Twinreaper

well in thery it sounds nice, but theamount of patchwork required for each and every map would be a bit much to write out and distribute. too my knowledge it would be virtually impossible anyway due to the fact that most tag id offsets are different for each map and created during each maps.compilinf process. dont quote me on that....but a lot of allocation occurs during level compiling.

Actually this bill can and will effect a wide majority of all NATO related nations. Given past history, when one country follows a path regarding piracy or stopping it in some way, it isn't long before the rest fall into plaece like dominos. Sad...even our great homeland of Germany, Mayhem.....will eventually follow the same path as well. And Caboose, what is wrong with Fox news? It's currently one of the only last standing news channels that actually serves it's political news with any truth to it. How many times has the government now tried to stranglehold the station and prevent them from reporting?

Just to edit this real quick, I didn't realize at the time of writing that i referrences the wrong location of the map listings. They are located in the [matg] tag, which is the "globals" tag of the mainmenu file. Also some info is insode the [mulg] the multiplayer gobals tag.

To explain the "slots" thing, I will do my best. The resource map that controls maps is the mainMenu.map file. Within this map's scenario file, is a listing of all maps Campaign and multiplayer. By default the campaign has no additional slots dedicated to the expansion of campaign. While multiplayer map types have roughly 20 additional slots and each have a unique identifier number associated with them. When new DLC content for multiplayer comes out, the maps that are given to us, each use one of the unique identifyer numbered slots in the new maps scenario file. This allows the mainmenu map file to recognize the maps and load them into the GUI for us to select. By default, if the value to show the slots was enabled, we would see a myriad of blank map shot boxes or name fields to indicate the map file can't be found anywhere in the gae disk or hdd. By adding the maps to the hdd the mainmenu can find them, ad show them to us after we DLC them. In order to give us a true DLC campaign expansion, it would require 343i to update the mainmenu and shared map files and include them into the DLC. But here si the problem with that. Each individual campaign map file does not contain all the same tags. The campaign uses the shared map file to load certain resources. If they were to add resources to the maps, it would disrupt the file allocation table of certain tags, and thus regular campaign maps would fail to load effected things. In short, releasing campaign DLC outside maybe some MegaloScript magic, would require the entire title to be updated and re-shipped or downloaded.

The problem isn't the map tools themselves when it comes to budgets and map size. Understand that the limits imposed on maps in terms of size and budget is derived from what the engine itself can safely handly without memory corruption occuring. Take the climate idea for example. Currently there is no game engine even capable of handling even a quarter of a real size in-game Halo ring. To make something like that happen would require the map mesh to be broken into sub-sections known as multiple bsp's. This technique is used to "stich" together campaign maps. The main prblem with this, is that even if they made a multiplayer map like this, you would be limited to only being able to fight or see opponents currently present within the same bsp section you are in. Multiple bsp's are not linked in a way that allows each player to interact with another one. This would cause issues of players instantly appearing insie another bsp without warning visually or by the radar. Secondly to add to this, there is not enough ram or GPU power available to allow players to use the toolset 343i will be using, or Bungie has used in the past, on a console. The cpu threads, time and system consuption far outweighs anything the 360 can handle. Also couple that with low RAM and the GPU limits, and crashes a plenty would occur. Think about it like this. I have on my main rig an Asus EVO m488 I think.....with a Phenom II X4 oc'd to 4.1ghz and 8 gig of ram. Also running dual 9800GT's for GPU's. At a medium GUI setting, my stsem still lag spikes like crazy when throwing in a ton of crap into the CryTek 2 sandbox. Now the 360 at max is about half as powerful as my main rig according to system spec comparisons. The Reach engine and any other future itteration of it, will require a rig of comparable size to mine, and the 360 just simply annot do it. Now for the latter part in which I will go over why custom things will never happen. Besides the fact that over 75% of the Halo poulation would be just plain lost with the toolset, ther eis the issue of having to re-compile and compile custom objects and the various animations, shaders, sounds and collisions that would go along withe them. Even simple objects like triangles or cubes would require the engine SDK to compile all relevant needed tags into a central (hlmt) tag and compile collision, physics collision, it's base weight, bounding radius, etc.... Simply put, the tools required to do it take patience and a great understanding to get anything usable out of them. That is unless everyone would be simply happy enough to play ona zillion Mario Bros remake maps. Not to stray too off topic, but I cannot see any viable reason in terms of gameplay mechanics to include any of the OP's suggestions for inclusions into halo 4. None of the ideas have any real positive impact on the core mechanics, nor take any real advantage of them.

First off, Halo was and still is one of the most if not "the most" profitable franchise in terms of length. Halo as a game will evolve constantly as technological bounds are broken and new techniques in graphics and physics handling emerge. Gamers on the otherhand as a norm, do not like change or evolution. They tend to latch on to something they love and fear all other comers in it's wake. Change is inevitable for a game at some point. CoD has a great campaign, it is a fact. the story telling and the repetative mechanics of the quake egnine powering it go hand in hand. People flock to CoD because they have come to kind of "expect" a certain repetative element in the game. Over time, this of coarse will fade and Infinity Ward and Activision will be forced to change it up. I have been a Halo fan since the midnight launch of the console with Combat Evolved. I am for all intent and purposes.....an old school halo fan. But that aside I am also an extreme modder. I rip apart titles to see what makes them tick, and play with engine tweaks and this allows me to see the game in a different ligut than most. Reach is a great game. The campaign is the second best in the series in my opinion. ODST is the best so you know, and from my stand point Reach brought back a lot of drama and unknown frightening moments during the game when you truly did not know what was gonna happen next. The particular version of Blam! running Reach is truly revolutionary. It is and always will be for some time, truly an engine ahead of it's time. Sure it easy to singleout multiplayer and say wether it wa s afailed title, but you have to judge the game on merit and full content. You cannot simply just pluck out one flaw you see and run with it all the way to the waaaaaaambulance. Having been with halo since the beginning, I see and feel no principle defference in handling or core gameplay when I pick up the controller. To date, I have never picked up the pad, started playing and was never able to carryon with my usual style of gaming. The consistency of gameplay flow has never deviated from core principles of the first Blam! engine. I can provide many fields of engine data to show the myriad of equalities in the physics and collision code alone. Now as for silly comments about population. Populations of a game spike and dip. it's the nature of the beast. To illistrate a very strong reason for such dips, one must go back into time and evaluate the "release situation" of games in or around the time of previous Halo's. reach to date had the biggest hurdles in terms of competition. Halo 1 had none being the first xbox title and the only console FPS. Halo 2 had little to no competition because of it's "modability". In fact, Halo 2 is still one of the most modded games on the xbox to date. Halo 3 is where we started to see a push and pull in "real competition". Games like Call of Duty 4, Gears of War, etc... made it all that more important to really hit a homerun. halo 3 only survived in the market due to it's great ranking system and mix of Halo 1 engine code along with portions of Halo 2's game mechanics. Don't bother to argue this, I can prove you wrong with engine code on that, and a myriad of community comments. Halo Reach however has had the most troublesome period. In between ODST and Reach, we saw a gigantic dip in the economy. Jobs were being lost and people were looking towards media entertainment as a much larger investment in one's "daily life". This made it all the more important to make a game that could and would, give the investee a lengthy amount of time to play and replay the product. Trouble is.....every other FPS coming out or in development waited till after reach to debut as a marketing tactic. Clearly CoD, gears, rage, Skyrim and a few others have the upper hand right now. They came in after gamers had some time to play reach, and then came in blowing minds with new features and multiplatform releases...and by that i mean PC. In fact, every title that currently beats Halo right now, is either a PC title or a console exclusive. For Reach, it is hard to compete with a game that is available for multiple systems and platforms. Had Reach been produced along side a PC version....there is no doubt that Halo would be reigning the top of the gaming ladder.

I could go into great lengths why the TU erks me, but it would be a 5 page novel of poor grammar....which I am pretty sure no one here wants to read. Instead here is a list of things I hate about the TU. I make more re-posts about certain tech and mechanic points on why i hate them later if people want.... 1. AA's. AA's are basic core components of the game and as such should not be tampered with. 2. Zero Bloom. Zero Bloom is effectively turning any scoped weapon into a zero error spamming machine. I dont like 5 variations of the BR in my games thanks. 3. Classic.....ok. Classic mode will never feel like Halo CE. No amount of tweaks to the engine or weapons will make it work right. 4. Forcing the TU accross all gametypes and maps regardless of playlist is drastically changing the playing field in which we already took a solid year to master. I said it before, if I wanted to playa title like halo 3 or 2, I would pop in the disc and play it. I play reach for basic core Reach I'm too tired to go on, but as I said, I can site perfectly good mechanic and game engine data to support my opinions...so there it is.

Unfortunatly, I have no expereince in anything 3d tech. I can research the issue but I cannot guarantee a correct answer. I am on it either way my friend.

Why would a 4 year old game receive an update? I'm not putting you down or anything, I am just curious as to your reasoning why it would make financial sense and by what would 343 would stand to gain from shifting engines? To be honest, it's an outdated graphics layer and engine. Not to mention we have no idea what kind of programming sources Bungie left to 343. Chances are, the source code for Halo 3 and the Guerilla/Sapien/Tool toolset was not passed on to them. if it was, then it still leaves the matter of devoting a team to work on Halo 3 updates, instead of having more resources to develop content for Halo 4.

Congrats Egyptian. You truly deserve the honor of being our new MOM...pun intended.

Yeah they got it. No point in posting a duplicate. Good job Adam

Bear, if you can explain to me why Reach is bad, besides the tired old uninformed non-gaming mechanic view of it...I will agree then with your position. Bashing someone for liking games that you do not is not only severly immature, but shows you have a limited mind when it comes to gaming entertainment. I for one absolutely love Reach. I love it because it has proven to be a challenge time and time again inc ampaign and the ammount of replay built into the basic core mechanics hands down beats every other Halo title...my opinion of coarse. On the engine side of things, the Blam! engine powering Reach is a great hybrid variant and really excells at controlling and handling variable content of any type across all the modes. It is really an engine ahead of it's time. I'm gonna go ahead anyway and continue this final post in this thread with a lengthy long-winded response at which I am known for. Feel free to correct, contradict or add to anything I miss... Ok so the thread is about Bloom in particular. For those who do not understand bloom, bloom is the common term used to describe the firing spread of a weapon. In Halo Reach, for the first time, we got an expanding and retracting reticule to show players on screen, the size and resting time of a weapons bloom. The common misconception, is that the reticule itself controls bloom, and that bloom is an entirely new feature they introduced in Reach. Part of that is correct. The correct part is that the firing spread of a weapon was handed down to perc. weapons across the board for the first time. Now bloom itself in a minimalistic sense has always been present even on marksmanship weapons. Halo had bloom on the pistol, but not the sniper rifle. In fact, the Magnum from H1 is to date, the only scoped weapon to ever have it's firing spread, go beyond the confines of the reticule. Halo 2 had bloom on the battle rifle. You can argue this all you want, but tag data extracted from the battle rifle weapon, specifically shows an error cone, but yes the error value is very very small. But this is also why if you slow down the firing, you will see a variation of bullets at different trajectories each firing burst. Halo 3 had a slight bloom in the form of the scope not resetting directly where you had it aimed with the sniper rifle. This was done to force snipers from spamming perfect shots on people. Halo reach simply only added the HUD reticule feature to give every player an even chance of guaging where the shots would land at what particular pace they were firing at. All the TU update did was make every marksman weapon fire similar the beloved BR everyone had missed from previous 2 titles. Even after giving the TU, people still ahve complaints about the 7 float values they changed with MegaloScript to achieve this. COmplaints ranged from overpowered, to too fast firing rates. the thing is, to change certain values, you have to inherintly change others. They can closely achieve BR and h1 magnum firing effects, but it will always feel a little weird or different than the original ones. When things like this happen, it all comes down to how well you adapt to abnormal changes in a game that ahs a completely different gameplay feel. Could you imagine what would of happened if they suddenly thru AA's into a Halo 3 DLC? It would have been hated upon in an instant because it altered gameplay too dramatically for what was already present in the core game. Last but not least is the map problems. maps are very hard to assemble. It may seem like an easy thing to place certain things at a certain place, but it is more invloved than that. Every map that come down at core basics, is layed out to support every default wepaon. Sometimes the designers have no choice but to settle on certain wepaon placements for things, wether they work or not. The same goes for spawn points. Spawn points are a much larger problem. Spawns have a myriad of different settings and groups. Along with basic spawns for individual players, we also have the following... a. Group or "Spawn Zones" b. Respawn points c. Respawn Zones d. Flag Away Zones e. Flag at home Zones f. Proximity Zones It is hard on small maps to fit all these in where it becomes a consistent flow of goodness. There are bound to be poorly placed ones, but it comes down to being able to encoprorate every needed item accordingly. So as you see some things are bound to not work sometimes. Sometimes, you have to take a few steps back and see things from a game mechanic and tool usage perspective.

The day they force TU content on every playlist they have is the day i leave and the Blam! engine for good. I can find other great sources of FPS contwnt than will cater to my needs better.

Actually Biggles, you can count me with the "hate it" crowd for the TU. I played it once or twice and will never go back. I have my reasons, both opinions and mechanic based but that's for another day of long winded explanations.

Actually the damage bounds of both the AR in Halo 1, Halo 3 and in Halo Reach are the same. The only difference in the weapons, is that with Halo 2 through Reach, we had an additional field in the damage response tag, that specifies a "lower bounds" damage calculation in addition to the two existing "Min and Max Upper Bounds" fields that we have in all titles. The lower bounds are primarily used for grenades or "High explosive" catagorized weapon damage like frags and Concussion Rifle projectiles. It is still unclear exactly how that field alters the weapons. For those wondering....here is the breakdown of values from each... Halo 1: Damage Upper Bound (Minimum): 10 Damage Upper Bound (Maximum): 10 halo 3 thru Reach: Damage Upper Bound (Minimum): 3 <-----the amount of damage one can expect on legs and torso Damage Upper Bound (maximum): 10 <-----the amount of damage you can expect on heads and chests Damage Lower bound: 0 <-----still unkown effect after tweaking

The glitch you are all talking about is the "Assault on the Control Room" right? If that is the case, here is why it does not work. CEA and CE run along side of eachother. Because of this, it is actually monitoring your position on two seperate engines. because CEA is a remastered version with code being "emulated" on the Reach engine side, it will ultimatley effect it's original execution in CE. It's inevitable that soem minor string execution for player death boundaries will fail, or went unoticed. It isn't feesable to say to a developer, 'Why didn't you catch 100% of the flaws". Some things just won't work or work the same as they did before due to the original being "emulated".

I agree that some problems time to time come up in terms of placement of items. but when we talk about forge variants, thats the community, or 343i's attempt to simlulate an older map. Doing that, is like trying to a bullseye on the moon...it's not gonna happen. Also remember, that with reach, we got customized loadouts that make traversing the map easier and that's why certain weapons are placed where they are. It also comes down to playstyle. Most people who game don't naturally work as a "Team", and thus you get 5 to 6 people all scrambling for a power weapon. In MLG where teamwork is a must, you don't see them having much trouble with this sort of thing. but then again, yes I know we are talking about a majority of gamers who don't play for teamwork and only selfish bragging rights. no offense was meant towards anyone else but the OP. His wording of things very much needs to be fine tuned.

I have to agree with Dog on the whole range vs damage perspective. There are fields left unused or altered in a lot of the titles' projectile fields that can easily change what damage modify is used at what range to enemy. basically in a nutshell, the collision detection tells the engine how many world units away the hit target is, and applies the correct amount of damage per range. Definatly a feature that should be implenmented. After having said that, they do kinda have already a system that takes of that for weapons with single shot spreads. Similar to the shotgun, if you are point blank and all rounds hit you square in the chest, you are killed or either have 1/4 health and no shields. yet at ranges, where some rounds hit you, the damage is less. the same is present for the ASSR. So I guess it's all a matter of how you like to look at it, or how you think it may play different in a good way, to include range modifiers in the damage calculations.

First off, lets stop with the bloom talk already. nearly 3/4 of the population still does not know what bloom is. Just say instead, you want to just run around with percission wepaons all day insrtead of using a wide variety of firing effect equipment to play with. There is no need to remove anything, just go play a playlist specifically designed to make you 3 shot - 5 shot killers happy. I like my battles drawn out and very tactical thank you. The maps are fine. Let's see you create a better one shall we. There are plenty of HEK tools out there, lets see some of your great planned out works of map art, then you can come back in here and criticise them. Other wise, sit down. All Halo titles were great, it just depends on your perspective of what makes a particular title better than the others. For em personally Halo 2 was and always will be the bees knees for multiplayer, and ODST will always remain my fave go to campaign. But I would not go as far to criticese the developer and tell them anything they produce otherwise is a regurgutated pile of turd. Please be a little more consciderate and state these as YOUR opinions, don't throw words around like you represent the community. I cannot stand that in here. Furthermore, I see a very common pattern within the Halo community. Everytime a newer title comes out, people complain and compare it to the previous and say things like "Bring it back to how it was". Things will be no different when halo 4 comes out. We will see the same rediculous people saying the same tired things about how the game doesn't feel like "Halo", and how they need to change things back to the earlier title. Surfice to say, this community doesn't know what it wants.

Teamspeak and Halo servers are back up and operating within normal parameters. Please continue to enjoy!

Screw that! I'm moving back to Germany. It's the only European country left that is standing on it's own without financing from other countries...cough cough *china owns us* cough cough. hell, Germany even fronted billions to the European Nation along with a line of credit up to I think....2 billion dollars. Obviously they did something right. And having a bill like this pass through is not right. Glad to hear it's finally getting the media attention it deserves.

Nah you won't get much hate. No gamer can deny that MW/CoD brings a completely seperate and great expereince to the gaming table. Anyone who would deny this is in denial or has only ever played a Halo game. I mean really, halo is a great game and it plays very much worlds apart from the traditional fps's. halo did pretty much bring FPS titles into the limelight and spawned a league. But CoD and MW games also have their place in gaming fame. They brought a very much more realistic fast paced shooter to the table. The amount of weapons and great etxtures it uses is phenominal. Mw3 alone uses 18,706 textures!!!! 2 times the amount of Reach, and handles draw geometry much better and faster than Blam! could. People who flame or just plain out always hate on CoD/MW has never really given it a fair chance and tried to really get into it. The survival modes are sick in MW3...much more fun to play now than firefight I would say.

Griff, the two bills you are referring to are SOPA and Protect IP. I have a thread pinned to the top of this forum section if you want to go there, click the link to it and read about the bills.

EX, your statements about spread, when they were introduced and the fact that 2 seperate engines control weapon firing is completely wrong......where to start.... 1. The magnum in H1 had firing spread. In fact, it is the only Halo weapon to date to have a firing spread that went beyond the confines of the aiming reticule. 2. The BR in halo 2 and Halo 3 both had firing spread. If it pleases you, I can post relevant extracted tag data to show you the value fields. It was not randomized vector that the projectile took, but a precisley calculate restraint error vector and error change. Their was no middle compromise.... 3. FIRING SPREAD HAS ALWAYS BEEN ON EVRY HALO WEAPON..with the exception of the sniper rifles for obvious reasons. 4. Outstrafing your opponent in Reach does not yield the same results as previous Halo titles. The projectile spead has been increased on precision weapons to simulate "hitscan" type of collision detection responses. Becasue of this, every precision weapon fires similar to the BR, and thus required a larger firing spread to balance it out. Plus let's not forget that weapons like the BR, dealt 3 seperate round bursts, that each had it's own damage modifier and response. Basically the only REAL issue anyone has with Reach, is that the beloved human precision weapon, the DMR, did not function like the BR from previously overplayed Halo 3. Sorry Reach doesn't have a precision wepaon you can spam the heck out of without sacraficing accuracy. To be quite honest, everyone needs to go back and play Halo 1. If the H1 magnum had the same exact damage modifier as the Reach BR, you would have had people complaining about the same thing with it's accuracy. Simply put, to get a straight out even 3 shot kill in Halo 1 took patience to pace your shots just right so you could kill the opponent in those 3 to 4 shots instead of laying down rapid fire in hopes to hit the head dead on. But more over to the point, Zero Bloom playlist feels to me, like a Battle Rifle spam fest. What I liked about the weapon mechanics and firing spread in Reach, is that it gave old school gamers of the franchise, something fresh and different. It's a shame those people could not get past the previous titles execution, and adapt to change. Just my opinion though. Oh, and hi Serene!

To add to tbis real quick regarding the magnum....the firing spread of the magnum was not within the confines of the reticule. %50 of the shots fired rapidly would go outside the aiming reticule.