Halo: Reach Discussion

[Warsaw]

Aha funny man.
different planet, different environmental make up and different gravity all together, elements on one planet may not react the same due to nearly a infinite number of different variables.

Unless it's really fucking frozen with bubbles trapped, it will still have reflections (and at that point we call it ice and/or snow). You are missing the point. What most of us are bawing about is the shitty reflections, not its density values. This water is clearly a liquid, meaning it isn't frozen, and it should look like water as opposed to a puke-coloured bedsheet sitting on top of the water.

And yes, even under different conditions water will still behave like water. Definition of water.

[Kornman00]

Assuming the stream is actually composed of H2O, then yes, "water". However, the shallowness of the water and global lighting (or lack thereof due to clouds) play as a factor.

Since both gifs were of areas by a waterfall source or an area where a rapids effect is taking place the "omg no reflections in dat water " is just really fucking lame.

In the end, it's a fucking game that is about combat. Are water reflections in turbulent water really that fucking important? And don't give me any "immersion" bullshit. Maybe if this was Tomb Raider or something but this is Halo. It doesn't need photo realism. So can we go back to talking about actual gameplay related topics?

[=sw=warlord]

Unless it's really fucking frozen with bubbles trapped, it will still have reflections (and at that point we call it ice and/or snow).
Still different conditions which you missed, i wont bother going into more details as it really wouldn't get much understanding anyways, carry on thinking water is the same every where in the universe...
.You are missing the point. What most of us are bawing about is the shitty reflections, not its density values.You're bawwing over a stupid detail, atleast this water is 3D unlike so many others. This water is clearly a liquid, meaning it isn't frozen, and it should look like water as opposed to a puke-coloured bedsheet sitting on top of the water.

And yes, even under different conditions water will still behave like water. Definition of water.
Two parts hydrogen, 1 part oxygen fused together is the definition of water, not it's physical form.

.

[Warsaw]

Look how cool you are using the excuse "I don't care" to avoid backing up your purported knowledge of chemistry!

H2O will always behave like H2O, so yes, definition of water. L2 chemical and physical properties. Rapids still have reflections when you get up close, and since it's up close, I can't see why it looks like a matte, translucent object. Both of you are stretching it. Most of what we saw weren't rapids but fairly gentle waves. If those were supposed to be rapids then they have some work to do...but it is an alpha so not much to say at this point. The only instances of matte water I can think of are the actual white caps, ice that has a jagged surface on the very small scale, ice with bubbles in it, ice with dirt or some other particulate in it (particularly on the surface), steam, or water that's been supersaturated with a solute. Aside from the last one, none of those are actually matte but just so small in their reflections that you can't discern anything other than the brightest source of light shining off of it merging together to form one colour, and otherwise scatter any light trying to pass through it. Also note that most of them are frozen. Did that water look frozen to you? Did that water look like a vapour to you? Did it look supersaturated? If you know something that I don't, then I pray thee tell.

So yes, your statements are still invalid. I said it and I'll say it again: small things like this take away from the experience. A game can be fun, but when one runs across a particularly heinous texture or a badly proportioned NPC, often one will pause and go "wow, they could have done that better" or "really now, an extra day of production would be worth it to make this worth it." Not sure about you, but I'd rather have flat water that looks like water than a bunch of tris that don't.

On a somewhat related note, I wonder if they'll make it such that you can crouch in a deep enough source of water or hide in foliage to actually fool the AI and set an ambush. I get tired of games where I know that there is no way in hell that my signature is visible against the environment unless I move, yet they still shoot at me anyways with frightening accuracy.

[Saggy]

The beta test for Halo: Reach is set to begin on May 3 for owners of Halo 3: ODST. Until today, Bungie has been tight-lipped about new features and improvements coming to Reach's multiplayer game, releasing only one multiplayer trailer. Yesterday, I spoke with the team at Bungie for a preview of some of the new features for Halo: Reach's multiplayer offering, including Active Roster, Queue-Joining, and the extremely exciting "Arena" system.


Halo: Reach's new UI and a shot from singleplayer.
Now, I've played a good amount of Halo 3 and Bungie's plans for Reach have me extremely excited. What follows will be pretty in-depth and assume some knowledge of Halo 3's multiplayer, but I'll try to explain things in as much detail as possible. New Features:

• Active Roster - This is a throwback to Halo 2. When you boot up Reach, right at the main menu or lobby, you'll see a list of what your Xbox Live friends are doing within Reach. You'll get detailed information about any friends playing Reach including who they are partied with, what game they are in (plus score and remaining time), and more.

• Basically, Bungie wants to make it so that you do not have to utilize the Xbox Live Guide to find out what your buddies are doing in Reach. Queue-Joining - In Halo 3, it was difficult to join friends that were already playing in a match. You had to wait until they were finished. If you started a game while you waited, they would then have to wait for you. Instead of going back and forth, Reach will support queue-joining. Simply put, Reach will automatically join up as soon as your friends are joinable.
  Improved Voting System - Halo: Reach will utilize a new voting system, which Bungie described as "Veto 2.0". Each playlist will provide players with four options. The first will be a combination of map and gametype, much like you would see in Halo 3. The other three options will offer players additional choices to vote on. Thankfully, you'll know up front what your four options are so you no longer have to risk voting down a favored map, but unfavored gametype and getting an unfavored combination.

• Behind-the-scenes, a lot of work has been done to give more flexibility to the playlist designers. A designer could, for example, ensure that the first choice is always Team Slayer on a set of 3 popular maps, but offer different gametypes in the additional choices. Arena Playlists - Possibly the largest change coming in Halo: Reach is the Arena. This is a Slayer and Team Slayer set of playlists entirely geared toward the hardcore. If that wasn't enough, players will be rated and placed into skill divisions in month-long seasons.
  The rating system is smart enough to realize that kills aren't the other determining factor behind skill. This is especially true for team games where assists play a huge roll. Similarly, players that have a greater kill/death ratio (had more kills than deaths) will rank higher than players that die as much as they kill.
  The divisions are Onyx, Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Steel. It is possible to move up or down within a single season. To qualify for ranking, players will have to play a certain number of games a day to gain a "Daily Ranking", which will be an average of a player's best games from the day. To get a divisional ranking and compete in a season, players will need a certain number of Daily Rankings.

• Casual gametypes will not appear in Arena playlists. You won't be seeing Rocket Race or Fiesta here. Even though Arena is geared toward top-level players, it should help less skilled players avoid being matched up against people they have no chance of winning against.
  Ranked and Social Combined - Since the hardcore will be in the Arena, Bungie doesn't want to further splinter the community. In Halo 3, Ranked and Social playlists served two different purposes. Ranked games were generally of a higher quality, while social games were more casual.
  In Reach, the playlists will be smart enough to put you and your party in the proper match based upon how many players you have. Say you're looking for a game in a four-on-four playlist. If you bring four people, Reach will attempt to match your team against another group of four at a similar skill level. If you go in with more than four, it will properly split your party across the teams and fill in the blanks with additional players.
  Streamlined Party-Up - After a Halo 3 match, players were presented with the option to "Party Up" and merge lobbies with all willing players. In Reach, it will be an opt-out system. After a match, players will be kept together and it will automatically roll into looking for the next match. The system is flexible enough to allow Bungie to determine, per playlist, whether to keep a team together and find a new set of opponents or keep an entire game together and move onto the next map.

• 
  
  • Matchmaking Connection Options - The options for finding games in matchmaking will be more open to the player, if they so choose. If you only ever want to play in games with a good connection, that can be set in the options. If you only ever want to play against players of a similar skill, that can be set. The same goes for finding players that speak to same language. Social Settings - In addition to these connection options, players can rate themselves along four axes to add another layer of criteria to the matchmaking. These won't trump anything else, but it will help Bungie build better teams. Players will define their playstyle in the following four categories:
    
    • Teamwork - Team Player vs. Lone Wolf
    • Motivation - Winning vs. Having Fun
    • Chattiness - Chatty vs. Quiet
    • Tone - Polite vs. Rowdy
    
    
  
  

• This allows Bungie, for example, to try and build a team of chatty, polite, team-playing, winners in serious playlists.

These new features are a huge part of Halo: Reach and should help foster a better community than Halo 3 or Halo 2. Personally, I'm extremely excited about the Arena system. I've been having a lot of fun in the StarCraft II beta test with Blizzard's Leagues & Ladders system. Arena is the same concept. It should also help alleviate the epidemic of smurfing (creating new Xbox Live accounts) to give maxed out players something to do in Halo 3. Instead of starting over, destroying noobs and reclimbing the skill charts, these top-level players will be encouraged to play season-after-season in the Arena and be meaningfully compared to each other. It's a system that has been a long-time-coming to a first-person shooter.
Look for more coverage on Halo: Reach from Shacknews soon and get ready for the beta, which begins on May 3rd. The full game will be released exclusively for the Xbox 360 this fall. See you online!

Copypasta from Shacknews

[Kornman00]

H2O will always behave like H2O, so yes, definition of water. L2 chemical and physical properties. Rapids still have reflections when you get up close, and since it's up close, I can't see why it looks like a matte, translucent object.

Can't see why? Well to start off, it's a game and to add it's game where the developer has never gone on to say they're trying to create a photo realistic world. This is Halo. It's always had it's own look. Go outside if you want to stare at yourself in the water. If your mind is really that worried about your lack of reflection in the game's liquids then I have to wonder what use you are when the shit starts hitting the fan in-game.

Both of you are stretching it. Most of what we saw weren't rapids but fairly gentle waves.

I said a rapid effect. Not explicitly that they were river rapids.

So yes, your statements are still invalid. I said it and I'll say it again: small things like this take away from the experience. A game can be fun, but when one runs across a particularly heinous texture or a badly proportioned NPC, often one will pause and go "wow, they could have done that better" or "really now, an extra day of production would be worth it to make this worth it." Not sure about you, but I'd rather have flat water that looks like water than a bunch of tris that don't.

Have you ever stopped to consider the ramifications having reflections on a level's water could be to computation (they still support split screen remember)? That perhaps maybe they wanted to distribute the amount of detail in all aspects of the game world so other details didn't feel unbalanced? If they went ahead and satisfied your need for reflections while sacrificing some other photo realistic detail then you'd just be going off and baaawwwww'ing about that.

The argument of having "bland" water is "invalid" too as your mind would now pick out on this detail which doesn't sit right with the level of detail put into the rest of the world.

Have you ever considered hibernating or cryosleeping until Virtual Reality (ie, Holodecks) are consumable and cost effective? Or would you then go on to complain that since you can't touch and feel the objects in game yet that it takes away from the experience?

[Siliconmaster]

I saw the new stuff about the multiplayer- looks really cool. I'm looking forward to the new matchmaking options, and also to seeing how the new playlists work in practice. The new veto system is brilliant, and the opt-out option at the end of a match instead of the party-up system from H3 sounds a lot like MW2, which actually works pretty well from my experience.

[teh lag]

Kornmad00

I think it's more about the fact that they were parading the water effects like a brilliant addition to the game when, in fact, they're just okay water effects.

[Kornman00]

Well comparing to the previous Halo engines it is looking better. When we actually get hands on with the Beta we'll get to truly judge just how grander they've made liquid physics interact with the world. After all, physics not only includes the light spectrum but also physical attributes like viscosity. The water isn't just a render effect. Since Halo 3 they've made it geometry of it's own, to where it should be feasible to do something Warsaw was diving into with sneaking up on an enemy (AI or human) while submerged in murky depths like that of water along a shore line.

[Heathen]

Aha funny man.
different planet, different environmental make up and different gravity all together, elements on one planet may not react the same due to nearly a infinite number of different variables.

Gravity won't stop reflections