First off, did any of the gameplay that we’ve seen on YouTube from the playable builds that were played by MLG and at Pax run on a real Xbox 360, or just a special computer? I didn’t see any issues, which is good. I’m concerned about how H4 will handle frame rate, because of how bad it was in Reach.
What will Halo 4’s frame rate be like playing on our Xbox 360 consoles?
The builds were played on Xbox 360’s.
I’ve never had any problems with frame rate in Halo: Reach, except when it gets really laggy. Even then, those don’t happen often for me at all.
> The builds were played on Xbox 360’s.
Cool. I feel better now. 
> I’ve never had any problems with frame rate in Halo: Reach, except when it gets really laggy. Even then, those don’t happen often for me at all.
Ehh I very, very rarely (read: almost never) play splitscreen and even I can tell there’s framerate issues on some maps. So it definitely does exist.
> > I’ve never had any problems with frame rate in Halo: Reach, except when it gets really laggy. Even then, those don’t happen often for me at all.
>
> Ehh I very, very rarely (read: almost never) play splitscreen and even I can tell there’s framerate issues on some maps. So it definitely does exist.
Oh, with splitscreen there’s issues? I don’t play splitscreen multi-player.
> > > I’ve never had any problems with frame rate in Halo: Reach, except when it gets really laggy. Even then, those don’t happen often for me at all.
> >
> > Ehh I very, very rarely (read: almost never) play splitscreen and even I can tell there’s framerate issues on some maps. So it definitely does exist.
>
> Oh, with splitscreen there’s issues? I don’t play splitscreen multi-player.
That’s why there are size restrictions in many of the playlists. Some of the forged maps simply cannot handle more than 2 people on a console.
> > > > I’ve never had any problems with frame rate in Halo: Reach, except when it gets really laggy. Even then, those don’t happen often for me at all.
> > >
> > > Ehh I very, very rarely (read: almost never) play splitscreen and even I can tell there’s framerate issues on some maps. So it definitely does exist.
> >
> > Oh, with splitscreen there’s issues? I don’t play splitscreen multi-player.
>
> That’s why there are size restrictions in many of the playlists. Some of the forged maps simply cannot handle more than 2 people on a console.
There are a lot of annoying times as well on one person matchmaking when I’m looking at a part of a map while fighting enemies, and my frame rate drops so badly.
Halo Reach was poorly coded.
All Halo games games has 30fps.
> I’ve never had any problems with frame rate in Halo: Reach, except when it gets really laggy. Even then, those don’t happen often for me at all.
Be happy. I can’t snipe on ANY Forge World map. No lie, when just zooming in the scope view feels like its moving through oil, and it stutters, when I look around in most instances. I’ve had to adjust my gameplay by only going for quickscopes, which is fun but sometimes it’d be nice to zoom in and look around for people. I just hope H4 fixes that problem.
Oddly enough, it’s never a problem when zooming in with any other weapon. Just the sniper rifle.
From what I’ve seen, there’s a video that analyzes the frame rate (from a video of it playing on an XBOX 360) and it rarely drops below 30fps, which is good considering the HUGE jump in graphics from Reach (lightning, mainly, as well as things like environmental models; no more super blocky looking rocks and such), as well as the fact that it’s running at 720p natively, and not 580p or 600p like most XBOX 360 games/Halo games in the past.
It’s some black magic they’re using, apparently. No clue how they’re doing it, but I doubt multiplayer will have the same (or more) frame rate issues that Reach did. Reach is especially annoying when you have a 120hz/240hz LED with “MotionPlus”, because everything plays butter-smooth but you notice every single individual little frame drop, and it happens every couple of seconds on most maps. Not game-breaking, but certainly noticeable.
More importantly, Halo 4 doesn’t use Reach’s anti-aliasing/smoothing engine, which SUCKED and caused all kinds of graphical anomalies. I’ve spoken before about the odd “ghosting” issues with HUD items, especially the reticule, on my TV. It doesn’t happen in hardly any other games, so it’s definitely not the TV (at least, not entirely). Halo 4 seems to not have that issue, from what I’ve heard of people playing at PAX (which had almost the same TV as I do), as well as from what I’ve seen myself.
tbh with reach it only realy happened on forge world but you gotta remember that map was HUGE and alot to load at one time, and if ur on forge and lookin at forge world then thats when it REALY struggles and seeming as the maps are no where near as big as that i dont think there should be as many problems tbh but i cant judge cos i havent played it yet but im too worried about this but like you said it seems to be running very smoothly so far!!
Multiplayer games in Halo 4 also only allow TWO players per console, not four.
So that’ll allow for a much smoother frame rate.
> Multiplayer games in Halo 4 also only allow TWO players per console, not four.
>
> So that’ll allow for a much smoother frame rate.
That won’t improve frame rate, it will simply remove a situation where the frame rate would be undesirable (e.g. 4-play split-screen). It will have no effect on 2-player split-screen or single-player gameplay.
I have no idea what you people are talking about. Never had any problem sniping on forge maps and never had frame rate issues.
I think its your TV/internet connections not the game.
I suspect the problem with Reach campaign was that 1) AI (particularly the troopers) were too detailed, 2) there may have been a bit too much AI, and 3) there may have been too much scripting for individual enemies instead of scripting for all enemies (i.e. all enemies go to this point).
Lastly, perhaps the scripting was too complex.
Compare TotS 2nd AA gun area to PoA Aszod ship breaking yards. Both locations are prone to lagging up if you give the enemies a chance to accumulate.
The latter has lots of enemies but they do not have a single go-to point. Most of them are stuck where they spawn.
The former barely goes over 20 AI and once the AA gun’s destroyed, all of the enemies will head over to a particular spot. It is when the troopers get dropped off that the lag occurs IIRC.
I’ve done a lot of AI collecting in Halo 2 and Halo 3 and I can say from experience that scripting is heavily involved in frame rate lag, much more than the number of AI:
When I assembled 40 (non-scripted) Elite Councilors then kept 10 (scripted) Zealots from departing to engage Tartarus in Halo 2 Vista, the particle effects were noticeably absent (no lag since this was on PC). But when I killed the Zealots and added 10-20 more Elite Councilors, the effects were still present (marginally of course).
When I assembled an army of 25 (scripted) Hornets in Halo 3, there was missing particle effects and a lot of lag. But when I killed the 12 (scripted) Brutes at the tower, the lag was gone. When I assembled an army of about 50 (non-scripted) Hornets, there was no lag, just a lot of missing effects.
When I collected 14 marines & 8 Elites (non-scripted), 3 Grunts & 19 Brutes (scripted) in Halo 3, there wasn’t any lag, not even when the 4 Hornets dropped down or when the various vehicles I had collected were being operated.
When I modded Nightfall, moving all of the AI (about 39 Grunts, 7 Elites, 4 Jackals, 2 Guta) that spawn before you meet the militia to one particular location outside of the map (that wasn’t too isolated from their scripted paths), there was no lag at all despite the massive enemy numbers. Most of these enemies had simple scripting.
Just like most other xbox 360 titles, Halo 4 will run at ~30fps. Pretty much only COD chooses the performance of game play over eye candy, and run their game at 60fps.
I wish more studios had that mind set.
From what ive read and heard…no sources atm at work. They are using the reach game engine, but they completely tore the engine down from scrap and redid everything. Game looks awesome and better and still managed to get more fps. I have to give alot of credit to 343 and everyone that worked on H4, game is looking outstanding. Not worried about performance in this. Dnt think ive heard any complaints either about fps from ppl that played it also.