Any Halo fans here?

[jassemon]

Halo needs YOU! http://www.gamespy.com/titlefight/matches/0213.shtml

[George W. Bush]

High altitude low opening?

[jassemon]

Halo (XBOX/PC game) not HALO :)

[Seoulstriker]

Halo PC sucks, man. hate to break it to you.

Xbox? oh yeah, the best game on that system. too bad it was originally designed for the mac in 1999. rofl

[flickme]

Halo all the way.

[Ratamacue]

Actually, Halo was originally going to be a 3rd person shooter for PC. Halo PC doesn't suck, it's just that it's not the groundbreaking game that it was for the Xbox in 2001. I'm hoping they won't wait so long to release Halo 2 for PC after it comes out for Xbox this year though. I think even our own overly superficial Seoulstriker could appreciate Halo 2 given the graphics engine it has. ;)

Oh yeah, Halo rocks Quake.

[jassemon]

Phew, that was a close one. Halo won by 21 votes, total votes given 18443 woot

[Seoulstriker]

Actually, Halo was originally going to be a 3rd person shooter for PC. Halo PC doesn't suck, it's just that it's not the groundbreaking game that it was for the Xbox in 2001. I'm hoping they won't wait so long to release Halo 2 for PC after it comes out for Xbox this year though. I think even our own overly superficial Seoulstriker could appreciate Halo 2 given the graphics engine it has. ;)

Oh yeah, Halo rocks Quake.


Actually, Halo was originally going to be a 3rd person shooter for the Mac. Bungie was actually in the late stages of development when they were bought out by Microsoft. MS put it on hold for two years before release on the Xbox as the 'premier' game.

I admit, Halo seems to have some really good action, but the PC development was absolutely terrible, barely running on decent systems.

I'm actually not very knowledgeable of the Halo 2 engine. Do you know what the engine is capable of doing over past engines?

(I'm skeptical, though, because it has to run on the Xbox, so it can't be that physically demanding. if it were for the xbox 2, that would be another story. i'm not expecting a drastically different engine from the original halo, as seen in the developer interview.)

[Gordon]

I always heard HALO was originally made for the PC but i'll take ya word for it seoul, was due to be released, developers were bought by microsoft ... then the release was put back 3 years for the PC so it could be the debut game for the XBox. Us PC users were meant to get HALO a little before it came out on the XBox ... but hell, we got better games now and anyway, by the time it came out on the PC I reckon most people had played / finished it on the XBox whether they owned one or not, they should have changed the levels or something.

Personally I never had any probs running it on my system which was at the time a 1.2GHz Athlon w/ 768MB RAM w/ Radeon 9000, sure the detail wasn't that high and I saw other people had probs running it on high with awesome systems.

[Ratamacue]

Look at some screenshots of Halo 2 and take a look at the bumpmapping they've thrown in. Better yet, find and download the E3 2003 movie. There appears to be a half-decent physics engine in it as well

And don't put the blame on Bungie for the PC version of Halo. The dev company responsible for the PC port was Gearbox, same guys that did the Opposing Force and Blue Shift expansions for Half-Life.

[Operation Ivy]

I got Halo on PC and love it :D



and HL2 Rules ;)

[Haiw]

Preliminary warning: anyone that even thinks of mentioning Doom 3 in this thread gets his balls cut off. *looks to seoulstiker*

[MVSpartan117]

I'm quite the Halo fan :D

I'm pretty sure Halo was actually originally planned as a Real Time Stadegy Game.

[Seoulstriker]

Look at some screenshots of Halo 2 and take a look at the bumpmapping they've thrown in. Better yet, find and download the E3 2003 movie. There appears to be a half-decent physics engine in it as well

And don't put the blame on Bungie for the PC version of Halo. The dev company responsible for the PC port was Gearbox, same guys that did the Opposing Force and Blue Shift expansions for Half-Life.

i know that bungie didn't due the PC version.



here are 'screenshots' of halo 2:

http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2003/xbox/halo2/0710/halo2_screen002.jpg
nice bumpmapping on his pants. why isn't anything else in the picture bump-mapped? and that's definitely a 3d render from blender or 3dsMax or whatev. far tire seems bump-mapped or with a very high-poly mesh, but the near tire shows a high-->low recast.


http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2003/xbox/halo2/0710/halo2_screen003.jpg
bump-mapping disappears. pixel-shaders are used to illimuniate one part of his armor in the sunlight, while the rest of his body is texture-mapped over a high-poly model. the 2 dimensional look to the map is exposed on his forearm.


http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2003/xbox/halo2/0710/halo2_screen004.jpg
same thing in this screenshot. it is quite obvious that the texture is mapped over an extremely high-poly model and then recasted over a low-poly segment of the body to give the 3d/bump-mapped look at perpindicular angles.



http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2003/xbox/halo2/0710/halo2_screen005.jpg
nice model of the character in favor of the low-precision model of the vehicle.



http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2003/xbox/halo2/0710/halo2_screen006.jpg
high-poly model once again, with bits of recasting.



http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2003/screen2/562116_2003061603_screen001.jpg
very doubtful rendering using the halo 2 engine based on its time in development (much earlier than previous screenshots, no aliasing in the image, and very high resolution)


http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2003/e3/0512/xb_halo205121130_screen001.jpg
infamous screenshot grab from the bungie interview. there has been massive improvement over the pixel shaders used to render the visor.

[Ratamacue]

Seoul, Master Chief's entire friggin body is bump mapped. Most of the vehicles, Marines, etc. have other bump mapping all over them, just look.

http://halo.bungie.net/site/halo/features/gallery_10.html

That page has, among other things, the transition of Master Chief from wireframe to smoothed to bump-mapped to skinned. If you look at the weapons page, you can see they're bump mapped as well. Same with all the vehicles.

[MVSpartan117]

Anyone read the books? they're quite good, I enjoyed them a lot!

[Seoulstriker]

Seoul, Master Chief's entire friggin body is bump mapped. Most of the vehicles, Marines, etc. have other bump mapping all over them, just look.

http://halo.bungie.net/site/halo/features/gallery_10.html

That page has, among other things, the transition of Master Chief from wireframe to smoothed to bump-mapped to skinned. If you look at the weapons page, you can see they're bump mapped as well. Same with all the vehicles.

http://halo.bungie.net/images/site/halo/gallery/halo2/mc_maps.jpg
http://halo.bungie.net/images/site/halo/gallery/halo2/mc_final.jpg
http://halo.bungie.net/images/site/halo/gallery/halo2/warthog_rear.jpg


i know that that is bump-mapping, but it is done with a renderer like 3d studio max. as shown in the actual screenshots, the high-poly/high-bump-mapped character is actually textured and then the poly-count takes a drastic hit and then the previous texture is put on to make an extremely realistic look.

it looks fantastic and the engine seems to be pretty good.

unfortunately, that is the best they can really do with the hardware available to them. it doesn't have the same hardware base that future 3d game engines will have. ;)

[MVSpartan117]

Thats why I don't like consoles, the games are only limited to it's power. PC all the way! :D

[Ratamacue]

Trust me Seoul, even ingame it's bump-mapped. If you watch either the trailer or E3 2003 video, the graphics sure look nice, right? Those are in-game cinematics, which means that they were taken with the actual engine and there is a good deal of bump-mapping, trust me. If you watch the E3 movie, the guy's faces will have shadows where their cheekbones are depending on how they're facing.

I know, I know. It's all a conspiracy, right?

[Seoulstriker]

Trust me Seoul, even ingame it's bump-mapped. If you watch either the trailer or E3 2003 video, the graphics sure look nice, right? Those are in-game cinematics, which means that they were taken with the actual engine and there is a good deal of bump-mapping, trust me. If you watch the E3 movie, the guy's faces will have shadows where their cheekbones are depending on how they're facing.

I know, I know. It's all a conspiracy, right?


noooooo, man, that's the polygon casting the shadow! :)

here, look at it like this. if the masterchief were really bump-mapped in real time, do you think that would be the best they would do? bump-mapping real-time is to make something super 'textured' without relying on massive poly-count numbers for one model.

[MVSpartan117]

Yeah in game is definatly Bump-mapped

http://www.game-revolution.com/previews/screens/xbox/halo_2/halo_21b.jpg

http://www.game-revolution.com/previews/screens/xbox/halo_2/halo_24b.jpg

http://www.silicon-fusion.com/games/Xbox/145/2.jpg

[Seoulstriker]

man, of course it's bump-mapped.... it's complicated, though. ;)

[MVSpartan117]

Ok, I'd didn't completely read you guys posts...... =P