Community Questions Answered

During this section, I will spend some time going over a handful of questions that have been asked online at various locations across the internets. If you have questions, be sure to look out for my posts on Reddit, Twitter, and/or Halo Waypoint. I can’t answer all of them but will take some of the top ones to the team to get as much info as possible for y’all. Let’s dive on in!

How are things going on many PC customization options such as resolution settings?

We are still working hard on the various different customization options we have discussed in previous blogs. These key features are all very top of mind. Today we can show you a couple screenshot on some progress made on Ultra-widescreen support.

(Ultrawide work in progress screenshot with edge of screen UI.)

A member on the test team, Jared Ives, is the lucky one to have this beautiful Ultra-wide monitor. I have serious pixel envy for Jared's setup right now. Below is a 2nd image that shows this work in progress with the options altered to have your UI centered rather than pushed out to the edges of the widescreen.

(Ultrawide work in progress screenshot with centered UI)

Lists of HCE bugs have circulated for some time amongst the community. There is a lot of curiosity around what will be done with these as it relates to MCC.

Over the past several months we have worked directly with the HCE community across many social platforms to compile a list of top issues that players have with HCE and what they wanted to see fixed the most. A few weeks ago, I sat down with the Publishing Team’s engineers, producers, designers, and discussed each of the issues from this list.

In talking with the team, it is easy to see that at the core the goal is to make CE as close to parity as possible. With CE coming to PC, we won’t be able to address every reported issue, however we believe the community eventually will, once broader mod support and functionality arrives.

We are planning to investigate many of the issues brought up by the community during our development for HCE on PC and work to bring any fixes we make to both PC and Console. The below issues are using internal descriptions, so they are not 1:1 to the names on the list linked above but do capture the core of the issues outlined in it.

Key Community reported Issues to investigate during development for HCE in MCC PC:

Player camo state desyncs on pickup of camo as camo wears off

Teleporter behavior differs from Legacy Halo CE

There are differences between original HCE maps and MCC HCE maps

Classic MP audio is not used in MP

Please consider using the original version’s weapon tags

These issues are going to be investigated to see what the scope of work is required to resolve them to the community’s standards. However, if changes to resolve the issues are deemed too risky, requires an extensive amount of work, or is something we cannot accomplish within the production schedule - they may not make the cut. We won’t know until we are able to adequately investigate them and some may be punted to post-release.

Community reported issues to investigate after MCC PC project work completes:

Sniper and Magnum shots are too easy in MCC

Slow moving projectile weapons impact and effects are not synced

Actions executed after dying can queue up and be performed on respawn

When a powerup or weapon is moved from spawn it can appear in different locations for clients

Multiplayer latency issues

Community reported Issues we will not be investigating or working on:

In-game timer is missing when players are dead and respawning

Option to make weapon cocking and footsteps SFXs play client side only in HCE

These last two issues don’t warrant investigation or further work as these behaviors do not match legacy Halo titles and differs from the design in MCC entirely. We understand that these are options some in the community want, but it doesn’t match the design goals for the product.

One thing we would like to reiterate though is that we are in full support of modding these titles if it is done in compliance with Microsoft’s terms of use with a purchased copy of the games when they are released. Even if we do not address areas the community wants to see changed, we encourage the modding community to update the games the way you see fit to play with your friends. This is something the Halo community has done for a long time and as long as it follows the Xbox Content Usage rules there should be no reason to stop.

What sort of anti-cheat tools will be used with MCC PC?

For MCC PC we will be utilizing an industry-leading anti-cheat solution that will be used to protect matchmade games played on dedicated servers. We are doing this in order to allow modded content to be used by the community for other game modes they would like to customize. Our goals are to protect players while also providing freedom to players who mod as long as it doesn’t negatively impact others. We will have a lot more to talk about on this in the future as development progresses.

What are some interesting bugs that the team has encountered during development?

This is a fun section where we are going to show off some of the funniest or most interesting bugs that have been encountered during development.

Bug #1 - Best Checkpoint Ever

Remember those times where you kept trying over and over to reach a certain checkpoint in a mission? This is a checkpoint you will forever want to avoid.

Bug #2 - Tank Beats Everything

Everyone knows that tanks beat everything. In this case, it went above and beyond by beating the driver.

Bug #3 - Emile Says No New Friends

We all know that everything is better with friends. In this video, Noble 6 made one, but Emile didn't approve.

Bug #4 - Now You See Me

Enemies are always finding new and sneaky ways to defeat you. This time though, we had the enemies playing hide and go die when bullets were seeking them out.

Bug #5 - Kat Rage

It wouldn't be natural if Kat did something odd in Halo: Reach. In this bug, Kat claims her space on the boardwalk with some force.

Bug #6 - You Had One Job

Many of us also know the pain of lining up the best shot with rockets only to have a wall magically appear when you go to fire. This marine in Reach fell victim to those pesky walls popping out of nowhere.

Now that we have gotten through those buggy shenanigans, here’s Grim with an update from Halo: Outpost Discovery!