Vuthakral

(this is a crappy placeholder logo) Overview Amalgamate is a project I have hoped to be able to do for many years, but have held off on getting my hopes of up from being able to do in the event we never got the tools or community tools to bring this idea to life. The tl;dr goal of this project is to take Halo 4's art assets and create a merge between the old and the new. Things that logically shouldn't change between games (that wouldn't be considered an 'acceptable' change between sequels) don't, things that are taken to the extreme are dialed back while still keeping some influence. The goal of this project is by no means to replace or invalidate the things done with Halo 4. I approach this project under the original plan of Halo 4 just being an art style change. I am working towards dialing back to intensity to which the style was shifted. To make stuff that would be a jarring change to existing players no longer so much of one. This project, for the Halo 4 mod-side of things, is also looking to make a couple of gameplay changes to make the game a lot more fun to actually play. This will include some AI tweaks, vehicle alterations, new (old) weapons, new (new) weapons, as well as gameplay-integrated visual changes. Just trust me when I say I understand game balance fairly well, the sandbox should never feel overbearing or like you have multiple weapons which accomplish the same goals but slightly better or worse. As for the Halo 2 Anniversary Multiplayer side of things, it's going to be just a bunch of tags to use with H2AMP visually, and I am not very focused on altering any gameplay there. It's more a "I know these assets are natively cross-compatible except for the shaders, so let me do the tedious part for you so you can just use them for your mods over there." What am I visually aiming for? As stated above, a visual blend between the oldschool "Bungie Halo" and 343i art styles. Stylistically, things may lean a bit more towards the "Bungie Halo", but incorporate elements of 343 design. An easy to give example would be the warthog. It will sport the classic style, but with some parts recreated from the 343i & Forza hog such as the gas canisters, bumpers, and foglight. Weapons are going to be distinctly "Bungie Halo" styled, and yes that even includes the newer promethean weapons. I will be recreating them in a more Halo 2/3 sentinel style. "So what separates this from the other 2 3 4 "We're changing Halo 4 into Bungie assets" mods?" I am not just taking tags from Halo 3/Reach/2A and dropping them into the Halo 4 editing kit, for one. Not that there's any shame in that, it's a very valid option. I've just chosen probably the most painful route. If you have ever followed my modeling work, you may have seen some releases I've posted on my SketchFab under the names of "Restorations". I am continuing this series of models for anything I am putting into this project, and also intend to release those models at the conclusion of the project. Here's some screenshots of some of the current weapons ingame: Halo 4 Gameplay Changes The Halo 4 mod-side of things will include a whole host of small changes which will add up to make the game a lot more fun to play on any difficulty. I'm very well-aware of the kinds of issues with Halo 4's campaign sandbox that lead to all kinds of frustrating & annoying bits, and its generally not-fun gameplay loop. To cover some of the basic additions & changes that most people will want to know about: The ammo economy problems of the Halo 4 sandbox will become a thing of the past. Bullet sponge enemy design & pea shooter weapons are bad and they've gotta go. You won't be a walking armoury, but you also won't be bled dry for bullets every waking moment of the game. Promethean Knight combat gameplay & AI will be reworked entirely, don't expect prometheans to be the same annoying enemies that you drink to forget remember. The SMG is being added to the campaign, but will only appear in places it would make sense to find it in, and serve a different combat role than the assault rifle. Sentinels will now drop usable sentinel beams (Because yes.) The Plasma Caster will make rare appearances in the campaign. Some fun surprises from the Infinity & its crew that I don't want to spoil just yet. Armour abilities will receive various tweaks which will vary in how different they are from stock Halo 4, but are ultimately being designed in such a way that they will function as an extension to the gameplay loop and not as a gimmick or a loop-stopper. Halo 4 is known heavily for its use (or over-use, depending on who you ask) of post-processing in its campaign. In notable areas such as the mission "Forerunner", effects such as the screen bloom will be reduced. Cortana did not rewrite your suit's firmware while the Master Chief was in cryostasis. It's going to take a lot of work, but I aim to create a HUD very similar to Halo 3's, with heavy inspiration taken from the Halo 3 HUD Spec documentation. (probably some other stuff I've thought of but can't remember and haven't written down which I can't recall at the time of writing this)

woah holy shit I'm posting stuff in this thread again? Here's a lot of stuff I've done since 2020: ODST Stuff (Thanks to Spiral for sharing their original to use / make high-poly with this.) Now, as for everything else: Halo 3 styled pilot helmet: Isolated CE pilot helmet + more modern-styled curvy Halo 3 optional attachment Remodeled/restored alt armour which existed in the texture assets but were not used in the final game: A secondary set of re-UV'ed torso bits of the two above pictured armour sets utilizing the unarmoured marine texture, in case anyone had any fun ideas for survivors scavenging whatever they can. And of course, here's everyone's' favourite caps & bandanas with extra polygons: And then lastly, previously people asked for closeup views of the new hands; so here's those:

Halo 3 Spectre This is something I've put probably way more time into than I reasonably should have. Albeit most of it was adjusting to the Halo 3 Editing Kit. Images Spectre Features: - This spectre has several alternate variants which can be assigned within the map editor or within script. These variants are: "default" - Default spectre "heretic" - Heretic-themed skin for the spectre "kai" - Halo 2/Halo 3 seraph-themed skin for the spectre "shadow" - A variant using a Halo CE-esque turret based on the cut "Shadow" vehicle from Halo Combat Evolved. - Enhanced standard model with much better polygon detail for the undamaged regions - Proper effects work, a custom death explosion, lingering effects, etc - Unique sound selection to help make it feel a bit more unique in the gameplay loop to know when it is being damaged/used/etc. - IK Attachment markers for all the seats - Marines, grunts, elites, brutes, and spartans can drive the spectre out of the box - Marines, elites, brutes, and spartans can use the rider seats out of the box - Marines, elites, and spartans can use the standard turret out of the box (The included readme tells you how you can make it so brutes can use them) - Marines, elites, brutes, and spartans can use the "Shadow turret" out of the box. (The same method explained for the brutes on standard turrets can help you set up grunts for this one.) Download From: NexusMods | Google Drive

I mean, I do it but only for test maps. In the event they get leaked I don't want my unfinished work being spread around by the you-know-who part of the community and resulting in my finished work never getting any attention, and getting buried solely by the over-saturated environment surrounding it using old tags.. It has happened time and time again, so please don't tell me that's an invalid reason. If it's selfish for an artist to want their finished product that they put way more effort into to be known than an unfinished slice of what they made then I don't want to be part of this community any more. For once I'm with Tark. You do realize that a good chunk of custom maps are protected right? Also, you do also realize that the notion of protecting your maps has only in the recent years become a notion of being a "bad thing to do", right? It was a very common practice back in the day because tag ripping of all kinds, especially the maliciously-aligned kind, was very common thanks to this little known thing called HEK+. People didn't want their tags to get corrupted & reused in a broken format. We've seen some of these broken tags from this era still pop up from time to time nowadays. Map protection didn't start out as some evil thing. God forbid, @(SBB) Storm can show your the peak of this toxic time in the environment with the dude who ripped SPv2 and tried to use it as a ransom. I'd post it myself but I don't have that video's URL. Don't get me wrong; I don't like the concept of people who use map protection for purely selfish reasons and I don't deny that there are people who use it on finished maps, but I get moderately offended at the notion that every single person to ever protect their maps is entirely selfish, or that they don't have valid reason or are automatically invalid for doing so. This is a disgusting mentality to have in general regardless of the topic.

Introduction This thread is created solely for providing a full list of visual differences between the versions of the map "Edge" as we have seen it appear in Halo Online (the most popular build of ms23) versus the version we currently have in the Halo: The Master Chief Collection flight. As one of the Seven documented people on the planet who actually likes this map, this map coming to Halo: The Master Chief Collection is a huge deal to me. While this map will undoubtedly play very awkwardly given it was designed with sprint in mind, it's always good to not see talented peoples' work go to waste. This is going to be a very in-depth observational post discussing plain old differences in visuals, map geometry, engine tech, and etc. But first, We need to talk about parallel universes cover a few bits of grounding information about "Edge" and it's original game. "Edge" is a map originally from a cancelled free-to-play Halo game developed by Saber Interactive called "Halo Online" which was held in closed testing in Russia back in 2015 through the 4game service. Halo Online runs on a very heavily modified version of the Halo 3: ODST engine, which also has some new rendering features such as true HDR and screen space reflections just to name the ones relevant to this thread. As the version I will be drawing comparisons with compared to the MCC version is an old build of the game, some differences that may seem like missing objects are more likely to actually be updates. Notes: All of these screenshots were taken & saved as a high quality PNG. I play both Halo Online & MCC with proper brightness configurations. Yes, I am one of those people who take my time to get those settings right. Lastly, All images shown in this thread will have Halo Online on the left side, and MCC on the right. (Or top/bottom on mobile) The point of this thread is by no means to berate the work that has gone into porting this map from Halo Online into the Master Chief Collection. It is solely to archive information on the port itself and any possible differences, bugs, or etc. Any technical terminology on my part ranges anywhere from "I solidly know what I'm talking about" to "I'm honestly just taking a guess here" as most of my knowledge with the Blam engine is from Halo Custom Edition & Halo 2 Vista. The Comparisons Now, let me start by getting one big huge point out of the way immediately: The screen space reflections, and true HDR. One huge difference you are going to notice in almost every comparison immediately is that the images taken from Halo Online will generally appear to have much brighter environments. This is not due to any kind of bug in either game. It is a side-effect of engine differences. MCC Halo 3 multiplayer still uses Halo 3's Bloom & Fake HDR, whereas Halo Online uses Halo 3 ODST's rendering, which includes its true HDR. Colours overall in the MCC version are going to look a little drowned out the closer they are to white due to this. It's a very small difference, but it's very noticeable in some places. The other thing is that Halo Online had technology for screen space reflections in the engine. As far as I know, it's still the only version of the Blam engine to have this feature to this day. So you are going to be frequently noticing that images from Halo Online seem to have reflections absent in the MCC version. This should be considered normal. Below, the first image demonstrates both of these two major effects very obviously. Comparing SSR & HDR Note: In MCC, the map in general has a very thick fog along the interiors. This is undoubtedly a change made later in development after ms23. Hammer / Rocket platform Central Interior Entrance In here if you're observant, you can probably notice the first issue present in this port. Bonus points if you can figure it out before I explain it further below. Red Base Center Doorway Interestingly, despite weapon spawns being changed, you can see the plasma grenades in both images above have not been altered in spawns at all. They even share the same angles. Also, do not be fooled by how much darker this environment feels in MCC. It is entirely caused by the fog. Red Base Central Overview This is another comparison which helps show that the version of Edge present in MCC is from a later version of the map than what was in ms23. If you look about the central iconic formation, in Halo Online it causes a sharp line in the lightmap, whereas by the time it reached the version ported to MCC, this was fixed. Red Base Corner Overview The most notable difference is the removal of the panel decoration above the doorway, which actually still has its glow visible in the lightmap. Personal note: If it were up to me, I'd have this map's lightmaps re-run before pushing this into MCC solely because of issues like this, among others you will see further down. Skybox, Vegetation, and Fog Downgrades. Cliff Shader Upgrades. Now, I can already safely assume the exact reason for the downgrades: Performance. If you were around trying to play Halo Online (either legitimately through 4game or otherwise), if you were running on anything other than a modern NVIDIA & Intel combo this map probably crashed or lagged A LOT for you. Edge was bar none the most unoptimized map during this time period, so it only makes sense that elements like vegetation & the skybox were cut back to save performance. In terms of upgrades, it is plainly obvious that the cliffs themselves have gotten some very nice material overhauls. The skybox of Edge is undoubtedly marred the most by the lack of Halo Online's lighting. High tones in the clouds, sun, and volumetrics went from white to grey, and as a result even made some of the clouds nearly invisible against the backdrop. I'm unsure if the lens flare plainly visible in MCC is a side-effect of Halo 3's sun, or was an intentional change later in development of Edge for Halo Online. Personal note: I do hope that with MCC being able to run this map a lot more stabily, we can see the return of all the extra skybox & foliage details from the old version of this map. Red Base Central Sword/Rocket Platform Overlook Blue Hall to Outer Center Blue & Red Base Back Wall The forcefield floor in here seems to be missing its team-coloured tint. I have a feeling this has to do with the next comparison. Central Platform Forcefield Floor Notice how on the edge of the floor that in Halo Online the shader fades out around it? This leads me to one of two assumptions: 1) These shaders are tied to the wrong shader type, which does not fade around geometry edges & does not support colour change 2) The shader IS set, but does not function correctly in MCC. (more likely). Note how in earlier images, this shader seemingly disappears when viewed from a near-parallel angle in MCC. Gravity Lifts Gravity Lift Exit Here we can see one of the very few real differences in the bsp between these versions. The wall is roughly 1/3 taller than in ms23. Also, note the forcefield rendering differently. Bottom of the Central Room Obviously enough, these details were removed due to performance concerns. While I'm not sure just how much of a save this would have made, if any, there's really no other logical way of thinking about why these details would have been removed. Top of the Central Room Some odd object lighting errors up there.

Disconnect (Beta 2) Disconnect is a map I started roughly two weeks ago, but had 99% of its work done in the past three days, so B2 is basically a map made in three days. There's a couple of visual issues, but no game-stopping issues that I caught. This map is compiled using the Refined tagset & Jesse's High Resolution HUD. This map is very much still unfinished, and I've got a lot more bsp work to do, but I've got (most of) the playable area done. This is a very fast-paced map with team-oriented spawns. All gametypes should be supported. If you want to see what this map was three days ago: ABOUT THE MAP Disconnect is a derelict Forerunner relay station adrift somewhere in space near Installation 04, relay stations like these are used to coordinate all communication within the Forerunner Empire, but with the violent destruction of Installation 04, this station now sits adrift, barely able to sustain power floating through the orbit of the gas giant Theshold. The station's distant groans can be faintly heard as parts of the station which were impacted directly shift and tear themselves apart, with no coordination center left for the sentinel subsystems of the station it will forever drift in disrepair. SCREENSHOTS A thanks to SBB for helping me with testing in beta1 to expose some pretty bad screwups. Download from Google Drive

I'd highly advise putting the flags in the center of their respective rooms as opposed to all the way in the back. It was obscenely hard if near impossible to gets flags out of their base rooms because if you could even get to them you were still going to have to deal with the entire enemy team respawning to stop you due to travel time. Unless you have your entire team pulling a coordinated push or the team leaves their flag unguarded its really just about impossible to get the flag. Also, what's the intended story going on with the Ma37 & marine helmet outside the level boundary in the area where the campaign normally proceeds?

And here I thought from the title this may have been an update to the long-abandoned "Halo Texmod" project by SSO Really psyched to see modding to any extent of the HD graphics engine side of Halo CEA. I've always hoped to be able to go in and restore a lot of the lost artistry of the original game.

Halo '99 Stealth Tank Remake This is my remake of the ever-so-popular "Halo '99" stealth tank. It utilizes textures from the stock CE scorpion tank, warthog, and lifepod. The geometry is roughly 90-something-percent accurate based on all screenshots/videos I could find of the old thing online. Some minor differences exist such as the barrel of the tank. In Halo '99 the stealth tank just had a giant metal barrel, whereas here it has a little more intricate design because there was nothing high resolution enough to use as a solid metal barrel that matched the colour profile. My friend I made this for & I agreed we'd just call it the "MD99" as a little nod to its origin.Obviously meaning "Mac Demo '99". IMPORTANT NOTES FOR THOSE WHO WISH TO PUT THIS INGAME AND MAKE IT ACCURATE TO THE REAL STEALTH TANK In a video of the tank being driven, which can be seen here, take note of the track guards when it fires. There's a weighting error in the rig which causes it to stretch slightly. If you want authenticity you're gonna have to include that. When the stealth tank fires, there's a very fiery backblast from the two vents along the rear of the cannon (can be seen in video linked above) When rotating up/down, the cannon piece physically raises & lowers so that the back of the cannon does not clip. (Example can be seen in tons of prerelease media as well as fourth image above) Despite looking like fixed tracks, it can be seen in one of the prerelease images that the front half of the tracks actually have some spring to them to angle downward when nothing is below them. The tank has a radio antenna on the cannon on the right side of the back centerpiece. It can be seen in the video linked above. Download from Google Drive

Is there any consideration for custom UIs over in Custom Edition maps which make use of their own fonts at all? I'd imagine some stuff might start to look out of place if something is designed to use a sharper or more angular font but it gets overwritten by a standard font.

Alright that's it, I'm calling in the specialist to deal with this abomination: @Pfhunkie

I can't technically vote since the first one I "bought" was the PC port just because my family didn't have an Xbox but we did have a computer, but I played the fuck out of Halo CE Xbox MP with my family whenever we went over to their house, or when they came here they'd bring the xbox with them. Halo is love, Halo is life.

Aaannd five tickets to you! Got to help playtest this earlier today and it works really well. Can't wait to play it some more on gamenights.