The Inevitable Halo 3 Thread

[LK]

That reads like it was created using tips from the Republican Propoganda machine, except applied to Microsoft.

[Mrbloodworth]

Quite simply, Halo 3 is the reason the Xbox 360 exists.

All down hill from there then right? 

[Kitsune]

Oh snap, Halo 3 stoled ur pixelz.

[schild]

To say the least, Halo 3 never was and never will be the benchmark for anything visual. All 3 were ugly as sin and the art was just a hair better than the Area 51 arcade game.

Bungie sucks at art and optimization. I think all the Halo fans got over that a long time ago.

[LK]

Bigger is not always better?

[Margalis]

Wow...what a fucking joke of a defense. Basically makes himself look like a complete ass by talking shit to people who are exactly right.

One item making the interwebs rounds this week was the scandalous revelation that Halo 3 runs at “640p” which isn’t even technically a resolution.

Of course it is, just not a standardly supported one. And of course, the interwebs are exactly right: Halo 3 runs at 640 and is upscaled.

Naturally it’s more complicated than that. In fact, you could argue we gave you 1280 pixels of vertical resolution, since Halo 3 uses not one, but two frame buffers – both of which render at 1152x640 pixels.

Using multiple buffers has been around for decades.

The reason we chose this slightly unorthodox resolution and this very complex use of two buffers is simple enough to see – lighting. We wanted to preserve as much dynamic range as possible – so we use one for the high dynamic range and one for the low dynamic range values. Both are combined to create the finished on screen image.

Yes, using multiple buffers for graphical effects is very complex and unorthodox, having been widely understood for decades but only commonly used for the last many years or so.

 

Making this decision simpler still is the fact that the 360 scales the “almost-720p” image effortlessly all the way up to 1080p if you so desire.

I bet it scales almost 340p pretty well too.

In fact, if you do a comparison shot between the native 1152x640 image and the scaled 1280x720, it’s practically impossible to discern the difference.

Bungie: high resolution makes zero difference. Interesting stance.

In fact the reason we haven’t mentioned this before in weekly updates, is the simple fact that it would have distracted conversation away from more important aspects of the game, and given tinfoil hats some new gristle to chew on as they catalogued their toenail clippings.

But they did mention that in runs in 720p which is an outright lie. I suppose admitting that they lied about the resolution and that the flagship game on an HD system wasn't HD would have been distracting.

I like how the people who are 100% correct are tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists. Those crazy tinfoil hat wearers, next they'll claim that the moon isn't made of cheese!
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The entire tone of the piece is "fuck you, we lied, suck it bitches."

[caladein]

I love the whole "It's not 640p, that's just crazy talk. It's almost-720p!" angle. That and the GameSpy review are retarded to point of causing physical pain.

[schild]

I have this feeling in my gut that 640p is the resolution at which the soul-crushing lag went away. They simply couldn't figure out how to code it away at 720p. Bungie sucks.

[Tannhauser]

I'm a pretty big Halo fanboy, but this spew is just bullshit. 

[Trippy]

Does anybody understand why they have the render the same frame twice to support HDR? That doesn't sound right on modern GPU hardware.

[Margalis]

They are rendering the same frame twice because of floating-point precision and cap issues.

HDR is still somewhat new and the hardware support for it is not standard yet. Basically to render something in HDR you need to be able to store color/light values above 1.0. What happens in a typical setup is that you have a really really bright light, that might realistically be 500, but it gets capped at one because floating points are capped at zero and one. Which means that if you then cut the light in half you get .5 when what you should get is 250, which if capped later on would still cap at 1.

To render high levels of light you need to delay that capping until right before you render to the screen. If the hardware can't support that (for technical or efficiency reasons) you need an alternate strategy. Probably the second buffer is still capped at zero to one but they do some translation of that range during the compositing of the two buffers. That's pretty much how all HDR implementations worked at first. Capping floating points between zero and one allows for greater precision and greater efficiency, so it's likely that even if the 360 hardware technically supports HDR rendering via GPU directly that it isn't the best strategy.
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I see this happening a lot now - some customer spots a legitimate problem and a spokeperson for the company then mocks them. It's incredibly stupid, insulting the consumer. I guess this is why marketing departments don't like to let non-marketers speak non-marketing.

[Morfiend]

So I played a bunch more this weekend. Did coop with my friend, and after level 4 the game really gets better. The Vehicle combat is fun as shit. Its still a generic SciFi FPS, but once you get in to the meat of the game, its pretty well done.

[Kitsune]

They really didn't help themselves by being cocks about it.  When people asked the Warhawk people if the game would be out in 1080p, the Warhawk devs gave an honest, straight answer of 'We're doing it in 720 so we can keep the framerate up on big maps.  It'll upscale to 1080, but the native is 720'.  If the Bungie people gave a similar answer, that'd be fine.  But instead they had to behave like a pack of assholes about it and then ice the cake with bullshit about how the second frame in the buffer means it's at double resolution.

[Modern Angel]

They really didn't help themselves by being cocks about it.  When people asked the Warhawk people if the game would be out in 1080p, the Warhawk devs gave an honest, straight answer of 'We're doing it in 720 so we can keep the framerate up on big maps.  It'll upscale to 1080, but the native is 720'.  If the Bungie people gave a similar answer, that'd be fine.  But instead they had to behave like a pack of assholes about it and then ice the cake with bullshit about how the second frame in the buffer means it's at double resolution.

The gaming public won't give two shits and when Halo: The Lost Levels comes out it'll sell just as well.

[Surlyboi]

Fuck it.

It wasn't groundbreaking, it's not revolutionary. It's not even spectacularly scintillating in its implementation of multiplayer. (TF2 does indeed rock at that)

But goddammit, I like the fucking storyline. I never got my Marathon 4, so I'm happy I got this. That said, some of the multiplayer maps are pretty sweet. Dustbowl being one. Others? Not so much.

[Yegolev]

That guy, I wonder if he's well-paid or just enjoys being a cock-puppet.  He basically wrote out that Halo 3 doesn't add much beyond Halo 2 and yet says it's a game worth $300.  Talk about buying into the hype!

EDIT: Oh, hey, context: http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=10963.msg347553#msg347553

[Moaner]

I'm weak and lame and picked it up at 7-11 Sunday because I could.  I played through level 6 coop with a friend and it was quite entertaining.  One thing I noticed right off the bat is that the controller issues I had with games like Bioshock are nonexistent in Halo3.  I can actually jump, spin 180 mid air, and blow heads off before I hit the ground.  Of course the game feels slow as molasses after TF2 so there is that.

I played a couple games of 4 player death match too.  I'm ashamed to admit I thought it was fun.

[Surlyboi]

Oh... and Gravity Hammer? Most fun, unbalanced FPS weapon. EVAR.

[Morfiend]

**MILD SPOILER**









So far my favorite thing I think is the big ass spider walker things, that you have to bring down at the leg, and then climb inside and blow the core. Fun shit.

[Surlyboi]

Wait 'til later...  :-D

[AcidCat]

So I played a bunch more this weekend. Did coop with my friend, and after level 4 the game really gets better. The Vehicle combat is fun as shit. Its still a generic SciFi FPS, but once you get in to the meat of the game, its pretty well done.

I agree, I have to take back my initial impressions of the campaign because it does get a lot better as you progress. More open environments and vehicles break up the corridor action, and just a ton of opportunities for cooperative strategies - it really feels like the campaign was built from the ground up as a coop experience, I've been having a blast playing with my friend online. Just a ton of "oh that's fucking cool" moments.

So far my favorite thing I think is the big ass spider walker things, that you have to bring down at the leg, and then climb inside and blow the core. Fun shit.

Probably the most fun I've had in the campaign yet is the part where ... well I guess I don't want to spoil anything if you've only fought the first one?

[Surlyboi]

I did enjoy jumping on the first one from the top of the crane with the minigun I'd pulled from the emplacement and just ripping shit up. Go for the knees? Fuck that. Death from above.

[MrHat]

Zero Punctuation reviews Halo 3:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctuation/2304-Zero-Punctuation-Halo-3

[ahoythematey]

That review is Win.

[Surlyboi]

"pants on head retarded". Heh.  :-D

[Stormwaltz]

I don't care about Halo 3 the game one way or the other. Sorry. I am not your market.

But Halo 3 the soundtrack? I'll be all over that.

[Surlyboi]

Yeah, Marty's work was amazing as usual.

[Morfiend]

Zero Punctuation reviews Halo 3:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctuation/2304-Zero-Punctuation-Halo-3

Are there any spoilers, as Im getting close to the end, but even though its not great, dont want spoilers.

[Surlyboi]

Small spoilers. Wait 'til you're done.

[Prospero]

But goddammit, I like the fucking storyline. I never got my Marathon 4, so I'm happy I got this.

I only played the second Halo, but is there a storyline? I hear rumor of it, but then everyone tells me I have to go read the books. That seems like a less than optimal solution. Did Halo 1 and 3 actually bother to put a plot in?

[schild]

Guys, you should really listen to I Love Bees.

[Riggswolfe]

But goddammit, I like the fucking storyline. I never got my Marathon 4, so I'm happy I got this.

I only played the second Halo, but is there a storyline? I hear rumor of it, but then everyone tells me I have to go read the books. That seems like a less than optimal solution. Did Halo 1 and 3 actually bother to put a plot in?

There is. It's not on the level of an RPG really. Basically, it's an action movie storyline with a few really cool characters: MC, Cortana (by far my favorite character), Sgt Johnson and Mirana errr...can't remember her last name at the moment. She's the daughter of the captain from the first Halo.

BTW, if you have the collectors edition it is worth watching the 2nd disc for two features:

Bungie's 7 steps to world domination which is basically a history of bungie with alot of silliness
and the mini-doc where the voice actress who plays Cortana travels around the country and meets hardcore Halo fans. (website masters, the red vs blue guys, a guy who makes his own Spartan armor and a few others). It's priceless to see the lead singer of Barenaked Ladies reaction when he realizes who this "woman from Bungie" is. Lol. The voice actress is really cute and seems genuinely nice and amused by how fanatic the fans are. Most of the time she doesn't tell the people she meets who she is and just drops Cortana's lines into conversation until they figure it out.

[Yegolev]

I had already read Ringworld and pretty much ignored any story elements that nagged me in Halo.  It was harder to ignore in Halo 2, but not impossible since I had already played Advent Rising.

[Pennilenko]

Guys, you should really listen to I Love Bees.

Link please, good sir, for the internet searching disabled.

[schild]

Guys, you should really listen to I Love Bees.

Link please, good sir, for the internet searching disabled.

http://nikon.bungie.org/misc/ilb_reordered/