The Halo Thread V12: The Last Thread Turned Into A Bridge - Games

Yeah honestly saying "Reach didn't have dual wielding because MJOLNIR armor didn't support it at the time" sounded a lot less dumb in my head. But I'm pretty sure that was the reason, it takes place before Halo 1 so they made the gameplay closer to Halo 1.

I think it was removed because Bungie legitimately just couldn't figure out how to balance it so they just didn't even bother to bring it back. 343 carried that on, and not just because Halo 4 was derived from Reach. I'm probably wrong on that though.

Balancing issues make sense tbh. [editline]10th April 2016[/editline] Also why is Halo CE 2v2 in MCC? That's dumb. Should be 3v3 at minimum.

Balancing issues works too. Honestly I do kinda prefer it without dual wielding, mostly because it makes the weapons that were previously dual wield-able much more viable. I remember a bunch of guns sucking in ODST because they were balanced for dual wielding and you couldn't.

Depends on how you balance it. Increase reload times and decrease accuracy, remove scope/ADS functionality, no second (technically third) weapon or throwing of grenades whenever dual wielding. Would mobility need to be nerfed too? Anyway, this has probably been posted before, but I found this today: [t]http://orig09.deviantart.net/e0a7/f/2011/338/a/4/master_chief_by_sgthk-d4i61ti.jpg[/t] I wish 343 would make their armor like this. It looks like the perfect blend of Reach's detail and Mark VI, and also screams "superhuman" so much more than the bubblewrap latex suits.

If you go through the Halo 4 and 5 art books you can find a lot of cool armor designs that are the perfect blend of Reach's armor style and some newer styles seen in 4/5. If they just stuck with that instead of outsourcing and going for more of a fantasy scifi look I think the last two games would have gotten a little less flak over the art direction. [editline]10th April 2016[/editline] Here is one of Fred's older designs as seen on Reddit earlier this week. [t]http://i.imgur.com/FOTqWj5.jpg[/t]

Jun is that you?

Woah, that is one badass suit.

This clip brings me a lot of joy. [t]http://i.imgur.com/e81BYUq.gif[/t]

[QUOTE=Makol;50105764]This clip brings me a lot of joy. [t]http://i.imgur.com/e81BYUq.gif[/t][/QUOTE] Probably one of my favorite moments from that session.

I think I enjoy your failed melee hit a bit more than the [I]almost[/I] synchronized crouch humping

Damn I wish I could play with you guys.. Being in the UK is a pain in the ass. That and I have coursework...

I keep forgetting you're in the UK. I'm rarely online these days, but that may change for a while with work slowing down.

[QUOTE=ElectricSquid;50104342]I'm curious as to why the texture coloration looks flat - does it not need detail like in the original because it's PBR?[/QUOTE] In halo 1, shading was extremely basic-- if it didn't shade the entire model, or if it wasn't baked and didn't affect models, it only lit models-- there was no self-shading or shadow-casting beyond the fake texture shadows players and vehicles cast (which btw go through EVERYTHING) As a result MOST of your shading was done in the texture, as you can see in Bungie's texture there. Furthermore, everything was shaded the same way. All you had control over was how MUCH something reflected other stuff. Bungie did this with a "multipurpose" texture that also controlled the intensity of lights on a surface and (for covenant and multiplayer) what parts of a surface change color based on rank or player choice (blue and red elites use the same textures, but the multipurpose map combined with the elite's personal tags change its texture from white to whatever it needs to be). A multipurpose map looks like this, once split into r/g/b: [t]http://i.imgur.com/p8dbSFs.png[/t] (A lot of Bungie's maps, when the blue channel isn't used, duplicate the red channel into it. Confusing... but probably compresses nicer or something) Modern engines, like UE4, do a lot more self-shading and additionally can handle bump-mapping on all surfaces (halo 1 only had bump-mapped level geometry (and for some reason, teleporter exits)) as well as in UE4, really fucking nice ambient occlusion. PBR (or physically-based rendering) also changes the way reflection maps work, which turns out to be extremely important to making convincing models. PBR effectively splits specular into two components: the "metalness" of a material and its "roughness". Roughness is pretty self-explanatory-- it's how rough the surface of a model is. Metalness is how much the reflection is affected by the color of the material-- for example, a mirror, which reflects almost none of its base color, would be made 100% metal in UE4. On the other hand, a clean whiteboard would be 100% nonmetal, even though the two materials have effectively the same reflectivity (or "roughness"). Here's how I set up my roughness and metalness maps for the plasma rifle: [t]http://i.imgur.com/rKkRV3P.png[/t] There is one other thing I did to make this look decent and not flat. Halo doesn't support bumpmapped weapons-- at least...not without [url=http://www.halomods.com/ips/index.php?/topic/848-opensauce-v400-release/]open sauce[/url]. So I made a heightmap with some gradients and the layers I made for the base texture aaaand threw them into a program called "Crazybump" that generates bumpmaps. Here's the result from that: [t]http://i.imgur.com/JPy0Win.jpg[/t]

So i'm about to get on Halo anyone on/wanna join?

That's one thing about crazybump that puts me off using it and that's the"puffy" looking normal maps that get exported just doesn't look too good to me

[QUOTE=Delta616;50106299]So i'm about to get on Halo anyone on/wanna join?[/QUOTE] If you asked like 20 minutes ago I would've be down to play a few rounds. But I've been up all night finishing projects and I must sleep. If you're online later tonight I'll be online for a while.

I miss the old armours that... were armour.

[QUOTE=Itszutak;50106137]In halo 1, shading was extremely basic-- if it didn't shade the entire model, or if it wasn't baked and didn't affect models, it only lit models-- there was no self-shading or shadow-casting beyond the fake texture shadows players and vehicles cast (which btw go through EVERYTHING) As a result MOST of your shading was done in the texture, as you can see in Bungie's texture there. Furthermore, everything was shaded the same way. All you had control over was how MUCH something reflected other stuff. Bungie did this with a "multipurpose" texture that also controlled the intensity of lights on a surface and (for covenant and multiplayer) what parts of a surface change color based on rank or player choice (blue and red elites use the same textures, but the multipurpose map combined with the elite's personal tags change its texture from white to whatever it needs to be). A multipurpose map looks like this, once split into r/g/b: [t]http://i.imgur.com/p8dbSFs.png[/t] [/QUOTE] I watched Dice's GDC talk on Battlefront last night and they use multipurpose maps for a lot of stuff. I only just heard about this sort of thing and it's blowing my mind. I need to learn how shaders work man. [editline]10th April 2016[/editline] Oh great, pageking with the most off-topic thing I could say.. [editline]10th April 2016[/editline] [URL="http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1023272/Photogrammetry-and-Star-Wars-Battlefront"]Link [/URL]to said talk [URL="http://www.frostbite.com/2016/03/photogrammetry-and-star-wars-battlefront/"]Link [/URL]to slides etc

[QUOTE=Delta616;50106299]So i'm about to get on Halo anyone on/wanna join?[/QUOTE] I'm up for playing

[QUOTE=Itauske Roken;50106304]That's one thing about crazybump that puts me off using it and that's the"puffy" looking normal maps that get exported just doesn't look too good to me[/QUOTE] yeah it's not the best, but it's the only thing I have on hand...When I start making my own assets I'll be able to bake normal maps using 3ds max and that will be so much nicer

Fuck assholes who box you in at your spawn on Warzone and don't destory core. There should be something to prevent that.

[QUOTE=Itszutak;50106137] [big post about textures] [/QUOTE] Yeah, I've tinkered a bit with texturing (but not much PBR), so that makes sense. The multi-channel textures are used really extensively throughout the later games too, they get heavy use for multiplayer colours and emblems. I've never really been able to make sense of them in a non-Blam-engine context (like implementing them in Blender or something) though.

[QUOTE=ElectricSquid;50107277]Yeah, I've tinkered a bit with texturing (but not much PBR), so that makes sense. The multi-channel textures are used really extensively throughout the later games too, they get heavy use for multiplayer colours and emblems. I've never really been able to make sense of them in a non-Blam-engine context (like implementing them in Blender or something) though.[/QUOTE] Luckily Guerilla has this helpful text for the halo 1 maps at least: [t]http://i.imgur.com/AP69BtO.png[/t]

Does Forge in 5 have auto turrets like 4 had?

[QUOTE=Itszutak;50106137]not quoting whole thing[/QUOTE] That normal map no offence looks bad. You would get better results by following this handy guide. [t]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16349584/proper_normals_creation.jpg[/t] Sorry if I came off as harsh, I just really hate crazybump.

[QUOTE=nomad1;50107588]That normal map no offence looks bad. You would get better results by following this handy guide. [t]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16349584/proper_normals_creation.jpg[/t] Sorry if I came off as harsh, I just really hate crazybump.[/QUOTE] no trust me I hate it too-- this was a quick first pass that I just wanted to show off. There's a lot I'd do to a second pass (like removing the illumination elements, for one) but I was happy enough with the results to post it. [url=http://i.imgur.com/UYcS3Kx.png]Usually my normal maps are a lot more conservative[/url], and use a hand-drawn heightmap with 50% gray like the tutorial there; here I got a bit lazy because it was around midnight when I finished that up.

[QUOTE=SpartanXC9;50107431]Does Forge in 5 have auto turrets like 4 had?[/QUOTE] Sadly no, that was for that Dominion gamemode.

[QUOTE=Killjoy;50108627]Sadly no, that was for that Dominion gamemode.[/QUOTE] From what i remember it could be used in other gamemodes like infection. Really mixed up the whole idea for customs.

[QUOTE=death2sarge;50108812]From what i remember it could be used in other gamemodes like infection. Really mixed up the whole idea for customs.[/QUOTE] I just meant that was the only reason we got that item in the first place. We don't have that gamemode so they got rid of it. Its a shame, it was really cool.