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Re: Halo: Reach
I am going to love using that sniper.Comment
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Re: Halo: Reach
I hope I play this more than I played H3. I liked it but we just needed to see other games.Comment
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Re: Halo: Reach
I have a feeling the custom game variant editor and the forge mode are gonna make this game 's customs incredible. I'm sure we will be able to edit the loadouts and all that. He said in the video there are a maximum of 5 at a time but more will come and go as the game goes on.
Think of all the options.
:O
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Re: Halo: Reach
I just creamed my pants.The quality of the stream on GTTV isn't very good - a lot compression and artifacting.
Stream: http://www.gametrailers.com/episode/...p=89&ch=1&sd=0
Download is a little better: http://flvseek.gametrailers.com/gt_v...9_pqktr_hd.flv
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The show didn't do a great job of explaining Invasion, but here's a great writeup. Sounds awesome. Final game will allow 8v8.
I love the look of the EMP effect from the Armor Lock ability:
XBL: DTX3
PSN: DTX987
WII U: DodgerBlue760Comment
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Re: Halo: Reach
Summary/Highlights from latest Bungie podcast:
- If you're carrying a flag, bomb, or any objective object, armor abilities are disabled until you drop it.
- In custom games you can toggle an option to use armor abilities while carrying an objective object. Pretty much can do whatever you want. If you can think it up, it can probably be done.
- Skull return zones in Headhunter randomly move around to prevent people from just camping them. They blink with 5 seconds left before going away.
- Invasion is a multi-staged objective gametype - attackers vs. defenders. In the beta the Elites will be attacking while the Spartans are defending a UNSC data core. First phase kind of plays like territories with the Elites trying to destroy these generators to bring down shields - 4 minutes, if they don't complete their objective the game is over. This rarely happens though. As the game progresses the load-outs (weapons and armor) get better, vehicles get unlocked, and the scale and area of combat grows exponentially. Found that 6v6 with 3 groups of 2 (two-man fire teams) is kind of the sweet spot. Not ruling out 8v8 for the final game, and can certainly do so in custom games if you choose.
- Invasion Slayer is a simpler gametype - play for kills (to 100), but there's a territory that roams around Crazy King style, and if you capture it 15 seconds later, you will get a prize. You might get a rocket launcher or sniper in the beginning, or by the end it could be a Scorpion tank. Prizes are "dropped-off".
- Much more to look forward to outside of the beta.
- They have a new tool set to create gametype engines, so if somebody at Bungie comes up with an idea for a gametype one day, they can be play testing that same day. They don't need a programmer to write the rules of the game, and have to wait weeks, since their potentially stupid idea isn't a high priority.
- You can back out to the main menu and still retain your party.
- Engineer David Aldridge worked a full year on nothing but deep investigation tool development about refining and polishing the networking model.
- He cut down bandwidth utilization by 40% in some cases compared to Halo 3.
- Another Engineer wrote a crazy system, where they can data mine what may be considered a bad spawn point - can track how long and how many have died at a particular spawn. Also, can gather data for line of sight checks.
- Can tolerate worse network conditions in such better ways than ever before.
- Substantially less bandwidth pipe needed to run Big Team Battle.
- Much better about locality in matching you with people who are going to be close to you. Basically, based on the mapping of your IP address to where you are, matchmaking will push you into games with people with good quality low-latency matches to you. If by some crazy chance England to the U.S. had this fat pipe that connected them, the database would actually take that into count, and all the sudden you would be playing with dudes from England. On the other hand, lets say it turns out East Coast to West goes to complete ****, and it takes 800 milliseconds, the matchmaking system would naturally evolve as the database was telling it that, and you would not be match together anymore. Brian Jarrard quipped that it sounds like Skynet.
- Better able to use a players historical data to choose a host. This person hosting is playing, but say is using bit-torrent during a game as well, pushes to download something, and crushes his upstream. The system is smart enough to detect this, and know to move away from him as a host to hopefully bring the performance back up.
- Preparing for the number of concurrent players in the beta to be in the millions, but realistically don't expect everything to go absolutely perfect.
- 4-way split screen is a massive investment, but Bungie is doing it for Reach just like in previous Halo games. It's always been apart of the Halo social experience, and don't won't to deny friends that may come over to your place, and want to jump on and play with you.
Last edited by Flawless; 04-20-2010, 03:36 PM.Go Noles!!! >>----->Comment
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Re: Halo: Reach
Excellent analysis of the GTTV footage:
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Brian Jarrard:
...No video today, or tomorrow actually. All the direct feed media captured last week at Bungie is held for next week... to give breathing room to something we are releasing later this week.
I don't imagine we'd release the raw b-roll we provided to media but you'll see more footage next week. Lot's more I imagine.
Tomorrow you will see a few new screens and global hands-on impressions.
Big beta world for Bungie game
Q: How many people do you expect to play the beta?
Jarrard: My expectation is it could be upwards of 3 million people. I think that's a fairly conservative estimate. Certainly there will never be a console beta of this magnitude. ...Q: Some think the game industry may bounce back this year. What role will "Reach" play in any recovery, and what does your competition look like?
Jarrard: We're very optimistic. We have a lot riding on this game and we have high expectations for it. I think you can expect to see a lot more grandiose marketing efforts; things will be at a much higher scale than they were for "ODST."
There are a lot of great games coming out this fall, a lot of shooters in particular. I think we definitely benefit from having a really huge built-in audience. We have a huge, high-level, pop-culture awareness that a lot of other games don't. The 360 has a much bigger install base than we had back in the "Halo 3" era, so a lot of things are working in our favor.
We certainly feel "Reach" will be the best "Halo" game that Bungie's ever made, and I think Microsoft's going to bet really big behind it. This is what Microsoft does really well — big, huge entertainment launches. You're going to see that happen again for "Reach."For all intents and purposes we probably won't revisit the "Halo" universe again as a company. Our next game is definitely not "Halo;" it's something totally new.
That being the case, we want to pull out all the stops. We can draw on a decade's worth of experience, refining and crafting all the things that made "Halo" successful. The ideal goal is we carry all the best parts forward, add even better new things like armor abilities and new nuances, and hopefully that all amounts to the best "Halo" game we've ever made and the lasting mark in the franchise.Last edited by Flawless; 04-20-2010, 04:41 PM.Go Noles!!! >>----->Comment
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Re: Halo: Reach
B.net Beta Buckdown!
In the past, Beta time on Bungie.net meant players simply had access to game history, but for Reach we’ve gone significantly further than that. Not only will you find game history, but your Service Record, aggregate career stats, Commendations, File Share, file tagging, file rating, file searching, file comments, and even Reach Film Render to Video for Bungie Pro subscribers. Most of these features are extremely well polished, and not at all what you would expect a Beta to support.While we hope nobody runs into bugs, these features are offered as beta and are about 75% functional from what you’ll see on launch day. We will be using feedback obtained from the beta to improve and enhance everything. <tease>There are also a few other surprises that we have planned for ship.</tease>Why do you feel it’s important to give players access to such a robust wealth of supplementary stats and features, even for the Beta? What’s the goal here?
Chris Gossett
We feel Bungie.net is an integral part of the overall online experience. Ultimately, we want to understand how people can and do play our game, including Bungie.net. The Beta allows us the unique opportunity to stress test our backend systems, tweak the Bungie.net design, discover important stats to emphasize and a great way for Beta testers to discuss and report glitches.
Tom Gioconda
Yup, the goal is to provide players the full experience of Halo: Reach. Bungie.net is a core part of that experience, and in the past, we’ve not had it available in a very complete form for the Beta. This limited the amount of useful feedback we can get from the game’s Beta. By having such a robust feature set from day one, we can see how players use the entire feature set both in game and on Bungie.net.We have a bunch of nifty new stats that are interesting – average kill distance and average death distance are early favorites. Many players who aren’t familiar with Bungie.net may not realize we added file tagging and searching to Halo 3 a while ago, it will be cool to see them get used by the full population. And, of course, video rendering was added really late to Halo 3, and we have it for the Beta for Reach.
But really, the most awesome thing is really the scope and polish of Bungie.net at this early time, not any one feature. Bungie.net has been setting the bar for game community and stats sites for years now. We have more stats and community features on our Beta than most games do when they launch. And we’re not done yet.Brian wants me to make sure the implications of in game file tagging and searching hit home. Without ever leaving the game’s menus, you’ll be able to not only tag and upload your own content to your File Share, but you’ll have full access to the entirety of content stored on Bungie.net. Search for content using pre-baked queries, or use tag searching to find exactly what you’re looking for, all live and on the fly. Rate a screenshot and you can check in over at Bungie.net and see the results almost instantly.
Brian’s right, it’s pretty incredible. You’ll potentially have access to millions of pieces of content, right from the in game menus.
Last edited by Flawless; 04-20-2010, 06:46 PM.Go Noles!!! >>----->Comment
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Re: Halo: Reach
I need a 360 asap.XBL: DTX3
PSN: DTX987
WII U: DodgerBlue760Comment
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Re: Halo: Reach
Stats integration for the BETA? That is awesome!Comment
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Re: Halo: Reach
Hands-on previews of the beta:
1UP
Ars Technica
Videogamer
Kotaku
Joystiq
IGN
CVG
Not a ton new, and quite a few errors in some of these previews.
The new stuff:
- Default control layout is different.
The most dramatic change is that the B button no longer controls melee attacks. It switches between grenades now. The left bumper now controls your armor abilities and the right bumper melees.- Plasma Pistol no longer tracks.
"The plasma pistol doesn't track, but the charged shot is an EMP burst that you can fire between two guys and it'll knock their shields down."- New vehicle damage system.
"The biggest change is the addition of a progressive damage system to vehicles. As your vehicle is getting hit, it's taking damage. In Halo 3 we linked that to your health, so your vehicle could be completely destroyed -- you could be flying around in a Banshee that had no wings, just a shell -- but as long as you had health you were fine. Now, your vehicle will hit a certain spot where it'll catch on fire and you'll start hearing certain sounds that mean it's time to get out."- You can search and browse peoples File Share even while sitting in matchmaking.
New ScreensWe have a tagging ability now, so now when you put your awesome rocket kill up to share, you can tag it with "rocket," "awesome," "cool," whatever. And people can do searches based on tags. So if you wanted to look at all the "rocket" screenshots anyone ever posted in their share, you can do a custom search for "rocket screenshot" while you're in Reach, and it'll list every single shot.
You can even look through them while you're sitting in Matchmaking. Like, what are the top rated cool files right now? Bam, press the Start button, you're looking at top rated screenshots.
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