Sprint doesnt force stretching (Video comparison)

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

Video comparison of The Pit map from Halo 4 and Halo 3, absolutely no difference. Yet halo 4 has sprint, the map plays beautifully in Halo 4. This in sequence of a conversation i was having with someone else on this forum about map stretching. Map stretching shouldn’t happen with sprint, otherwise the effects of sprint are nullified. Sprint serves to travel across distances in a shorter period of time, if the maps are stretched then the time of traversal remains the same.

I honestly never understood that complaint from people, maybe its just one of those theories people force on others simply because they don’t want Halo to have Sprint.

2

Noone ever said that it forced stretching, but that sprint must be accounted for when designing maps, otherwise sprint can negatively impact on how it plays. It just so happens to be that The Pit/Pitfall can work both ways. Can you please stop straw manning it at every possible opportunity, -Yoink!- all over the chessboard and then claim that you’re the victor?

3

it is people who are too stuck in the past to move on to new things that different company bring into the game. and as a result they feel like that said company is destroy what another company has built. It is very common.

4

We’ve actually known about this for a while, it’s been discussed several times and tests have been done by various people. While Pitfall seems to be a near direct remake of The Pit, many of Halo 4’s default maps take longer to traverse from one side of the other at base speed than maps from previous games.

However, it’s also been noted that sprinting across Halo 4 maps is faster than walking across the general majority of Halo 3 maps. The problem with this is that the chances of you ever being able to sprint across the entire map without getting shot and/or having to engage someone is inecredibly unlikely. You likely won’t be moving at max capacity all or even the majority of the time. In comparison, would could (theoretically) traverse all of Halo 3’s maps while engaging in combat and never move slower than max speed.

Granted, that is situational and debatable, not particularly a solid argument, but it’s worth noting.

So in short, 4v4 maps in general are larger than before, however due to sprint they are usually the same if not faster to traverse assuming you are un-impeded while sprinting.

With sprint being unlimited in Halo 5 and there being no slow down, the above argument could change.

> 2533274873910058;1:
> Yet halo 4 has sprint, the map plays beautifully in Halo 4.

I’ll admit my experience with pitfall is limited to probably 4-5 games, and the players I was playing with weren’t particularly knowledgeable on how to play the map, but from what I have played it didn’t exactly run very smoothly. I found it rather chaotic, similar to Halo 4’s Rumble Pit where it was just constant engagement with little or no time to defend or set up anything. This was especially noticeable in the objective games I played where it was near impossible to get a flag going anywhere without getting shot by someone or some thing.

Then again that’s not too different from Abandon or Haven. Solace and Adrift didn’t play objective too badly, other than both having extremely campy bases, especially in comparison to the rest of the map. Nor is it necessarily the mark of a bad map, as midship and Onslaught played very similarly. It just doesn’t play as well as the original Pit did (in my opinion).

> 2533274873910058;5:
> That is absolutely false, if the purpose of sprint is to travel similar distances in a short period of time, then stretching the map would make sprint redundant.
>
> Sprint serves for one fundamental reason: to shorten the gaps between action moments, to raise the encounter rate. That is why sprint exists in any shooter and its something Halo desperately needs. Halo 4 matches were action packed, fun and unpredictable. That is how an online experience should be.

You only get around as fast as the map maker intends. If the map maker wants you to get across the map at an average of 15 seconds, you will. Sprint or lack-there-of not withstanding.

5

Honestly running into encounters at a higher rate is a very, very good thing. That’s the whole purpose, and frankly its really weird that anyone wouldn’t want that to happen.

> 2533274881015020;2:
> Noone ever said that it forced stretching, but that sprint must be accounted for when designing maps, otherwise sprint can negatively impact on how it plays.

That is absolutely false, if the purpose of sprint is to travel similar distances in a short period of time, then stretching the map would make sprint redundant.

Sprint serves for one fundamental reason: to shorten the gaps between action moments, to raise the encounter rate. That is why sprint exists in any shooter and its something Halo desperately needs. Halo 4 matches were action packed, fun and unpredictable. That is how an online experience should be.

6

What, exactly, was the point of that video? It tells absolutely nothing about the scale difference between the maps because there is no reference point in it, no object we know is the exact same size in both games. That video shows the shape is roughly the same, but it tells nothing about the size.

If you actually go and run from one end of the map to the other on both versions, you actually do find that the time it takes is roughly the same in Halo 3 and 4 when you adjust for the fact that Halo 4 has a slower movement speed. I did the tests months ago, it has been known for a long time that Pitfall is a 1:1 replica of The Pit. There is nothing new in that. If you go and do the same on Ragnarok, our other remake, you will see that that, too, is a 1:1 replica. That’s how 343i decided to do their remakes. If you actually go and compare different maps which are not remakes, what you will find is that in Halo 4, the time it takes from one end to the other is substantially higher than in Halo 3.

The choice of maps you compare of course needs to be made sensibly. It goes without saying that it’s not sensible to compare a BTB map to a small 4v4 map. What I did in my experiments was to compare the smallest release map of Halo 4 (Haven) to one of the smallest release maps of Halo 3 (Guardian). These maps were selected because they both have two straight paths through the map. If you go and test, you will find that it takes substantially longer time to run through Haven than through Guardian. When you use sprint, you will find that the time it takes is roughly the same as Guardian, plus-minus 0.5 seconds.

None of this is new information, and it was discussed at length a few months back. Here’s the thread. There’s also an article on Gamasutra related to the subject where one of the people interviewed was the lead multiplayer level designer of 343i. There’s one particularly relevant paragraph in the article:

> Similarly, Halo 4’s designers keep a watchful eye on distance. “We definitely have standards for the size than something can be and the time it takes from one corner of a map to the other, or one objective sight to the other,” says Pearson. “It’s to make sure we’re tuning the experience to keep the time-to-death down, or making sure that your time-to-engagement is enough to give you a breather between dying, but not so long that you’re hunting through the map and not finding people.” Again, game mechanics have a direct bearing. In Halo 3, sprinting was impossible. In Halo: Reach, sprinting was a selectable armor ability. In Halo 4, everyone’s at it, and the maps have grown to compensate.

All of this is well enough documented that there is no doubt sprint needs to be taken into account in map design.

7

> 2533274825830455;6:
> What, exactly, was the point of that video? It tells absolutely nothing about the scale difference between the maps because there is no reference point in it, no object we know is the exact same size in both games. That video shows the shape is roughly the same, but it tells nothing about the size.
>
> If you actually go and run from one end of the map to the other on both versions, you actually do find that the time it takes is roughly the same in Halo 3 and 4 when you adjust for the fact that Halo 4 has a slower movement speed. I did the tests months ago, it has been known for a long time that Pitfall is a 1:1 replica of The Pit. There is nothing new in that. If you go and do the same on Ragnarok, our other remake, you will see that that, too, is a 1:1 replica. That’s how 343i decided to do their remakes. If you actually go and compare different maps which are not remakes, what you will find is that in Halo 4, the time it takes from one end to the other is substantially higher than in Halo 3.
>
> The choice of maps you compare of course needs to be made sensibly. It goes without saying that it’s not sensible to compare a BTB map to a small 4v4 map. What I did in my experiments was to compare the smallest release map of Halo 4 (Haven) to one of the smallest release maps of Halo 3 (Guardian). These maps were selected because they both have two straight paths through the map. If you go and test, you will find that it takes substantially longer time to run through Haven than through Guardian. When you use sprint, you will find that the time it takes is roughly the same as Guardian, plus-minus 0.5 seconds.
>
> None of this is new information, and it was discussed at length a few months back. Here’s the thread. There’s also an article on Gamasutra related to the subject where one of the people interviewed was the lead multiplayer level designer of 343i. There’s one particularly relevant paragraph in the article:
>
>
>
> > Similarly, Halo 4’s designers keep a watchful eye on distance. “We definitely have standards for the size than something can be and the time it takes from one corner of a map to the other, or one objective sight to the other,” says Pearson. “It’s to make sure we’re tuning the experience to keep the time-to-death down, or making sure that your time-to-engagement is enough to give you a breather between dying, but not so long that you’re hunting through the map and not finding people.” Again, game mechanics have a direct bearing. In Halo 3, sprinting was impossible. In Halo: Reach, sprinting was a selectable armor ability. In Halo 4, everyone’s at it, and the maps have grown to compensate.
>
>
> All of this is well enough documented that there is no doubt sprint needs to be taken into account in map design.

Well that’s pretty stupid then, thank you for the source. I don’t understand your first paragraph though, the video shows that sprinting doesn’t have to affect the map size and layout. Inch for inch The pit is the same in a game with and without sprint. And yet i see people going on about how sprint affects map size and scale.

8

> 2533274873910058;5:
> > 2533274881015020;2:
> > Noone ever said that it forced stretching, but that sprint must be accounted for when designing maps, otherwise sprint can negatively impact on how it plays.
>
>
>
>
> That is absolutely false, if the purpose of sprint is to travel similar distances in a short period of time, then stretching the map would make sprint redundant.
>
> Sprint serves for one fundamental reason: to shorten the gaps between action moments, to raise the encounter rate. That is why sprint exists in any shooter and its something Halo desperately needs. Halo 4 matches were action packed, fun and unpredictable. That is how an online experience should be.

Because it is redundant. Either the maps are made to be bigger, or the base movement speed is lowered as pointed out by a forum monitor, tsassi.

> 2533274873910058;5:
> Halo 4 matches were action packed, fun and unpredictable. That is how an online experience should be.

Not in an arena shooter. Which is what Halo is at its core. Unpredictability works against the fundamental design of an arena shooter.

9

> 2533274873910058;7:
> Well that’s pretty stupid then, thank you for the source. I don’t understand your first paragraph though, the video shows that sprinting doesn’t have to affect the map size and layout.

It’s a problem you run into when you try to make relative measurements of objects without a reference point. For demonstration, take a look at these two pictures of computer monitors: 1, 2. Now, can you tell me, based on these two pictures, which monitor is larger? You can’t tell because there is no additional information. You don’t know if one picture was taken from further away, if the pictures were taken with two cameras with different resolutions, or if they have been rescaled. For you to be able to tell the scale, you would need a reference object in both pictures, some object everyone knows is so and so big.

With computer graphics, it’s even more arbitrary, because there is no actual physical scale differences between two polygon meshes. The software used to create the meshes might have its own set of units, but if the meshes have been created in different software, the units are completely arbitrary. The only way we could “measure” the size difference would be to agree something like “this car and this car have the same size”, and then go and measure how many cars long a distance is. But it only works because we agreed that something has the same size.

The way we do size measurements in Halo is by assuming that the in-game units – used in Forge pieces, for example – always have the same size throughout each game. Then we measure everything with respect to this standard unit. But without that standard unit, it makes no sense to discuss which map is larger.

10

> 2533274873910058;5:
> Honestly running into encounters at a higher rate is a very, very good thing. That’s the whole purpose, and frankly its really weird that anyone wouldn’t want that to happen.
>
>
>
> > 2533274881015020;2:
> > Noone ever said that it forced stretching, but that sprint must be accounted for when designing maps, otherwise sprint can negatively impact on how it plays.
>
>
> That is absolutely false, if the purpose of sprint is to travel similar distances in a short period of time, then stretching the map would make sprint redundant.
>
> Sprint serves for one fundamental reason: to shorten the gaps between action moments, to raise the encounter rate. That is why sprint exists in any shooter and its something Halo desperately needs. Halo 4 matches were action packed, fun and unpredictable. That is how an online experience should be.

I find it hard to take you seriously when you think an Arena Shooter should be unpredictable and desperately needs a mechanic that has only truly worked in Ultimate Doom and Half-Life 2. You are basically saying, “yeah let’s add worthless gimmick that destroys the skill-gap”.

11

Next time do a video comparison of Halo 2’s midship and Halo 5’s Truth if you want to see map stretching in action. The Pit didn’t need to be streched because it was already a medium sized map. The map stretching phenomenon pops up with small maps, which are now nonexistent thanks to sprint.

Guardian, Lockout, Midship, and Warlock are all small maps that will not function properly with sprint because they are too small to accommodate it. Essentially Halo 1-3’s medium maps are considered small maps in H4-5 because they never get smaller than The Pit. Just look at the Halo 5 remake of Midship, it’s obviously been scaled up to what would be considered a medium sized map in the Halo 1-3 days, whereas the original is one of the smallest maps in Halo history.

12

Okay, the Pit was already a fairly large map in Halo 3. I can guarantee you that Pitfall is much more chaotic in comparison.

You can’t leave maps the same size and add sprint because sprint ‘inherently’* increases how quickly people cross the map, even if inconsistently. Imagine if everyone was sprinting around Wizard in Halo CE. Thus the map would need to be extended to be keep the same pacing.

*It’s really not that simple but I’m not going to over-complicate.

> Honestly running into encounters at a higher rate is a very, very good thing. That’s the whole purpose, and frankly its really weird that anyone wouldn’t want that to happen.

You run into encounters all the time on a map like Wizard.

Developers put long stretches of land into a map because they want to control the pace, they want there to be downtimes between fights. The entire point of downtime is to give players time to plan and react. If we wanted the game to be as fast paced as possible, we could spawn everyone in a tiny box a la Octagon and let them duke it out. I fervently believe that whatever we want accomplished with map pacing can be accomplished through map design itself.

Whether I want rapid encounters or not is a bit besides the point. Sprint isn’t necessary for such encounters to occur.

Here’s what happens with putting sprint on scaled-up maps.
-Crossing the entire map is the same speed.
-Crossing any given amount of units is faster.

So let’s say there’s a crate on the map, I’m hiding behind it, and I decide to use it for cover.
In Halo 3, I could be 10 feet away from that box and take 1s to go back to it.
In Halo 4, I could be 20 feet away from that box and take the same time to reach it due to sprint.
Or I could be 10 feet away from that box and reach it in half the time, allowing me more time to decide whether to fight or flee.

So maybe in Halo 3 I decide my shields are half way gone and decide to get out of there, while in Halo 4 I can wait for red shields until I have to flee.

13

Ok because I am bored on discussing this matter and I believe that we all have, let’s make it clear.

IT’S ALL OPINION!!!

There are people who like sprint for some reasons which are the same reasons other people dislike it and the opposite.

If someone is too far and you see him first and start shoot at him and he has no cover nearby, he has little to no chance of killing you first, so his only option is to run away to survive. In Halo CE/2/3 he can’t do that and he it’s almost sure he will die, while with sprint he has a chance and imo that’s fair. Others will disagree, saying that’s what should happen but that’s what I am saying right? Its all opinion.

Some others say (also mentioned in posts above) that small maps can’t exist anymore with sprint. While that’s true and we can’t have small maps as Midship and Warlock what matters is if you like maps that are this small. For example I am tired of seeing people spawn kill poor guys who respawn at Midship, Warlock, Lockout and Shrine and I simply find it unfair (while I have done it to others myself). Please don’t say that this happens on other big maps, because that happens at random when the game has no place to spawn you. At the maps mentioned above though, this happens because people want it to happen. I mean that anyone can take a sniper rifle and with his team placed at the right position he can have an invincible just for fun. Also I just prefer bigger maps while others like small maps.

From now on please stop trying to give excuses to support your opinion from either side and just state if you like sprint or not.

By the way, (PLEASE DON’T ANSWER OR TAKE THIS AS OFFENSIVE) the most ridiculous excuse I have seen regarding sprint, (it was in a different topic) was from someone who was saying in a single post that sprint doesn’t make you faster and then saying that people use it to escape because it makes them faster and I was like: aaaeeee…

14

> 2533274900821330;13:
> From now on please stop trying to give excuses to support your opinion from either side and just state if you like sprint or not.

But what fun would that be? Moreover, what use would it be? I’d strongly advise people not to jump in the it’s-all-opinion train. If everyone just pretends all opinions are right, no constructive discussion is ever going to take place because people aren’t actively questioning other people’s opinions.

There are two types of statements in the world: falsifiable, and non-falsifiable. You’re completely right when it comes to non-falsifiable statements. Whether sprint is “bad” or “good” without any careful definition of bad and good is just a matter of opinion. But that doesn’t mean we can’t try to come up with falsifiable statements about sprint, e.g. “sprint increases skill gap”, and try to prove or disprove them either through logic or experiment. That way we can at least have meaningful discussion about sprint without resorting to “that’s just your opinion” in every instance we don’t have a counter argument.

You don’t have to participate in the discussion if you don’t want to. But just because you want to believe that every opinion is as valid as the next one doesn’t mean everyone else should have the same mindset.

15

Well playing any game that doesn’t have sprint, even my beloved halo 3, just feels like winding up a spring. I mean, can I go any slower?

16

> 2533274881015020;8:
> > 2533274873910058;5:
> > Halo 4 matches were action packed, fun and unpredictable. That is how an online experience should be.
>
>
> Not in an arena shooter. Which is what Halo is at its core. Unpredictability works against the fundamental design of an arena shooter.

That sounds arbitrary and frankly, made up. Quake and Unreal Tournament were core Arena shooters, highly unpredictable too.

> 2533274800739735;11:
> Next time do a video comparison of Halo 2’s midship and Halo 5’s Truth if you want to see map stretching in action. The Pit didn’t need to be streched because it was already a medium sized map.

Doing a comparison of midship in Halo 5 would be redundant, since this argument comes from way before Halo 5 was ever announced. I would very much like to see the source of this “stretching” theory. If you’re telling me that all sprinting dopes is make medium size maps… well then im more than ok with it. Mid size maps are awesome.

17

> 2533274881015020;2:
> Noone ever said that it forced stretching, but that sprint must be accounted for when designing maps, otherwise sprint can negatively impact on how it plays. It just so happens to be that The Pit/Pitfall can work both ways. Can you please stop straw manning it at every possible opportunity, -Yoink!- all over the chessboard and then claim that you’re the victor?

This, you guys have to stop making false claims. Sprint has to accounted for on all maps. Sprinting on small maps would just make it easier to escape a bad situation. Why are players so inclined to keep sprint? It really has no positive effect on gameplay.

18

> 2533274873910058;16:
> > 2533274881015020;8:
> > > 2533274873910058;5:
> > > Halo 4 matches were action packed, fun and unpredictable. That is how an online experience should be.
> >
> >
> >
> > Not in an arena shooter. Which is what Halo is at its core. Unpredictability works against the fundamental design of an arena shooter.
>
>
>
>
> That sounds arbitrary and frankly, made up. Quake and Unreal Tournament were core Arena shooters, highly unpredictable too.

Unless you can give some evidence on how those two are unpredictable, they are predictable.

19

> 2533274873910058;16:
> > 2533274881015020;8:
> > > 2533274873910058;5:
> > > Halo 4 matches were action packed, fun and unpredictable. That is how an online experience should be.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Not in an arena shooter. Which is what Halo is at its core. Unpredictability works against the fundamental design of an arena shooter.
>
>
>
>
> That sounds arbitrary and frankly, made up. Quake and Unreal Tournament were core Arena shooters, highly unpredictable too.
>
>
>
> > 2533274800739735;11:
> > Next time do a video comparison of Halo 2’s midship and Halo 5’s Truth if you want to see map stretching in action. The Pit didn’t need to be streched because it was already a medium sized map.
>
>
>
>
> Doing a comparison of midship in Halo 5 would be redundant, since this argument comes from way before Halo 5 was ever announced. I would very much like to see the source of this “stretching” theory. If you’re telling me that all sprinting dopes is make medium size maps… well then im more than ok with it. Mid size maps are awesome.

You’re only thinking of stretching when it comes to remakes, you need to look at overall map design based on individual games too. It’s is extremely obvious that maps in Halo 4 were much larger than maps in previous games, and Halo 5 has proven the ‘map stretching to accommodate sprint theory’ as soon as they revealed a remake of what was originally a small map (midship) that has been drastically increased in size for this exact reason. You don’t need hands on with Halo 5’s Truth to see that it is much larger, it is apparent just by looking at the videos. Halo 4 does not have any maps that would be considered small by Halo 1-3 standards, and with sprint as default it’s doubtful that we will have any small maps in Halo 5, because they would play horribly with sprint.

Sprint will only increase the speed of gameplay if it is added to a medium or large map that was originally built for a singular run speed, meanwhile it completely causes the removal of the the ‘small’ category of maps. With sprint in the game you will never see small CQC oriented maps like Lockout, Guardian, and Warlock in their original size, because they would not function properly with sprint. If any of these maps were to be remade you would see them stretched out just as they’ve done to Midship in the remake known as “Truth”. When you strech a map it has more consequences than just increasing walking distance it also affects the distance in which you will enter combat Most fights will now take place at medium to long range, just as we already have seen happen in Halo 4.