Halo: Reach

[Acert93]

I don't think it would work. Everyone would spawn with Spartan Lasers, rockets, or snipers. I don't have a problem with power weapons placed on the map. It gives something to control and gain advantage. Problems arise only when they give too much advantage, as demonstrated by the dual wielding fiasco in Halo 2. Halo 3 was better in this regard.

Of course, Halo CE was best of all here IMO. Every weapon was useful in the right circumstances, and there weren't really any redundant weapons. The fact that Bungie keeps making a point of this when talking about Reach is an encouraging sign I think.

That can be worked around by a) leaving power weapons at objectives (i.e. obtain an objective/capture point get access to a new weapon) and b) limiting the load outs--even total weapons available.

The last point is pretty much what Halo does already: you spawn and everyone makes a made dash to the rifle and nades. Why not have a "armory" center in the home base? Much better than a Spartan Laser spawning ... on a grassy knoll???!!!!

 

[LightHeaven]

Diminishing returns in regards to poly budgets (e.g. the silhouette between a 100 poly circle and 1000 poly circle is hard to distinguish) and a lot of detail is baked into the normals and textures. Tada!

They're using the absolutely industry standard method of creating a multi-million poly model in Zbrush to use for normal mapping and that's it, don't expect any fancy new tech stuff here.

And the cutscene was in-engine and using ingame assets, I think we're far beyond the point where it could be doubted.

Right, i also expected this to be the case, just got really impressed by the vidoc because i couldn't spot any difference beetween the million+ polys model and the ingame one at all... And that's not usually the case, even thought they look close enough you can almost always tell they are not the same model...

But, however, maybe it's the video compression hiding details that would be otherwise noticeable.

 

[warb]

I wish they (bungie and/or media) wouldn't use terms like "near infinite" because some people will latch onto it and parrot it all over the place thus decreasing the signal:noise ratio. It should be obvious to everyone that no game can have "near infinite" anything.

Having said that, a large increase (3 in H3 to 20 in Reach) in the number of dynamic lights sounds awesome. This gen has shown me just much better good lighting makes a game look. I think it is very worthwhile for devs to spend resources here.

Perhaps their "deferred lighting technique" allows for tons of dynamic light sources, more than necessary, and 20-40 is what they typically have.

 

[warb]

Right, i also expected this to be the case, just got really impressed by the vidoc because i couldn't spot any difference beetween the million+ polys model and the ingame one at all... And that's not usually the case, even thought they look close enough you can almost always tell they are not the same model...

But, however, maybe it's the video compression hiding details that would be otherwise noticeable.

What about the 3 or 4 million polygons over Halo 3 bit; were they talking the overall polygon count of everything combined? Polygons were mentioned a lot in the ViDoc, lol.

 

[Alucardx23]

What about the 3 or 4 million polygons over Halo 3 bit; were they talking the overall polygon count of everything combined? Polygons were mentioned a lot in the ViDoc, lol.

That must be 4,000,000 divided by 30 frames or 133,333 polygons per frame more than Halo 3.

 

[dragonelite]

Great post and I completely agree.A combination of both would be quite welcome..Bungie did say they were going to be a few surprises to the mp formula so im excited to learn more about that.Just wondering, do you think Bungie would include destructible enviornments for mp? Not on a BF BC2 level of destruction but I'd say around 50% would be more then enough for me..Another thing I'd love to have in mp is the ability to customize your weapons color, different attachments, etc..What do you think about it?

Wasn't destruction already confirmed at X10 they showed the multiplayer there behind closed doors.
I could have swear destructible walls were mentioned.

 

[warb]

That must be 4,000,000 divided by 30 frames or 133,333 polygons per frame more than Halo 3.

I misheard. It was "4 times the amount of polygons".

 

[dragonelite]

I misheard. It was "4 times the amount of polygons".

In the vidoc they mentioned they had 4 times the polygons to work with on models.
And that Reach is pushing 4 millions more polygon at average then halo 3.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Yeah, the two are separate things; the increased model detail and the overall scene detail are not entirely related because of the new impostor LOD system.

 

[warb]

A few ViDoc grabs, pinched from here, showing nice close-up detail:

 

[RenegadeRocks]

The motion blur looks great. The gun quality has not yet reached the KZ2 levels, but the killer lighting makes me drool at the footage again n again .

Also, all the untextured footage shown has occlusion on gray characters. Is SSAO in the game?

 

[Laa-Yosh]

It's been previously concluded that yes, there's some sort of SSAO going on; Reach is using deferred pre-pass lighting so all the necessary buffers and the "free" time to do some post processing are there.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Love seeing stuff like that. I'm probably an atypical player in that I liked to get up close on scenery to get a better look at what the artists have done.

And I'm always disappointed when I see that it's almost always a texture that loses all illusion of depth as soon as you get close and/or blurs heavily as soon as you get close.

Glad to see they have even small details using poly's. Texture could be better, but it's a console, so not much they can do about that.

Regards,
SB

 

[ShadowWolf64]

Love seeing stuff like that. I'm probably an atypical player in that I liked to get up close on scenery to get a better look at what the artists have done.

And I'm always disappointed when I see that it's almost always a texture that loses all illusion of depth as soon as you get close and/or blurs heavily as soon as you get close.

Glad to see they have even small details using poly's. Texture could be better, but it's a console, so not much they can do about that.

Regards,
SB

Textures will look better since they are using placeholder textures in the vidoc that we've seen..

:smile:

 

[nightshade]

The motion blur looks great.

Its just a Camera motion blur

 

[dragonelite]

Textures will look better since they are using placeholder textures in the vidoc that we've seen..

:smile:

I like the part in the vidoc around the 4:05 mark.
It shows how much a area changes when devs get further with the game.

And im drooling over the skyboxes to epic storm is epic

 

[ShadowWolf64]

I like the part in the vidoc around the 4:05 mark.
It shows how much a area changes when devs get further with the game.

And im drooling over the skyboxes to epic storm is epic

The skyboxes do look pretty darn good.I love the green colored tint on the DMR's scope as it looks cool.The shotgun also looks quite menacing as well.Im hoping the shotgun in Reach has as much range as the shotty in Halo CE does...I've had plenty of epic mid-range kills with the shotty in Halo CE...

 

[TurnDragoZeroV2G]

Its just a Camera motion blur

As in dependent only on movement of the camera, or do you mean screen-space blur?

More here

 

[LightHeaven]

What about the 3 or 4 million polygons over Halo 3 bit; were they talking the overall polygon count of everything combined? Polygons were mentioned a lot in the ViDoc, lol.

Did they said 3 or 4 millions more polygons than halo3 ?

I understood that as 3-4 times the poly count in halo 3 and just assumed Halo 3 had incredibly low poly counts for a 360 game (Which kinda does)

 

[LightHeaven]

A few ViDoc grabs, pinched from here, showing nice close-up detail:

Whoa... If they are able to maintain that amount of detail on pretty much everything its going to be really impressive...

There's a screenshoot that shows some sandbags that also got me impressed by how detailed they were, i mean, looked even as a waste to have so much detail on a sandbag XD