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This topic has moved here: Poll [52 votes]: How do you like the idea of effects under the ghosts?
  • Poll [52 votes]: How do you like the idea of effects under the ghosts?
Subject: One More Aesthetic Argument
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Poll: How do you like the idea of effects under the ghosts?  [closed]
They're great as they are:  65%
(34 Votes)
The effects shown at E3 could be be better:  4%
(2 Votes)
Found nothing wrong with having no effects at all:  12%
(6 Votes)
Don't care about this topic, but I love puppies:  19%
(10 Votes)
Total Votes: 52

I'll be the first to admit that there was more about the Halo 2 demo at this year's E3 that I found disappointing rather than encouraging. Before this thread is replied to by fanatics who would like to stomp on this trivial post with self-contradictory cries of "the graphics are great" and "graphics don't affect gameplay" let me post some quotes that have been posted before on this board (recently, in fact).

---

Don't tell me that ultimately, graphics don't matter. Graphics do matter, or people wouldn't buy Playstation 2's or Gamecubes. Those systems primarily improve upon their predecessors graphically, and that's it. The Xbox has no predecessor, yet touted online play from the beginning, a hard drive for easier data management, and in conjunction with that point, ease of development in general. That dease of development fosters better graphics, so why would developers taqke advantage of those graphical possibilites if graphics did not matter? Why doesn't Halo 2 use the same engine as the first Halo, why does it bother to redo graphcis at all? WHY THEN, DID THE LOOK OF THE PLSAMA SWORD CHANGE? Graphics do much to immerse a gamer, or distract him, or even disgust him. I know people would like to believe that they are hardcore and that if they were offered, say, Resident Evil in its original Playstation form or the new Gamecube form, that they'd just flip a coin since "graphics don't matter," but I think that the reality is that humans are human, and appreciate artistic quality, and would rather play the same game in its more beautiful or more fitting form. HOWEVER, that is not the point I am trying to make about the plasma sword's look, technically or even artistically. It's about the feeling the player gets wielding the sword, the experience--the adrenaline rush of picking that bad boy up. That is why I personally feel that I personally would be personally more pumped up by picking up a glowing rippling blade that lookds like it cuts through the very core of your livelihood than I personally would with a solid crystalline edge. Personally. Please, disagreement is fine and expected, but don't spin this into a graphics-whore-or-not argument. That's just petty and reflects a poor contrasting argumentative standpoint.

Tangent: gameplay and gameplay mechanics are two different things. The former is a combination of the latter, sound, graphics, and design. It is a definition of experience, and while I'm sure the people who would like to tell themselves that they are the manifestation of the misguided term "hardcore" would like to believe that that is not how the experience SHOULD be definied; that it should equal the latter and nothing more or less, I feel that the difference exists, and is analogous to say, the rules of a poker game and the actual experience of the game, which changes based on the setting in which the game takes place, the players involved, whether or not drinks are served, etc. To say nothing of how each player's individual input (yes, game experiences are defined by more than the developer's inputs, at least half the game is the player's way to receiving the game, which, for fanboys, is already predetermined half the time) affects the end-result experience as well.

And please don't talk to me about how this demo is not the final version. I know that--people who have to play that tune like a broken record clearly believe they know how Bungie is going to build the game when they do not. Rhetoric about Bungie's credentials are redundant--everyone's at least played Halo here, and we wouldn't care that the game has some criticism going for it if we didn't care about the game in the first place. And we wouldn't care about the game if we didn't already expect it to be good. Finally, we would not expect the game to be good if we did not respect the developer--exhalt it, even.

---

Yeah, okay, those were my words from another topic--I reposted them not just as a disclaimer for this topic but also because it didn't seem lik emany people read my admittedly long shmill.

So other than the new plasma sword look, the recycled animations, and the removal of reflective visors, has anyone else found the addition of the little sparkling effects under the ghosts a little tacky? While I personally liked the way the ghosts hovered without effects in the first game (really gives off that kind of mysterious advanced technological edge the Covenant have over humanity feeling), I am not saying I cannot live with effects as well. I personally just find them kind of cheesy--like when a movie has been barreling through a list of events without that much plot, and all of a sudden some explanation has to be narrated to the audience to explain things that no one asked for an explanation for to begin with. Those effects remind me of the stuff I saw when I played Everquest, and I think that's the core of my awkward feelings towards them--those effects look like something out of a western magical fairy tale, not a science fiction novel.

For the fanatics, please try to avoid reading between lines that aren't there. Thanks.

  • 05.17.2004 2:59 AM PDT
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ok, i didnt read all of it because my eyes started to hurt. the plasma sword has not changed much. that sword in the new demo was not the plasma sword, that was an energy sword, something completely different. if you want to see what the plasma sword looks like then watch the end of the E3 2K3 demo.

what point are you trying to make here?

[Edited on 5/17/2004 3:24:50 AM]

  • 05.17.2004 3:23 AM PDT
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I never heard about the distinction between plasma and energy swords, and if memory serves me correctly--and it may not due to the sheer volume of information that came out of E3 this year--but the E3 demo shown referred to the swords specifically as "plasma swords." Of course I would completely like the look shown at the end of the E3 2003 demo more--that was in fact a point I made in an earlier post where the plasma swords were called directly into question.

The point of this topic simply revolves about the ghost and new effects shown at E3. I am saying I liked how ghosts looked in say, the E3 2003 demo more than I did in the E3 2004 demo.

  • 05.17.2004 3:27 AM PDT
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i think that that sword is multiplayer only, the ones in SP will be much better looking

  • 05.17.2004 3:37 AM PDT
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yeah, i have to agree with that. There is a heap more information being processed in MP than SP. So in SP they have more CPU to play around with, and hence the graphics will be better looking and so will the plasma sword.

TS

  • 05.17.2004 3:44 AM PDT
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But if I remember correctly, there were six elites in the 2003 demo holding those awesome-looking swords. In the demo, there was only one spawn point for teh plasma sword. Given that, shouldn't we expect the same variable number of plasma swords of 2003 fashion to be extant and still for the game to run smoothly? It was not as if the 2003 demo was pre-rendered or anything--Halo's cutscenes use the ingame engine to act out pre-determined movements, but that's it. In fact, sometimes things go awry. For example, when I played the Japanese version of Halo, during the cutscene on the sixth level where you encounter the flood for th very first time--the one where you watch everything through Jenkins' helmet--Jenkins ran into a the Convenant turret that flew out from the Forerunner complex as you approached it and got stuck there. I think I inadvertantly blew up the turret and it landed in from of Jenkin's predesignated path...although that shouldn't make any sense--since the turret shouldn't havee been blown out there to begin with when the captain went in. Still, ultimately, that's what happened, so I'm certain that the cutscenes in game run off of the system just as it does when a gamer is playing. The input is all there, although there may be slightly less calculations involved.

At any rate, I don't think the idea that the multiplayer cannot support multiple cool-looking plasma swords is fully correct. Perhaps we'll never know.

  • 05.17.2004 7:14 AM PDT
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You do realize that each seperate function of 'nice graphics' must be transmitted over to a server when playing online correct? You do realize that all of that takes processing power correct? You do realize in final that if you were to have say 16 or greater people playing in a game at once how much all those 'perfect' graphics would affect framerates and ping correct? You have to realize in single player, it's only you and whatever pre-designation you're facing that you have to compute, in multiplayer it's near 50 times the load because EVERY PLAYER it independent of what YOU do. So having all the pretty single player graphics would make multiplayer so unbearable it'd be atrocious. But, the multiplayer graphics, though turned down, were extremely top notch in my opinion and extremely functionable.

  • 05.17.2004 7:19 AM PDT

While you seem to assume that the broken record playing in the background of this forum is all the "fanboys," I would simply say that it's the truth. To judge what hasn't been finished isn't the most productive way of looking at things. Imagine the outlook one would have after seeing the first vids of Halo (the 1st one), or even the 2001 E3 demo. It was a completely different game... looks, gameplay, storyline, etc. I'm not suggesting that Halo 2 is going to go through some radical transformation. All I'm saying, is that even in the 2001 E3 demo the look of Halo was drastically different than the final product, which happend to be due out a few months later. I could say that the negative outlook from all the A.D.D. types in this forum gives off the stench of an old "Spice Girls" record stuck on repeat, but I'm not. People are entitled to their opinions, collectively and independently. So, go ahead and post whatever thoughts you may have on the game... it's your opinion:)


As for the ghost effect that you talk about, I personally like it. These next few statements are not an attack on your thoughts; rather, it's a question to you. You seems to make the point that more is better (graphically) when it comes to the plasma/energy sword. Why wouldn't the same apply to the ghost? Bungie has updated the ghost drastically from last years E3 vid.

[Edited on 5/17/2004 8:25:22 AM]

  • 05.17.2004 7:38 AM PDT

The sword is exactly the same as in Halo 2 except without the blue glow.

  • 05.17.2004 8:17 AM PDT
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congrats you have covered every reply you could ever have gotten in your own first post. I do the same thing becasue most people never read my first post and start to flame my opinions. my advice to you is don't make a topic if you don't want to hear what people have to say, and if you want people to agree with you then just post a topic on how great sniping is. Oh and uh... i'm awesome.

  • 05.17.2004 8:18 AM PDT
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to be honest, i wasn't particularly impressed with the visual effect of the plasma sword, but then again i wasn't disappointed either. and, as others have pointed out, the SP plasma sword may very well indeed be full of glowy, glowing, goodness. granted, they still have a fair bit of time to make changes, but i'll take it however it comes. people just have to understand the give and take relationship between fancy effects and processing power.
i have to agree that the ghost's "ground effects" were not to my liking. i'm sure someone can come up with some techno-babble derived from the books about why the effects were made to look that way, but the bottom line is that they could do better. hell, the effects for the original were fine (yes, i realize there were none). or maybe some very faint distortion, such as the cloak produces.

  • 05.17.2004 12:11 PM PDT
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Of course I want to hear people's opinions; I'm looking for someone to change my mind, since it's not as if I like being disappointed.

As for the computtation required, the arguement made earlier about the complexity required to transfer data over multiplayer, here are a few thoughts:
- graphics are not transmitted over the internet, unless the developer team is full of the most ass-backwards programmers on the planet, who have never studied computer science but somehow know how to program. I'm going to go ahead and assume Bungie is not composed of such nonexistent tards. The graphics are manipulated on your Xbox. These days, as much as possible the only data that was so hangingly mentioned transferred over from console to console or PC to PC is the action of other players-just the commands. Your console performs the calculations required to have the resulting action and effects appear on your Xbox. It is not as if every XBox is querying every other XBox asking "so what is your player doing now? Please show me everything, then tell me what he's doing next after that." It is probably something more akin to "Oh, you're telling me that your player is doing that? I have all the components required to imagine and simulate that for my audience the player, keep it coming." The most basic database structuring class in high school or college will teach you about efficient data manipulation, transfer, and storage. So Abolitionofman, unless you want to continue thinking of graphics manipulation and information transferring as some sort of hazy magic thing that goes on with a linear amount of power required to do a matching amount of work, go online and read the basics before making arguments that are just plain wrong.
- seriously, each model animation must be in the in the megabytes of space taken. I can't say for sure, I have only recently moved on and begun learning how to animate, to speak nothing of some of the advanced techniquges Bungie is taking advantage of on the XBox. But let's say that magically each animation were only a hundred kilobytes. Most people with broadband connections wouldn't be able to get more than a few of such packets per second, and we're talking about playing a fps--so nothing less than a semi-steady 30 frames per second of animation would be required. In other words, what you are imagining would be impossible to begin with. It is not the case that each frame of animation is transferred to every XBox. That would be hell to program for, not to mention animate.

My post was really just an aesthetic argument. So like, I said, I think that AESTHETICALLY the ghosts look better without extra effects. This has nothing to do with simplyfying things in general. It's just my opinion on this one thing.

Back to Abolitionofman, as for your argument about keeping things simpler for "multiplayer smoothness"--wouldn't having no effects on the ghost then thearetically "make things smoother" in multiplayer? Yeesh.

  • 05.17.2004 9:02 PM PDT
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That's a fine argument. But, let's put it this way. Is having the ground effects REALLY that distracting? Let's refer back to the countless hands-on impression from people who have actually PLAYED the game. How many of said articles said, "The ground effects on the ghost are so distracting, it looked much better before?" None. And not to say that your argument is bad, it's just that there is no way you can say that it's distracting, when you haven't played the game. People have played it, and EVERY single one of them has loved it. So let's just think of how much it will rule, as we wait for this six-month eterenity to pass.

  • 05.17.2004 9:09 PM PDT
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January 30, 2004 (Warthog's Day)
The Master Chief emerged from his code. After seeing his dynamically lit realtime shadow, he went back for 9 more months of development.


Behold the power of the Originals, the Gods Axeone-Neurone.

Have you also thought that not everything was turned on during the demo. It did not have melee combos or sprinting. It goes to say that not all the graphics were turned on either.

[color="salmon"]Have you seen the newest pic. Look at the detail on the energy sword handle it is absolutely beautiful. Also the visors are still reflective just not mirrored.[/color]

  • 05.17.2004 9:43 PM PDT
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WOW

Long posts

Time to beat all them posts......







Well I got nothin....seeya

  • 05.17.2004 9:49 PM PDT
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Awww, I thought someone actually replied to my post...you poo-head.

  • 05.17.2004 10:28 PM PDT
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January 30, 2004 (Warthog's Day)
The Master Chief emerged from his code. After seeing his dynamically lit realtime shadow, he went back for 9 more months of development.


Behold the power of the Originals, the Gods Axeone-Neurone.

Posted by: jharbst
Awww, I thought someone actually replied to my post...you poo-head.

Well I agree with you there isn't much for me to add. You said it really well.

  • 05.17.2004 10:40 PM PDT
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Posted by: jharbst
as we wait for this six-month eterenity to pass.



Mind over matter my friend. It's not an eternity.

  • 05.17.2004 10:53 PM PDT
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I wish you were right....but after reading all these hands-on reports, einsteins theory of relativity seems even more true than ever.

  • 05.17.2004 10:54 PM PDT
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LoL, just stay strong man.

  • 05.18.2004 1:50 AM PDT
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volucritas is right about the transfer of data over the net. I'm hearing this "MP is more technologically demanding than SP" or "SP will look alot better!." No it won't. It's pretty obvious not many people know how network code (or any code for that matter) works.
I won't repeat what volucritas said though, as he explained it pretty well.
As far as the subject at hand, i think the added graphical effects are great. I mean, it only makes sense that the ghost is powered using the same gravity tech as the grav-lifts. And the sword...well, I don't believe for a second that there would be two completely similar types of blade (one plasma and one energy). Whats the point? I'm suprised anyone believes this.
Anyway, I was a bit perplexed by the lack of glowy-funness about the new blade, but things can change, and if it doesn't oh well. I don't care THAT much.
You whippersnappers pipe down and be thankful Bungie's even making it! ^_^

[Edited on 5/18/2004 2:19:02 AM]

  • 05.18.2004 2:18 AM PDT
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I really don't pay much attention to effects like that, but it seems that in any multiplayer game, the effects will always be of greater grandure in the one player missions then in actual deatmatch situations. Besides that I think it is amazing the Xbox can do what it does considering the graphics card inside is more or less a GeForce 2--a card that cant even really run Halo on the PC, so cut Bungie some slack.

  • 05.18.2004 2:42 AM PDT
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I think the card is actually greater than a GeForce 2 and comparable to a Geforce 3--if I remember correctly. Also, remember that the XBox is a machine that is designed specifically to play games--despite what would haters would say about it simply being a PC. The only validity to that statement isn't really valid at all, but applies to this topic in that most of the XBox's parts are the sort of things you could buy right off electronic store shelves. So you have a machine running at something like 700mhz, with a decent video card, with the memory and hard drive dedicated solely to the execution of a single program--the game inside the disc slot.

Not to say that I am not impressed by what Halo 2 has to offer, but after reading lal those articles about animalistic Convenant behavior, environmentally aware AI, and things like that--well, E3 2003 ended with me wondering why anyone cared about Halo-Life 2 compared to Halo 2 (I'm slightly exaggerating here). However, after 2004, things started to stand out in my mind, that's all. And for some reason, the little hovering effects lagged on my mind.

  • 05.18.2004 4:48 AM PDT