This New Helmet ISN'T impossible to ship with DLC.

The reason that it would be 9GB is that they would have to add the model of the helemt to every single map and cutscene in the entire game. Though I suspect they are working on a way around this due to the recent pics of new armor.

 

I haven't read the official post saying it would be like a 9gb download but I'll take your word for it.

I would of assumed all in game/cut scenes/everywhere on disk your spartan was just a invisible object in campaign/MM/Cutscenes/everywhere and just loaded .png file of your aesthetic skin(your armor) from a global folder and the way to add new DLC armor would be just downloading new .png file/s into global skin folder and bit of coding for game to recognize it.
(spoiler example of a skin just incase I didn't explain well enough)

Spoiler

But if it's not like that which it doesn't sound like it is because of the 9gbs and to change it to that way would pretty much change all there coding around would be way to much work.
But they have put a new armor into someone copy of Halo:Reach so it definitely isn't impossible but I have no idea whats going on just hoping for new armor one day.

 

So are we getting this armor soon or what?

 

It depends how the engine works, the engine could just call the armor pieces from a library of models without it having to be in the cutscenes or maps. It honestly depends on the current setup. Looking back at Halo3 and how bad that was setup for expansion, I doubt they haven't learned from their mistakes, but who knows..

 

This is a post that squid made in the other thread regarding new armour. It shows a message from Evil Otto saying that, as he was told by those who know about programming of these things, the process hasn't changed from H3. Or at least that's what I take away from what he said, it certainly doesn't sound like he is referring to the H3 development process, but rather Reach's. Whilst there is room in what he said about it possibly having been changed after he was told that, if they didn't learn at the start of development (which, I agree, you'd assume they would) then maybe it's not possible or much harder? Idk. As far as we can tell right now nothing has changed.

Did you even read his post? He's not saying that the helmet takes 9GB to add, but that no armour perms can be added, or current ones modified because every aspect of them is, as Otto puts it, 'baked' in to each map file etc. I'm no more of a programming expert than you, but it certainly sounds as if there would be no technical difference between adding a new helmet perm or simply adding a couple of extra bits to a current one. For all we know, each slightly different version of a base helmet could could count as a whole new model, though I'm guessing someone who messed with such things in H3 could elaborate on that point since it sounds like little has changed in how models are done (Katana being the only example I can think).

 

creating a new helmet model is way more complicated than just "pasting it in"

this isnt MS Paint.

 

Oh but that it were, I'd totally scrawl random 'omg' and 'wat's all over everything in obnoxious shades of red.

 

Yes, the only way that they could realistically add DLC to the game is if it weren't DownLoadable Content, but rather Disk Locked Content. Downloadable armor is impossible because they would have to recode it for every single cutscene, moment in campaign, every map (four times; for MM, customs, forge, and theater,) and for it to show up in the armory and player models. Thats a stupendous amount of work, and where Otto said about 9GB of memory. That is why we got nothing in Halo: 3.

That same system is in Reach. However, remember the first few months of Halo: 3 when nobody knew about Recon? It was on the disk, but LOCKED so that you couldn't access it without downloading a key that lets it become used. AKA, DISK LOCKED CONTENT.

Say bungie had included a hidden code, located outside of the rest of the armor files, that allowed for helmet A to be unlocked when the player has an active set of B code. If bungie made it so that the B code is both hidden and constantly turned off, it would be unusable. Say that later they had a download, a tiny one line of code that turned line B to be active. It would be a friggen millisecond of a download and would take up no space, but would have the exact same effect as something that you did download. It would activate the otherwise locked armor.

Honestly, I think that Disk Locked Content rather than traditional DLC is the only way that we could have new armor.

Also, every time someone tries to tell me that you CAN make a download for armor, I'm gonna lol at them. You know what happens if someone HASN'T download that armor? They get see a HUGE glowing error marker that the devs use. If you have ever played a PC game and accidentally deleted one of the texture files, or something similar, you know what I'm talking about. The massive question mark of lolz!

 

Now THAT is something I wanna see in MM .

 

I know, right? It would be sooo funny except for the fact that you couldn't hit a soul to save your life!

 

Why couldn't they make the Armor download compulsory like those updates you can't play online till you update the game and then only people who have bought the DLC able to use the armor?

Assuming they can fix the 9GB problem.

 

Because that would be exactly the same as Disk Locked Content. Everyone has it, but only people who download the lock code can use it. So theoretically they can do that, if they solve the problem. Which is simply impossible, unfortunately.

All this theoretical stuff doesn't matter anyway. If there is downloadable armor, its not the armor that you download. Its the right to use it. Anything not on the disk already can't be a part of the game.