Halo 4
- Thread starter Rangers
- Start date
The Anniversary terminals had some sort of alphabet to unlock a secret waypoint terminal. Was just about to look up the alphanumeric decoder. 
Actually, looking back, it seems they first showed up in Halo Wars on a spherical keyboard.
I think this one is correct:
The H4 symbols look different.
Actually, looking back, it seems they first showed up in Halo Wars on a spherical keyboard.I think this one is correct:
The H4 symbols look different.
I see nothing wrong with the textures in the game, it's the filtering that could use improving. I also don't know anything about the loading since we haven't seen any loading from the final code.
Depends on the armor permutation. Some have it on the chest, some on the shoulder, etc, but yes I get where you're coming from.
There's no place for a knife on the Chief's armor... Yeah it's nitpicking but somehow it still doesn't feel right. It was okay or the Spartan-IIIs in Reach and I realize that they just wanted to keep a good gameplay mechanic, but why no sheet for the knife on the armor then?
Fall of Reach. The very first Halo novel that came out in like 2000-2001.
dragonelite
Veteran
They should have based Halo:Reach on the end of Fall of Reach and a part of First Strike and bring out expansion pack for the rest of the book or the complete book. The story would have been better if you ask me First Strike novel action packed from what i can remember.
Forge/Rendering Speculation
I have a strong suspicion that large portions of the buildings in the map "Complex" were assembled with Forge pieces do to some inconsistencies with the lighting.
I noticed that certain parts of the 'Complex' map's structures are receiving shadows and lighting that is not consistent with pre-baked GI such as you would typically see on static geometry that is built-in/modeled-in to the map., and I am wondering why that is?
For example, some shadows have a low resolution, grainy, flickery form of filtering that seems characteristic of real-time shadows:
Some foliage shadows even seem to move from swaying in the wind, cool!
Another example, certain base interiors are lit in such a way that if they were using baked GI in typical form of a light map with accurate diffuse inter-reflection, , they would have to be far brighter, no?
The sunlight still does seem to bounce in through some of the doorways, but not with the same fidelity of Light mapped GI; it's effect tapers off uniformly and shortly, seemingly like that of a point light. That seems to me like the spherical harmonic probe system that we were shown earlier when Forge was revealed. You know, the one that is regenerated in a second or two every time you switch between forge monitor and gameplay mode?
It could be that the lighting was not re-baked in this build since the last changes were made and this might be a way to quickly view an approximation of the lighting as a previsualization before it is baked into final static form. Perhaps this is used in the case of needing to put out a prototype or trade-show/preview build without spending time rebuilding lighting
However, more interestingly, and I could be jumping to conclusions, It could also be that either a large portion of that map was made in Forge or these structures are in some way dynamic (perhaps similar to the bases used in the Dominion gametype?). The structures themselves look as though they are assembled from modular forge pieces. I also noticed that some of the railings, walls and pipe pieces of the bases have their shadows disappear when you are more than 25ish feet away from them:
All these techniques are nothing new in general, but for Halo, they are.
Anyone else have an idea as to why they would seemingly arbitrarily change between multiple shadowing and lighting techniques? I noticed that character and vehicle lighting have a super crisp, almost 'signed distance field' looking shadows, while forge pieces and some dynamic foliage have noisy dynamic shadows, and other static geometry has the typical low res baked in lighting/shadowing from before.
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In addition, something about the terrain they showed off seems somewhat advanced over what they had before.
Not necessarily BF3 or Rage style virtual texturing but maybe the typical small set of tiling textures, mixed with some better procedural blend shader with special masks?
I have a strong suspicion that large portions of the buildings in the map "Complex" were assembled with Forge pieces do to some inconsistencies with the lighting.
I noticed that certain parts of the 'Complex' map's structures are receiving shadows and lighting that is not consistent with pre-baked GI such as you would typically see on static geometry that is built-in/modeled-in to the map., and I am wondering why that is?
For example, some shadows have a low resolution, grainy, flickery form of filtering that seems characteristic of real-time shadows:
Some foliage shadows even seem to move from swaying in the wind, cool!
Another example, certain base interiors are lit in such a way that if they were using baked GI in typical form of a light map with accurate diffuse inter-reflection, , they would have to be far brighter, no?
The sunlight still does seem to bounce in through some of the doorways, but not with the same fidelity of Light mapped GI; it's effect tapers off uniformly and shortly, seemingly like that of a point light. That seems to me like the spherical harmonic probe system that we were shown earlier when Forge was revealed. You know, the one that is regenerated in a second or two every time you switch between forge monitor and gameplay mode?
It could be that the lighting was not re-baked in this build since the last changes were made and this might be a way to quickly view an approximation of the lighting as a previsualization before it is baked into final static form. Perhaps this is used in the case of needing to put out a prototype or trade-show/preview build without spending time rebuilding lighting
However, more interestingly, and I could be jumping to conclusions, It could also be that either a large portion of that map was made in Forge or these structures are in some way dynamic (perhaps similar to the bases used in the Dominion gametype?). The structures themselves look as though they are assembled from modular forge pieces. I also noticed that some of the railings, walls and pipe pieces of the bases have their shadows disappear when you are more than 25ish feet away from them:
All these techniques are nothing new in general, but for Halo, they are.
Anyone else have an idea as to why they would seemingly arbitrarily change between multiple shadowing and lighting techniques? I noticed that character and vehicle lighting have a super crisp, almost 'signed distance field' looking shadows, while forge pieces and some dynamic foliage have noisy dynamic shadows, and other static geometry has the typical low res baked in lighting/shadowing from before.
--------------------------------------------------
In addition, something about the terrain they showed off seems somewhat advanced over what they had before.
Not necessarily BF3 or Rage style virtual texturing but maybe the typical small set of tiling textures, mixed with some better procedural blend shader with special masks?
Billy Idol
Legend
Is it the original halo in better graphics? Especially: is the soundtrack identical?
Kameradschaft
Regular
Frankie said on neogaf that the network structure is the same as the original CE and that's the reason there's lag when playing online...I guess I was lucky that I played it with a friend via system link where it was pretty much flawless.
Halo 4 will use a refined version of Reach's netcode which was pretty decent from what I've played.
Very well observerd. I'll try to check that out when I can, but I would not guess that they are ment to be terribly interactive during gameplay, but rather, they want to make those sections editable for modding.
That same pic is very good looking but I just noticed how the patches of grass are very obviously blocky. It's not something that jumps at you, but once you notice it it becomes very evident. So yeah, that grass mask is very low-res then. Still they must have a reasonably complex shader to generate those terrain textures. Maybe it is done in texture space and updated at run time ala BF3 or Trial Evo.
IGN Abandon map walkthrough: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7vwD0L0iWs
Is that motion blur I see, and depth of field in theatre mode?
Is that motion blur I see, and depth of field in theatre mode?
Hopefully I am not just being mislead by the quality of the video or overanalyzing. (<probably that,
)I am hoping that the dynamic lighting/shadowing techniques I pointed out indicate that sections of that map are built/moddable with forge.
I would love to know some more about this if anyone has any other possible explanations as I am sure there are other possibilities I could be overlooking other than pre-viz or forge.
I don't imagine that you would just put multiple dynamic lighting and shadowing techniques in your game without good reasons, especially given lightmapped GI's immense utility this console gen and, I imagine, the complexity in maintaining multiple methods.
I am not able to pick out any noticeable tiling or texture reuse as you might with the typical terrain tiling-texture blending,
but there also doesn't seem to be enough variety in the texture to indicate a Rage-style SVT with unique decal stamping and/or sculpting detail.
So I think you are probably right, or not too far-off.
Was there a presentation/paper with details on Trials Evo's terrain that I somehow missed?
I remember a few details mentioned in an interview with their programmer and some things mentioned here and there on their forum, but I am curious about more specifics of their terrain rendering.
Frankie says they have the ability for this in engine (probably in a debug menu) that they use for press shots. They have had this since Halo 3 at least, so I don't have any reason to assume they included the functionality in theatre mode as a feature for the final build.
I would love to have the ability though.
Come on Halo 4 Theatre mode, impress me!
Wishfull thinking:
Let me shoot in some higher bit depth or .RAW, add EXIF data with game info and let me have direct access to gbuffers.
(Just imagine what you could do in After-Effects/nuke for machinima or montages if you could record the depth channel into video!)
More realistic suggetions:
Exposure and postprocessing control. oh and FOV.
Pay atention to the grass patches on the very bottom of that screenshot. They are shaped on very pariticular grid-like way that leads me to believe their coverege is determined by some low-res monocromatic alpha mask of sorts.
About Trial's engine, all I know comes from a couple interviews and Sebbbi's comentary on this very same forum.
