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Halo |OT11| Forward Unto Dong

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Right, but wouldn't you have to allow enough memory for Theater to run itself and also "playback" the code? So removing Theater as a limitation would give them X amount of extra memory to do more Campaign stuff?



Right, and I specified that. My point was that perhaps some of that stuff is going on during gameplay too.

No, Theater has no impact on the game while you are playing it.
 
Whoa, I made a comment earlier and nobody understood it lol. I fell asleep and was unable to call out my mistake too. It was supposed to be a little sarcastic, I just guess it wasn't enough to set the meters off lol

I just want to say Halo 4 looks like a fantastic Halo game lol. I've had it preordered for months and stuff.
 

senador

Banned
Bungie never cared about "stuff falling apart" in theater and neither should 343. The fact that they've shown how they're basically 'cheating' in that video shows that they don't particularly mind if people find out what trickery they've used to pull certain things off. That would probably be the last reason for them to remove the mode.

I suppose. I'm just trying to think of logical reasons for cutting it. I know they have one and I don't believe it is "No eff you!".

No, Theater has no impact on the game while you are playing it.

Indeed, but Campaign has an effect on Theater while using it. So if they wanted to guarantee a Campaign film is viewable in Theater, they'd have to run it under X amount of memory so when its played back, there's enough for Theater too. That's what I am speculating anyway.

If there is something you'd be able to see not-finished in the background in theater mode, you'd be able to see it in just regular gameplay too. That's not it.

Not necessarily. Angles and distance play into it too. Whatever though, it doesn't seem to be that I guess.
 

LAUGHTREY

Modesty becomes a woman
Right, but wouldn't you have to allow enough memory for Theater to run itself and also "playback" the code? So removing Theater as a limitation would give them X amount of extra memory to do more Campaign stuff?



Right, and I specified that. My point was that perhaps some of that stuff is going on during gameplay too.

If there is something you'd be able to see not-finished in the background in theater mode, you'd be able to see it in just regular gameplay too. That's not it.
 
I suppose. I'm just trying to think of logical reasons for cutting it. I know they have one and I don't believe it is "No eff you!".



Indeed, but Campaign has an effect on Theater while using it.

The game has to processes less information while you are watching something in Theater mode as apposed to playing it.
 

Tashi

343i Lead Esports Producer
Would that be because the campaign is shaping up to be awesome or because the community is awesome?

Z3lUA.gif


Thanks for the gif ex!
 
The game has to processes less information while you are watching something in Theater mode as apposed to playing it.

That wouldn't be true, the engine is still treating it as 'live' gameplay - except the inputs are recorded rather than coming from random seeds and the player. So if a cone goes flying the physics engine still needs to calculate where that cone needs to end up.

Right?
 

Shadders

Member
They can't have cut campaign Theatre, that's unpossible! :(

This must be because of some awesome unnanounced feature they've added to multiplayer theatre, right? Right guys?
 
That wouldn't be true, the engine is still treating it as 'live' gameplay - except the inputs are recorded rather than coming from random seeds and the player.

Because of the way that AI and physics work in Halo that would make the AI and physics do different things and the film wouldn't work right.
 

BigShow36

Member
While playing the game it has to do the graphics, physics, AI and your controller input. While watching something in Theater all it does is replay some code to replicate what happened.

But doesn't the engine also need to render things you normally wouldn't be seeing during an actual playthrough. As far as I know, most game engines only render things that the player can currently see. When you have a camera that you can detatch and move to places a player normally would not be, it needs to render a lot more. Add on the fact that it's also processing the actions of the player in addition to rendering more, that could be the limiting factor.

In replay mode, the engine is rendering on the fly, its not just "replaying" what was already rendered.
 

GhaleonEB

Member
Flag is auto-pickup.
Oddball is auto-pickup.
These are confirmed by 343.

All leaked sources say there's no way of turning this off in Customs. This hasn't been OFFICIALLY confirmed by 343. We also know from leaks that there is no way of making classic CTF in customs. If this was horseshit I feel Frankie or Ellis would have said something.

I'm a couple hundred posts behind. But to add: yes it has.

Will there be a way to disable auto-pickup for Flag/Oddball? -CyReN CE

At launch and in the launch playlists, we will be deploying CTF as-is. Although it's possible in the future that we will give players more specific control and choices, this is something we feel pretty strongly about - and is in some ways a new mode, rather than simply an evolution of an existing game type. We understand the reaction this may cause, but there's method in our madness and we ask your indulgence in the short term.

No custom options to disable auto-pick up. (Sorry if this was answered, I've been buried at work.)
 
So really no theater for campaign!? Like I said earlier, I never really used it but 343i taking features out just rubs me the wrong way.

Campaign better be fucking amazing and I don't want anymore suprise missing features.
 
They can't have cut campaign Theatre, that's unpossible! :(

This must be because of some awesome unnanounced feature they've added to multiplayer theatre, right? Right guys?

They couldnt get promethean AI to work, so every 'AI' in campaign is essentially a real person. They hired every call centre across America in order to attempt to staff the number of knights needed.

Theatre mode was cut and the budget was put towards the call centres staffs salary. On the plus side they have a fantastic new feature for the leakers to promote (they refuse to promote it themselves as there is not enough space in the weekly updates for all the bad jokes as it is)

They expect that Frankie and David will take over playing as the knights once the initial campaign rush is over.
 
But doesn't the engine also need to render things you normally wouldn't be seeing during an actual playthrough. As far as I know, most game engines only render things that the player can currently see. When you have a camera that you can detatch and move to places a player normally would not be, it needs to render a lot more. Add on the fact that it's also processing the actions of the player in addition to rendering more, that could be the limiting factor.

In replay mode, the engine is rendering on the fly, its not just "replaying" what was already rendered.

Why do you think there are invisible barriers stopping you from going to far in theater?
 

Flipyap

Member
I have checked with my sources and can confirm that theater mode does in fact not work with campaign.

Why does 343 continue to make stupid changes that do nothing but shit on Halo fans?
This one really seems like a technical issue, not some random design screw up. I'm sure they'd keep this feature if they could, or if it wouldn't hurt the presentation of the game whose new graphics tech is such an important bullet point.

Bungie never gave a fuck if you saw their trickery in theater, why should 343 care?
Bungie never did it this way, and their games' graphics were openly mocked in the parts of the internet which this new iteration is supposed to lure back in.
The tricks 343 uses are blatantly apparent in official, carefully selected screenshots. I wouldn't be surprised if they don't want you to look too far behind the curtain... wait, am I on the 343 defense force now?

What a dark day for the series.
 

abadguy

Banned
I'd agree with that, when I tried MW2 online, I was being asked if I'd prestiged because I was blitzing everyone. I think Halo lays a good foundation for those games as it is less forgiving.

COD MPis basically "i see you first i win". It got boring as hell after less than an hour of play too.
 

kylej

Banned
I have checked with my sources and can confirm that theater mode does in fact not work with campaign.

Why does 343 continue to make stupid changes that do nothing but shit on Halo fans?

Probably because they know Halo fans will buy it regardless and they don't give a shit. It's COD money they want. I swear some people here forget all this shit is a business. They don't make a limited edition because they want to sell you really cool stuff. The make a limited edition because they get an inflated margin on top of standard sales.

Halo 4 is not being made to sell to anyone in here.
 
Because of the way that AI and physics work in Halo that would make the AI and physics do different things and the film wouldn't work right.

AI and physics would be calculated in the same way every single time, due to maths working the same way every time.

Anything thats randomised would have its value tracked and the random seed would be input - but generally film playback is very much getting the engine to render the game out there and the - just with pre-determined random generator numbers and player input.

Is how I always understood it anyway. :/


I mean they cant track the X,Y and Z position of EVERY item in every game as that really would generate a bunch of data. Only way to do it is to save the inputs and let the engine do the rest.
 

FyreWulff

Member
You have to somehow generate all the random seeds in exactly the same way though right? Perhaps it was getting to the point where some of the stuff in the backend that needed to be randomized was too difficult to replicate.

Halo 3, ODST, and Reach already do this. You determine the seed once at the start of the session, and that determines all the dice rolls for that session in exactly the same order. This allows both films and online co-op to work, as the AI will make the same random determinations in the same order with the same inputs. This is what its going on when you see "deterministic AI" (which only Halo 3 onwards has, Halo 2 has some remnants of it in their attempts at online co-op) or "deterministic networking" (Halo 3/ODST/Reach campaign and Firefight networking)

Right, but wouldn't you have to allow enough memory for Theater to run itself and also "playback" the code? So removing Theater as a limitation would give them X amount of extra memory to do Campaign stuff?

It only loads the immediate buffer it needs - confirmed a while back by Bungie that films can get as big as the biggest 360 HDD (when someone was asking how long an ODST firefight film would keep recording for). So we already know gigabyte plus films will be loaded.

I have three plausible speculations in mind.

1) Simply cut for time. Boring and heartless explanation, but it happens, and the most likely.

2) The new Forerunner AI was not made deterministic. But that wouldn't make sense since campaign co-op over Live wouldn't work under lockstep if it wasn't deterministic...... unless campaign networking is no longer lockstep. I think I just confused myself.

3) 343 may be planning to more aggressively update Halo 4 with Title Updates than past titles. Under this plan, it would be harder to maintain campaign film interoperation between versions, as they don't have the luxury of just loading specific Megalo hooks. It would, IN THEORY, be easier to just drop films in campaign so you no longer have to consider them in title updates. Bungie's interop of old films in 3 was a considerable undertaking. This is 110% pure speculation though.

This is of course assuming campaign films are even cut.
 

willow ve

Member
I'm a couple hundred posts behind. But to add: yes it has.

It is safe to say that I fundamentally disagree with almost every single new idea they have implemented with CTF in 4. I'm sure I'll still play it, however, as objective games have usually been my favorite (even if not my most played) hopper in the past two games.

Please, just please, 343 tell me that full parties will ONLY match with OTHER PARTIES. Due to odd work hours, family, etc., I almost 100% of the time go into matchmaking alone. It is frustrating to seemingly always get paired up against full parties...
 

BigShow36

Member
Why do you think there are invisible barriers stopping you from going to far in theater?

My point is that the graphical burden on the engine is probably much greater in Halo 4. It's possible that simply detaching the camera from the player caused the game to slow down to a crawl. They could lock the view point to a FPS view, but that sort of defeats the purpose of the campaign replay system. It could also be that the replay system itself would have needed some overhaul to force a player into first-person only.

Maybe I'm wrong.
 
AI and physics would be calculated in the same way every single time, due to maths working the same way every time.

Anything thats randomised would have its value tracked and the random seed would be input - but generally film playback is very much getting the engine to render the game out there and the - just with pre-determined random generator numbers and player input.

Is how I always understood it anyway. :/

The AI in Halo post Halo 2 makes "decisions", this is why you couldn't rewind in Theater in Halo 3, they altered some things in Reach's theater so it isn't actually using AI and is just replaying what the AI did.
My point is that the graphical burden on the engine is probably much greater in Halo 4. It's possible that simply detaching the camera from the player caused the game to slow down to a crawl. They could lock the view point to a FPS view, but that sort of defeats the purpose of the campaign replay system. It could also be that the replay system itself would have needed some overhaul to force a player into first-person only.

Maybe I'm wrong.
It doesn't render the entire level, just the section you are on, and if it is a big section the LOD system should take care of it.
 

Arnie

Member
I'd be fucking pissed if the reason for no campaign theatre was those little first person QTE sequences they've added, and how they don't translate well to theatre mode. Either that or them sacrificing theatre functionalities to crank up the visual fidelity; which also asks questions about whether you'd advocate such a thing, considering one of Halo's defining factors, at least this generation, was how it prioritised a certain feature set that includes full theatre playback.
 

Woorloog

Banned
The AI in Halo post Halo 2 makes "decisions", this is why you couldn't rewind in Theater in Halo 3, they altered some things in Reach's theater so it isn't actually using AI and is just replaying what the AI did.

I seem to be recalling Halo CE being called deterministick but not sure if it concerned the AI.
Would the AI do same thing always if i did the same thing always (assuming the same spawn point, the NPCs had a few possible positions most of the time, i think)?
 
I'd be fucking pissed if the reason for no campaign theatre was those little first person QTE sequences they've added, and how they don't translate well to theatre mode. Either that or them sacrificing theatre functionalities to crank up the visual fidelity; which also asks questions about whether you'd advocate such a thing, considering one of Halo's defining factors, at least this generation, was how it prioritised a certain feature set that includes full theatre playback.

The bolded a million times.

How does Halo 3 theatre handle Cortana's tantrums out of interest? I know its not the same thing, im just genuinly curious if they force the stupid visuals and slowdown on you even when your freecam. Would be weird to see the players pace slow to a crawl every time it happened lol.

Wheres my list of things Halo 4 doesnt have? Add this to the list, lol.

Pro-Pipe
AR Starts
Campaign Theatre.

- I can live with that. :p

I am actually gutted about the pro-pipe being replaced by the sticky detonator, and theres a ton of good stuff like classic CTF thats been removed, I just wanted to get the AR joke in. :(
 
I seem to be recalling Halo CE being called deterministick but not sure if it concerned the AI.
Would the AI do same thing always if i did the same thing always (assuming the same spawn point, the NPCs had a few possible positions most of the time, i think)?

Thats why I said POST Halo 2. Halo CE and Halo 2 have deterministic AI, while Halo 3 upgraded it quite a bit into a decision making type of AI.
 
At launch and in the launch playlists, we will be deploying CTF as-is. Although it's possible in the future that we will give players more specific control and choices, this is something we feel pretty strongly about - and is in some ways a new mode, rather than simply an evolution of an existing game type. We understand the reaction this may cause, but there's method in our madness and we ask your indulgence in the short term.

Play it, judge it and if the community truly hates it despite our positive feedback in testing, we'll change it or give you the option the change it. Sounds fine to me. Let's chill. They're just trying to force some change. Let it happen. No doesn't mean no in the case of video game subtleties.
 

Deadly Cyclone

Pride of Iowa State
Probably because they know Halo fans will buy it regardless and they don't give a shit. It's COD money they want. I swear some people here forget all this shit is a business. They don't make a limited edition because they want to sell you really cool stuff. The make a limited edition because they get an inflated margin on top of standard sales.

Halo 4 is not being made to sell to anyone in here.

Give me a god damn break.

This thread is ridiculous right now. Yes losing campaign theater blows, but christ.
 

Arnie

Member
Play it, judge it and if the community truly hates it despite our positive feedback in testing, we'll change it or give you the option the change it. Sounds fine to me. Let's chill. They're just trying to force some change. Let it happen. No doesn't mean no in the case of video game subtleties.

Out of the many banal design decisions 343 have shoehorned into the sandbox, CTF is the one I'm least worried and most open minded about. I really don't know how much I'll like it until I play it, and it could turn out to be a positive move. If you'd ask me now if I'd prefer flag juggling, of course I would, but in a few months time I could be a convert.

Other changes I can cast off without even experiencing, though, primarily because I've experienced them in various forms since 2007. Even back then I eschewed their accessible flavour and stuck to Halo, unfortunately 343 have reneged to the other side.
 

Fracas

#fuckonami
Give me a god damn break.

This thread is ridiculous right now. Yes losing campaign theater blows, but christ.

I really, really liked theater in campaign. I liked going back and watching how the enemy AI reacts to what's going on. It's not the end of the world I guess, but it is pretty disappointing.

These things that have been cut from the game (Assault, original CTF settings, etc) will be sorely missed, but of course they're not a total deal breaker.
 

Deadly Cyclone

Pride of Iowa State
I really, really liked theater in campaign. I liked going back and watching how the enemy AI reacts to what's going on. It's not the end of the world I guess, but it is pretty disappointing.

These things that have been cut from the game (Assault, original CTF settings, etc) will be sorely missed, but of course they're not a total deal breaker.

I agree with you 100%. I didn't use campaign theater all that much, but I did a few times and enjoyed it. Losing it but gaining a much better looking game, and crafted single player experience (from what I've seen) is something I can deal with.

I didn't like assault, but it could have been a custom games thing and I'd be fine. CTF is up in the air until I play more than the 1 game I've played, but none of this trumps the fun I had when playing.

People are acting like changes in this video game series is the worst thing to happen to planet earth since the dinosaurs died. It's just a bit insane to me.
 

Arnie

Member
Give me a god damn break.

This thread is ridiculous right now. Yes losing campaign theater blows, but christ.

There's a fine line, and a middle ground between both parties.

Yes, Kyle's exaggerating for obvious effect, but there's a general point to what he's saying that needs to be heeded by all. If you don't believe the core changes to Halo multiplayer, of which there's many, none of which are at all original, are made with the intent to attract Call of Duty audiences, and thus a portion of Call of Duty's profits, then you aren't thinking critically enough, from my perspective.

Forget slurping, forget salt, it's common sense.
 

Pop

Member
I really, really liked theater in campaign. I liked going back and watching how the enemy AI reacts to what's going on. It's not the end of the world I guess, but it is pretty disappointing.

These things that have been cut from the game (Assault, original CTF settings, etc) will be sorely missed, but of course they're not a total deal breaker.

Big things have small beginnings.
 

Bsigg12

Member
Its ignorant to think that they cut campaign theater for shits and giggles. It has been in the engine since 3, so obviously they had a starting place for it.

Like I said last page, they are pulling off some great graphics on limited RAM and 7 year old hardware. If this was Bungie's game we wouldn't be getting the 720p base, which does make the game look fantastic.

I stand behind that the system simply could not handle allowing players to fly around and view anything and everything. There's a lot more technically going on here than any of us know.
 
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