Misc CE Development

[Samuco 297]

Oh

I made another video anyway with bigger text

 

The plugin is more stable now

 

 

[Kavawuvi 7,026]

In Halo, all of the console messages will fade after 150 frames. If the game is running at 30 frames per second, then it'll fade out after 5 seconds. If the game is running at 60 frames per second, then it's 2.5 seconds. If it's 120 frames per second, then it's 1.25 seconds. If the framerate is uncapped and it ends up running at 600 frames per second, then each message will go away after 0.25 seconds.

 

This plugin causes each message to fade out after 150 ticks, instead. Assuming the game is running at 30 ticks per second, each message will fade out after 5 seconds regardless of the framerate.

 

 

Currently I've only made a HaloMD version, because it especially affects HaloMD, as the framerate is set by default to Vsync.

 

As HAC2 already fixes it, I'm not sure about porting it to Halo PC/CE, as the default framerate is 30 FPS. Many people (possibly most people) are going to have the default frame rate, plus running the game faster than 30 FPS causes animation bugs which keeps a lot of people from running it any faster. That would mean this tool will not help these people in any way whatsoever, so it may just be a waste of time.

 

Any opinions?

[NeX 1,756]

Not sure it's worth the time, to be honest. I can only imagine that the pool of players for MD is even smaller than that of PC/CE.

 

It's your time, if you think it's worth it, then have at. I'm just surprised anyone still messes with this stuff on a day-to-day basis

[Kavawuvi 7,026]

Not sure it's worth the time, to be honest. I can only imagine that the pool of players for MD is even smaller than that of PC/CE.

 

It's your time, if you think it's worth it, then have at. I'm just surprised anyone still messes with this stuff on a day-to-day basis

I kind of figured the same. However, HaloMD has been growing quite a bit over the past few years, and technically, anyone who has the frame rate set to anything higher than 30 FPS has this issue. Much more people on HaloMD would have a use for this than PC/CE users. I'd hate to make something Mac-exclusive, but I can really only conclude releasing this for PC/CE is nearly pointless.

 

I don't make this stuff daily or even monthly. I come up with a cool idea every few months or so, or I see a problem with Halo's engine and I want to fix it. As a result, I've made a bunch of cool things this way. Stuff like syncing biped locations (apparently this is good for AI), custom gravity (talking about bipeds, weapons, projectiles, equipment, etc.), syncing player velocity (you've seen it), and stuff like this are all very possible with a little bit of programming, but just aren't very useful. For instance, I know people have been wanting stuff like AI syncing since before Halo modding became a thing, but with how dead Halo PC/CE is, I guess it's simply not worth finishing.

[WaeV 5,049]

MD is nice because of:

• How easy it is to add executable plugins/extensions/whatever-they're-called
• Integrated lobby chat
• One download and you're set to go

PC doesn't have anything like that.

[Kavawuvi 7,026]

I figured I should also add an additional feature that I felt was missing. Console text that has completely faded out reappears when you bring up the console again.

 

[Kavawuvi 7,026]

I'm almost torn now on how I want fading to work.

 

This is how it is right now:

 

Basically, it will unfade past console messages, and refade them when you close the console.

 

 

Then there is this:

 

Exiting the console will fade out all of the console messages, including new ones received when you were using the console. However, this will only affect you if you open and exit the console. If you receive a console message through something like a SAPP or Phasor script when you aren't using the console, this message will still begin to fade out after the usual time.

 

Most games won't have console messages lingering once you exit the console, which is why I'm considering this behavior. In my opinion, this is better.

[Samuco 297]

I have been working on a plugin for HaloMD (sorry PC folks!) that lets me run Electron deferred shaders within Halo. Here's the scree-space reflection shader running within MD. The pipeline needs more work, but this shows that it is certainly possible. 

 

Added un-optimized SSAO and improved reflection

Edited June 27, 2016 by Samuco

[Skeezix the Cat 3,089]

woah...you say unoptimized.  What kind of performance hit is there?

[Samuco 297]

Reflections... essentially free (0 performance loss)

 

SSAO... not free. It dropped my 60fps to 40 fps

However, I didn't use the proper process (downscale, blur, upscale etc) as in Electron, mainly because I wanted to see if it actually worked first. When optimised it becomes essentially free. I'm also running on an old laptop, but > 60fps should still be easily achievable. 

Edited June 28, 2016 by Samuco