The Halo Engine

[Bathroom Security]

Well after taking a trip to compiling-for-CSS-land, i've gotten to know more about gaming engines and such.

I was wondering, how good is Halo's gaming engine? A lot of models i've noticed are in the 1-3K range, which is actually a really small amount. Is it because Halo's engine is so obsolete that it blows over when there's two many polies? A lot of models i've worked with in CSS were in the high 5-10K poly range.

Of course, it's not all about polies, but i think i've got a little going. what do you guys think D:

[rossmum]

It'll take up to 6k fine, higher on characters and vehicles. Res on textures goes up to 2048x2048.

Draw distance is what, about 3-4km? Half to two-thirds of Hugeass? Sounds about right...

[Sgt Stacker]

Compared to the engines of todays games HALO's SUCKS , that is all. :lol:

[rossmum]

...Thank you for that insightful and HIGHLY constructive post.

[Sgt Stacker]

Tell its true.. even halo 2's engine , and definatly halo 3 , and all the other next gen game engines will own halo over , it would be sweet if they made one last awsome update for halo and halo ce.. just to statistfy the fans :p

[rossmum]

Yeah, but the point of the thread is to post its capabilities, not whether you think it sucks or not.

[Sgt Stacker]

what kinda compatibilites? you plan on making hogs rideable without falling off? :eyesroll:

[Btd69]

I plan on smacking you upside the head if you continue to post utter nonsense.

The Halo engine is pretty outdated, compared to engines such as the Source engine.. though it is still pretty usefull, which is why alot of people still make mods with it. H2V will get the same treatment IMO.

As for its capabilities, more and more are being discovered over time; take the portal gun for example.

[rossmum]

Given enough time and smarts, we'd eventually be able to bend the thing to our will, I reckon. I've been around since the early days of modding when people were still discovering things left, right, and centre, and back then we knew almost nothing, yet the smart people with lots of patience and spare time discovered not only all manners of useful info, but then made programs so us regular types could mod the game ourselves without wetting our pants at the mere sight of several thousand lines of hex.

The Halo engine is outdated, but still does some pretty cool stuff. Who knows, one day we might even get to the point where we can go in and make it do whatever we want it to.

[jcap]

Compared to the engines of todays games HALO's SUCKS , that is all. :lol:Wrong. Really, many games TODAY don't even have engines as good as the Blam! engine. They have just began picking up speed with the Next-Gen consoles. Seriously, don't look at all of the games which are coming out, but the ones which came out in the first half of 2006 and earlier. Source, Jupiter, and CryEngine are the only ones which stand out in my mind as being on par or above Halo's.

One thing that no game I have seen has been able to beat Halo in yet is the map loading time. Halo takes SECONDS to load, usually half a second. Other games, like the Source games for example, take a year to load.


Tell its true.. even halo 2's engine , and definatly halo 3 , and all the other next gen game engines will own halo over , it would be sweet if they made one last awsome update for halo and halo ce.. just to statistfy the fans :pYou do realize that the entire Halo series has been developed on the same engine? Bungie has worked with the Blam! engine from the beginning of Halo's development. The lead engine programmers have just been modifying the engine to keep it up to date with everything else out there.

[rossmum]

^ Post wins, thank you.

Halo's version of Blam might be rather limited compared to Halo 2's, but it's still not half bad.

[Patrickssj6]

Halo was one of the first games supporting Pixel Shader 2.0.Guess who has it still?CSS mbmb?

Halo engine was made around 2002-2003.Now tell me again that it is sucky if you compare it to engines created 3-4 years after.

[Sgt Stacker]

if a awsome programer was able to decompile the halo engine (even if thats possible) and make it so AI sync.. they would be my god :eek:

[Zeph]

You also have to realize that Blam! was made for the xbox at its origional launch. Blam!2 was rewritten to take advantage of WAN features, but it's overall the same once you get past the new bitmap system. It's a possibility, but heaven forbid that the new bitmapping makes it unable to process higher levels of geometry. The point was, afterall, to make less complex geometry look more complex.

Blam!3 though will blow anything else out of the water. It combines the greatest aspects of Blam! and Blam!2 and adds in all the great technological advances that have popped up over the years such as soft shadows and HDR. Seeing how the 360's GPU is a prototype R600, I would expect great things to come out of the Blam!3 engine should it be publically released for content creation.

[Bathroom Security]

You also have to realize that Blam! was made for the xbox at its origional launch. Blam!2 was rewritten to take advantage of WAN features, but it's overall the same once you get past the new bitmap system. It's a possibility, but heaven forbid that the new bitmapping makes it unable to process higher levels of geometry. The point was, afterall, to make less complex geometry look more complex.

Blam!3 though will blow anything else out of the water. It combines the greatest aspects of Blam! and Blam!2 and adds in all the great technological advances that have popped up over the years such as soft shadows and HDR. Seeing how the 360's GPU is a prototype R600, I would expect great things to come out of the Blam!3 engine should it be publically released for content creation.

well said. why's that there are so many Blam! 's? o_o

also, looking at the H3 screenshots, the game'll take advantage of stronger normal and ref maps

[Chewy Gumball]

Thats the name of halo's engine.

[Random]

well said. why's that there are so many Blam! 's? o_o


Blam! = Halo's game engine
Blam!2 = Halo2's game engine
Blam!3 = Halo3's game engine

[Zeph]

Yeah, there hasn't been any official notice of what the engine is called, so I say Blam!, Blam!2, etc. to signify the version of the engine. I say it along the lines of Source6 is running Counterstrike Source. >_>, assuming it is version 6.whatever running the game.

[mR_r0b0to]

it's called Blam?
i thought it was Acid Rain.



or i'm on Acid -_-

[rossmum]

It's Blam!

Think that might be why that's the word censor on the Bungie forums? HAX MB!? :D

[mR_r0b0to]

rly?

*tries*

[Rescudo]

Yeah really, you -Blam!-ing -Blam!-.

That's how it works ;)

[Cortexian]

Blam! you, you Blam!

neways, I doubt it would be a small feat to decompile the engine, and I doubt anyone has the need to right now, since H2V is coming out...

[Bathroom Security]

haha bungie calls it Blam! because even they think it runs like Blam!

you can decompile a model or a map, but never heard of an entire game engine

D:

[legionaire45]

I would imagine it would be hard to decompile it if possible at all, but since it is written in C++ im sure that it would be simple to make a "version 1.08" that fixes many of H CE's downfalls if it were. When H2V hits the market Bungie needs to release the raw source code to Halo PC and CE so that we can pimp the engine xD.

I vote open source Blam!

[rossmum]

Yes. That would be made of win.

[Chewy Gumball]

He means not in a seat.

[mR_r0b0to]

open sourcing CE would take some customers from H2Vista.
i don't think they'd do it.

[p0lar_bear]

"Blam" was Halo's codename while it was in pre-alpha stages. The official name of the engine is Blam afaik. If you open any Halo tags in a hex editor, you will see the string "blam" in the tag header, signifying that it's for that engine. Heck, gametype and profile saves even have it for a filename; blam.lst.

You can't "decompile" a game engine, per sé. You have to analyze how it works by watching what goes on closely, and watching memory changes, then recode it to the best of your abilities. That's called "reverse engineering."

[mR_r0b0to]

You can't "decompile" a game engine, per sé. You have to analyze how it works by watching what goes on closely, and watching memory changes, then recode it to the best of your abilities. That's called "reverse engineering."

which is what kornman and bitter were doing before kornman was shipped off..amirite?

damn military..

[Patrickssj6]

which is what kornman and bitter were doing before kornman was shipped off..amirite?

damn military..
only korn.

now BB knows it too

[Kornman00]

Seeing as how Halo is based off years 2000-2001 tech, I think you :fail: @ life.

o hai thar shout outs

[legionaire45]

well guys, I aready ported Halo over to source so why not just start there? Just open up halo.exe in text, conpy it and paste it into sources console. You immediately get Halo with HDR and all the models gain 13324324252K triangles and are awesome sauce.

[Hotrod]

I thought that you stopped making Halo for Source and that you gave me all your files that have to do with the project...:D

[legionaire45]

I did, but I didnt want to be a nerd anymore so I actually sent you porn.exe and trashed the files. I also organized the System32 folder because there were all of these files just floating around all disorganized....

[Hotrod]

*Sends Legionaire back all the files* There, you can be a nerd again. And no quitting this time, and make sure you give me all your betas as releases from now on.

[mR_r0b0to]

lol bump?

[Hotrod]

Not really considered a bump, it's only been about 30 seconds...

[mR_r0b0to]

no, korn bumped it from four months ago..

[Kornman00]

Not really considered a bump, it's only been about 30 seconds...
pwnd :smerk: