Twinreaper

Nice find there 819, I never played Halo Wars. It's the only Halo themed game I have to actually buy or download via the marketplace. I just really hate RTS'.

Judging from what we already know about the flood and their behavior it is safe to assume the following in terms of infection. Grunts: They provide little in terms of physical combat, but due to their staunchy size and gurth, they would provide excellent choices to become a flood sack. The mobile sack that collapses and releases flood infections. Now, we don't see many of these so it also viable that they are used to construct flood enviroments. Drones. Because these creatures are naturally flight enabled, they of coarse provide the most resistance to the flood. They would be the hardest of the species to infect because of said flight capabilities. Now even if a drone were to be taken host by a flood infection, the drones body are much to frail and small to provide any usuable combat skill. More than likely this species as well as the jackals and a few unknown others are used as sack nurturing fluids or construction material in flood surroundings. Lekgolos or combined....Hunters: Now the hunters are not technically a species of its own, rather a collection of the lekgolo worms simply working together as one inside an armor suit. Now because these individual worms are intelligent enough to combine and work.together cognitavly, they make an excellent choice to become flood infections. Their size would allow them to easily approach its victim quickly and silently. Also, they provide little resistance to the flood in individuals. Even in combined form, without the assistance of an exterior armor or other type of suit, it is likely they would be just as helpless. The main choice for flood hosts of coarse is what we already see. Brutes, Humans and Elites obviously make a first priority choice because of the inherant intelligence and mobility they possess. The floods first action from what we see is almost always creating a good mobile defensive end of combat ready troops. Also keep in mind that the latter of species enable the new hosts of flood to weild weapons. Something the flood during the "Forerunner / San Shyuum- Human war".

I tried to post a reply here, but my phone sucks for writing, so I edited this post just to let you know why there is a double post from me. Sorry in advance.

Here is a great way to break that boredom. Play thru campaign a few times on legendary or Heroic. And just for kicks, jump down on enemies like elites or grunts, and watch what happens after your standing on their heads. It's priceless sometimes. It's stuff that like, with the varied AI responses to any type of situation that make the replay value really great. There are tons a wacky crap you can do in campaign to amuse yourself for the next year until h4 comes out. You just gotta think outside the box a little. For instance, on Sword base. usually when playing thru on Heroic or harder, the elites will use the warthog turret at the entrance to Sword Base after you activate all the AA guns. When they use the turret, they tend not to get out of it even if you go right up to them. Try driving the hog around the map with the elite in the turret. It's funny as hell! Or for more crazy fun, down a ghost with a PP, then carefully wedge yourself between the seat and the beginning of the ghost. When he takes off, if you place yourself correctly, it will boost around doing crazy driving trying to get you off. In the middle of a battle it can be quite insane fun!

The Shoulder Armor Permutations: My god almighty! The shoulder attachments are just exactly what you pointed out...ATACHMENTS!! They are meant to be an add-on extension to the default armor in place, not an entirely new shoulder model section. As far as frames per second....you quite obviously have a little understanding about how the human eye captures light and processes it. A game running at 30 fps is an average zone for any game to run. They base this as the average because everyone in existence has his/her own set of tolerances as to how fast the eye can capture and interpret movement between frames. Sometimes people see blurry movement when fps is increased above 30. Some see rough edges around objects, it all varies. Just because your whoopity doo great eye sight may allow you to see above 30 crystal clear, does not mean everyone else can. Engineering has nothing to do with speeding up the frame rate of the game. Some games look dreadful when running at high fps. In order for lots of detail to be easily noticed, it is important to keep fps's low to mid range. Kat was killed?!? About that little nonsense filled bit. Wow really, you mean the phantom was that close. NO ****! I have eyes and I can see that. For that matter, if what you say is true about that incident, then why didn't the Covie just have a Capital Ship glass it? Hmmmm? It's because the whole thing was a tactical OP to take out the teams most valuable asset. Why do you think they dispatched that special group of Elites down to the surface for? To take out the Spartans. They were sent to personally ensure their demise. In numbers, they would of easily fought off the Elites as they did when they first encountered them at Sword Base. You do remember that part right? You weren't too drunk after that all night Frat bash? Anywho, also keep in mind that the Covenant also needed the Spartans to be on the defensive and on the run. Without the remaining Spartans alive, they never would have been able to discover the exact location of the buried Forerunner installation. Credit System. Ok here is where I call complete and total bull**** on you and your friends. The cap on credits is perfect. If anyone out there, in one day and sitting actually reaches 180,000 earned credits...YOU NEED A ******* HOBBY!!!! There is no way in hell you and your little gal pals are earning 6,000 per match. The only way to do that would be to hit a credit jackpot every match, and complete a challenge or commendation on every match. The only time I have ever hit 6,000 for one match, was when I completed 3 challenges in a single match. Other than that, the basic average anyone can expect to earn is between 3,000 and 4,000. So lets do a little math here cupcake. 180,000 cr / 4,000 cr = 45 matches. Each match lasts an average of 6 to 7 minutes, most going above that to 10. But for easy pickings, lets just average each match at 6. So now still with me? 6 minutes x 45 matches = 270 minutes or in-game play. Now this is not including the time it takes to load the map, end the match, and connect or have to wait for players. That time added into the equation will boost each match to an average of 7 to 8 minutes when all said and done. So lets re-calculate sunshine. 8 minutes x 45 matches = 360 minutes. Now 360 minutes / 60 minutes = 6 hours. Also keep in mind it could take longer based on what game types. Something like firefight would obviously take 3 times as long. Holy ****en Hell!!!! Your really gonna sit there and tell me that for a whole 6 hours out of those 3 to 4 days, you and your loser buddies have 6 hours to just sit there and game? Yet you say you all attend school and work? What do you work....2 hours a day at 3 days a week? Do you even study at all? Guess not. Must be easy taking mommy and daddy's money and waste it playing Halo. My point is this, unless you can provide a video or videos of you and your buddies legit making 6,000 or more per match without glitching the daily achievs or your commendations....YOU ARE FULL OF ****!!!!! Grenades Grenades Grenades: Wow oh wow son. You have not played any Halo game at all before Reach. If you were a gamer of Halo, as you or whoever that was from is....said person would know very well that each Halo title had a different velocity and bounce for the grenades. Throwing nades always takes a slight learning curve when jumping to another title. All this time you played Reach, and you still can't master something stupid like throwing a grenade? Winning Bonus. All I said was the credits you earn for being the winning team is greater...I never said it was a huge amount. Just stating facts about it. The Great Player Filter. You are really annoying at this point. The filter system works perfectly. Keep in mind, that like most filters, it will only work as well as the selection of the gaming populations. For example... say you go to play some slayer. Ughhhh paired with 2 recruits, 1 inheritor, 3 General grade 2's and what ever else. Bummer! The reason why this happened is simple. It is not because the filter didn't work. It is because the ranks of the population the match had to choose from, contained no active game waiting participants. Chances are, everyone else was in another match. The filter or the game itself is not going to just stand there and put everyone on standby for like 15 minutes just to get a match of all selected ranks from your filter. It happens broskie. It happens to the best of us. And besides, wasn't it you that said rank doesn't determine skill? And last but not least...SPAWNING. You really need to get a ******* clue home slice. You and everyone else in the world ******* about the spawning. First off, it's called RE-SPAWNING!!! Second, do you have any clue as to how involved the inital and re-spawning function of the game is? have you ever created, adjusted and tweaked a spawn placement or zone. No I didn't think so. That's because your some dickless fanboy who has no knowledge of any kind about !Blam or the individual components that link tags to function calls, or the value settings. ***** please! I work on mapping for Halo, Halo CE, Halo 2 Xbox and Halo 2 PC. I have been there, done that and then some. I have ripped through tag structures of every Halo game, except for Halo Wars. I understand perfectly well all the relevant data that goes into deciding when and where I will re-spawn during any match. For example. A basic small mpa like Corvette contains 42 to 56 intial spawn points, and that's just for a basic 2 team match. The map itself contains over 84 initial spawns points. Any one of those points can be used for initial spawn respawning, dynamic or overspawns. Basically in a nutshell, what you can play with and do in Forge is just the tip of the iceburg in what is really involved. Trust a pro on this one. To summerise, I have no personal beef with you. You are probably a really cool guy, just like me. I get very worked up about game specific details when it comes to game components, the story etc.... Nothing was meant personal by it.

Don't worry everyone, I will be posting a nice lengthy reply to update this thread and the reasons why it is so flawed, from a decompiled tag, and game mechanic perspective. Stay tuned for some hilarious reading!!!

Infinity is the mystery map that everyone is speculating about. They gave us a hint a while back in saying that the map is famous for it's amount of deaths by falling. Last time I checked, Infinity had almost 100x more fall deaths than Danger Canyon ever had. Then again, if it's a firefight map they made it into, Infinity would just simply be way to large of a map for 4 players to do it on. If I had to guess on the firefight part of it, I would say the map is Danger Canyon. It is a great mid-large map with plenty of spaces, and roughly the overall size of Unearthed. But then again, they said this firefight map was going to be doing things not ever seen or thought possible before?!? Damn 343 you scary!!!!

Wheaties, do you know how the service functions at all? Yes, during gameplay the match is carried by what we call a "host". The Halo 3 server itself is tasked with verifying content of all players connecting to it. It then provides the gametype or whatever, then passes the hosting of the match off to a players with the best connection at that time. The server at that point goes into a data collection mode, and processes the kills, medals etc. all the while still monitoring each players connection (ping) so that in case of bad connection it can re-route hosting duties to another player. Handling the actual game connection between all the players, would not only be a waste of server resources, but it also is very minuscule compared to the various API's it has to rely and process player data for. Now granted internet bandwidth has not seen that much of an improvement or breakthrough, but the server equipment they deploy still needs to be maintained and cared for. Who do you think really wants to keep on servicing and updating hardware for a game they no longer make any money with? You really think that $19.99 worth of MS points for the download, or physical copy is gonna keep those servers running? Hardly. Is it really that hard to come to terms with, that eventually one day halo 3 will no longer be supported by Live? Oh no!!!! Burn everything!!!!!! It's a god damn game....relax already. We all know damn well when the H3 servers go bye-bye, you will already be invested in some other game anyway. Move on!

Halo 3 servers more than likely will go the way of the H2 ones. Financially, what company would re-invest on dedicated servers to host millions of connections for Live? Halo 2 was not shut down due to the discontinuation of Xbox 1 titles. halo 2 was shut down because Halo 2 had made it's way to PC, and gave the gaming community more control over it's playfield. Not to mention the vast gap in community players with ODST and Halo 3 being played. Dean PHP is correct in his view of the servers. Wright8509, you have no idea what kind of server setup or equipment 343 has in their server line. Even if you did, how idiotic of a network manager do you think they have, that they would have instances of Halo 3 running on the same server or servers as the reach ones? That kind of thing might be ok for your home hosted 16 max players...but we are talking hundreds of thousands of simultaneous players. We all have to face facts sometime. Halo 3 is almost five years old now (wow only a week or so!), and as such it has no longer benefited from any kind of product support in the form of DLC or matchmaking fixes, etc. Microsoft will not want 4 different Halo titles being simultaneously supported on Live. It will divide the player base beyond any fruitful means, and it would give the PC community a chance to enjoy Halo 3 on the PC and host their own servers.

The firing spread will still be the same no matter how the DMR is used. Bloom was only a visual so you could judge the radius in which to guess your shots might land. It will and has no effect on teh firing spread calculations that go into the weapon projectile. As for Armor Lock, quit whining and find a solution to your annoying problem. Just because 25% of the whining fanboy community can't compete properly against it, doesn't mean the rest of the gaming community should suffer for your l337 fails in-game. You either like the game or don't. Stop complaining and keep these damn things to yourself!

You quite obviously have no idea what you are talking about. There is no such feature as "pre-timed" shots. The Battle Rifle is a weapon with 3 projectiles that release upon firing. It is a common tag block in the [weap] for number of projectiles. Also last time I checked, the starting and ending velocity for the BR projectile is 1200. Keep in mind that all three released projectiles must hit the target to achieve the maximum damage per round (yes all 3 bullets count as a round) it releases. The bloom effect is a just a visual addition to the hud. With or without bloom, each weapon still suffers from a good accurate firing rate when spamming. The reason you see no bloom on some Covie weapons, is because by default the weapon tag is set to fire accross multiple markers to achieve a random discharge effect. In which case makes the bloom HUD add-on effect useless. The only weapon in Halo history that never gave it's user a clear radius of the firing pattern via the "bloom" or reticule radius.... was the Pistol from halo 1. When spamming it, the shots tend to land outside the radius of the reticule.

1. There is what you call "bloom" in every Halo title. Not just visibly in all. 2. When I played Halo 1 most of you were all "kids". It didnt suck because you played it more than my other adult friends. I find your intolerance disturbing. 3. Theatre was reduced to 1 person because of the extreme amount of geometry data the party leader would be responsable for dishing out over Live. Hosting a custom game is no where near the bandwidth or amount of memory used in the process of theatre. Pretty much evwrything else posted above is spot on.

So because my opinion differs from someone elses( I am an idiot? Hate to break it to you Mr. Ego but it's just a game. And as such everyones opinion or view will differ. The only relavant content you can argue on a right or wrong basis is how the game mechanics work. In which case my knowledge is far more superior than yours will ever be.

Bloom cannot be taken out of the game. Bloom is a core tag block value. For that matter everyone doesnt even know what the bloom in Reach is besides a few other well informed modding community members. Reach ruined nothing for Halo. Halo is what ever the creators decide it is, not us. There is no "real" story or timeline in Halo that is defined or has any rivht to be called true or real. Halo is unique in the fact that it was created with no definite story ark or background. Anything published outside Bungie or now 343 is simply fanfare. For that matter..... everyone stop complaining about everything. When one of you develope and release a very optimized and full featured game engine and a game for it...... then you can complain. Only then by showing everyone you have some sort of talent or expertise to base your opinions on. Nuff said!

Not a problem my friend. And to clear a few things up also, I add the following.... Calling multiplayer and campaign seperate engines is not true. The engine itself is the core of the game. the difference between multiplater and campaign, is how the engine itself utilizes the game assets and the individual scripts. people always say stuff like CE multiplayer engine was the best and all that jazz. fact is, the multiplayer handling, physics, particle system etc, are the same core assets we see in the campaign. the only difference in CE's case, is that the spawning scripts for players are different. That being said, the only real world difference between the two, lie in how the game uses netcode, and how much data can be processed and synced with said netcode. The netcode of CE was bar far the worst piece of garbage ever constructed. And that garbage alone took a team of 6 guys about 7 months to make. the Reach scripting uses by Megalo to handle multiplayer probably took a team of 32 or more people the same time frame of 7 to 9 months to create alone.

Sorry for the double post but I also wanted to touch on the whole multiplayer aspect. Does anyone know how much money and pro essing power is needed and utilized to fully collect deploy and provide a multiplayer experience? Didn't think so. This is why we have idiotic fanboys bitching about CEA being included to be part of the current gen multiplayer. It would take more than a year for 343 alone to ship a CEA game with a standalone multiplayer element. The CE engine for multiplayer was written 10 years ago by 6 guys. Gaming languages have changed so drastically that using anything from CE's engine standalone now, you would have to also write an exclusive Live handling servi e just for it. Keep in mind also, 343 nor Microsoft want to split apart the player base. It would takes about a 1.75 years to fully recreate, impliment and deploy a standalone game remastered like CEA. And it would take primarily another year after the title was developed, to.create and deploy a standalone service just for it. Also, who's gonna pay for the added server equipment and maintainence on the equipment? Let me guess, you guys want all this but would be appauled at the thought of having to pay for the extra service of it?

All the above statements are wrong in part. Reach's Blam! engine runs along side the script engine dubbed Megalo. Megalo executes scripts which control up to 75% of everything in the map or maps level assets. This powerful script engine can control, manipulate and load any game asset present in the games own resource library. This is how they achieved the gametypes we play like haloball. That being said, the engine used primarily for the CEA release is actually the entire Reach Blam engine. In order to utilize the function to call Reach's graphic layer in substitution for CE's, requires either that the CE envine be re-written to include the new layer or the Reach Blam engine has to use Megalo to call the CE graphic layer. CEA is using Reach's engine as its core processing and using Megalo to call the CE engine to be used when the game is first loaded. This is the only way to make the game.function as we have seen from the trailers. Remember, CE's blam engine is no where near sophisticated enough to run anything outside 10 years ago. Furthermor, calling it an updated graphic layer is not entirely accurate. During the trailers and comparison shots we are given, it is clear that the shaders are not the only update. Much of each levels geometry is slightly off or changed. Shaders alone using increased bump map depths cannot change structures to appear longer or shaped differently. What we are in fact seeing is touched up physical geometry mesh. Basically callibg CEA a remastered game is accurate. Everything but the core CE engine was touched up and changed.

The Flood Juggernaut is incomplete on Halo 2. No sub tags related to it besides simple models exist in the tag layout. Based on that fact alone you cannot know with 100% certainty how the Juggernaut was supposed to move, act or attack. It wasn't removed because of being overpowered either. It was one of the concept ideas that was scrapped in order to finish the game on time.

Ok, I am unsure where half of you get your information, (cough BROONEY cough) but you may want to go back and look thru some VidOC specials and published developer documents. Frankie himself stated after the initial trailer for CE, that the game was using the Reach engine because of issues with Halo 1's netcode, and that using a seperate multiplayer experience would only divide the player base. It is a wide known and troublesome fact, that H1 suffered from the most horrible written net handling code ever spewed forth. To go back and re-write the netcode, would also mean having to go back and re-write sections of the core engine. Not very investment friendly. Now about the Reach graphic layer. Calling it a top graphic layer is not really accurate. This is because the Reach engine is actually the core layer. Reach uses what is called the Megalo Engine to handle scripting. Scripting controls probably about 75% of everything we can do in Reach. In order for the Reach graphics to be able to be used with CE, it is obvious that the Reach Engine is using Megalo in the backround to use scripts, which in fact call for the CE engine to used. I know it sounds complex, and it is. But in order to use the graphics of Reach on CE, it is the only way one would go about being able to do it without having to re-write the original engine. As for Halo 2, it did not take 9 months to complete. September 2002 was when the first Halo 2 trailer was shown. Production for that trailer took alone 3 months to complete. Actual production time for Halo 2 took place from June 2002 to October 2004. Production time for game discs is very minimal and takes only mere weeks. Bungie just barely made it in time to release it, but had to scrap the whole ending and many other multiplayer and campaign options. As for John's take on the 75% of players not knowing who makes a game or even helps with halo....that number is actually pretty accurate. I will guarantee you that if you go into Reach now and start asking people which two companies produced Halo Reach, 75% of them will tell you Bungie alone did it....which we all know is false, as 343 worked hand in hand with them on it. The main fact is, most new gamers care nothing about who actually produces a game or who slaves over it for ever in the process.

Bungie gave everyone plenty of time to get in on it. You mean to tell me you couldn't spare 1.5 minutes to go onto Bungie.net and click the dang button? If so, then you like most dont deserve it. Don't expect 343 or bungie to feel sorry for lazyness.

You guys really had a hard time getting those? Legendary isn't all that difficult. I played thru on legendary from the start. Only mission that gave me trouble was Pillar of Autumn. Damn those Elites before you have to protect the Pillar from the Capital Ship attack!

Haloid works like equipment. Allows player to double jump and jump off of vertical surfaces. Would be cool for multiplayer too! Unlocked by killing 5 Golden Elites.

I have to disagree slightly. Equipment at least has a set usage, then you have to grab another one, if it spawns. I do agree that people need to get over their ego's and just admit defeat when they are beaten countless times over and over again, rather than blame the game and it's features. If they do include armor abilities, I think the best route to go in would be making the abilities function like the H3 equipment. For the love of god do not make them starting equipment, and do not use loadouts. Make them fought over and controlled, like most weapons. That was the key to equipment being such a great addition to Halo. You had to fight for the right to use them and obtain them, not simply spawn and be given a choice of various ones.

I could not agree more with everything that was said in this thread. The DMR is a great weapon, hands down. Now if this were Halo 2 and not Halo Reach, then yes, the BR would be the dominate one. The DMR is great at any range. Even when spamming shots, it takes skill at medium and long range to hit the target dead on every time. But there is something that is never mentioned in any of these weapon hate threads.....the players "hit box". Depending on where you are hitting the player, all determines who is going to win any weapon battle, obviously beside rockets and such.... Think back to the good old days of H3 and H2 BR fights. Depending on who shot first, and who was able to keep their hits to the head only, determined who got the t-bag. Judging from the poster, he fails to realize that head shots will always win over body shots, no matter how much skill you have. Besides from that, any experienced player should be able to compensate for the firing spread of a weapon (bloom) when spamming shots and playing long distance to close distance matches. Oh, and before the poster decides to flame back some random numbers or bullsh** re-post, I am an old school modder. I have delved deep into map structure, tag structure, weapon mechanics, bsp..etc. I know what I am talking about and can always provide solid hard proof of anything I post. Where is yours? Magic numbers? That's not proof.

See, you are touching something very dear to my heart with this thread. Halo 2 to date, still has the best absolute multiplayer experience and layout. It's a proven fact. it's the only title besides CE to have a complete "original" (not remade) list of maps for it's release. If they remade Halo 2, they would also have to redo the multiplayer aspect, which would be a big "no deal" not buying it sticking point with me. I think rather than redo the title, they should look into continuing some kind of 343 server support for it. Or if possible, retrieve source code for the H2V conversion process from Hired Gun and PI Studios, and start some support for that as well.