Apr 30, 2020

Halo: The Master Chief Collection - Postums

Welcome back friends to another monthly installment of the MCC Development Update! This is our second entry while working offsite during quarantine and this month’s blog will be a bit different given these unusual circumstances. While we will dive into some proper development updates, much of this month’s news centers on our recent Halo 2 flight and the team’s continued evolution to adapt and keep progress going while we’re all away from the office. To kick things off, we will check in on people working from home and see how this unique reality is impacting their day to day. Then, we will get a Design Update that goes in depth on several new features and the playlist schedule for the month of May. Lastly, we will be looking at the most recent flight for Halo 2, what folks can expect for playlist updates in the coming month, and an overall project update for MCC.

Let’s dive right into it and get things rolling!

WORKING OFFSITE

Working from home is now the norm for nearly everyone at 343. This way of life is something each of us has handled differently as we are all in our own unique situations. Today, we are going to take a look behind the curtain at a handful of folks that are on the teams helping bring MCC to PC including the Community Team, Marketing, Data Analytics, and Quality Assurance. These are our stories (insert Law & Order sound-bite here).

Tyler “Postums” Davis - Community Dude

(Goats pictured above are Ogre1, Ogre2, and Walshy)
It has been nearly 2 months since I and many others last stepped foot inside of the offices at 343. The safety and wellbeing of our teams and their families is the top priority so everyone across the studio has been adjusting and adapting to working remotely. Our studio members have taken this change in stride and pushed through the challenges that have come with it to continue driving progress against development milestones.

To read the full update check out the article in its entirety over on Halo Waypoint today!

MCC Development Update – April 2020

You can find previous updates here:

Mar 31, 2020

MCC Development Update – March 2020

Halo: The Master Chief Collection - Postums

Welcome back friends, old and new, to another monthly installment of the MCC Development Update series! Usually I can’t believe that a month has already gone so quickly. But this month has been a long year, so to speak, and I’ve spotted a few more grey hairs joining the ranks in my beard. To help reduce my greys, this is my heartfelt reminder to stay inside, continue social distancing, and continue your efforts to battle against the Covenant on this Great Journey!

This month we will start off by taking a brief look back at what has happened since the launch of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary on PC and what you can expect in April for MCC playlist updates. From there, we’ll look at our planned public flights for Halo 2 and Halo 2: Anniversary. After that, we will talk shop with some members of the Publishing Team for a design update covering Theater, Forge, the upcoming challenges system, and more. We will then cruise on down the road to an update from the Senior Producer on MCC as it relates to all areas on the project. Before we leave, I will touch on a few important things in our Looking Ahead section.

THE GREAT JOURNEY

Earlier this month, we took another step on the Great Journey in bringing MCC to PC. Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary is now available via Xbox Game Pass for PC (Beta), the Microsoft Store, and Steam! The full launch blog detailing all its goodness lives HERE. You can also find some sweet pixels that snickerdoodle organized over HERE. This culmination of efforts has been celebrated by many online and while it was a surprise launch, it’s been rewarding to see such reactions from Halo fans old and new. As we have stated before, this is a journey we are taking with our fans as we bring each title to PC.

To bring all of the titles in MCC to PC we have enlisted the help of the community through our Halo Insider Program. If you would like to sign-up for a chance to participate in future flights, please head over and register for the Halo Insider Program. Or, if you are already registered, it never hurts to update your profile (make sure you have a DXDIAG file uploaded if you want to be eligible for PC flighting and make sure your email is current and verified!).

To read the full update check out the article in its entirety over on Halo Waypoint today!

MCC Development Update – March 2020

You can find previous updates here:

Jan 29, 2020

MCC Development Update – January 2020

Halo: The Master Chief Collection - misplacedyank

It is hard to fathom that the first month of 2020 is already ending! And with it, we have another Development Update that includes news about Halo: Reach – the first title released for MCC on PC. 2020 is shaping up to be an action-packed year for Halo fans old and new!

Since the launch of Halo: Reach last December, many of you have been playing, watching, and talking about Noble Team, Matchmaking, Firefight, and everything in between. This month’s blog is going to cover today’s patch for MCC on both PC and Xbox One, upcoming flighting plans, along with a deep dive into requested and in-development game features. We’ll also chat about the plan for February’s in-game events, matchmaking changes, and will wrap-up with an overall project update on MCC. There are some juicy details this month!

Before we get started, in case this is your first time joining us, our goal for these monthly blogs is to share insights into MCC's ongoing development and share details on what’s currently going on with the game. If you want to learn more about MCC’s history, please feel free to check out the Halo: The Master Chief Collection section within Halo Waypoint’s News section which includes a wealth of insights into the journey to bring MCC to PC. But enough about the past, let’s get into today’s game patch for MCC on both PC and Xbox One.

GAME UPDATE – JANUARY 29, 2020

A new game update went live today which includes additional options for Social Matchmaking, additional game content to support events in February, and several bug fixes to areas related to accessibility and stability, as well as some improvements to our behind-the-scenes reporting tools.

We know there’s still a sizable list of improvements the community has been vocal about since launch. Many of these issues (PC & Xbox) were known and on the team’s radar prior to launch and some others didn’t surface until the game was out in the wild. With each small patch that doesn’t address these larger lingering issues (i.e. the audio problems some players have experienced) we know it can lead to frustration and disappointment across the community. Please know that the team has been steadily attacking a slew of bugs while also working on quality of life improvements and working towards a larger patch for MCC that will be next up on the release schedule. This will likely entail another flight for Reach as well. We appreciate all the feedback and Halo Support tickets you’ve filed, and we thank you for your continued support and patience as we work to improve Reach and bring the remaining five titles to MCC on PC.

Here’s the full list of everything included in today’s update.

NEW FEATURES & CONTENT

Additional details for the New Features & Content items can be found below in the design update section for rotational playlists, featured content, and events for the month of February.

Featured playlists in Match Composer
New nameplates for future events
New upcoming Matchmaking content

ACCESIBILITY BUG FIXES

PC Only

Fixed an issue where pressing the spacebar would search for a player while typing a Gamertag in the “Find Player” prompt.

Global

Fixed bugs where pop-up messages were not read properly by Narrator & Xbox Game Transcription.
Fixed bugs button prompts were not read properly by Narrator & Xbox Game Transcription.
Fixed bugs where on-screen text was not read properly by Narrator & Xbox Game Transcription.

GENERAL FIXES

Xbox Only

Fixed an issue where the Main Menu would not appear after passing the title screen when launching for the first time.

Global

Fixed a rare crash related to player stats and leaderboards.
Reduced some excessive diagnostic reporting to improve performance.
Improved player reporting on dedicated servers when identifying potential anti-cheat violations.

PLAYLIST UPDATE

Social 1v1

Removed Magnum secondary from Halo: Reach Head to Head based on community feedback.
- Social 1v1 is intended as a warmup arena for the Halo: Reach Hardcore playlist, so it’s important that the settings match.

Social 4v4

Team Slayer option has been replaced with “Precision Slayer” and “Auto Slayer.”
- Historically, we’ve compromised by combining these into a single selection. We fully understand that different players have different preferences here, so now we offer players choice over their starting weapon/experience.
Precision Slayer includes weapon starts of DMR, BR, or Magnum.
Auto Slayer includes weapon starts of AR, SMG, and Halo 4 loadout starts.
Rotated in featured Halo: CE Anniversary category for Halo: Reach which contains maps and game settings which emulate Halo: CE.

Social 8v8

Reduced hill movement timer from 120s to 90s and reduced score to win from 250 to 200.
- Out of the box, Reach’s base King of the Hill variant does not support a 90 second hill rotation option. The 120 second timer was longer than we liked so we took the opportunity to add the option for this variant. As the hill spends less time in each location, players will spend a bit more time moving between hills, so it was important that we reduced the score to win slightly to match this. We weren’t able to add the 90 second option globally as this would require all King of the Hill variants in the game to be rebuilt, but players seeking a 90 second timer for custom games can use the Big Team King variant as a base.
Replaced Territories with 3-plot Territories on Tempest.
- As a symmetrical map, Tempest is well-suited to 3-Plot Territories. In 4v4, this game type was already paired with this map and, after seeing some intense matches of it played in the recent Big Team Battle Throwback Throwdown tournament, we wanted to make it official for 8v8 as well.
Rotated in experimental AR starts category containing AR start versions of all core Halo: Reach 8v8 map and game variants.
- The range utility of the DMR makes it incredibly effective on some of the more open battlegrounds common in Big Team Battle. This leads to many engagements occurring at extreme range and can result in stagnation where players are discouraged from using certain movement options. Many players have requested that DMR starts be replaced with AR / Magnum starts in 8v8. We have concerns that this would leave players too vulnerable off spawn, leave them ineffective against vehicles, not provide enough starting ammunition, and lead to “snowballing” (where the score gap between two teams grows exponentially) when some players gain control of long range rifles. However, we wanted to give players a chance to try it for themselves. Depending on feedback and data, we’ll consider pulling Big Team AR starts into the core categories more permanently.

To read the rest of the update which includes a flighting update for Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, design updates, and more, check out the full article on Halo Waypoint: MCC Development Update – January 2020.

If you'd like to catch up on previous MCC Development Updates, here are the links:

Jan 24, 2020

Modding Halo: A Community Tradition

Halo: The Master Chief Collection - misplacedyank

Today, we are going to reflect on the past, check out the current landscape of modding, and glimpse at what both the community, as well as the studio, plans for the future. Although there are many modders out there working on creative projects for Halo, we can’t focus on everyone and everything in one blog so instead I’ve picked examples from a few people for this feature. If you have favorite modders or mods, please let me know and perhaps we can spotlight them in a future article.

Welcome to our first modding blog!

HISTORY OF MODS IN HALO

Before we dive into some new hotness, let’s take a minute to reflect on some history. Modding is not something new to video games. Since the dawn of time, players have found new and unique ways to inject their own custom data (or even code) into titles to create new experiences. Fast forward to today, it’s pretty much a mandatory expectation amongst PC gamers to allow modders to tinker and bring these new pieces to the forefront for the broader community to enjoy. Personally, I remember using the Game Genie (wow I feel old) back in my youth on the NES to get different flavors of Jellybeans.

Halo has a long history of being modified, both officially and unofficially. It started, nearly 20 years ago, on the OG Xbox version of Halo: Combat Evolved and has continued to today. The explosion of new content, to bring this level of customized experience to Halo: Reach proves that players continue to love tinkering and building new ways to play in the Halo universe.

In the beginning, these mods were entirely ‘unofficial’ and often were done behind closed doors, requiring a lot of effort from those partaking, and unfortunately, violating Microsoft’s Terms of Service. Note: to this day, modifying consoles and the content on them is still against Terms of Service. This is where the PC world bridges a gap for those interested in building new experiences in Halo games.

Over time, these often-taboo Halo modding efforts were eventually supported and even encouraged. This mentality became more acceptable once the first PC version of Halo: Combat Evolved was released but was emphasized even more so with the launch of Halo “Custom Edition.” Here is a Halopedia article that covers some of the history and associated communities with Halo Custom Edition. To fully enjoy a time capsule of the history of Halo modding, just perusing http://www.halomaps.org/ will give you a sense of the rich modding history Halo has had over the years.

For those who played Halo 2 on Xbox, some may remember mods that were used online in matchmaking. Unfortunately, these mods were abused by many bad actors and many were banned because of these actions. As nefarious as some were, there were lots of community created mods that weren't intended to be used online in matchmaking, but purely for fun. My favorite mod from Halo 2 still is the one where the plasma pistol shot out sticky grenades, but when fully charged, it shot out the train from the map "Terminal." Here is a video showing off a small sampling of some old school mods from Halo 2.

While I have played Halo and many games for most of my life, I’ve not tinkered in mods myself. To learn more about the subject, I decided to interview a few folks from the modding community who have multiple years experience creating customized tools and content for others to enjoy. But before we dive into talking with the folks, let’s first talk about some resources folks might find useful, some do’s and don’ts, and general guidance on modding for Halo.

Read the rest on Halo Waypoint now!