Halo 4 engine downgrades

[Devious]

Doesn't mean much if it's coming off a non technical staff.

" Though the water is in a near final state, the effects I'm imagining are really a technical mixture of bump mapping, tessellation, and other technical tricks that are apparently well outside the realm of my understanding."

This should be better - http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-halo-reach-tech-interview?page=2

Digital Foundry: You've discussed many of your systems in public before for SIGGRAPH or GDC, but we've never heard much about your water tech. It's obviously been radically upgraded for Reach. What are the principles here - do you use the 360's tesselator, for example?

Chris Tchou: It's a pretty big topic, but in a nutshell, it basically calculates the waves in an offscreen texture as the super-position of many splash/wave particles. It uses the GPU tesselator to convert it into a mesh on screen, and runs a custom refraction/reflection/fog/foam shader to render it. For Reach we spent a lot of time optimising the heck out of it, so we could use it on a much grander scale. We sped up the shader several-fold, turning off things like refraction when you're far away, and stopped animation when you weren't looking at it. The visual improvements were mainly the result of more polish in setting up the shaders.

 

[antwan]

...

Because, frankly, if you cannot see where the gameplay footage in Halo 4 looks better than Halo 3 and ODST in particular you are not qualified to make the statements you are.

Which would explain the baiting and lack of substance and dodges when confronted with the silly rhetoric.

B3D was mentioned often on gaf, and I found it interesting to dig through this forum. I was never able to register here before because it was not possible in my browser I think (safari); the registration page did not display correctly. In anyway, there are a few posters here who would qualify as 360 fanbaws, sorry, but your name is one that I remember from older threads, but it could also be somebody else. Not fanbaws perse, but people who would argue that games like uncharted 4 or god of war 3 are nothing to write home about technically, while praising the lighting model used in Gears of War 2.

Still, I am not claiming the game is bad looking. It looks wonderful, while still retaining the Halo feel. I believe that in itself is one of the biggest achievements.

The latest footage looks absolutely amazing btw

Often, games that have real technological progress and as a result appear even better then previous games are often written of as: "it's because of the art"
And in this case, a lot of technological features from previous games are missing, and the main thing the game has going for it is better art, but this time the fanbaws think it is actually a technological achievement ?

Again, Halo4 looks better than Reach and more so the other Halo games. But you cannot ignore the fanbaw factor here. Try comparing 4 with Reach and you will see the main difference is in the art.

I knew I had seen the self shadowing before so to me that was no improvement, I didn't know it was cut.

Also, read this:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-halo-reach-tech-analysis-article
Then you will understand the downgrades from a technical perspective.

From a technical perspective, Halo: Reach is undoubtedly a colossal improvement over the previous games in the series: higher resolution without sacrificing HDR, tangibly improved poly counts, insane use of particles and alpha, far higher levels of dynamic lighting, four times the draw distance, four times the amount of enemy units... the list is seemingly never-ending. But for all its technical achievements, it's clearly still a Halo game. It looks like one, it plays like one - and that's all by design.

 

[BadTB25]

At antwan.

Calling people "fanbaws" is not helping your case here.

I'd go back and re-read your original post and try to understand why some of the wording on your post is inflammatory.

 

[antwan]

At antwan.

Calling people "fanbaws" is not helping your case here.

I'd go back and re-read your original post and try to understand why some of the wording on your post is inflammatory.

I tell it exactly like it is.
The improvement from Halo: Reach to Halo4 is 90% art.
Now we have people claiming that the Halo HDR was not really special or useful, and that the motion blur was only near the edges so it didn't matter. Plus deliberately forgetting Halo: Reach happened and insisting on Halo3 vs 4 comparisons. Yeah, that is really neutral and nothing "fanbaw" at all right?

 

[AlNom]

I tell it exactly like it is.

As you see it.

The improvement from Halo: Reach to Halo4 is 90% art.

Since your eyes can see into the engine, there really is nowhere to go from here.