(Check description) Halo 2 Restored Lighting Update: Delta Halo's Improved Lighting and Shadows
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ส.ค. 2024
- IMPORTANT:
I have found that this mod uses a LOT of work by someone called 'SEV' - please go and check out their channel at: / @i_sev_i
These shaders also are not related to the original E3 stencil shadows, they are a different shader added in and not related to the original Bungie stencil engine.
In this video, we revisit the Halo 2 Restored Lighting Mod by 'Mr.PirateFox' (Although it makes extensive usage of shaders by SEV, as above), now updated to include the levels The Arbiter, The Oracle, and Delta Halo. We focus on Delta Halo to examine the impressive new lighting and shadowing effects on an actual Halo ring level. Join us as we compare the enhanced visuals to the original, showcasing how this mod continues to breathe new life into Halo 2.
Steam Workshop link (Mod made by 'Mr.PirateFox' - using shaders by / @i_sev_i):
🔗 steamcommunity...
E3 2002 Announcement trailer for Halo 2:
• Halo 2 E3 2002 Reveal ...
E3 2003 Trailer:
• 🚨ORIGINAL FILE🚨 Halo 2...
#Halo2 #RestoredLighting #DeltaHalo #HaloMCC #Modding #GamingGraphics #HaloMods #Nostalgia - เกม
IMPORTANT:
I have found that this mod uses a LOT of work by someone called 'SEV' - please go and check out their channel at: www.youtube.com/@I_SEV_I
These shaders also are not related to the original E3 stencil shadows, they are a different shader added in and not related to the original Bungie stencil engine.
thanks for the update about SEV. Although he was credited in the mod since the beggining, apparently a lot of people missed the mention or were confused as to who/what SEV was. The current mod description also has a link ot both his channel and his github page
Apart from the obvious visual anomalies, this looks really, really good. Looks more like an early 360 launch title as it should have been to begin with.
But why delay halo 2 when money
Thatd of been such a wait... But imagine the game.
Buuut I'm still glad for the entire era of Bungies Halos regardless.
@@charlesmaclellan8124You don't have to worry about expressing disappointment with the Bungie games, no one would fault you for it. Bungie themselves were critical with what they weren't able to do in their games, why should the fans act like it's all perfect regardless?
The game was originaly supposed to release in fall 2003 but they found out in june after e3 that the gamengine they had been working on for 1 and half year woudnt work on the original xbox. In a miraculous move they managed to convince the microsoft executives to push the release to 2004, they had little amount of time to recreate the game from scratch and the lighting system was downgraded heavily.
@raulion97 while that's true, i watched the DVD when it came out....how can they work on an engine for a year and half and not realise it wasn't possible to squeeze it all in!!!
That was a COLASSAL oversight!
Even though the shadows themselves look extremely flat, the biggest benefit is how it brings out the normal maps and makes them pop. So much more detail and color under the dynamic lights that instantly improves the look of the game
Modders save the day once again, this is such an important game to me but inevitably it looked a lot less cohesive than CE due to its rush. So nice to see such a big step towards reintroducing a semblance of what it was "meant to be" so to speak
Now if only they stop the culling..... modern PCs are MUCH more powerful now that the culling seems needless
Tbh im gonna work a lot more on Delta Halo cuz i didn't like the way it looks that much. Im gonna see if i can fill the rest of the map with dynamic lights that dont cast any shadows so i can partially solve the light pop in problem
Good luck with that. I'd personally prefer no shadows at all then distracting pop-in. But it's a shame Halo 2 was rushed and they had to scrap parts of their engine mid dev cycle. Game looks so flat
Honestly you're already doing an amazing job. The game wasn't built for these lights so bugs are bound to happen, the fact that it runs at all and does end up looking so much better is a miracle. Glad you're still working on it though, if you need any help hmu.
Thank you for your work
@@gonnsolo8506 Well the game _was_ built for them, the hardware of the original Xbox wasn't, and the engine had trouble handling the shadows mostly due to the hardware limitations
@@XCalibur_EX it was planned for them, the art specifically, but they couldn't build it like that.
It looks very promising, but if I'm being honest, it needs more indirect lighting for areas that aren't directly lit by the sun, indirectly lit areas still look very flat. But I know this is still very work in progress of course. This is a game that would GREATLY benefit from a path tracing mod.
unrelated, but nice marie pfp
@@veculon
"path tracing mod."
No, use the Source 1 method that Half Life 2 uses, precalculated GI.
The goal is to restore the cut lighting that bungie was going for
Think Doom 3
Just adding the lighting the game was designed for makes Halo 2 look nearly as good as Halo 3. It's ablsolutely incredible the difference it made.
I believe Halo 2 on the original Xbox could have handled real-time shadow maps like in this mod, with some compromises. Sudeki and Far Cry: Instincts on Xbox both use shadow mapping on a similar scale to this mod (i.e. environments and objects/characters cast shadows, with projection onto other objects and self-shadowing), but with a reduced resolution on the shadows maps and a limited distance at which shadow maps are visible. They used shadow mapping because stencil shadows can only cast shadows from polygons (and performance gets worse with more polygons, not to mention when tessellation is involved), not from alpha/transparent textures needed for things like vegetation (grass, plants, tree leaves), hair and chain-link fences (etc.). Of course, it worked for these games but it’s very possible Bungie didn’t think doing it in Halo 2 was worth the extra slow-down, especially considering the large-scale vehicle and infantry battles found within.
No it couldn't, Halo2 was already pushing the original Xbox to its limits as it was, that's why they had to cut so many features just so it could run stable at all. Trying to add any kind of dynamic lighting would have had it running as a slideshow at best, constant crashing at worst. Even if they could somehow have gotten it to work it would have almost certainly required major sacrifices elsewhere that they weren't willing to make, they already had to make major cuts to encounters throughout the game as it was and didn't want to have to cut down even further.
@@Joe-xq3zu Not to mention that Far Cry Instincts already ran poorly in the OG Xbox, with noticeable performance drops at many points during the game, not to mention the multitude of visual bugs present throughout, even when the game was ported to the Xbox 360 later down the line.
@@Joe-xq3zu There already exists real-time shadow mapping in Halo 2, it’s just relegated to cutscenes and the occasional light spot in some levels, so it’s certainly possible to extend its usage. If Trespasser (1998) could have shadow maps casting from *every* object (like plants/bushes/trees, rocks, enemies, physics objects etc.) in a scene at run-time (no baking), then I’m sure Halo 2 could have managed it too, especially considering static geometry doesn’t have to be updated for each frame (outside of dynamic lights like muzzle flashes or explosions). I don’t doubt that time constraints played a role in Bungie excluding or cutting the feature, but it would certainly have been technically possible (with slow-down, of course).
@@Th3_L30n It’s still perfectly playable. Every late-gen Xbox game had to make some sort of visual and/or performance sacrifice in order to accommodate more advanced lighting or multi-texturing effects.
don't forget Doom 3!
It looks much more like Halo 3 now. Just goes to show how much lighting/shadows can completely change the presentation of a game so dramatically.
20:54 the lights from the warthog creating dynamic shadows onto and under the tank is such a subtle, yet beautiful detail.
This is what Halo 2 looks like in my memories.
I mean wow what a difference. I cant wait for this mod to develop further in the coming years. When its consistent and refined its goong to absolutely transform this game to where it was always meant to be
I love the work the lighting does on the weapons, especially the magnum the lighting is usually a lot more flat so it just feels like a generic pistol. The lighting actually makes it look like the magnum and brings out all those details
I never noticed the grooves in the BR :o
Honestly, i'd love to make a mod for h2 that RUNS on the ORIGINAL xbox and has improved lighting. Obv would take up extra space, but i'd LOVE that project -- just to show what is possible in h2, without any extra tech, but just extra time.
I always felt like Halo 2 looked worse than CE. This is what was missing. However, they were on an insane timeline from a production perspective.
Great stuff, now he just needs to normalize the shadow pop in and out, and get this working in cutscenes!
17:00 - They EASILY could have imported the baked lighting hybrid system from hce / other games and baked most of those shadows/lights and added minor shadow calculation.... But they ran out of time and had to cut it.
Would be cool if we could get people from 343 onboard with this, imagine what they could accomplish with the access they have to the game engine.
That's a nice sentiment, but 343i and Microsoft are like the King Midas of feces: everything they touch turns out shit.
13:53 - I feel they could have done a lot of tricks for lighting and just ran out of time. They had space they could have used on the disc to "bake" lightmaps and various other techniques, as well as adding "faked" shadows to everything, but they just ran out of time once they got the game populated and ran into performance issues.
It's crazy to see how the environments were obviously designed for this in the first place. The interiors look beautiful with the shadows draping over them
Double shadows but being able to see more npcs with shadows and the corpses also casting them is awesome.
Wasn't it about that stencil shadow thing that would have been implemented but couldn't?
They attempted to use stencil shadows (which are very detailed dynamic shadows) but the Xbox just wasnt powerful enough to run them with a playable framerate, so they got rid of dynamic shadows entirely
@@MrJohansen The one shown in video is dynamic shadows, just not the stencil technique.
God, i can see de detail of the batlee rifle, in the original loks like a blak thing whit a blue number ass decoration😮
I'd like to see visuals on the High Charity and the later levels to compare...
The light effects from the Elite armor interacting with the shadows is someting that is truly special.
How would this mod work with other mods, such as Halo 2 Uncut? I assume these edits are made on the levels themselves, thus modders would have to use these map files, correct? Because I hope this mod gets to be an "standard" across other mods.
Correct. Only one mod can be played at a time as they are "baked into" their respective map files, essentially.
@@limoneadeGlass yeah the edits are made to the maps themselves as these light placements literally dont exist in the vanilla game (the tags do, but are mostly unused). Every modder that wanted to use this kind of lighting would need to go through the process of lighting the maps for their mods from scratch. This lighting can work on H2 Uncut, sure, but VKMT or Vengaful Vadam would need to add all of these lights by themselves
Wow, such a big difference such a (seemingly) simple change made. Definitely looks closer to what I think Bungie intended back then.
This is so god damn cool!!!
This almost looks like halo 3 ❤
I really wish Bungie was given another six months or a year to finish and polish Halo 2. The game is fantastic but it really could have been so much greater than it is.
Can you please do a side by side comparison i think it would really bring understanding to how it works
He did, didn't he?
@@caramelldansen2204 Smaller window doesn't show small details and different as its subtle change
@@myblaonga I suppose so...
This has to be the grittiest looking lvl by far hehe
IMHO, my biggest complaint is the lighting on surfaces at times feels too bright -- eg: the walls look pure bright yellow vs having more specular limits, and adding in stone details.
Could be because of missing lightmap/detail textures -- or less info in them vs later titles.
But if you could fix this with basic shader changes to limit the max brightness, this would look SO MUCH better.
the skip at 24:33 💀 LMAO
I was wondering if anyone else caught that. I reflexively heard one of Dunkey's fast-forward "WAMP's" from his Halo video series lmao
With each update the games gets closer and closer to Halo 3.
Can i actually SEE now? Good work
Criminal intent!
I think the mod is great so far with where it's going but I have some issues.
- No matter where you are, indoors or outdoors, you will always have a shadow, sometimes 2 which outside doesn't make sense, or next to a window peering into space.
- If there are too many light sources, say you're looking outside but in your field of vision are maybe 2 or 3 lamps that also cast shadows, it hinders the performance significantly, dropping my frames way down to the 30s.
- There are some parts on a few levels, most notably thr first, that are both way too bright and too saturated from either lighting or bloom.
Much better.
This is what 343 should've done along with like some less disappearing geometry dk how it woulve affected perfomance tho
dude this is awesome
I always thought halo 2 looked like ass when I played it on the mcc and now I see that the game was missing the proper implementation of a feature it relied on heavily to bring a lot of texture and depth to the game because I always thought it looked flat but ti looks beautiful here.
Cool now I cant see the enemies. Dis why I played old graphics on MCC.
The xenoanthropology of those ruins are a lot more interesting than the lighting but they're not so alien. Sadly, lots of it had to be damaged or destroyed in the fighting.
Like a completely different game.
The inside areas look perfect but I think the outside is a little too bright. awesome anyways
Wooow
Looks better than infinite
Amazing keep it up ❤❤❤
I love it. But my laptop integrated graphics doesnt
Imagine if MS wasn’t short sighted and waiting one more year to let Halo 2 be on the 360.
I know right
this on a old crt tv
I think it's too saturated and there is too much bloom.
How do I activate this in my mods?
ehhh, its still not great, but it IS better looking.
wow halo 2 doesnt look visually worse than halo ce for a change
lul u can now notice how the geometry behind the player disappears cus the shadows disappear hehe
I really wish the mods could be like Left 4 dead where its a list of what you want in the campaign, guns for example would be cool or just let me play with what modders made in others playspaces instead of hey modder this modder made that can you input this into yours, getting the BR demo version in one sucked its cool but i prefer the og so if i could play with the toys in this campaign but take out things while playing if you know what i mean o god
Is it just me or do I not notice anything different?
oblivion halo
Bro turn your brights off 😂
Halo 2 misses precalculation of GI that i think Halo 3 has. This is why dark areas look bad.
Somehow Halo 2 looks worse to me than CE. I guess it's the crunchy bumpmapped textures and overexposed lighting at times.
still looks like garbage
Bro this shit still looks so much better then retail
geometry culling could maybe be fixed by widening the frustum, forcing it to keep geometry in the shadow camera