CMT Public Beta Feedback

[jcap]

• The twisted and burnt hallways were the best part of the map. That and the hog bays are awesome. Everything else is...redundant. I think the original map has enough boring hallways and turns in it.

In all honestly, what would have been awesome to see is a small segment of the last level where you can fight in one of those big rooms you drive through at the end of the game. You could cut out maybe 75% of the hallways and then throw in that giant fight scene.

• The silenced pistol sound is about as loud as it regularly is. Tone it down, jeez.

• Pretty much all of the sounds of Halo 3 weapons sound muffled and horrible. It's like they were recorded from the game with the shittiest mic possible.

• The new BSPs are INCREDIBLY boring without any music.

• The environment sounds cut off and restart slowly again between the stock BSP and the custom one (A Whole New World).

• The freight elevator stops about a foot too high.

[ICEE]

-I wish laggy hadn't edited his AR/BR animations since the last build I got. They seem too fluid and weak now.
-The AI seem massively improved, their bigger, more intimidating and more fun to fight. Loving it.
-I got lost a few times, but frankly I think thats a good thing. It shouldnt be entirely obvious where to go. The player should know the direction but not the course. however I did get stuck. Not going to go into detail about it here since I posted on halomaps.
-Im gonna go ahead and promise you that the laser isn't bent. But I do agree that it is stupid.

[Warsaw]

I had a perfect run through with no glitches at all. Died only once.

The Good:

• HUD is brilliant. Some say it is low-res, I think it looked just fine at 1280x1024.
• Plasma Rifles are drop dead gorgeous. Bravo CMT.
• Good weapon balance; Spiker could be a tad more useful against shields.
• Cortana skin is good (model needs fixin').
• Pistol sound is genius.
• Added sections were fun, the enemies were not too numerous, but not too few. Didn't really get lost.
• Particle effects are awesome (especially the plasma pistol).
• The added length of a10 was fun.

The Bad:

• Cortana model needs anatomical lessons.
• Pistol looks kinda stupid...use the ODST model or something pl0x (and the laser! You hurt me Masters, said it wouldn't be in there ).
• The AI is retarded...I massacred a whole room of sleeping grunts and the Brute stood there and watched me do it, and this was at close range too.
• Arrows on ground of added BSP would be nice, not so much for aiding navigation as for keeping a uniform look throughout the level.
• There is no noticeable difference in the two plasma rifles handling other than the fact that the red one is less accurate and less powerful.
• Plasma Pistol skin is ugly.
• Stock marine models all over the place...last I checked ships had real crews, not marines as a crew (placeholders mb?)
• Master Chief skin needs to be twice as dark, and needs more black parts on his armour.
• Low-res damaged 'Hogs.
• Crappy sounds on the Halo 2/3 weapons; they are indeed garbled.
• Low-res skins on Halo 3 weapons (not the BR though).
• Firing animations on the BR55 need some serious work; they defy common sense.
• Slow-Mo power up lasts way too long.
• Needs more environment sounds on custom BSP...it felt like I was playing the underwater portion of Half-Life: Opposing Force (which admittedly was rather refreshing)
• Hatches on closed-off ladders is a good idea.
• New areas need more polish on the visuals, more details pl0x.

Some Suggestions...

Weapons:

• Give the plasma projectiles a whispy trail behind them...I always found the simplistic blue/green/red bolt from Halo 2 and 3 to be underwhelming. Contrails would spice it up nicely.
• Pistol: ditch that laser; it's bent, and it looks dumb anyways. Also, it is rather plain-looking compared to the rest of the arsenal.
• Hunter Cannon needs a charging particle effect for first person. Also, I'd suggest the traditional Fuel Rod Cannon, since it is deadlier and more intimidating. Perhaps give Brute Chieftains this as well.
• Bring back the SPv1 or Vanilla melee for the assault rifle. The current one is the overused smashing of the pistol-grip one...

Enemies:

• Make them smarter and less .
• Brute shields: make them have some motion; it looks like just a bunch of bright dots that appear in the exact same spot on every hit. It's lame.
• Elite Shields: tile them more. I dunno how it works, but it has the same effect as if a single tile of a low res texture was stretched over one whole map.

BSP:

• Add details to new areas, make it more in-line with the originals.

Closing Statements:

The map was fun, possibly the most fun I've had playing a10 in a long time. Even though some of the visuals were not consistent (and the fact that my normally 200+fps were slowed to <40fps ), it was a good experience. Some say the new parts lacked environment sounds, but it had a good effect...it felt like a remote part of the ship which the Covenant had invaded, which is exactly what it was. I like how SPv2 so far is nowhere near as over-the-top as SPv1 was in terms of weapons and gameplay. It looks good and plays well, so I want to applaud CMT so far. Main beefs I have:
-Pistol Model
-Cortana model
-AI

[BobtheGreatII]

The Bad:

-Seriously fix the alpha channels on A LOT of the textures. The maintenance doors were horrible to look at, bring back the old texture.
-Normals on a lot of the BSP textures look out of place, or over done.
-Pistol just seems silly, I just want the old pistol back.
-The Dharma logo on the back of the SMG really needs to go. Just looks silly.
-Why in the world are the dash readings working on the blown up warthogs? That makes zero sense.
-Just like what everyone else has said, extended parts were long and boring. And it looked like everything was 4x normal size of what they needed to be. The rooms served no purpose, and just over all looked out of place.
-Ladders need to be UV'd the same. In one section the rungs were huge and wide, and then in, what I guess was the bunk rooms, the ladders were small and the rungs were crazy close together.
-Everything in the new area looked boxy and silly. The doors were huge, and the lights looked ridiculous.
-Please fix the textures on Cortana's eyes and hair. She looked great except for those two things.
-Health packs as previously stated.
-Marine/Key's textures need re done, they don't match anything surrounding them.
-Marines are wearing silly hats and not combat armor? Seems silly to me.
-Battles got a little boring after a while. I kept turning corners and going "Great, more grunts and a few more brutes to kill..."
-Double speed powerup needs named, picked it up, saw it's name, was confused, and then thought that my entire system was lagging, even though I was going normal speed. Took me a second or two to see what was going on.
-Battle rifle still has choppy firing sounds, not sure why.
-Sounds still don't match up for when the MC gets out of the cryo pod.

The Good:

-Was fun. I enjoyed running through and playing with new weapons and what not, but I always do.
-Cortana looked great. Finally she matches the entrance textures before she shows up.
-Twisty halls were good.
-Long hallways of the warthog run looked good and gave a good feeling of foreshadowing.
-The Chief biped looks great.

[Warsaw]

About the Cryo Pod sounds: what you hear is him standing up in the pod. If you have 2.1 or better, you can hear his feet hitting the ground when he gets out.

[Siliconmaster]

Basically I agree with Warsaw^ having discussed the level with him while playing via xfire. The AI was entertaining, if strangely retarded, and some of the details were just odd. The drab corridors, the plasma pistol. THat being said I had a LOT of fun playing through it, and I'd probably do it again.

Stuff that stands out for me, good and bad:

• Like Bacon, I got stuck in a dying loop caused by getting stuck right before a checkpoint. Any way to prevent this?
• Plasma pistol needs moar shiny
• I LOVED the new Elites as well as the plasma rifle models- extremely beautiful compared to the older ones
• Nice updated particles
• Marine hands- different LOD mb?
• Chiron was lol, but cool- all the covenant in the area swarmed me and I hid
• The twisted corridors were very cool, as were the warthog tunnels. Much more interesting than the other a10 areas, though I did appreciate having more areas to run around in
• That corrugated tin (?) texture doesn't make sense. I mean, who builds a spaceship out of tin plates? o_o
• I really like the MC model, but I can see what people mean about it looking out of place. That being said, the only time when it was really apparent to me was the end cinematic when he's standing in the doorway. Just looked... odd. I can live with it though- 'tis shiny and epic.

I'd say great job CMT, you made an old map entertaining again. Tweak the weird stuff a bit and it will be even more awesome.

Oh, and wasn't there talk of gravity failing in some parts being OS-related? If I'm just out of touch debate-wise, let me know. Don't want to start another flame war.

Edit: I have a 5.1 system and don't hear his feet hit the floor. Halo doesn't like my (new) card though- no EAX, so idk.

[Lon]

Bad:
- As said about 10 times before, the new BSP's are very dull and lack detail or anything interesting, The places with the marines and the millions of ladders is very blocky and the needed direction isn't very clear at all.
- Brutes, need attack / charge you instead of standing still, and the Brute that is in the room with the sleeping grunts needs to either react to the player being in the room, or be turned with his face towards a way that would allow you to come from behind and kill him
- Ive seen a Marine just run around in a circle as he was getting shot by grunts, and when you see the 2 Elites and brute in the Cryo area, one of the Elites doesn't leave, instead just stands there staring at you
- First Person Hands, not really liking the texture seen on them.
- Animation for the Pistol whack is a bit odd, doesn't look like it would even harm someone if hit with.
- Brute falling animation is also weird, the feet seem to wiggle around before they fall.
- As seen here, two problems are visible. One being the ground having improper lighting, and the other is that the Spiker HAS full ammo but i am told that i need to switch weapons. ( I will check for the improper lighting problem again )
- Hunter's Fuel rod cannon needs work done to it, as it looks very ugly.
- Don't really like the Brutes shields, they look odd
- What ever is done to the Maintenance access ways doesn't really look pretty with the flashlight on. It shouldn't be applied to places where Flashlight is needed.
- Weapon sounds, (AR reloading for example) aren't that great.

Good:
- The part of the level with the destroyed / slanted hallway is very nice
- Spiker is a very good weapon, good for low amounts of punches to kill
- Skipping the Tutorials, Much better as most people playing SPV2 would have already played Halo before thus not needed
- SMG is also a decent weapon, would use it over the AR
- Level is longer, not as short as it used to be

I Generally enjoyed the map, it could have some improvements like the AI or the BSPs.

[itszutak]

Found a glitch. If you're reloading a BR's grenade and you pick up (using E) a BR on the ground, you lose the one that you were reloading and the other BR remains on the ground (leaving you with a single weapon).

[Siliconmaster]

- As seen here, two problems are visible. One being the ground having improper lighting, and the other is that the Spiker HAS full ammo but i am told that i need to switch weapons. ( I will check for the improper lighting problem again )

I noticed the same thing. The flashlight illuminates it, but it's dark normally, which is bizarre.

[English Mobster]

Tried to get through it, realized how much I suck at Halo and I got stuck in a loop where I got a checkpoint while stuck.
Accidentally hit "Quit" right as I was getting to the new BSP, so no comments on the new stuff. Boarding Action, you say? I'll take a look in a bit.
You've heard pretty much everything I have to complain about, so I'll leave it at that.

E: OH, and I was getting CRAPPY framerate, dipping close to unplayable, even when I was optimizing everything using the new CMT Extras menu (THANK YOU FOR THE "CREATE A CHECKPOINT" FEATURE). I'm running an old 2005 laptop with 512 MB of RAM and Windows 7 (which eats up half that RAM just by running), so it might be my computer.