Halo Master Chief Collection [H:MCC] [XO, XBSX|S, PC, XGP]

Who wants to get on that grind for level 50 in Halo 2 lol? Just kidding, it was almost impossible leveling past 40. I remember when I got my 34 for the first time in Team Slayer and I almost cried. Greatest moment ever. Halo 2 ranking system is still GOAT.

Ranking2.jpg
 
Heh, I remember playing H2 MP on XBox Live on launch day. Prior to that, everyone had always played Halo MP on a LAN with real people. The first few games most people just ran around talking to each other "oohing and awwing" about how freakin cool it was. Was pretty incredible at the time.
 
I went to LAN parties for both Halo 2 & 3. We did 4v4s, 2v2s, and 1v1s and it was pretty damn intense. I wish I could have gone to actual events over in Anaheim but at the time I was still very young and going to school so my parents pretty much saw it as a waste of time.

Without sounding too much like an old man yelling at clouds, I sure do hope they revive the competitive Halo scene and put it back on the circuit. I like the COD scene but there is only so much I can take of it without getting all nostalgic.
 
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MS recently had a Halo tournament...did you watch it? It was about a month or two ago.

The last BIG tournament they held that I remember was Halo Global Championship but that was an FFA tournament (A pretty good FFA tournament. Shout-out to Ace and Pistola). The next one is the RTX tournament which should be pretty big but isn't enough to save a game that didn't even last 6 months. The tournaments they hold in their MS stores aren't enough either.

This is why I can't wait for the MCC and play Halo 2 online again. Even though MLG likes to tweet and tease the Halo community about holding events I like the tweet that Sundance put on his twitter the day after the MCC was announced. Frankie even chimed in on GAF. I'm already seeing old pros getting excited about playing and possibly competing in Halo 2 with guys like Ogre 2 and FearitSelf. Even Nadeshot, who is probably the biggest Call of Duty player on the face of planet, is excited to play Halo 2 again. MS needs to hold a lot more tournaments such as their Global Championships except make it more than an FFA tournament. Make it 4v4s and/or 2v2s allowing a ton of teams to compete and win a big prize pool. That's how you make the game stay relevant when you have people wanting to get better and compete. That's what also makes a true-skill ranking system more important like the one in Halo 2 and 3 when you actually have something to play for rather than just losing and still earning credits.

I don't know... I'm just rambling at this point trying to hold onto the past. Trying to hold out for another 5 months for the MCC sucks.
 
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Heh, there was nothing like Halo CE LAN parties back in 2001/2002. Every Friday, about 15 coworkers+friends would converge on my house after work with TVs, Xboxes, network switches, Ethernet cables, pizza, beer, etc. We would battle until early in the morning. Then crash out for a few hours, get up, eat, and go at it again. While great, there is no way Xbox Live can duplicate the fun, intensity, camaraderie, and general awesomeness of playing a game in person with your friends.

LOL, I still remember the bitching: "Somebody go Blue team!" "Quit f-ing screen watching!" and also the sound of 16 pistols cocking at the start of a match just like it was yesterday. Halo CE was something truly special.
 
Heh, there was nothing like Halo CE LAN parties back in 2001/2002. Every Friday, about 15 coworkers+friends would converge on my house after work with TVs, Xboxes, network switches, Ethernet cables, pizza, beer, etc. We would battle until early in the morning. Then crash out for a few hours, get up, eat, and go at it again. While great, there is no way Xbox Live can duplicate the fun, intensity, camaraderie, and general awesomeness of playing a game in person with your friends.

LOL, I still remember the bitching: "Somebody go Blue team!" "Quit f-ing screen watching!" and also the sound of 16 pistols cocking at the start of a match just like it was yesterday. Halo CE was something truly special.
:cool: I would love to live that, the only similar thing I lived was going every single day after work to a cyber cafe where I spent like 5€ a day, quickly checking the forums, internet, email..., and playing in LAN parties with the cyber cafe regulars.

This was back in 2005, early 2006. But I got the Xbox with Halo 2 in November 2004 and all I got to know was Xbox Live.

Which reminds of your previous post.

Those were the days. I remember my most casual friend watching me playing Halo 2 and telling me "Those are the games that are worth to be played!". "That's what it's fun about games".

And he wasn't even a gamer. But Halo 2 maps/game modes were so fun that the game carried people away and won them over, even if they weren't core gamers.

Plus listening people's voices and watching their nicks and so on, was interesting then.

I remember a guy who seemed to like my nick or whatever and he never shot me, so I didn't open fire either. :D
 
Didn't know this but apparently Frankie/Stinkles said H2A campaign may not necessarily be 1080? And he blamed the 2nd graphics engine buffer? But all MP will be 1080/60. And he said the goal is 1080 on campaign.

http://www.inquisitr.com/1317848/halo-2-campaign-in-master-chief-collection-might-not-be-1080p/
crucially, all four games run at 60 frames per second. But 343 still isn't sure if it'll get all four games to output at 1080p resolution. It's looking good for Halo 1, 3 and 4, but Halo 2 is the sticking point, which I find slightly bizarre.

"We're heading for 1080p," Ries says. "That's what we want to do, but I can't commit to that right now.

"Some of the levels in Halo 4 are already running at 1080p. I'm confident some of the games will get there. I'm not confident in all of them."

"The only open question right now is Halo 2 Anniversary mode," O'Connor adds, "because we have the two frame buffers, and we're doing Xbox One level of graphics. The idea is we try and get it to 1080p but we may have to sacrifice the resolution on that to have that mode. Our target is to get to 1080p."

Oh and I guess Alstrong/Htupolev already counted H2A to be currently 1440X810/810P

That's only about HALF 1080P in pixel count, long way to go...

This is probably old news to some as it's been raging at GAF but I wasn't aware.
 
I mean down to the code/implementation. :p They might need to rebuild it from scratch.

The 360 water was pretty specific to it, using memexport and the tesselator HW, for XBoxOne the effect (and better presumable) will need moving to computer shaders and possibly domain/hull shaders.

Deano
 
Didn't know this but apparently Frankie/Stinkles said H2A campaign may not necessarily be 1080? And he blamed the 2nd graphics engine buffer? But all MP will be 1080/60. And he said the goal is 1080 on campaign.
.

Without making any comment at all on res/framerate etc. its worth noting that sometimes teams have different goals. It sounds like the twin graphic engine idea has been given high importance for Halo 2 whereas Halo 3 and 4 goal seems more performance orientated.

So its not hard to imagine that would be at different points and facing different challenges at the moment, as they are being done by different teams with apparently slightly difference objectives.

Deano
 
It sounds like the twin graphic engine idea has been given high importance for Halo 2 whereas Halo 3 and 4 goal seems more performance orientated.

I thought it was more that all the games except H2A are in (the original) "Xbox 360 level" graphics, just in high res (Halo Anniversary (stand in for CE), 3, and 4 are all on 360, and 2 is the one getting updated with this collection). H2A campaign on the other hand, is aspiring to "Xbox One level" graphics. And is the only title in the collection to do so.

The idea of an anniversary edition is totally rebuilt graphics, not just a simple uprezzing. Only Halo 2 is Anniversary edition in this collection.

This jibes with Frankies comment. Which blames the issue not just on two framebuffers, but also "Xbox One level of graphics", unique to H2A.

"The only open question right now is Halo 2 Anniversary mode," O'Connor adds, "because we have the two frame buffers, and we're doing Xbox One level of graphics. The idea is we try and get it to 1080p but we may have to sacrifice the resolution on that to have that mode. Our target is to get to 1080p."

I'm not totally up on how the MP works at all. From what I've seen is it possibly really original Xbox level graphics for all those (not 360 level)? Then, I believe there are 6 MP levels that are given the Anniversary treatment (H2 ones I suppose), so, fully brought into the modern era.
 
The 360 water was pretty specific to it, using memexport and the tesselator HW, for XBoxOne the effect (and better presumable) will need moving to computer shaders and possibly domain/hull shaders.

Deano

hm... Is "Stream Out" the equivalent to memexport?

I'm not totally up on how the MP works at all. From what I've seen is it possibly really original Xbox level graphics for all those (not 360 level)? Then, I believe there are 6 MP levels that are given the Anniversary treatment (H2 ones I suppose), so, fully brought into the modern era.

For multiplayer you're getting the vanilla renderer from CE, 2, 3, 4, and the 6 remade H2 maps (running in a different engine than H2A) at 1080p60.

Oh and I guess Alstrong/Htupolev already counted H2A to be currently 1440X810/810P

Mind you, it's just the E3 video, which also didn't hold a candle to 60fps either (+ tearing). Curiously, the screenshots on Waypoint look like they were rendered at 900p and with a better edge detection.

WIP etc etc.
 
How can anyone make technical sense out of BS marketing "buzz words" like Xbox One level graphics? What the hell does something like that even mean?
 
Its pretty obvious he is saying that because the other games included are high res 360 games.
By saying Xbox One Level he means current gen graphics. It could have been worded better but it isnt BS just because it came from a Ms employee.
 
How can anyone make technical sense out of BS marketing "buzz words" like Xbox One level graphics? What the hell does something like that even mean?

About as much sense as CEA being 360-level. :p That said, there's a lot of things they can burn performance on such as shadowmaps & dynamic lighting, which were prevalent in CEA
just not AF
.


It's never AF
.
 
How can anyone make technical sense out of BS marketing "buzz words" like Xbox One level graphics? What the hell does something like that even mean?

Should be obvious? Different from Xbox 360 level graphics?

About as much sense as CEA being 360-level.

I dunno what this means but I thought CEA looked good? Just a cut below Halo 4 but well better than 3 if I recall.

For multiplayer you're getting the vanilla renderer from CE, 2, 3, 4, and the 6 remade H2 maps (running in a different engine than H2A) at 1080p60.

Hmm, what does that mean? Did all those games use the same renderer on 360 (obviously not)? Or they will on Xbox One?

I guess I should do my homework before asking all these questions but, it's confusing. There was a good post on GAF summing it up but I lost it. But it seemed like one of the screens I saw of collection MP looked like original Xbox level graphics, not even 360 level! But surely that cant be.
 
Hmm, what does that mean? Did all those games use the same renderer on 360 (obviously not)? Or they will on Xbox One?

Vanilla meaning it's a basic port of the engines.

Halo CE MP was not updated (nor included) for CEA. The renderer for MP will be the same old one.

H2 was never ported to 360. You're getting the same old renderer & engine for MP. The MP for the remade H2A maps are on a different engine.

The MP uses the same old renderers and engines from each respective game.
 
That all sounds very confusing. Are we really getting a mish-mash of old and new renderers for H2A, depending in which map we're playing? Something tells me this is going to be a mess, visually.
 
That all sounds very confusing. Are we really getting a mish-mash of old and new renderers for H2A, depending in which map we're playing? Something tells me this is going to be a mess, visually.

Halo CEA MP = Halo CE MP = Halo CE Engine
Halo 2 MP = Halo 2 engine
Halo 2A MP = new engine = 6 remade maps
Halo 3 = Halo 3 Engine
Halo 4 = Halo 4 Engine

Halo CEA SP = Halo CE engine + new shiny
Halo 2A SP = Halo 2 engine + new shiny


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I'm not entirely clear as to why they're bothering with the remade H2A MP maps tbh. It might make sense if they plan to add more maps throughout the year.

6/26 H2 maps... timing & scheduling might just have been all wrong to get it all done, but I guess if those are really the main maps that the hardcore H2 MP folks ever played, then that's that. *shrug*
 
What the hell, I'm gonna buy it anyway. Been kinda jonesing for some Halo.

We should "get the band back together" and have a B3D Halo romp.
 
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