Twinreaper

Touching back on the whole "hitscan" thing again. I came across an interesting little tid-bit the other day while playing thru Exodus on Legendary with my son. Now the whole controversy around hitscan, is that Reach uses it, and all weapons except for covie ones uses it. I can now say without fail that it is false. As I said me and my boy were on Exodus, where you have to defend the civilians from the covie, the part right before you take the elevator down to the jet pack area. Anyway, as I was engaging the last of the 3 brutes that remained.... I found myself and the brute both running along the same path. As we were running, I had my DMR pointed directly at and kept it at his head while we were both moving. The distance between us at our moving speed was maybe about 3 feet distance in real life perspective. At that distance, with the reticule dead center, I began to fire bursts of shots. By burst, I mean well paced waiting for bloom to rest. Every shot I fired missed the brute. That's right, every single shot, that was dead aimed at his head while moving missed. If hitscan were used, this would not have occurred, since the projectile would have been instantly collided with said brutes head. I almost took a dump in my pants when this happened. 3 feet away, and I unloaded half a clip and missed everytime. Of coarse I went back into theater mode and saw firsthand, that yes indeed, every shot did miss. WTF Bungie and 343!!!! So I tried to replicate this again, after me and the boy got schooled by the last Brute hammer chief guy ****** thingy. This time I lead my shot in front of his head a tiny bit. And wouldn't you know it, every shot hit. Now it just begs the question, is this a random incident or has anyone else had this happen to him or her?

I'm guessing they made you [REDACTED] out the map name you are referencing. Those of us who play and belong to the [CñR] Halo clan, know all too well that the map you talking about is Infinity. It is the only map in the original that fall damage becomes an issue when traversing the gulch center bridges. Sorry if I spoiled it, but I couldn't resist. On a side note, is MP gameplay the only thing that the TU is going to change? I would assume that like all other TU's, it would also have quick fixes and adjustments for the SP aspect of the game?

Does noone read the press releases or the official developer release statements? First off, Halo CEA is finished. It is already more than likley already in the RC2 stages, which is minor or last minute bug fixes before being shipped off to the disc production center. As far as the game engine goes, it is the same old blam! engine you have in the original game. The only thing they added, was a top layer to the game engine to support the newer blam! engine shader templates. The only thing effect, particle or material effect, you will see, are the differences in the shader capability. there is nothing else added to the game that was not in the original. Quite frankly if they do add something else, they already stated it would only be additional info on the events of the first Halo game, so people who have never played it before, can feel as if they know what's going on. Compare this to how we felt the first time we played it. I didn't know why the hell I was here or what was going on.

I have seen all the VidOc's. 3rd party sites that only have members or other people discussing weapons and other stuff hold no water unless a Bungie developer would come in a grant a "yay" or "nay" to the claims. As for sources from Bungie themselves, they admitted that it is simulated hitscan. If you really do understand what hitscan is, then you know that any weapon fired, hits it's target instantly, no matter the range, without any travel time. There is travel time with every weapon, but the difference is so slight, (by a mere 1 frame, according to Bungie) that calling them non-hitscan would be pointless because of the marginal error. Bungie did do a fantastic job with simulating it, but in the end they are still simulated, and takes away a lot of the skill involved with combat that pro players have come to know and love. Simply because of this, I never play Reach multi, and always go on and play H2 or H1 multi. But in the end for the sake of arguing over something so mere, I will just go ahead and say sorry, I was wrong. I wasn't understanding the switching of the weapon style you were talking about, my bad on that. That would be a great addition in the custom game settings, it would really give you more control and balance when playing with new players or freinds that are just not use to Halo multiplayer. Just being able to tweak in a shotgun with those few 3 extra shots would be cool as hell. As far as I am concerned, they did let up a lot in giving the player control of settings, but still held back where it counted the most in the end. I am with you on the betray, but you also have to keep in mind, that sometimes players will shoot by accident and hit a live grenade on the ground. When that happens you know all to well that it explodes, and if a teammate is near it and it kills him, you get a betrayal. Again though, it doesnt apply to me as I dont go into multi, but I do agree that it comes as a major fustration to a majority of other players. Some people just cant use teamwork...lol I almost didn't notice the Plasma Launcher thing. I could not agree more. The plasma Launcher when weilded by covenant in campaign still makes you go "oh crap!". But for us in multiplayer or when turning it against the enemy, it just plain sucks. I would love to know what exactly they did to make it so much weaker then in the beta. What were your personal observations about it's performance? Besides the rediculous arming time to fire multiple nades. My god it takes so long! And everyone can dodge them so easily!

Uh no. All Halo titles use the projectiles defined speed located in the weapon tag. The only, and I say again only weapon to ever use or be close enough to be conscidered "hitscan", was the battle rifle. That is the only weapon. I may have confused some people with the previous post. When we all say "real time" we are clearly talking about a different definition and use when it comes to the Halo games. I am quite aware that every weapon has a starting velocity, and a maximum velocity, both which are reflexives (32 bit floats) located inside the weap tags. When I talk about real time, I am literally using it as it is meant...real. Real is all chance, all gravity, yattah yattah. Halo is pre-defined and bound to the limits of the engine itself. Halo Reach does not use hitscan. They are using a method similar to hitscan, but make no mistake it is not hitscan. If that were the case, you would not have to lead enemies with your shots.

Nah MJ has it dead on guys. Reach's story was fast paced, the flow of the battles and the controls really worked outstanding. Halo 2 is and always will be the multiplayer king of the franchise. I am sure me and MJ could argue you boys on that for days on end. (especially the tech end of it from me). But yes, the multiplayer sucks. Face it. Reach is a failed attempt at something new. Perhaps years from now, the gameplay they tried might be good. But for now, it does not measure up. As for the superiority of games over all, here is my tally... 1. Halo 2. Best multiplayer and really good campaign flow. Things progressed so you could easily understand the events. 2. Halo 1. Best Story layout hands down, especially for a first title launch. Multiplayer maps were awesome. Still the map king. 3. Halo 3 . Recycled maps, but long capaign. Multiplayer was better than Reach, but fell short compared to H1 and H2. 4. Halo Reach. Best campaign out of all of them, hands down. Multiplayer was fail, but did improve the forge system. All multi maps were lazy campaign barrier added areas. Where was the genius?

Well that sucks for both of us!

First off Sierra, still love it when peeps use that name. Second, welcome aboard. You'll quite enjoy your stay here. We got some cool dudes around here.

Baykem, again, you have no understanding of the weap, hud or proj tag reflexives or the links between them using the scripting system of the blam! engine. Bloom is exactly what I defined it to be. Bloom is not some magical formula that the weapon uses to prevent the players from firing rapidly accurately. The spread of a weapon is pre-defined in the weap tag, by a min and max data value. The spread is random, and is not subject to if the bloom effect on the reticule is at rest or not. As for your remarks for the battlerifle. The battle rifle was a "hitscan" weapon. If you know what "hitscan" is, then you know why it functioned the way it did in Halo2, and because of this, it cannot be thrown into the normal catagory you would throw other weapons that have a firing spread. Perhaps you should search for my very detailed, engine in-depth explination on how this works and why it is what it is. As for the post about the real time physics vs hitscan. Do you even know what hitscan is? How it works, or why it has no place in the game? First off, you would not be able to toggle it on and off. The physics handling of the game objects and assets is hard coded into blam!, and would not be easily turned off and on as you suggested. Real time actaul physic calculations for weapons is unrealistic and could not be achieved using the current hardware. Those types of calculations would have to be done at the time the weapon is fired. the game would then have to reffer to player locations, trajectories, the pre-defined projectile spead, or (hitscan - infinite speed), then go thru the process of calculating how much damage based on range at firing, place of hit, and so on. It would have to do this for every single shot you made. Even in Halo 2, there was a slight jitter in animation, which was caused by the collision detection system, to calculate the "hitscan". Hitscan is far less complex and it caused that slight drop in framerate due to calculating it. Could you imagine a 16 player match of people using all real time physics weapons? The game itself would seize due to the computational power needed to run all those game triggers. No weapon in the Halo franchise or the game itself uses a real time physics simulation codebase. Everything is pre-defined with a min max value, and everything that occurs is simply at random. Which is why sometimes you can do the same exact type of stunt one time, and the next it comes out completely different. Suggesting something like that, leans me towards believeing you are one of those lesser skilled players who is looking for someone to blame for your poor tactics or ability on the battlefield. I have no shame in saying I suck at multiplayer, and just cannot get used to how it feels in Reach. My multiplayer skill has gone down roughly 200% compared to the skill I have and still use on HaloPC and Halo2PC. I do agree that things have to change, but before you throw ideas like these out there, you better do a little more research on the engine, it's map structure and architecture before you do.

grunty thirst or orders from

I have to agree about the multiplayer aspect. When it comes to the maps, I feel as if the development just got plain out lazy, and thats why they decided to use levels from the campaign. But there in itself lies the problem. There was nothing new. Usually when we saw multiplayer maps, each one added a new twist or visual to the game. With Reach it was just like, "oh wow, they put the whole level as the.....oh...they didnt. Just this crapy part". Lets face facts. Halo 2 had the only other original line-up of maps that were not all re-hashed from a previous title. Almost all the Halo 3 maps were a redo of the Halo 2 maps. The only map that wasn't a direct copy of an existing map was Narrows. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing to get mad about when they introduce redone maps that are done good, and feel different, but Reach really did not deliver with it. The campaign was hands down the best, obviously. But multiplayer was an epic fail. Hopefully, they will go back to what started the epic goodness that was Halo Multiplayer, but right now, seeing as how they have a brand new Reach overhauled blam! engine to work with, I doubt it will revert and ignore the advances and just focus on the core multi aspect. but here is hoping anyways!

While I do agree that Reach is inferior to the other titles you mentioned, you also have to take into conscideration the timeline of events. Reach was well before anything in Halo 1 and so on. The armor abilities I think were added in because it wouldnt derail the tech timeline any for the previous titles. Now if we had armor abilities in halo 2, and then didnt have them in Halo 3, then it would make no sense. They added all these new things in because of the opportunity to do so. It was a chance to try new things without hurting the story any. Armor abilities going forward shouldnt exist. halsey along with any Spartan program tech data is lost now, hence why we have no new Spartans and Armor advances being made in Halo 2 and Halo 3. If you study the weapons and gear closely while remembering the timeline, it all does fit pretty well. Lets see if I can help elaborate more.... Halo Reach: Spartans are a plenty and have a lot of funding a resources devoted to supporting them. Brutes are shaggy, weild useless weapons, and the Covenant army as a whole is obviously a lot stronger. Halo 1: Chief is now on his own and is supposedly the last remaining active and alive Spartan. He has no tech support and is limited to what supplies and weapons are already on the POA. The Covenant have only sent a single ship to pursue the POA, and because of that, also has no real back-up or tech support. The Covenant did not plan on anybody leaving the planet alive, and because of that was not at the ready to deploy the range of firepower we saw on Reach. Halo 2: Chief upon arriving at Earth, has a suit upgrade. One that was more than likely meant for him to recieve after leaving Reach with the intention on heading straight to Earth. The Brutes are still shaggy but weild a little more firepower, keeping with the timeline of tech development. The elites are more tactical now given the prior encounters and now know that human forces are very resourcessful. The Covenant fail to get to the ring before it is destroyed in Halo 1, and decide instead to go to Earth where the supposed Arc is. The Covenant are not well prepared for what they find on Earth since they did not know humans were there. This is why again, we see little to no new firepower being deployed, like on Reach. Chief goes to High Charity. This is the one place you would expect to find all new tech and wepaons. Wrong. The covenant have already transferred the firepower and stuff to the invading fleet for Earth. They did not expect Chief to show up in Charity, so they were not prepared. Halo 3: This is where we see new vehicles, new outfits and new weapons far apart from what we saw in the previous titles. In keeping with tech timeline, the Covenant had decided to phase out Spectres and Revenants in favor of more Brute styled vehicles. At this time the elites are no longer part of the covenant. The humans also realize that they need new wepaons to use against the Covenant, since they had been invaded once before on Earth. This is why we see now the Hornetss and the Mongooses. There was no need back in Halo 2 since we had no idea the Covenant were coming, and a majority of said gear was on Reach, and thus we needed production time. We see new personell weapons like the trip mine and bubble shield. We learned Covenant tactics and adapted a few of our own to match. Chief has no new suit upgrades due to lack of time and support assets. This seems reasonable in the timeline. We were too busy to worry about one guy's equipment. ODST I would mention but those events take place during and right after Halo 2, and lead mid way into halo 3. That is why we see brutes with armor and new weapons. Because of production time for vehicles, we were forced to use Falcons instead of Hornets. Everything there should make sense after reading all of my above. So there you have it. A well thoughtout event timeline that explains why Reach sucks in multiplayer, and also gives you a little background as to why we more than likely have things like armor abilities and those way cooler vehicles.

Hmmmm. Sounds like a loading issue with the HDD. What style xbox do you have? What I mean is, do you have the new Slim Black one, or the older Xbox Arcade white version? etc....

I wonder how they will address that? I mean sure, he is going to look all shiny and new with the shaders and development tools, but where is our explination of how he goes from battleworn, to perfectly fine? Did Cortana pack a picnic basket with some goodies? Did he take a good hot shower and put on some new wears? can you imagine how stinky that man must be? My god the skid marks alone in his jockies is prolly enough to clog a Pillar of Autumn sized toilet!

where his pink underwear went.

Yup. The trailer blew me away too. I want to so badly play as a German soldier. Fighting on my homeland with my brothers seems comforting somehow in all that MW3 chaos. Hopefully they have learned a few things from their online competition and will use those learning to correct things in multiplayer.

Well yes and no. I have been going by the callsign Twinreaper, since my old Doom on dial-up days. Wow showing my age now...lmao My gamertag is actually "B4M Twinreaper" I can also be reached on xfire at "Twinreaper", and you will usually find me on C?R Halo PC servers at [C?R]Twin.

Well, the one where you commit suicide and take enemies with you would be like jumping into the base with a roket pointed down, and firing when you hit the ground. if anyone was next to you, you would kill them, and it would also count as a suicide since you died from your own actions. Quite funny to see people trying this...lmao Most of what i named would also be used for campaign. I also mainly got reach for it's campaign. I only play campaign and doubles firefight now. But lets face it. A majority of gamers actaully play the competative end, which you and I dont obviously. That is why I focused my new achievs and medals on multiplayer. I could prolly come up with some more just for campaign, but that take about another quick 15 minutes...

True that. It would have made a much more interesting game if they followed the books. But then again, Bungie created the universe, so whatever they decide will always trump the books written by others.

Agreed! halo is the superior game. I dont just say that because I am a complete Halo freak/nerd. While CoD does "try" to maintain a more realistic battlefield, it utterly fails. The Physics and collision handling is by far out matched by Halo. In CoD, you cant even jump on top of a crate that is literaly as tall maybe your kneecap. The melee system sucks balls on top of that. Even with a huge knife, it takes like 5 swipes to take down an enemy. Do they have some kind of magic shield in fron of there ugly faces? CoD is and always will be far behind Halo in terms of gameplay and multiplayer experience. It does however excel at telling the story. I cannot deny that aspect, even being the die hard halo fan i am. It does have one hell of a great story and plot.

Remember, Spartans never die...they are just MIA. I still laugh at that phrase every time. We clearly see Kat die in Reach..lmao! I may have to revisit some of the books. If memory serves correct, there are still quite a few handfuls of spartans in the galaxy roaming around on other missions, are there not?

Finally! Someone said it....Clans! I knew I wasnt the only one around here missing the clan option from Halo 2. yet just another reason Halo 2 will always be the most dominate Halo title!

Hello everyone, my name is Twinreaper. I am an old school modder from way back in the ealy years of Halo PC and Xbox. I have been modding since Halo has been around. I have done many things in the community, and my knowledge and experience in the Halo game engine franchise has proven quite usefull in understanding the direction the developers go in the games. I am here for all things Halo. I love being around people as passionate as I am about Halo and it's ever expanding universe. I am always around for general questions about game mechanics, tag structures, general nonsense and good old fashion debates. Hit me up and look for my posts when ever you can, and I am always ready to help others. Peace!

Every site has one, so why not here. This will be the new official Halo related only 5 word story thread. I will start off. As the dawn of a new

To me, "more classic" means removing armor abilities and assassinations, and loading in some the standard equipment from the other Halo titles. With the script system they have in place for the engine, it would not be too difficult to script in the use of classic halo 1, 2 and 3 weapons into the multiplayer matchmaking. It would go nicely with the re-done maps I think. Oh, and make certain weapons dual-weilding again. SMG + Plasma Rifle always ruled for me!