How would you improve Halo Combat Evolved?

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Kayar
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Re: How would you improve Halo Combat Evolved?

Post by Kayar » Fri Mar 23, 2012 3:27 pm

Allow riding dragons, make NPCs have more voice actors, the ability to combine spells with each other for new effects, more shouts with more interesting effects, the ability to kill off companions/followers, the ability to become a weredragon rather than a werewolf...

I'm sorry, what game were we talking about again?
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Re: How would you improve Halo Combat Evolved?

Post by Sparky » Fri Mar 23, 2012 4:42 pm

Let me refresh your memory:
Topic wrote:How would you improve Halo Combat Evolved?
Hope that helps.
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Re: How would you improve Halo Combat Evolved?

Post by Kayar » Fri Mar 23, 2012 5:54 pm

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Re: How would you improve Halo Combat Evolved?

Post by Sparky » Fri Mar 23, 2012 6:34 pm

Kayar, stop wasting posting space on this topic please. I'm looking for suggestions such as:

- enable scripting in multiplayer
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Re: How would you improve Halo Combat Evolved?

Post by Dead Site » Fri Mar 23, 2012 7:29 pm

Enable scripting you say?
Kayar wrote:make NPCs have more voice actors,
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Re: How would you improve Halo Combat Evolved?

Post by Samuco » Sat Mar 24, 2012 3:58 am

Enabling scripting in the first place would be better.

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Re: How would you improve Halo Combat Evolved?

Post by Sparky » Sat Mar 24, 2012 7:01 am

Alright guys, let's try to get a better idea of what is handled by the executable and what is handled by the maps. Content is maps, Engine is executable.

For sounds, the quantity, durations, etc. are dependent upon the map file data. An upgrade to the engine would rather let us include sound tags recorded at a higher kHz, bit rate, and compression format. For example, an engine change would allow making tags from .wav files at 192kHz and 32 bits, and let us use more than the engine's data size limit. This reminds me of when Altimit01 responded to my Eschaton stress tests and modified it so it would allow more tags than the "legal limit". There's a really short duration of sound permitted with sound tags compiled using Tool which is around 1 minute long per permutation. Also, permutation indices are borken. So that would also need to be fixed.

The idea of a built-in multiplayer-style (collaborative) map editor sounds great; these maps would be saved in memory and could be optionally uploaded / saved to HDM. If you have played with the free game engine called Sauerbraten, you can collaboratively edit game maps there; we'd use a very similar setup.

Along those lines, I'd like to have a better console in the game, using a UI which makes it easy for players to change the server settings, such as extending the duration of a multiplayer game while it is in progress, and adding a "pause" feature to the timer which ends the game. This would ui.map changes also. We'd want to have the game additionally consolidate its resources, so that ALL ui.map-related changes would take place in ui.map, rather than changing after you loaded a different playable scenario map. I'd like to see in the ui.map file the ability to reference the filesystem, so you would be able to take a screenshot of your mod while it was in progress in the game and then select the screenshot using the ui widget system from your hard drive so that this all could be uploaded as a set of information to include on HDM's mod database (this will eventually be a template collection of all the pages under the "Mods" category).

Bitmaps: The limitation at this point is 16-bit images for certain compression types... 32-bit images are possible, but I think there could be some improvements to the quality of bitmaps we can use. I also wonder if the engine could be less quirky about things like screen coordinate offsets. I'm thinking of making a reference image for HUD changes to include coordinates on a grid overlay. It would be too cool if this bitmap HUD reference overlay image were used in the built-in map editor.

Since some of these things involve using the tools more than we typically do, I'm going to invite people from the Halo Custom Edition communities to participate in this topic also.

Related topic for my reference: http://forum.halomaps.org/index.cfm?pag ... icID=40492
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Re: How would you improve Halo Combat Evolved?

Post by Kayar » Sat Mar 24, 2012 2:18 pm

Alright Sparky, I apologize.

On-topic: I feel that much of the changes which would add the most to Combat Evolved are HUD and UI changes. I feel that changing anything beyond that goes too far into the direction of simply making a mod.

Extra options also seem like a nice idea, I see some suggestions have already been made in that direction. One thought: The option to change in-game music during multiplayer matches? As in, use the existing campaign loops in multiplayer, but somehow allow for adding these to multiplayer dynamically? Though, again, that does go in the direction of modding more, but I see by other suggestions that adding content is less of an issue after all. Sparky, I like your idea of interacting directly with events in the campaign, though I believe it may interfere with the concept of Master Chief being a mostly-silent protagonist, not that I see us doing any voice-acting in the future.
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Re: How would you improve Halo Combat Evolved?

Post by Vegerot » Sat Mar 24, 2012 5:01 pm

Sparky wrote: The idea of a built-in multiplayer-style (collaborative) map editor sounds great; these maps would be saved in memory and could be optionally uploaded / saved to HDM. If you have played with the free game engine called Sauerbraten, you can collaboratively edit game maps there; we'd use a very similar setup.
Meh, that could work. Taking advantage of more-advanced, modern-day memory would be good.
Sparky wrote: I'd like to see in the ui.map file the ability to reference the filesystem, so you would be able to take a screenshot of your mod while it was in progress in the game and then select the screenshot using the ui widget system from your hard drive so that this all could be uploaded as a set of information to include on HDM's mod database (this will eventually be a template collection of all the pages under the "Mods" category).
Do you have Steam? They essentially have this already. I forget whether you could do this for Halo (I think you can take screenshots of non-Steam games).
Kayar wrote:One thought: The option to change in-game music during multiplayer matches? As in, use the existing campaign loops in multiplayer, but somehow allow for adding these to multiplayer dynamically?
Again, Steam, more specifically Garry's mod. Have you played gm_bigcity? It's exactly like you're talking about but you can do even more things with the music and it is TONS more advanced.
Kayar wrote:Sparky, I like your idea of interacting directly with events in the campaign, though I believe it may interfere with the concept of Master Chief being a mostly-silent protagonist, not that I see us doing any voice-acting in the future.
Well, 343 Industries is making the story a lot more personal in Halo 4, making John a much more dynamic character. Also, if you've read Halo: The Flood (which is the book of Halo: Combat Evolved), John talks a lot more than he does in-game.a
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Re: How would you improve Halo Combat Evolved?

Post by Sparky » Sat Mar 24, 2012 6:02 pm

Talking more could be an issue, since we don't have access to the voice actor. Game interactivity is what I have in mind and this can be more easily added.
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Re: How would you improve Halo Combat Evolved?

Post by Sparky » Sun Mar 25, 2012 4:43 pm

I'd like to mention that this "Official Halo Feedback Thread" is a great place to find ideas.

Moveable teleporters (as equipment) is a nice one.
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Re: How would you improve Halo Combat Evolved?

Post by Moxus » Sun Apr 08, 2012 3:52 pm

The only thing I'd really change about CE is eliminating the need for leading shots; my biggest frustration playing online was the guessing game you had to play trying to figure out where an opponent actually was, riding the rise and fall of lag waves. If that was gone, I'd be pretty satisfied.

Oh, and no instant kills with vehicles; nothing was more annoying than being unceremoniously killed as your teammate's Warthog nudged you at two km/h.

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Re: How would you improve Halo Combat Evolved?

Post by Zanghfei » Sun Apr 08, 2012 4:29 pm

- I'm tired of aiming on the left or on the right the cross-air.
aim on the right place on the cross-air.

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Re: How would you improve Halo Combat Evolved?

Post by TaxiService » Sun Apr 08, 2012 9:54 pm

>The only thing I'd really change about CE is eliminating the need for leading shots.
That's what skilled people call fun. I've never been a fan of leading either, but i am sure that people like nil would frown upon the possibility to remove leading from the game.

…if that's even possible. :-\ I've heard there were some fps games that, instead of using a host, would connect players to each others whenever they were shooting each others. I… can't remember anything useful about this? I only know that this thing sort of reduced lag, or something. >_>

>nothing was more annoying than being unceremoniously killed as your teammate's Warthog nudged you at two km/h.
oh, i agree. If we had the halo 2 or halo 3 vehicle physics this wouldn't happen anymore, and we could stand on moving vehicles too!

>aim on the right place on the cross-air.
that wouldn't be a hard thing to fix. If nudging the crosshair in the wphi isn't precise enough, we must make the crosshair's width an even number with photoshop or somethi-- oh wait, you are saying the same thing as moxus!! I thought you referred to that slight imprecisions that crosshairs have. Like, uh, they are made by odd pixels on an even document, so it is always a bit tilted to the right or left, etc… nevermind!!
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Re: How would you improve Halo Combat Evolved?

Post by Pielogist » Mon Apr 09, 2012 5:10 am

Melee lunge

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