What about the Drones/Buggers?

They suck and can't be done well in CE. So nope.

Why not? it doesn't seem that hard. You still have basic animations, bank angles, blur effect on the wings. Place the base node on the back between the wing's so it rotates around that point making it look like the wings are carrying it. Falling dead animation of it spinning out like it's wing got clipped off. Profit? Sorry, i just don't see why it'd be so hard :/ ...

I don't think he's really talking about the animations and what not, as much as getting the AI to work right and not just make them basically a bunch of sentinels. It just isn't something that can be done real well in CE.

It still adds height to the covenant enemies which would add diversity to encounters

sentinals don't straith. Their movement is much more robotic and less natural. Whereas the buggers are more fluid, when they move in the direction, it takes them a minute for they're momentum to swing out. their wings will be causing more drag to slow them down from the direction their traveling making their body swing that way, all of which can be done with animations. They can straith, they can take cover, so on and so on :| It's all possible...
Edited by grunt_eater on May 18, 2013 at 12:35 AM

You mean strafe?

Also, as far as I know (I made buggers for my old delta halo mod) there is no possible way to get them to be able to switch between flying and landing modes(like landing on walls, ceilings, floors, etc).

it hardly does anything except make it impossible to hide behind cover on harder difficulties. along with their strange halo2 hitboxes and skyward movements, they are virtually invincible(you should know, seeing that they are in lumoria and take forever to kill before they crash the game on legendary.) also, considering all of the closed environments in halo 1, there would be very little space for drones to fit in without being grunt-tier useless.

Yes atm it can't be done I do believe I had asked kirby about it before.

Pretty much every reason given why they won't work well is valid here. Don't forget, we still have our unused Enforcer and Flood Sentinel tags from SPV2, those are 2 other flying units you will eventually encounter in the second half of campaign. Speaking of the second half, some of us have began pre-production on it, and we hope to have everything planned out for our custom level/s we want to include in it, as well as the new tags and gameplay elements we want in the second half.

In terms of more recent news regarding the first half of campaign

-the B30 island is finally all navigateable!
-A30 has its final BSP layouts and encounter plans, with the majority of it scripted and playable
-Multiple people are working on getting the mantis working better. It was planned to be in A30 and in A50, but depending on how pacing works in A30, we may remove it all together from that map. A50's Mantis encounter is easily removable, in case we decide getting it fully working is to much work for the first half of campaign.
-We now have a rocket hog model.
-We have a new and better support weapon system we are looking to try soon.

Do we get an AR weapon evolution video soon I hope?

Not saying drones would work well in Halo 1, but cmt makes custom bsp add ons so there ya go.

And yes, drones add difficulty. Isn't that the point? Why they fly. They are rather easy to kill if ya shoot at em. And take that opportunity to hate Lumoria again like usual

Not saying CMT must do Drones, but those are my opinion on them. Adding variety and new combat scenarios
Edited by MatthewDratt on May 18, 2013 at 02:01 AM

drones are anti-fun.

yes, point out the lumoria "hate" even though it's valid and true.

the only variety they add is that for once you sit back while the marines/elites handle them since aiming at their impossibly glitchy hitboxes is the most irritating thing ever.

He has a point, you do take the opportunity to hate on Lumoria when ever you possibly can which gets a bit old. You can point out flaws with out doing it in a manner specifically meant to offend people who put lots of time and effort into something.

That being said, the Drones in Lumoria where a bit of a pain. If they had managed to make them as much fun to kill as the ones in Reach it might have worked out a little bit better.

except I was using it as an example to which you've agreed to, not hating on it.

Speaking in general terms, don't get all uppity now.

but you and matt got all uppity over it, not I :V
I was stating an example, then in comes you calling it out as hate.
Edited by master noob on May 18, 2013 at 03:08 AM

Well, considering every time Lumoria comes up you are one of the first to jump on the hate bandwagon, I don't think its entirely unfounded.

except lumoria never came up before my post, I used it as an example since it was a first-player map with drones in halo 1 since that was the discussion at hand. what are you trying to prove?

Your point wouldn't have been so annoying if you weren't always hating on lumoria. You just bring Lumoria up so often we have no idea weather you're just hating because lumoria or actually trying to make a point

Lumoria sux

'Cause it's so hard to create a new collision model? :|...


My point is that if you put a little work into them, they could work fine in CE.

The hitbox's aren't the issue. It's the AI.

Care to elaborate?

Yes, because people already have.

So far the arguments I've heard are
They're too hard to shoot, because of their collision. ;;Fixable
They can't land. ;;unimportant
They take forever just to kill one. ;;Lower their health, no shielding, and to compensate make them use charged pp firing as well, but less accuracy when firing normal because there are so many of them
There's hardly anywhere to take cover where they can't find you, and they're so hard to kill that you can't take them out before the do you. ;;same fix as above. Sure, they'll still find you, but you'll be able to pick them off with a couple pistol shots or a burst from an AR

So, let's recap. Fix collision, landing doesn't matter, no invisible shields, lower health, less accurate aiming, none of the last three matte because they travel in packs, add a little overhead cover maybe, and there you go. They'll be weaker so their easier to kill for those who said it's too hard, they'll be less accurate, making it harder for them to spam you and kill you when you're hiding, all of this adding a new "lower-then grunt" class, with the advantage of flight making them a little different so the player has to adapt. It doesn't seem that impossible to me.

Oh, btw, who's the texture artist for CMT? Just curious.
Edited by grunt_eater on May 18, 2013 at 11:29 AM

Them not being able to switch between modes is the problem. If we are going to do something like drones, we want to do them well, not half assed sentinels that simply like to hover in the air and bombard you with shots. Without switching modes, they can't effectively use cover, or hide for that matter like they do in bungie's games, which pretty much kills any chance of them being included.

Don't get me wrong, I like Drones, but they have no place in H1.

And Bobthegreat is our texture artist.

Okay, thank you. SO, the main problem is that they can't land. We know how to make bipeds that can fly(sentinels, monitor, buggers). And we know how to make bipeds that can walk on walls(flood). If you make a flying biped and simply check "can walk on walls" it won't work, because they don't walk. But what if we switched it around? What if we made a biped that can walk on walls, then loaded it into another biped that could fly? The only thing would be you'd need to be able to detect if a biped was touching a surface, so that when the flying biped touched a wall\ground\ceiling it would unload the walking biped so it would land.

This is, of course, without OS. I don't know anything about it, but maybe there's an easier way with that.

why do they have to land? That's what I don't quite understand. Instead of hovering and slowly moving like sentinels, make them fly much faster and switch direction often, so it's hard to target them. In addition allow them to overcharge plasma weapons and give them grenade throwing capabilities, and you've got an entirely different gameplay experience, not counting the fact that the plasma weapons they'd use perform completely different than sentinel beams. Maybe even they can occasionally use carbines and remain at a distance, making it even harder for them to be targeted, and making them more dangerous. Maybe even in forerunner interiors like on two betrayals perhaps you could have a version of the drone that runs around on high walls, jumping around quickly almost as if they are flying from one spot to another, performed not unlike a marines roll or elites strafe. These are just some ideas off the top of my head.

I mean come on people, quit trying to figuring out how to copy other halo games' ai functionality and start focusing on creating ai that fit ce's gameplay in a fun way, regardless of how they performed in the other games.

Now all this being said, to be clear, I'm not advocating for the appearance of drones, just stating that it's not impossible for them to be implemented in a way that creates a non half-assed gameplay experience different from that of the sentinel. And different, fun gameplay is really all that matters, not remaining true to their behaviors in other halo games.

wow dude
you missed the point

their flight patterns make them difficult, and landing is really the only opportunity to hit them on harder difficulties. making them faster and harder to hit makes them literally invincible, and giving them grenades and overcharge would make them OP. the landing is really the only thing preventing them from being harder sentinels.

that's...really not true. They have very low health, and are meant to be dropped from short controlled bursts by automatic weapons. They're not impossible to hit in ce or any other game (they're actually easy to take out in the air imo, even with their buggy hitboxes in lumoria), unless you can't aim worth crap. If they didn't move fast they would be underpowered.

and as a rare enemy encounter, they're SUPPOSED to be more powerful than sentinels (sentinels are trivial enemies anyway)

Edited by Delicon20 on May 18, 2013 at 05:08 PM

But if you lowered the health so that it would take a full mag from a sniper rifle to kill one then they wouldn't be so hard to kill. I hate how everyone thinks that the way to upgrade enemies is to make them hella invincible and give them power weapons. Like i said
No invisible shields, lower health so that they can be killed by 6\7 shots of a pistol or 15\20 shots of an AR, make normal rat of fire less accurate, and make them use charged pp mode. But no grenades, i have nightmares about it raining plasma grenades from that one statement *shutters*.

that's why you lower the grenade chance, lower the grenade vcelocity, and lower the grenade accuracy, so that they'd keep you on your toes, but not completely spam you and obliterate you. It's simple, really

Have a nice nightmare free sleep
Edited by Delicon20 on May 18, 2013 at 05:17 PM

it really is true.
they have about the same health as grunts(maybe more) and how many automatic weapons are in halo 2? 3 weapons? they were never officially in ce to begin with, so I don't see why you would use that as an example. I can't see how you could possible think a moving target is easier to hit than a static target, unless you never actually played halo 2. they already move faster than sentinels, so I also don't see why you would call them underpowered for that. and at least sentinels have shields and a shield-cleaning laser.

played it 5 times, 3 on heroic, 2 on legendary. But I wasn't talking about halo 2. When I mentioned the weakness to automatic weapons, I was remembering their functionality in halo 3 and odst. They were at their most challenging in odst imo, when the majors had plasma rifles and energy shields, but they were still simple enemies imo. And I never said moving targets were easier, I meant that when I fought them, 90% of the time they never made it to the ground. I honestly have no idea how you thought they were challenging.

As far as sentinels go, They're shields are easily remedied by plasma, or you can just spam an automatic weapon until they drop, or use a needler. Cut and dry combat.

Oh and just for the record, there were four automatic weapons and three automatic turret types in Halo 2