TurnDragoZeroV2G
Regular
Agreed here, as well.
Though I also take that to the extreme, in that I want to see somebody do a PS3/360 game that is rendered at 480p, but with 4xAA, suitable level of AF, an art style tailored to the lower resolution (i.e., not too-high frequency details), and more costly effects, high quality shadow filtering, large and high res shadow maps, SSAO, extensive use of parallax mapping, etc. Just to see what could be done.
Not for Halo Reach, of course, but for some game, somewhere.
But I'm insane, so...
Not for Halo Reach, of course, but for some game, somewhere.
But I'm insane, so...
(((interference))) said:
I wouldn't really consider anything their photomode does post-processing. It changes one aspect of the post-processing the game normally uses (a curve where they switch out the linear piecewise approx. for the real thing), but otherwise it's just rendering with a large number of tiles and resolving... with all the benefits that ultimately entails. But they don't switch out their lighting system, use higher-res models and textures than are in the game normally, etc...
But I digress...
dragonelite
Veteran
They could do it i mean last year wasn't over 56% of the users playing gears of war 2 on a sd tv.
And how would it effect the final image being upscaled to 720P?
But making the weapon hit scan save some system resources because it doesnt have to calculate a lot of ballistic stuff. Not yet learned enough to know what im talking about
(((interference)))
Veteran
But making the weapon hit scan save some system resources because it doesnt have to calculate a lot of ballistic stuff. Not yet learned enough to know what im talking about
I think it'll be somewhat offset by the fact that the covenant weaponry now fires plasma bolts that cast light and shadow around the environment during flight.
Thought that will also probably mean that spawning with interesting weapons will once again be disabled, like in H3 where you couldn't spawn with spikers or plasma rifles instead of the AR.
ShadowRunner
Veteran
Im talking about how choices on the graphics side affect gameplay. My point is that having better IQ doesnt have to come at the expense of gameplay like some keep on suggesting.
I dont want to get into what graphical features are better than others, im simply saying having 40 enemies on screen doesnt mean you have to have bad IQ. What good or bad IQ is is another matter entirely.
Also, when i talk of IQ im not reffering to resolution alone.
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Billy Idol
Legend
When you have 40 enemies/vehicles on screen, does this influence the decision "to tile or not to tile"?
If I understand correctly, such a huge number of (supposedly) high poly characters/objects could cause a massive performance hit in an already taxing high poly scenario (when you tile to fit to the edram for AA)...making the AA non-free in this case!?
Another question: if they would use tesselation...does tesselation (i.e. increase polys) has any interactions (increase complexity?, performance cost?) with tiling?
If I understand correctly, such a huge number of (supposedly) high poly characters/objects could cause a massive performance hit in an already taxing high poly scenario (when you tile to fit to the edram for AA)...making the AA non-free in this case!?
Another question: if they would use tesselation...does tesselation (i.e. increase polys) has any interactions (increase complexity?, performance cost?) with tiling?
ShadowRunner
Veteran
Like DrJay24 said, thats true if you have AA levels etc to still give good IQ. If your IQ is bad a lot of your work on other graphical areas is wasted.
Are you sure? Are you a dev? What you're suggesting seems to defy common sense.
Well it sounds like you have a definition of "bad IQ", and it seems like to you that means anything sub 720p w/o AA because those are the checkbox features you specifically mentioned. If you have other ideas, please share them.
Some of you guys are simply unrealistic. You want everything with no compromises.
For me, fun gameplay is most important of all. Everything else falls into the "nice but not mist important" category.
ShadowRunner
Veteran
How does it defy common sense exactly? If a developer realy wanted to they could cut other graphical features to attain better IQ, rather than change the number of enemies, what about that doesnt make sense? Halo could run at 1080p if they wanted it to with the same amount of enemies, it may mean the graphics are scaled back to a point they look terrible but thats the whole balancing act.
I gave an example of sacrificing lighting to attain 720p 2xAA, which would be trading 2 graphical features rather than a tradeoff between graphics and gameplay. I wasnt saying Halo, or any game of any scale, has to be 720p im simply challenging the idea that to enable a certain level of IQ MUST mean less enemies. I couldnt care less what resolution halo is as long as it looks good.
I never suggested i wanted everything with no compimises, im saying that to attain better IQ its possible to comprimise other graphical areas rather than gameplay.
If people dissagree thats fine but in that case please put forth a reason why better IQ MUST come at the expense of gameplay, and that its impossilbe that they could, just maybe, reduce graphical fidelity in other areas to attain it, regardless of whether you personnally think they should make tradeoffs with other graphical features or not.
I really think people are being way too over sensitive, especially when i havent said that bungie should make any tradeoffs to achieve better IQ than halo 3, just that they probably could without sacrificing gameplay. Once again i am not saying Halo Reach should be a specific level of resolution or AA! No, im not a dev, but if you are could you please explain why what i have stated is unrealistic.
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Really? As long as you do not sacrifice HD res and/or AA for some hard to notice feature like eDRAM busting HDR, then all is good. I doubt the new team will have any issues getting the engine running "check box" features along with traditional Halo gameplay (whatever that is, shooting aliens?).
GTA4 has 720P 2x AA in a huge open world city filled with cars and people, I'm sure Bungie can manage it with the environments we normally see in Halo games, which are not all that big or densely populated.
The bar is not set all that high for Bungie, they are lagging way behind in the tech dept up until now. The only reason they get a pass is they always make money. Some of us are more interested in the games (which included the graphics) and not the accounting books.
ShadowWolf64
Regular
Sounds like you never played any of the Halo games before since Halo does feature pretty big levels to roam around in.Secondly, Bungie never got a pass in the tech dept because it is widely known that they were having problems during the development of Halo 3.Halo 3 was originally being built as an original xbox title and 33% of the games budget was allocated towards that.
MS needed a Halo game for the xbox 360 and Bungie simply didn't have the time to update all of the art and engine assets to a proper next-gen level.Not only that, but Bungie chose to implement an hardware taxing HDR lighting method that reduced the overall image quality of the game.Even then, with those development problems, Halo 3 is still one of the better looking games out there.
Now, Bungie has an all new game engine developed from the ground up to take advantage of the xbox 360 and the graphics for Reach are already far better then anything we've seen from Halo 3.
Bungie seems to be very focused on creating an excellent Halo game as they're giving the weapons all new sound effects, armor abilities that greatly affect combat, a new animation system, etc.As a Halo fan, Im genuinely excited about what Halo Reach has to offer as a complete package from excellent graphics to outstanding gameplay.
Graphics serve gameplay. There are no such magic bullets as "You can go sub-HD if you use 4xMSAA or 2xMSAA+60Hz."
I am not one to defend Bungie approach to Halo 3 (going for a clean, colorful look with large open areas + large objects like forerunner objects and not using AA, filtering, and going sub-HD was a big whiff in terms of matching art with technology) but I don't think I need to slavishly point out how absurd your post is. Maybe when you get the gall to respond to my previous hand holding I will explain why this suggestion is plain bait.
I am pondering the many reasons why you focus so much on Halo (see above link) but appear to not be able to understand what makes Halo stick out.
It couldn't be that you think the AI sucks (haven't heard anyone say that) nor the gameplay features (like 4 player coop in the SP) or the fact Bungie, by all critical accounts, does have quality gameplay balance.
For spending so much time in Halo threads, but unable to identify "Halo gameplay" outside of anything other than "shooting aliens?" well, I think maybe you should play the game and come back with a critical analysis deeper than, "shooting aliens."
Because if that is as deep as you are going to go into gameplay do us all a favor and never become a game reviewer and game designer! Staying far and away from threads where your summary of the gameplay is "shoot aliens" may also help!
For a shooter Halo 3 actually does have some fairly populated areas. Not GTA-eque, but far more than you typically see in Gears or Killzone. Halo 3 has a scene with 2 scarabs, a handful of Hornets, some Banshees, and a fair number of AI units. There is the cliff side assault via hornets and the big tank assault of the beach that also features significant numbers of enemy units all on screen and in immediate area of engagement.
Not to say they cannot do better, but in terms of the genre (GTA isn't a shooter) Halo 3 is pushing on the upper end of sandbox size and enemy units.
Pick a shooter with similar scenes and we can get a better idea of where Bungie is falling short.
The above pretty much is the same error as saying a the renderer = the engine.
Bungie wasn't lagging when they squeezed Forge, Theater, or full campaign 4 player coop into their game. The rendering bits made some bad decisions back then (although the irrelevant forum bent demographic thought it looked fine) and it hasn't aged well, the *technology* of the *game* still isn't being matched by many titles.
Most games still have crappy (and slow) match making. We still aren't able to record our SP and MP matches and edit them. We still cannot modify MP levels in most titles. There is no social or sharing tools. And the number of games with quality coop is pretty far and inbetween.
Where Bungie keeps getting it right is that they have like 300,000 people on THEIR game every night.
Maybe they found a consumer group who wants to keep playing the game month after month instead of spending 8 hours grazing on a pixel? If the investment is the game, as a package, and not focusing singularly on one element (e.g. pixels), then there will be concessions in time and resources.
Obviously Bungie heard some of us thought they should improve the graphics some, and they seem to be addressing it. It will never make some completely happy (like myself unless it really is clean and completely functional; stylized games get an easier pass here as they can reach their gameplay design perfectly with graphics that are perfect) and some would never be happy no matter what.
But I still play Halo 3 and can say this much: As long as the gameplay is balanced, fun, and offers longevity and continues to outpace the industry in social features I don't really care if the graphics are "just" evolutionary. So it ain't about Bungie making money, it is about Bungie offering stuff to the market that other premier 1st party developers don't even bother to do--probably because they are so obsessed fixing their G-buffer bugs, pairing down their AI routines, and spending a ton of time checking animation issues instead of investing in coop and other gameplay features.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Well to be fair, it's not so much that the engine has been completely rewritten. There's going to be aspects of it that remain useful whether it was on Xbox or X360. AI (pathfinding, etc), Physics, data sets perhaps, for example wouldn't really have to be rewritten. But instead may just be improved over what was already there.
The point is that everything in Reach can be optimized to take advantage of the X360 hardware, whereas with Halo 3, due to the limited time frame and having started developement on Xbox, some of the things had to be left as is, or just marginally updated if it at least worked. Which means that in many cases, portions of the engine may have been completely rewritten and in other cases, just optimized or improved.
So for example you won't see cases of art that was developed for the Xbox being used relatively unchanged in Halo 3.
Regards,
SB
I think bungie knows what are they doing, h3 and ost sold around 13 mln. copies and we can safely assume that they have enough money to put in this project. They already hired a lot of new people with know-how , not that they didnt have those people before but it only means that they are trying to pull something nice out of x360. Sure the bar sits high after excellent games like mw2 and killzone but competition is always good for us.
Now im playing waiting game.
Now im playing waiting game.
ShadowWolf64
Regular
This is exactly what I was trying to say in my previous post and thank you for clarifying my previous post in a concise manner..I personally feel that the graphics in Reach look great and thats from a pre-alpha build of the game.I was impressed with how lethal the Assault Rifle finally sounds along with the DMR, frag grenades, etc.Im very eager to play the mp beta and I think it would be fantastic if we got some B3D members and play the Reach mp beta together....
About the GTA4 comparison, I wonder how the player would feel in a Halo game if he turned around and half the Grunts and the Wraith would disappear and a bunch of Flood with a Mongoose would spawn out of nowhere instead. I think random generated NPCs like that don't really work in an FPS game.
Seriously, comparing these games is stupid.
Seriously, comparing these games is stupid.
Nah, because we can now look at other 720p 2xMSAA games and go, "What, 3 enemies? CRAP developers I tell you!"
