I was thinking lately about having a mod for Halo CE called Brutal Halo, but I suck at coding, especially Halo 1 coding so I wanted to give it all out for someone (probably THE CHOSEN ONE) to do this.

For years, there's been Brutal Doom, Brutal Quake and even Brutal Half-Life. But there's something missing in all of them and that only the original Halo can provide. Brutal Halo would be a non-OS map mod for all the 10 campaign maps with a single goal : improve vanilla Halo 1 gameplay. That simple. No new sounds, no new graphics, no new models, none of that. It looks and sounds like the original, but plays a LOT different. Here would be the differences :

EDIT : This mod could also be known as "The tales of Invisible Spiderchief - the Badass Kick into outer space".

---Kick functionality as a melee function for all weapons. If you press the melee button for any weapon, I mean ANY weapon at all, Master Chief will lift his right leg and kick. The kick would be EXTREMELY overpowered though; kicking a vehicle would throw it for a large distance, about 10 meters, and a kick can actually lower an elite's shield in a single hit. The damage and speed of the kick would be the same across all weapons. And since the kick is so powerful, you can actually "throw" vehicles like they were throwing weapons, just like in the Halo novels. It's like a warthog being hit by a rocket.

EDIT : Remember though, the kick is short range and it's pretty precise. It's not theoretically an infinite gravity hammer. You can miss the kick and if you do, you can get ******.

---"Offend" button. When you press the flashlight button, this happens : https://youtu.be/SAwRp7Il4LY?t=2m58s
(If you're gonna complain the flashlight is missing, read below!)

---All weapons can zoom twice (like a sniper rifle), and while zoomed, have a night vision capability. This is to replace the flashlight in order to include the "offend" functionality, without potentially making the player blind in places that are dark. Also, this makes the assault rifle a "rifle" and not a peashooter. And it also increases awareness in big maps such as Assault on the Control Room.

---Dismemberment for all enemies. This is totally possible within the original Halo 1 engine. A technique of this can be seen here : https://youtu.be/jROY-zjyUrs
So imagine being able to behead an elite with a shotgun and then watching a jackal run away with both of his arms blown off. I always wanted to see that.

EDIT : This is not purely cosmetic because this would make all enemies act similar to the Flood. You would actually shoot off a Jackal's shield arm so that he only fires his main weapon, or watch what an Elite does when he gets both of his arms blown off. Probably stare at you with angry thoughts and then attempt to bash it's head on you.

!NEW!---Warthog gets replaced with the Rocket Warthog seen in multiplayer.

!NEW!---All guns are modified and fire different bullets than before. For example, a Pistol fires shotgun rounds. An Assault Rifle fires Pistol rounds. A Plasma Rifle fires the Phantom's plasma shots. A Plasma Pistol fires charged shots NORMALLY, and with an actual CHARGE shot, a Fuel Rod Gun shot. To add to the sick joke, the Fuel Rod Gun only fires normal Plasma Pistol shots. Haha. Grunts will be dangerous, Jackals will be EXTREMELY dangerous, and Elites are comparable to Reach's SLASO elites. Not sure what the Sniper Rifle and Rocket Launcher would do on the other hand. The Rocket Launcher would probably fire Scorpion rounds.

!NEW!---The above also applies to vehicles as well. For example, a Ghost fires Plasma Grenades rapidly, a Rocket Launcher Warthog fires Frag Grenades in a rate of fire identical to the original Warthog's turret (remember though, the grenades are affected by gravity, so it's not a "mini-Scorpion"), and the Scorpion fires rockets in it's secondary fire. Not sure what to do with the Banshee though. You guys decide that for yourselves.

---Doubled rate of fire for all weapons, applies to enemies and does not overwrite the above. So Grunts WILL spam charged Plasma Pistol shots as if it were new year's eve.

---Doubled reload speed for all weapons.

---Increased ammo storage for all weapons. 999 ammo max for everything! No, I'm not talking about starting ammo, I mean the maximum ammo you can get for all weapons.

!NEW!---Tripled health for all characters EXCEPT the player. Remember though, with all the crazy weapons as above, the marines and Spartans won't be any more useful as they were before. So they'll still dance on their grave.

---If you pick up an active camo, it lasts for the remainder of the map. If that's not possible because of a Halo engine limitation, set it to the maximum amount of time possible.

---Double the movement speed and jump height of the player. Makes the gameplay more arcade-y, alias Doom-like.

---If you crouch, you can stick to walls. Like Spider-Man. I know what people are gonna say : "THIS WILL BREAK MAPS!!11!1!" and YES, it will. Absolutely. And that's gonna be awesome. With all the things mentioned above, it will make the maps way more open, more accessible, faster paced and dynamic. Now you can stealth through the entire "It's Quiet..." section of "The Silent Cartographer" in any way you choose. You no longer need to follow a pre-determined path. And this is especially useful for Assault on the Control Room and Two Betrayals. Now these maps will feel like open world maps in comparison from before.

---All Marines are replaced by Spartans. All civilians/crewmen are replaced with Marines.

---Legendary difficulty across all difficulties; if you pick Easy, Normal or Heroic, you're just picking Legendary but with less enemies.

!NEW?!===If possible, a default 90 FOV for all maps. I want to play as a human super-soldier, not a horse with blinders. I once saw a Halo Trial map that did make a client-sided map that included this feature. It was possible to join other multiplayer sessions with the FOV remaining unchanged and without affecting others. Not sure if it's possible on CE though.

===If possible, double the magazine sizes of all weapons, except the Assault Rifle and Covenant weapons besides the Needler. The Assault Rifle would have a magazine clip maximum of 99 rounds (Aliens' M41A Pulse Rifle anyone?) because the counter can't go higher than that. And 200% Plasma weapons would be weird and redundant. And if the above works, make the player be able to carry 9 grenades of each type at once.

===If possible, modify all the first person animations so that they look more "cool" and badass. So if you idle with your pistol, Master Chief is gonna make a https://youtu.be/RHlldvAVBnE and when you shoot with a shotgun, Chief does a https://youtu.be/MS5CrDgV0jo and when you reload an assault rifle, Chief does a https://youtu.be/u7kuAk4w1B8

===Optionally, port all the sounds from Halo Anniversary, including music.

That's it really. If you have any more suggestions and ideas comment below.
Edited by gabrieloup on Apr 26, 2016 at 04:26 PM

You probably won't get much of a response on this, since your ideas are not much more than "this would be cool" with very general opinions on how it would impact gameplay.

Gameplay is a very complicated thing, arbitrarily doubling values isn't a sound way to make something fun.

Just give me an unlimited rocket launcher and MAX 500+ Health. #Fairness

I was thinking of a similar project. Since I had a higher movement speed in mind, I made this thread: http://forum.halomaps.org/index.cfm%3Fpage=topic&topicID=49204
You should add more midair trajectory control.

You want brutal halo, just play my map:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/4m2rshtmdu8hr6p/planet_flood_a.zip

Halonimator's brain:
"Hey look a thread that i clearly don't unterstand anything at all, i've an idea!! why not advertise here my crappy stuff even if no one wants it :v :V :v :v :v :v :v :v im so smart".
Edited by Kinnet on Apr 24, 2016 at 01:02 PM

true

It actually sounds pretty cool! You would be surprised how often a brutal halo comes up in the VKMT chat anyway, I would totally be down for it but I'm focusing on Dreamweb... hmmmmmmmm...

"many of your requested features aren't entirely feasable."
Yes they are. I saw many similar features in many different Halo maps before. This is totally possible. List the features that "aren't entirely feasable" before complaining.

"GAMEPLAY ISN'T BALANCED! DOUBLING VALUES IS TOO SIMPLE!"

Yes it is. It's balanced considering enemies would have double firing rate and all difficulty settings would share most of the same values except for enemy spawn numbers. I just thought that Halo 1's gameplay could've been spiced up to make something a lot more faster, open-ended and Halo novel-like while still retaining the vanilla looks. If you guys think there should be a million ways to balance things then go ahead and please post what's wrong, but don't just come and say "your thread is invalid" without stating any reasons as of why. Besides, you can't say a lot about my concept without trying, and this also applies to me as well. Halo is balanced enough so that simply changing a few values to be faster isn't necessarily unbalancing anything, it's called "making the gameplay faster" and less tedious. If you guys want the HYPER TACTICAL HD WEAPONS and everything, there's CMT SPV3, and soon enough SOI's Singleplayer Adventure, the latter which I'm extremely exited for. Don't complain because you can, complain if you want to help ME, not help yourself. And again, this is a small concept. If you want more features and stuff then PLEASE say them. But again, I don't want this to be "SPV3 but with more gore". I would want it to be something different that the Halo community didn't yet try. But sadly I'm a person with time restraints and I have little to no idea how to code.

try using as reference a Halo book or the comics or try making a next part of an already made campaign, I love something based in Halo 2 new mombasa I am not good aat writting but may be if we all as community help to you we can make an awesome custom campaign.

This sounds ridiculous.

It is good that you are thinking outside the box but that is not always THE way to go.

Most of what you suggested are not impossible to do, back in the older days or now. However, I would like to say that some things exist, or do not exist, for a reason.

Edited by Dumb AI on Apr 24, 2016 at 07:17 PM

Chaosgulch

You you you I see what you did there

To be fair, nuts.map is a good time depending on how sober you are.

@OP
Teams here almost always start off as one person attempting to realize their dream.
Getting close and personal with the HEK isn't an entirely difficult matter.
You should learn how stuff works and give it a go. Even if you come to realize most of what you want is improbable, you'll be more educated on the subject. Sounds like a win win to me.

Lists every type of mod that messes with the globals.globals and other important files in some say:

Yeah... oh gosh.
...Not without a sandbox
Edited by OrangeJuice on Apr 24, 2016 at 10:21 PM

otherwise you can always go play a chaosgulch serverBu-but custom map servers are always empty except Bigass:(

What is this nuts.map you speak of and does it contain almonds?

It will put some hair on your chest

Even if you are female

if you're into that ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Thankyou for that wonderful image I now mentally ingrained in my concious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ibtu98tPYCM

That's the point.

Haven't heard anything like THAT before.

I'm not saying you were mean about it, and not that you should've been nicer about it, but you were somewhere in between so isn't it conceivable someone somewhere might take it the wrong way?

That's just modacity's culture isn't it?

PTTTTHHHBBBBTHHHHOHOOHAHHAAHHAHAHAAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAH

WHEEEEEEEEEEZE

Okay, firstly to destroy your argument.

When designing any sort of gameplay experience, when something breaks it is never the player's fault, rather the designer's. Your idea of creating Spider-chief is pretty crappy. Your justification is they just don't "use" the feature if they don't want to break the game? The idea of a gameplay mechanic is that everyone uses it and it enhances the gameplay in a fashion that it gives the player a slight advantage against an opponent for a short period of time. Take the shield for example. It's designed for short bursts of action. With a full shield, the player can duck out of cover, handle the unshielded infantry until it is only the player and the elite. Now that it's easier, the player can use a combination of grenades and spraying, or quick short bursts of fire from behind cover to eliminate the enemy unit.

The player's shield is relatively weak, once it is depleted, non-regenerative health begins degrading. It is core to the Halo experience. If you add in Spiderchief you destroy that moment-to-moment gameplay as the player can just get right above the enemies, drop down, assassinate the elite and easily pick off the lower-tier units. Shame on you for your bad ideas.


Okay, now to actually challenge this.

When I read "Brutal Halo" I thought you were gonna make the gameplay significantly more challenging. I expected the player to have a horribly weak shield but greater amounts of cover, the enemies would all have a special defense the player had to use a certain tactic to counter, and that the human vehicles were actually so bad at fight the Covenant that it was essentially a deathwish by getting into a Warthog in non-critical areas.

When you first started this post you said "no new models, no new music, no new graphics etc." Animations are a part of "etc" so your ideas for assassinations and character animations are already out the window. But as I read on I lost hope that this was gonna be a post about making Halo harder, and I began to see it as a "Let's make Halo great again" where you are essentially making Mr. Spiderchief the superman of space. The gameplay restrictions are what makes a game challenging and enjoyable. Halo would not have become the successful cash-cow if the first game was "The tales of Invisible Spiderchief - the Badass Kick into outer space".

I wanted to enjoy this post but now I won't. Reconsider your stance. Don't make MC overpowered, make him a toddler in a room full of adults. Don't focus on cosmetics, it's a sure-fire way to make sure your game is Star Citizen (never released) but focus on the core gameplay and what you want to build your mod around.

Please?

Or better yet, make him a Marine in a room full of 7' tall energy-shielded alien warmongers who could crush his skull in the palm of their hands, toting weapons capable of boiling the flesh from his bones.

Okay guys, I tried to address some of the criticism. First post was edited. See it and see if you guys like it naow.

Yea I'm aware that it's heavily inspired by Doom. But if you want to make it Brutal Halo you have to change the idea. If you want to make it a clone of Doom, just reskin Doom with Halo models.

Also, Gabriel, did you even take my ideas into consideration? That's feedback works. You ask for criticism, read it, take it under advisement and change according. There exist people who are more knowledgeable than you about things. You've come to a Halo forum filled with veterans who under stand the theory of flow and enjoyable gameplay. I'm still learning, but others such as the gameplay designers of CMT and the Lumoria gameplay team clearly understand this at a much higher level.
Edited by Storm on Apr 26, 2016 at 07:14 PM

Ignore all the smart alec hate commentary, your ideas are fine. I suppose no one wants to have fun anymore and enjoy themselves, and people seem to forget that this is a 12 year old mod of a 15 year old video game. Not everything has to be perfectly balanced, and some people actually want to have fun with modding. Different styles of gameplay and different ideas are what keep this community alive.

I agree with t3h m00kz.because I made a scarab as a biped with actor variant, but the player dont collide as in halo 3.that's an example that not everything goes as you want in the Old HCE engine, also it happened to with my flood transporters, the player dont collide with the foot and cant go above the flood.but,You can try to create your own campaign.

Edited by Halonimator on Apr 26, 2016 at 09:48 PM

Just because he requested it, it does not mean that you have to reply to it. Likewise, just because he does not understand the concepts behind the modding, it does not mean that you need to be rude to him. Imagination is what made video games, and if it weren't for imagination, this game would not be here for us to mod and play with. If he doesn't know, that's ok, not many people know about this game or the modding scene until they really get into it. Heck, I didn't know a thing when I first started. I'm not starting a big debate or arguement, but it would be wise to just be patient.

why would you like to make, halo like Brutal Doom? wean these halo reach or ,bad game play halo 4.

1 you seem to have no idea, what OS is do you, what you ask cannot be done,
like reach assassinations, that cannot be done without !OS!,or like a lot of things cmt spv3 is doing, cannot be done without ^OS!

no2 {qt}If you crouch, you can stick to walls. Like Spider-Man. I know what people are gonna say : "THIS WILL BREAK MAPS!!11!1!" and YES, it will. Absolutely. And that's gonna be awesome. With all the things mentioned above, it will make the maps way more open, more accessible, faster paced and dynamic. Now you can stealth through the entire "It's Quiet..." section of "The Silent Cartographer" in any way you choose. You no longer need to follow a pre-determined path. And this is especially useful for Assault on the Control Room and Two Betrayals. Now these maps will feel like open world maps in comparison from before.{QT} that's a joke? there no way in hell that could be done, because that brakes, halo no joke ,that would kill the hole idea of halo.


3rd dumb idea [QT]---Legendary difficulty across all difficulties; if you pick Easy, Normal or Heroic, you're just picking Legendary but with less enemies.[QT]with this idea, you just killed all point of difficulty's, like doom there's hard and not so hard, then there's your a bad ass difficulty, so your idea is dead

4ht odd [QT} possible, to have default 90 FOV for all maps {QT] well yes however like, with os this game was made to run with 70 or 75 FOV 80,is ok, that's just my point of U

5HT QT] No new sounds, no new graphics, no new models, none of that. It looks and sounds like the original{QT} you lied your asking for new sounds and, graphics

6 damn it. QT] with a single goal : improve vanilla Halo 1 gameplay[QT] that's what cmt spv3 is doing.

to some this up, having doom in halo ce would be cool but not Brutal Doom,
I know there are two doom maps ones nuts that is a FUN and bad ass map, two was call doom box, didn't see it here but it's out there some where, maybe it didn't get uploaded here.

.last but lest...think how just about all your idea's here would be no fun.
Edited by DOOM899 on Apr 27, 2016 at 09:14 AM

I have never played a DOOM game.

Watched the crappy movie tho.

My pc can't handle old games

Its a shame halo slipped through the net.