Halo 3 Beta: May 16th - June 7th

I'm curious now. What is special about being MP? If you are somehow worried about response time, lag will kill it anyway. So for me, MP games are the ones for which I would care less about 60fps.

 

Mistakes in a competitive game have a bigger penalty than mistakes in a SP game. You never want to be denied your kill because of a performance issue. Pro gamers almost always play at about the lowest detail settings and at low resolutions just maintain constant fluidity.

MP games tend to be more chaotic and faster paced. Your searching around the screen a lot more, doing a lot more precision aiming, and generally the world moves around you a lot faster and more often. The more movement there is in your view port the more you notice the difference between 30 and 60.

Fast moving objects and projectiles also look much better at 60fps and MP games tend to have a lot of that going on.

 

I'm thinking MP will looks good, but not awesome when all is said and done because of the scale Bungie is going for in the SP game, and they need to keep things consistent across the game.

 

Yeah, I swear I read one of the Bungie guys say they were building off Halo 2's engine for multiplayer while creating a new engine for campaign, but I can't seem to dig up a souce to confirm it. Does anyone know in what weekly update or whatever that was stated? I recall hearing about it back when MS released the Halo 3 trailer at E3 and people insisting it wasn't game engine based on comparisons to early MP alpha shots.

 

Frankie says it's the brand new spankin' Halo 3 engine. The alpha had a lot of Halo 2 place holders, however, and the art style has really remained unchanged.

 

That's not possible, we didn't see Alpha shots until months AFTER that trailer.

 

As per Frankie. Personally, Bungie always delivers so I am not worried. I just want the game to play FANTASTIC.

 

I am so disappointed in Halo 3 graphics I don't even know where to begin. I'm really hoping there's a HUGE turnaround from what we've seen. I mean look at this:

Halo 2:





Halo 3:





The lighting is vastly improved and slight improvement in textures but the models and geometry are practically unchanged. Not to mention the animation in the video looks straight out of Halo 1 and 2.

 

Alpha

 

That's because so much IS out of Halo 1 & 2 - the first person model, textures, sounds, animations - this is from a build a year old built primarily to be stable and to be subject to rigorous play testing. Even so, we can already see some impressive stuff. The Spartan models are fantastic, almost CG quality, which ironically makes them seem out of place in the very simplistic environments of the alpha. Also, the subtle animation tweaks are nice. Adaptive procedural animation makes postures on hills far more natural, and stepping AROUND objects to avoid clipping is pretty awesome. The Lighting and shadow model, especially on Snowbound, is excellent. And by far my favorite thing is the presence of what looks to be full AF.

The game, even in this year old build, can still look better than many next-gen games released today.



Here we can see a good application of real time reflection in the visor, as well as very nice ambient lighting conditions.

http://images.xboxyde.com/gallery/public/5195/798_0005.jpg

Another shot demonstrating how well things are lit - the subtle HDR is a nice touch.

http://images.xboxyde.com/gallery/public/5195/798_0053.jpg



Good examples of the adaptive animation.

http://images.xboxyde.com/gallery/public/5195/798_0058.jpg

That soft shader is just so amazing to me. Better than lost planet even because it persists.

http://images.xboxyde.com/gallery/public/5195/798_0060.jpg

More advanced particle system in action.

http://images.xboxyde.com/gallery/public/5195/798_0068.jpg

Another demonstration of how great the Spartan models are. I'm positive they're the same as the E3 trailer model. Also, the bubble shield refraction is really nice.

http://images.xboxyde.com/gallery/public/5195/798_0084.jpg

Again, the lighting and shadowing on the Spartans is so close to CG quality in my eye.

Anyway, I believe that the Vidoc showed plenty of promising elements.

 

I wish they would redo or get rid the the Master Chief shield effects. The yellow sci-fi effects make the game look cheesy. I'm sure they could come up with something way cooler, less distracting and more realistic. Sure it helps to know if your hitting a guy, it justs seems makes the game look too much like the old Halos.

 

Looks like the same E3 06 Model to me.

Frankie said that the most 'recent' footage was of Snowbound, which did look the best out of the video.

 

Kyleb: The closest thing I could remember to admission that the SP and MP engines are being developed separately is from a Swedish magazine that did an expose on Halo 3 awhile back when the first MP screens came out sometime in November:

Source... There are scans there, but they are almost 5 months old. Mods please advise for removal if required.

I thought it was just implied that they were using ported code to get the MP up and running from the reuse of Halo 2 assets to the animation systems and just the overall similarity. It's not as though they need to reinvent the wheel - just get it to fit right so they can get moving and plug-in the newer tech and assets later.

Keep in mind the above quotation is a translation. I think the gist of it is that they're adding to the multiplayer build from a base code (Halo 2 for instance) rather than developing ground-up as is the case for the single player.

This must be the first time I've ever heard someone complain about shields, much less being cheesy or "unrealistic".

 

I don't think he's talking about the shields themselves he's refering to the actual effect they're using to represent the shield. And I agree with him, they do stick out along with a host of other problems with the graphics.

 

Exactly... I've never heard of any complaints regarding the look of the shields, much less being cheesy or unrealistic.


...


I'm sure they'll tweak it. I mean, even the laser looks pretty crappy at the moment. What's silly is complaining about realism. You might as well complain about the laser beam being visible. *shrug*

 

Man I hear you, I really do. Do you honestly think what we've seen matches the E3 model?

http://images.xboxyde.com/gallery/public/3291/798_0002.jpg
http://images.xboxyde.com/gallery/public/3291/798_0001.jpg

That model is on a whole nother level I'm sorry.

Now I understand what people were saying about DOA4 when I was defending it tooth and nail. So far this seriously looks like Halo 2 HD to me. I know things can change, I know it's an Alpha but that still doesn't make this look anymore impressive. I love the gameplay we've seen... I know Bungie will knock this out of the park from that perspective... I'm just hoping to be wowed by the complete package (graphics included).

 

No it looks nothing close, but we haven't seen SP so there's no comparison. I doubt that model was meant for the MP engine.

Have a little faith in Bungie, they haven't let us down before on the GFX front.

 

I recall that, except it was GRAW not Halo 3. Seriously I never remember that being said about Halo.

I do recall a statement on how they ended up ripping out things from Halo 2 for performance and they were pleased they could do it now, and that they have SP and MP teams. But the weekly updates drops so little information it's hard to keep track what was said vs. what was implied vs. what was imagined.

 

I'm going to reply to this knowing that I'll probably be told no or get ignored, but I still think I should try like.

Anyway, as the picture I posted above, I'm pretty sure they're the same model.

Obivously you're not seeing the tiny details like tiny little bumps in the metal, but you got to put into consideration that the camera isn't as close, different lighting, not a proper reflective visor, possibly some LOD, capped of a video with smaller resolution etc etc etc. To me anyway, they look like the same model, or at least very similar.