[XOne] Halo: The Master Chief Collection

Haha, ja nou... dat dus. Dat van die jun

Ja, dit dus. Dat van die jungle heb ik dus ook en dat was eerlijk best een tof stukje, maar de rest... Tja, erg ongeïnspireerd. Ik had ook het idee dat een aantal levels (gedeeltelijk) waren gerycycleld. Die structurele levels zegmaar. De wapens leken bij aankondiging erg vet, ik was iig hyped. Maar dat viel ook erg tegen.

 

Vreemd. Had dat gelukkig niet. Misschien omdat ik ze zo snel echter elkaar gespeeld hebt voelde Halo 4 heel verfrissend aan.

Lol wat @Racerblade01 dus zegt haha.

 

Heeft denk ik ook met de leeftijd van de games te maken. Halo 4 was een vrij gepolijste game. Alleen het level design liet het afweten. Had soms het gevoel dat we terug gingen naar Halo 1.

Je zag ook duidelijk dat sommige gebieden ingekort waren qua grootte om geheugen te besparen. Had liever de Bungie aanpak gehad in dat geval. Graphics? Boeiend, hier is een slachtveld met 5 tanks, 5 warthogs en 10 hornets/banshees. O ja, hier komen de Scarabs aan. Dat allemaal met prachtige skyboxes.

Dat is iets dat Bungie altijd goed kon. Set pieces. Zag je ook weer in Destiny: Venus is een van de mooiste omgevingen die ik ooit in een spel heb gezien.

 

Nee dat zei ik ook in mijn eerste post. Verschillende tijden ook dus ze zijn ook moeilijk te vergelijken.

 

Ahhh heb het spelletje weer na een tijdje opgepakt en doe de Halo Saga playlist (alle 4 campaigns achter elkaar). Zoveel nostalgie en fun in die campaigns. H2A ziet er zo goed uit.

Lekkere warming up voor Halo wars die er bijna aankomt + wat achievements grinden. 599 achievements man gatverdamme dit word echt een 10-jaren plan

 

Inmiddels zijn we een half jaartje verder en ik ben er bijna! als Halo fan is dit een eerbetoon aan de spellen die mijn liefde voor gaming hebben aangewakkert.

 

Ziek! Congrats.
Moet er zelf ook nog aan beginnen.
Halo 5 gaf echter zo'n vieze nasmaak dat ik er toen even geen zin in had . Wat een matige game is dat zeg.. (Singleplayer)

 

Yup, single player campaign legendary solo is echt een lachertje. had die binnen een aantal uur geklaard. Moet wel zeggen dat de control scheme met nieuwe mechanics op Bumper Jumper echt lekker speelt. Dat ADS'en en clamberen is wel ideaal. Het enige wat ik echt kon waarderen van die game waren de grote sandboxes en massive firefights. voor de rest was het echt matig

 

MP is baas. Dat wel.

 

Yes, daar wel goed mee vermaakt!
Daarom had ik ook (Singleplayer) er achter staan .

 

Is 't nog een beetje te doen dan de MP? Niet broken?

 

Sorry had het over Halo 5. MCC weet ik niet. Niet echt geprobeerd. SP was verder voor mij prima. Heb alles achterelkaar gespeeld zonder problemen. En dat is toch wel een vette ervaring om ze alles weer te spelen. Met best goede graphics en 60fps.

 

Goed nieuws voor halo fans!

HALO: CE - HALO 3 - HALO 3: ODST & HALO 4, worden allen backwards compatible en de beschikbare DLC packs worden kosteloos aangeboden



https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/news/halo-summer-celebration

 

As announced today, work is underway on updates, fixes and Xbox One X enhancements for Halo: The Master Chief Collection – coming in 2018.

 

Xbox One X Enhancements is goed nieuws. Weer een goede reden om deze game volgend jaar te installeren op m'n Xbox One X.
Heb 'm destijds gekocht maar niet veel gespeeld. Goed excuus nu.

 

Het gaat er toch sterk op lijken dat de Master Chief collectie binnenkort toegevoegd gaat worden aan de Xbox gamepass. Hopelijk dan wel direct met X Enhancements

https://www.onmsft.com/news/halo-master-chief-collection-seemingly-confirmed-for-xbox-game-pass

 

Ja kan niet wachten op de patch die de game weer helemaal fixed.
Gisteren de game maar weer geinstaleerd.

 

Als ze em gelijk nou even uitbrengen voor de PC

 

Ze moeten toch nog een exclusive game houden.

 

MILESTONE 5
Currently the team is in the process of wrapping up work items for “Milestone 5” – a collection of priorities and deliverables that both 343 and our external partner have been working towards since our last blog update. What types of things are included in M5? Glad you asked! Here’s a high-level summary provided by the production folks:

• P1 & P2 continued bug fixing
• Texture streaming
• Intelligent Delivery updated functionality and presentation (Still WIP)
• UI & UX Updates which include: Updated Title Screen Background Video, Main Menu from horizontal to vertical layout on top tier menus, HDR Settings (Gamma, Brightness)/SDR (Gamma), LAN Support Options (Changes network from Xbox LIVE to LAN and vice versa)
• Matchmaking playlist management has been moved from Xbox platform to 343's CMS services

So, what does this all mean? Let me try and unpack a few of these items as best I can….

“P1 & P2 continued bug fixing” is a broad way of saying “fixing all the worst bugs that negatively impact our ability to deliver the flighting build or complete a milestone.” Some of these bugs are carryovers from the retail version of MCC while others are new and were introduced during the process of this update work.

Texture streaming is something the engineering folks have been working on and I’m told some of the fruits of their labor are already noticeable in-game via considerably quicker load times. Greg says that MP map load times across the board are significantly quicker (approx. 35-40% of what they were previously).

Intelligent Delivery (the feature that will enable players to eventually have the option of only installing one or more specific titles within MCC or even changing which language they want to install) has been underway for a while now. This feature gets really complicated really quickly but is something the team continues to make good progress against. For what it’s worth, even though our flighting build will only have Halo 2 Anniversary in it, the other content is being manually stripped out for now – this is not technically “Intelligent Delivery” at work. Not yet.

We’ll talk more about the some of the UI and UX updates further below (including some show-and-tell!) but suffice it to say that the fruits of this work have slowly been making their way into our internal builds. Some of this, like the updated title screen and main menu, will be included in the first flight. Others, like HDR settings and LAN Support options, are not within the scope of the initial flight.

The last item on the list is more of a behind-the-scenes update but this has effectively migrated the tools and systems that are used to update and deploy MCC matchmaking playlists to a new, modernized CMS (content manage system) here within 343. It sounds trivial but this will pay big dividends down the road and should result in more efficient, consistent means of updating playlists and things like the Message of the Day.

FIRST OFFICIAL UPDATE SCOPE
There’s a lot going on with the MCC update and we’ve tried to be up front and clear about what’s considered a day one must-have, what’s being evaluated for further down the road, and still what other things are just pie-in-the-sky considerations for the future. To help manage expectations I wanted to clarify the current plan of record regarding what you can expect to be available when the retail version of MCC receives its first true patch. There's currently no firm ETA to share publicly, but assuming flighting and dependencies go as planned - which is honestly a potentially risky assumption with a project of this complexity - we're targeting release of the first patch sometime later this Summer. Ultimately, this project is driven by quality first and foremost, so the team will take as much time as needed to achieve their goals. We'll continue to keep you updated on release timing targets as the team continues to make progress.

Here’s what’s being prioritized for the first retail update:

• Intelligent Install
• Xbox One X Visual Enhancements
• HDR/SDR Calibration Settings
• Networking and Matchmaking Improvements (Continuous Matchmaking, Network/Multiplayer API updates)
• P1 & P2 Bug Fixes
• LAN Support
• UI & UX Updates (Main Menu, Title Screen Video, Button States/Highlight States)

This means that other new features, like the highly anticipated Custom Game Browser, will not be included with the first patch. It is, however, high atop the list for the next round of work (and will no doubt surface in public flighting rings in the coming months). In addition, for areas like “UI & UX updates”, that work will continue and is expected to grow in scope over time.

As we’ve stated all along, this MCC project is viewed as an ongoing process and partnership with our community – the team has ambitious goals for the title that involves a steady stream of rolling updates (and continuous public testing) well after the initial retail patch. We’ll continue to keep you abreast of these features, priorities, and targets as the project progresses. For now, what are you most looking forward to with this first update? Let us know over in the MCC forums!

TALES FROM THE ENGINEERING TRENCHES
One of the best ways for me to really get to the bottom of what’s been going on with the MCC project is to trap Greg Hermann, Andrew Schnickel and Sean Cooper in a room and talk shop. I don’t claim to fully understand everything they tell me, but here’s my best attempt at sharing some insights from the engineering trenches:

• Regression – When I ask the team “what keeps you up at night?” the answer was a resounding “REGRESSIONS!” This is a complicated project and with so much being worked on across so many engines and code bases there’s always a very high risk of introducing new bugs in the process of adding a new feature or fixing an old bug. This is nightmare fuel for an engineering team. Thankfully we’ll have an army of community players helping to catch any pesky bugs that might slip through the cracks!

• Blue Screen – Sean has done some work to bring back to the Halo 2 network transition screen (the bluescreen that pops up saying “Connecting to game…” and when there’s a wait for a player to join or when a host migration occurs). Turns out that original code was ‘commented out’ during MCC development which resulted in H2 network games just having black screens or just a scoreboard which isn’t informative for players (nor historically correct!).

• Classic Controls - Sean managed to squeeze in a few fixes addressing some MCC-era Halo 2 control scheme inconsistencies.

• Custom Edition – Another area Sean has been tinkering with on the side is working on the pipeline and process to bring Halo Custom Edition maps into MCC. This is longer lead proof-of-concept work that isn’t part of the near-term scope but he’s shared some exciting progress successfully loading a Halo Custom Edition map into MCC. There’s a lot of rough edges and plenty of work to still do on this front - and to be honest this feature work isn't currently even tied to an official milestone - but it’s a really tantalizing and exciting prospect to think about further down the road.

• Dedicated Optimizations - Andrew has spent some time behind the scenes improving how MCC’s dedicated servers operate. When MCC shipped originally, with all of its different MP engines, each individual game required a separate, individual server deployment. Now the team has been able to build this into a single dedicated server deployment that can support all of the games within MCC. This streamlining means that on our end, dedicated servers can be operated and managed much more efficiently.

• Spawning – Sean has been working on adjustments to restore the Halo 2 spawning code back to how it worked in the original game. Originally, in MCC, Halo 2 spawning was modified to heavily weight players to respawn by teammates / at team spawns, which is something a portion of the community (particularly the Halo 2 Vista community) has given a lot of feedback around. While it seems minor, it’s just another example of the focus the team has on trying to get all of MCC’s titles to play and feel as close to the original console games as possible.

• Tickrates – A single update of a game simulation is known as a "tick." The rate at which the simulation is run on a server is referred often to as the server's tickrate; this is essentially the server equivalent of a client's frame rate, absent any rendering system. When the Vista port was created for Halo 2, the “tickrate” was updated from 30 to 60, which resulted in the fire rate of some weapons inadvertently changing. There are also some similar oddities that have been discovered with AI fire rates that appears to be linked to the shift from 30hz to 60hz. Sean has been working on digging into this and identifying areas where this can be adjusted to more accurately replicate the original Xbox experience. This is ongoing but eventually is an area where the team will definitely want community feedback once this work hits a public flight build.

• Enhanced Visuals – When MCC shipped, Halo 2: Anniversary's Campaign was the only piece of the collection that wasn’t locked at 1080p. H2A was built for Xbox One natively, and so has very high fidelity assets and textures relative to the games ported in MCC. For that reason, it uses a variable resolution approach that prioritizes a smooth frame rate but can occasionally result in the resolution dropping slightly (the same tech was used in Halo 5). What this means is that as MCC is receiving visual enhancements, with a goal of making everything 4K, there’s still a likelihood that H2A might periodically dip below that resolution. The team continues to work on this area but wanted to let me know that it’s likely that H2A’s campaign, while getting a sweet visual boost, will still fundamentally rely on a “variable resolution” model.

SHOW-AND-TELL
Lastly, to end things with some eye candy, I present to you some brand new work-in-progress screens from the MCC update project. Today we’re looking at two areas specifically – a brand new ‘splash screen’ and an in-progress comp for a new take on the game’s main menu screen. (here's a slightly larger version which makes for a sweet wallpaper!)

SPLISH SPLASH


I asked Jeremy Cook, MCC Art Director, to share a bit of background with us about the updated MCC splash screen. Why change it?

The splash screen is the first impression into a title. I wanted it to immediately say “Halo” and give that sense of wonder and scale. The ring is not just our namesake, it’s (effectively) a main character, and is a constant theme throughout MCC. And with 4k, you’ll see all those amazing details in the ring and on the surface.

MAIN MENU MUSINGS
The team has already shared their desire to take this opportunity to give some TLC to the menu and UI in MCC. Some of this work is already starting to show up in the latest internal builds – like this screenshot below, which gives a good look at how the main menu is being tweaked.



One minor, cool detail – in the upper right corner you can see a progress bar that’s denoting what % of the entire MCC package is installed – this is tied to the “Intelligent Delivery” feature.

Again, here’s MCC Art Director Jeremy Cook with some additional context around these changes. Why change the menu and what are the goals behind these changes?

MCC is a BIG title. In fact, it’s five titles. So making it feel cohesive, thematic, and not confusing to the player in the process is a challenge.

With our updates, we approach every screen with the goals of having as few of clicks as possible to interact, making what is important stand out, and limit confusion on what you can do and where you can go from that current state/location.

Artistically, I wanted to visually simplify things, declutter and give everything a cohesive, Halo look, regardless of what “Halo” you’re playing.

And Jeremy and team aren’t done yet. What else are they working on and exploring when it comes to a MCC visual refresh?

This flighting build is just the first, baby steps - We’re tackling the early main menu areas for now, so stay tuned for bigger and better in the future.

Getting fan feedback is critical for us to inform future designs. A good example of this is hearing; “ODST is too buried, I can’t find it!” so we reordered some things and have it sitting with the other titles, front and center. (note that ODST is extra content that not everyone has). Nothing should ever be ‘buried’ or ‘lost.’ It’s a big job, and we’re working very hard to make as many logical, visual and flow changes to make MCC a better experience. We hope you like this first glimpse and the direction we’re going.

How do you like the refreshed splash screen and main menu? Share your feedback with Jeremy and the team over in the MCC forum here on Waypoint.