expect spawning has returned to normal at this point. It's basically a perfect storm of Red dominating the Blue team.

Note that on the default version of this map, the respawn zone is larger, and there are some backup points above the flag that likely would have come into play."
Click to expand...
That was the most detailed description of how the system works. Adding in factors such as line of sight might improve it, but I imagine the whole system is pretty complex, with no easy fix.

Anyhoo. AU2, come to me.
 
Is anyone having problems with maps/games taking up to five minutes to load? I don't want to believe that it's a disc/360 problem with me or one of my friends.
 
godhandiscen said:
Bungie hasn't even looked at my resume I bet. :( Next time I am sending it in coloured paper with pop up drawings in crayon.
I still have a year to graduate, I would love to work at Bungie, their technical papers are fucking awesome. I have a mad boner for Damian Isla, their main AI dude.
Click to expand...

Seriously stop talking if you don't really know the facts. You have no idea how much time or processing power Halo allocates to calculating a spawn point. You don't know how much time or processing power it takes to do ray casting within a Halo map.

Saying that Halo requires a dedicated server "for sure" is ridiculous. Obviously it would be best if Halo ran the spawn calculations overnight on a supercomputer, but that doesn't mean it's required.
 
GhaleonEB said:
That's the thing, though. I think the spawn system does take some of those things into account. Since it's pertinant to the discussion, here's the spawn trap on the Pit from the MLG Top 10 video.
Click to expand...
Ah, looks like I was wrong.
 
EazyB said:
Anyways, spawns. They're broken, no doubt about that. Standoff is laughably easy to spawn camp people in the warthog, on Avalanche the team will spawn right in front of my scorpion regardless of whether my team is in their base or not. On almost all of the smaller maps one is guaranteed to be jumped once or twice by a freshly spawned player appearing by their side. There's also many instances where you with spawn in the middle of a hail of grenades and vaporize as quickly as you appeared. But I have faith that their going to try to address it in AU2.
Click to expand...

I has proof : http://www.bungie.net/Stats/GameStatsHalo3.aspx?gameid=649256738&player=Oml3t
 
Domino Theory said:
It was taken out becuase that and the Radar Jammer had "double jump" capabilities (jump, then deploy the equipment and jump again ON the equipment, taking you higher)

I hope they address this glitch so those pieces of equipment can come back.
Click to expand...

I always thought the flare came out because its totally broken, and blinds the guy who throws it just as much/ if not more then those near it. I always thought the flare should have a slight delay till it lights up giving you a chance to turn away from it and run, basically covering a retreat or blinding those in a battle (and not to be used like a flashbang for ambushes, like most other games).
 
Spawns are horribly broken. I had three guys spawn in the same room I was in in High Ground last night. And I've spawned looking right at a sniper at times. It's truly sad. Just give me the Halo 2 spawn system and I'll be happy.
 
urk said:
Did you put that in your cover letter?
Click to expand...

Yep. I am being serious. I just didn't word it in that way.
Falagard said:
Seriously stop talking if you don't really know the facts. You have no idea how much time or processing power Halo allocates to calculating a spawn point. You don't know how much time or processing power it takes to do ray casting within a Halo map.

Saying that Halo requires a dedicated server "for sure" is ridiculous. Obviously it would be best if Halo ran the spawn calculations overnight on a supercomputer, but that doesn't mean it's required.
Click to expand...
I was giving my idea of what would be the perfect spawn system that uses processing power as a mean to get the best spawn point. Practically just a brute force solution. What I meant to say, and I don't think I was clear enough is that this brute force solution would require extra processing power. Fuck, for all I care it should predict player movements and shit like that. I never meant to say that this solution is what Bungie will apply, and I made it clear in later posts, that Bungie will solve our spawn point issues by thinking outside the box. They know player tendencies better than any, and a they have all the data they need to introduce new meaningful variables that will fix the algorithm. I do not understand why you are so offended. At no point I meant to say that Halo was broken beyond repair or anything like that.

BTW, what I bolded in your quote was practically what I tried to say.
 
Calculating all this spawn shit is pretty much bottle-necked at the connection speed. If the client/host isn't where the host/client is supposed to be it all goes to hell. I'd rather more bandwidth be dedicated to my BR hitting where I'm aiming at.

Maybe the spawning problem could be fixed in Forge? I tried to fix the beach spawning problem on High Ground by moving some spawns around. But never had enough people for customs to try and break it. I think it may still be on my fileshare: "Highly Grounded' I can't check cause I'm at work.

EazyB said:
On almost all of the smaller maps one is guaranteed to be jumped once or twice by a freshly spawned player appearing by their side. There's also many instances where you with spawn in the middle of a hail of grenades and vaporize as quickly as you appeared.
Click to expand...

Foundry in a nutshell :)
 
Man I was just looking at some ole' Halo 2 Vista Videos, like this one, the game still looks beautiful, especially now over 30fps, it's very smooth. I really wish I had Vista and a computer capable of running it. Then again, I wish Microsoft would release a ''Halo Classics HD'' game or something that has HD versions of Halo 1 and 2 with some modifications, like what was done to Halo 2 Vista, 60fps, online play, forge, and saved films.
 
urk said:
I thought it was because we've been playing with Wedge. All Transatlantic traffic gets sent by way of Chunnel, so there's a pretty good delay. An echo too.

Did you stick around long enough to get the death threat?
Click to expand...

No, I missed that apparnetly :lol

But no, we've had some problems outside of playing with Wedge, and I asked some of my other friends who play who said they've been experience much worse problems with lag lately than normal, so I dunno.
 
I think my rank is broken. I only seem to play players better than me these days.

Also, in the space of three or four hours tonight I got some 51 messages, friend requests, film clips, screenshots, and chat requests pertaining to my suit of armour. I need to take a screenshot of this one guy DA ROZ who sent messages challenging me to a duel for over an hour.
 
Domino Theory said:
It was taken out becuase that and the Radar Jammer had "double jump" capabilities (jump, then deploy the equipment and jump again ON the equipment, taking you higher)

I hope they address this glitch so those pieces of equipment can come back.
Click to expand...
And a person can't do this with a Power Drainer? That's what I find wrong.

They're the same build in items. Both the Jammer and Flare can be integral pieces in MM. The Flare also was decent in Isolation -- atop of the middle structure.
 
Required reading: Bungie President Harold Ryan interview.

http://weblogs.variety.com/the_cut_scene/2008/07/bungies-harold.html

Snippet:

Let's talk about the divestiture from Microsoft. When did that process first start, if only as an idea? And why did you want to do it?

The discussion goes back three or four years. The reasons for it are a mix. For one thing, any time you’re owned by someone you have less at least perceived control of what you do. It's harder to maintain your identity. One thing important for the Bungie ... is needing to have that sense of team where you look around the room and say "I'm part of Bungie."

Microsoft did allow a fair amount of freedom to maintain that culture while inside. But it got harder and harder over time. We had to figure out how to build and retain bungie as a place where top creatives would want to come and work and be part of the team.

Another reason was the pressure to stick with Halo. We can still make "Halo" games and we still are working on "Halo" games. But there is more latitude for us to put our focus on other IP, other universes, other things.

We wanted to get that push back where we could feel we’re going to really lay it on the line and push to come up with the next best thing in entertainment. It feels better to do that as an indie.
Click to expand...
Really interesting stuff.
 
GhaleonEB said:
Required reading: Bungie President Harold Ryan interview.
Click to expand...

Harold Ryan said:
Even now we're sustaining the game, managing the community, making multi-player maps. We’ve got a good 30-40 people working on it for a full year after we ship the game.
Click to expand...

Good news? Although this is saying that the DLC team will stop working on H3 stuff this september. I wonder if MS could outsource developement to another studio for more h3 maps down the line. Kinda like what bungie did with certian affinity
 
fin said:
Good news? Although this is saying that the DLC team will stop working on H3 stuff this september. I wonder if MS could outsource developement to another studio for more h3 maps down the line. Kinda like what bungie did with certian affinity
Click to expand...

Could just mean that they are cutting down on the people involved with the DLC, not completely stopping it. Who knows.
 
Was just in matchmaking with Timan and got matched up with a Bungie employee (Ghintoch) for the first time. Lost badly, not only two quitters on our team but I kept getting distracted by the flaming helmet and recon armor :lol
 
Sean said:
Was just in matchmaking with Timan and got matched up with a Bungie employee (Ghintoch) for the first time. Lost badly, not only two quitters on our team but I kept getting distracted by the flaming helmet and recon armor :lol
Click to expand...

I got matched against Shiska in team snipers. He had some normal armor on but I'll tell you, he can play. His team beat ours and he had some nice head shots. I had a pretty nice head shot on him though. Jumped out from a rock while he was waiting for me. Mid-air head shot at 10 sensitivity. :D I went even but I definitely didn't live up to my 3 star General tag. Good Game.
 
Tashi0106 said:
I got matched against Shiska in team snipers. He had some normal armor on but I'll tell you, he can play. His team beat ours and he had some nice head shots. I had a pretty nice head shot on him though. Jumped out from a rock while he was waiting for me. Mid-air head shot at 10 sensitivity. :D I went even but I definitely didn't live up to my 3 star General tag. Good Game.
Click to expand...
I don't remember him ever being considered that good. You know what that means, he's obviously been playing the hell out of the game instead of working on the playlists :P
 
EazyB said:
I don't remember him ever being considered that good. You know what that means, he's obviously been playing the hell out of the game instead of working on the playlists :P
Click to expand...

well, maybe it's just that he had a good game. Maybe my teammates were terrible. I don't wanna take anything away from the guy, he played pretty well. I was definitely impressed.

I found the match if you guys wanna take a look...

http://www.bungie.net/Stats/GameStatsHalo3.aspx?gameid=637098940&player=NYSTOFMIND23
 
Domino Theory said:
20ihnqh.jpg


Eh?
Click to expand...
BeastSucks.jpg


And there goes that theory. Good 'shop though.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

Nioh 3 | Review Thread
2
81
171
Germuso replied
Fossilfuel 3 - Official Reveal Trailer
Trailer Indie 
0
70
IbizaPocholo replied
HaloLeaks: Halo 2 & Halo 3 are being remade, yes they will have sprint.No multiplayer, only campaign.Full remakes. Multiplayer is going to be Halo 7
Rumor  2 3
109
1K
KenaiPhoenix replied
The Official Art In Video Games Thread
|OT| Social Opinion 
35
1K
AltruisticFormality replied
Jurassic World Evolution 3 - Official Launch Trailer
Trailer 
9
288
Codes 208 replied
Top Bottom