Thought I would post some info and links on any news I hear for what's supposed to be going on with the MCC updates that are coming this year. They said to start looking for stuff in March (Hence why I created this) so I assume that we will see our first update in June Is there anything you guys where hoping for? Is everyone as interested in this as I am? 01/31/2018 MCC DEVELOPMENT UPDATE 02/21/2018 MCC - WHAT IS YOUR TOP NEW FEATURE WISHLIST ITEM? NEW 03/07/2018 MCC DEVELOPMENT UPDATE #2 Scroll down for highlights of the latest news Here is a few paragraphs from the main article on what to expect from the MCC updates. UPDATED MATCHMAKING APIS MCC launched back in November of 2014 and there have been a ton of improvements and changes to how Xbox Live matchmaking functions since then. Greg and Andrew systematically updated MCC with the latest and greatest matchmaking APIs that brings forth many welcome improvements. What exactly does this mean? “Overall this results in big improvements to reliability,” explains Greg Hermann. “The older system used outdated methods which sometimes resulted in instances of parties disappearing randomly and lost notifications between clients and the matchmaking services.” “Xbox Matchmaking services would find you a match but the notification might get lost on the way to the system and then the game title itself would never see it.” Greg continues, “Under the old model the system software was the authority on who was connected to who and how… and now, the game title itself takes responsibility for that and gets to decide what the party composition is. This gives the title (and us) a lot more control over party management.” The big takeaway here is that the overall matchmaking experience, especially with parties, will work much more reliably following this modernization of MCC’s online systems. UPDATED PLATFORM XDKS In order to take advantage of the latest and greatest matchmaking systems the underlying platform XDK/APIs also needed updating. That means that all eight of the game engines running in MCC needed to go through this update process. Yes, that’s right, eight separate engines: H1 Classic, H1 Anniversary, H2 Classic, H2 Anniversary, H3, H3: ODST, H4, and H2A MP. Andrew Schnickel explains what this means: “One of the major implications of this work is that the XDK upgrades now allow us to support Xbox One X features such as increased resolution and visual enhancements. We can also use platform advancements such as the ‘social manager’, which simplifies a lot of our code around friends and presence management. And foundationally, this update opens the possibility for other things we’d like to explore like custom game session browsing, Xbox Arena or Mixer support.” According to Greg, updating all eight game engines includes fully retiling textures, recompiling shaders, etc. which is why MCC will eventually require a sizable re-download when it launches. It’ll definitely be worth it. "APPMODEL / REBOOT" In the original MCC, you’d have the unified UI running and then depending on which game you launched, one of the eight separate engines would run and then upon completion, the software would fully reboot. This is one of the underlying challenges MCC had when it came to “reconstructing the network session” after each discrete reboot. So what do these new changes mean? Here’s Greg again with an explanation: “Now instead of doing a reboot of the entire process, we just unload the .DLL and cleanly shut down each game engine. This means there’s less chance of your network session breaking down. You’ll also notice a much faster game-to-game transition time, greater overall UI consistency, and it also makes it easier for us to manage MP experiences and get players back into matchmaking quicker after a game session ends.” PEER CONNECTIONS One of the last items Greg and Andrew walked me through is a pretty significant overhaul of the underlying network code in MCC. The Xbox Platform provides a baseline mechanism for “NAT Traversal” and network encryption but in practice the internet ecosystem doesn’t always support it as well as we’d like. If you’ve ever had difficulty connecting behind a company or business firewall you might’ve experienced some of these challenges. We’ve updated to a new code base that does a lot of what the Xbox infrastructure does but also allows us to add in relays to work around NAT settings issues. What does this mean for the player? Here’s Greg with the technical takeaway: “We can route packets through separate UDP packet relay servers regardless of your NAT settings. This should result in a lot less ‘I can’t join this person’ problems.” "Additionally, with the original MCC, peer hosting was used for matchmade games as a fallback if dedicated servers weren’t available for whatever reason. We’re moving to a model where dedicated servers will now be guaranteed for all matchmade games." LATEST NEWS: This has been heavily edited to save space. Milestone 4 continues a series of optimizations across the MCC experience. One of the small but interesting things we've enabled is an update to the overall game package structure, allowing for incremental download of specific game content (internally we’ve referred to this as “Intelligent Delivery”). This means that rather than having to download the entire MCC game package under various scenarios, players can download an initial install, and then select other games, languages, and content areas they want to download from there. With regards to language specifically, this will allow players to select languages in MCC independent of their console language, location settings, or the SKU they originally purchased. FLIGHTING Flighting MCC with our community is very much still the plan but the specifics regarding when the first external folks will get access and what they’ll be testing is still a bit in flux. All of this boils down to what will likely result in some shifts to the initial schedule for our flighting kickoff. Even though we’ve yet to officially share a date, suffice it to say things will probably push slightly. The moral here is that the team is going to take the time needed to do this right. The project overall is quality driven, not schedule driven. MATCHMAKING We have heard feedback from the community about matchmaking times, voting, and the selection of games in playlists. In the future, we will limit playlists to a single game and remove the voting stage. With a clearer expectation of what is being played, this should also reduce the number of players quitting out just before a match starts. Of course, we’re thinking about all of this carefully, and while we expect a renewed and larger player population, we’ll want to be sure players aren’t encountering longer wait times. We will be working with the community and reviewing data to find the best combinations of maps and modes in playlists. Further down the road, we are also looking into ways to more easily find and join public custom games. We look forward to hearing your feedback and offering the best matchmaking experience for all Halo: MCC players." SKE7CH - One cool thing I immediately noticed in this playtest is the early work on “continuous matchmaking” that’s been implemented. This means that once a match ends, I’m taken to the Post Game Carnage Report (PGCR) and then I’m automatically put into my next game session rather than being dropped back to the matchmaking lobby. It’s a subtle change but personally I found it very welcome in a world where all I wanted to do was keep playing and having fun. Naturally, the team is continuing to tinker, test, and assess all the subtle tweaks and changes a continuous matchmaking model will require in MCC. WILL YOU ADD A CUSTOM GAME BROWSER TO MCC? This is one of the community’s most requested new features, which makes us extra happy to confirm - Yes, a Custom Game Browser is on the docket for MCC. As far as how this will function, that’s still being worked out but it likely will be more robust than the Custom Game browser that was added to Halo 5 last year. According to Greg Hermann, Technical Director: “A model that is very interesting to me is how Halo CE: PC and Halo 2 Vista work. It requires us to re-think the social experience - It’s more of a ‘drift in, drift out’ model, people just kind of come and go and it’s a constantly rotating game. When everyone leaves, the game goes away. The host sets certain parameters, configures map/game rotation, etc… We’re still discussing and debating whether or not we have a traditional lobby or follow something that’s more akin to how these PC titles have worked. There are interesting pros and cons and unique technical dependencies with each approach.” ARE THERE PLANS TO INTRODUCE JOIN-IN-PROGRESS FOR CUSTOM GAMES? Greg Hermann, Technical Director: Yes! ARE YOU PLANNING TO ADD LAN SUPPORT? Greg Hermann: “Yes, we’re looking to add offline LAN support for MCC.” CAN THE EMBLEM SYSTEM GET FIXED? Greg Hermann, Technical Director: “We have existing bugs on the emblems that are on the list but it’s too early to commit to exactly what is and isn’t going to be possible. We do want to improve some of MCC’s current emblem issues though.” IS THE TEAM PLANNING ANY UPDATES OR CHANGES TO MCC’S UI AND MENUS? Max Szlagor: “We have several goals in updating the MCC UI going forward. Here are a few things we are currently thinking about – We are looking at ways to streamline navigation and reduce the number of steps to get into any game experience. We are also looking into quality of life improvements and new options based on feedback provided from the community. In addition, we are looking at ways to improve the social experience so players can more easily find the experience they want and people to play with. Finally, we are looking for ways to offer more ways to play Halo: MCC and to better recognize player accomplishments. Jeremy Cook, Art Director: “One of our biggest VISUAL goals is to unify the large amount of content and styles coming from several titles, and development cycles. We’re working to give MCC a more cohesive, modern look while maintaining that Halo spirit.” SINCE HALO: CE IS BASED OFF THE PC CODE IS THERE ANY CHANCE OF HALO CUSTOM EDITION BEING ADDED TO MCC? Greg Hermann: “We’re excited to have added Sean Cooper to our team from the Halo Custom Edition Community. He’s already been incorporating numerous changes from Custom Edition into the Halo: CE build in MCC.” WILL THERE BE FUTURE UPDATES TO MCC AFTER THIS MASSIVE ONE? Yes, that is the current plan. In fact, not everything we’ve been discussing thus far will all be landing at the same time. While we are building towards a substantial initial game update, our production plans do entail ongoing updates with additional features continuing to roll out over time. If you find any official news or updates pertaining to the MCC please let me know and I will update this page.
"Is there anything you guys where hoping for?" An accurate, real time population counter for each multiplayer playlist.
Do you think my latest Halo MCC wishlist post is asking to much -------------------------------------------------- Add more Campaign gameplay modifiers to each game. Such as: I love Halo 5's weapons modifiers so think that and then enable something in the campaign like: -Welcome to the Party - Super Fiesta weapons for all / just Chief / just UNSC / or just Covenant -Get tactical Marines - Only light / tactical weapons -We need Big Guns - Only power weapons -Let it burn - Only flame weapons (Flame grenades / Flame thrower / Flaming grenade launcher? Flaming Rocket Launcher? maybe some other sort of flaming tech) -Neeeaar Faaaar - Swords, Hammers, shotguns, Rockets and Snipers only. -Super Soldiers - Your UNSC support team have infinite health. -They're Everywhere - Spawn Flood infection form throughout the entire campaign (story be damned) allowing them take over whatever they can. -Lights out - Disable virtually all lighting in game (excluding armor/ weapons/ vehicles and associated FX) requiring you to use a flashlight or draining enhanced vision something akin to the Outlast games -A big Grunty thirst - All Enemy's are now grunts (worrying about cutscenes relevance is for posers) I dunno, just get creative and weird. I love playing the game in it's classic form best of all, but I also like the idea that it can be turned into an almost entirely different game. ----------------------------------------------- To lean on the most realistic side, a Super Fiesta Mode for campaign in Halo 5 has been a big wish list item for me ever since seeing some of the more OP weapons. With Halo 5's weapons pool I think it would make the campaign a blast to play.
update: 4/17/2018 - MCC Development #3 Highlights: (heavily edited) Flighting is about to begin (within the next few weeks), but with over 13,000 registrants only a select few will be involved in the first wave. As testing progresses others will be added. If you didn't already know, flighting builds are **CONFIDENTIAL**. So, keep it on the DL, hush hush and all that. If you're 18 or older, and haven't already, you can register here. If you want to increase you odds on being selected for the earlier flights, play Halo MCC. DO I HAVE TO HAVE TO OWN / HAVE MCC INSTALLED IN ORDER TO PARTICIPATE IN A PUBLIC FLIGHT? No, you don’t have to own MCC to participate. However, players who have prior experience with MCC do have a higher likelihood of getting selected to participate in a flight(s). But the content itself is a separate, standalone download that doesn’t require the retail game. WHAT EXACTLY IS BEING INCLUDED IN THE FIRST FLIGHT? For the first public flight, our team is looking at stress testing the new matchmaking updates that have been integrated over the past few months. The first flight build will be limited to Halo 2: Anniversary multiplayer matchmaking and will include only Team Slayer on a handful of favorite maps. The game time will be set to 5 minutes to facilitate more matches to stress the matchmaking itself. MILESTONE 5 Currently the team is in the process of wrapping up work items for “Milestone 5” – a collection of priorities and deliverables that both 343 and our external partner have been working towards since our last blog update. “P1 & P2 continued bug fixing” is a broad way of saying “fixing all the worst bugs that negatively impact our ability to deliver the flighting build or complete a milestone.” Some of these bugs are carryovers from the retail version of MCC while others are new and were introduced during the process of this update work. Texture streaming is something the engineering folks have been working on and I’m told some of the fruits of their labor are already noticeable in-game via considerably quicker load times. Greg says that MP map load times across the board are significantly quicker (approx. 35-40% of what they were previously). Intelligent Delivery is the feature that will enable players to eventually have the option of only installing one or more specific titles within MCC or even changing which language they want to install. (WIP) UI & UX Updates which include: Updated Title Screen Background Video, Main Menu from horizontal to vertical layout on top tier menus, HDR Settings (Gamma, Brightness)/SDR (Gamma), LAN Support Options (Changes network from Xbox LIVE to LAN and vice versa) Matchmaking playlist management has been moved from Xbox platform to 343's CMS services. This will pay big dividends down the road and should result in more efficient, consistent means of updating playlists and things like the Message of the Day. FIRST OFFICIAL UPDATE SCOPE Hopes for the first public update are some time in summer but there currently is no firm ETA. Features may include: Intelligent Install Xbox One X Visual Enhancements HDR/SDR Calibration Settings Networking and Matchmaking Improvements (Continuous Matchmaking, Network/Multiplayer API updates) P1 & P2 Bug Fixes LAN Support UI & UX Updates (Main Menu, Title Screen Video, Button States/Highlight States) Other features and improvements including the Custom Game Browser will not been seen until later builds. Other noteworthy tidbits Classic Controls - Sean managed to squeeze in a few fixes addressing some MCC-era Halo 2 control scheme inconsistencies. Custom Edition – Seans personal project to bring Halo Custom Edition maps into MCC, has already seen success in loading a Halo CE map into the MCC. Though not officially supported it could potentially **fingers crossed** find it's way into a far off future build. Dedicated Optimizations - Andrew and team have been improving how MCC’s dedicated servers operate. Streamlining the multiple servers necessary in the past into a single dedicated server deployment that can support all of the games within MCC, allowing them to be manged more efficiently. Spawning – Sean has been working on adjustments to restore the Halo 2 spawning code back to how it worked in the original game. Originally, in MCC, Halo 2 spawning was modified to heavily weight players to respawn by teammates / at team spawns. Enhanced Visuals – MCC is receiving visual enhancements, with a goal of making everything 4K, but due to the extremely high fidelity assets in H2A there’s still a likelihood that it may at times be required to use variable resolution approach to maintain smooth frame rates. Work is still being done to overcome this hurdle. For the longer unedited version without omissions please click the link at the top of this post. Last but not least, here's a couple WIP screenshots for the new UI.
Finally, a HALO RING on the main screen for a collection of HALO games! Looks like they are doing some great work!
I've been working with MCC's Forge editors, specifically Halo 3, so I thought would post some MCC Forge requests over in ske7ch's MCC wishlist thread. Some things I would like to see done with the Forge editors in the MCC. Fix Halo 3 Forge object spawning. Many items either randomly don't spawn or they just never spawn. increase all Forge editor object limits (especially Halo 3, it is severely limited) Allow all of Halo 3's Forge pieces (Foundry) to be used on any and all maps whether they seem usable or not. update Halo 3's Forge editor controls/object movement to Halo Reach quality or better. add, at the very least, some basic lighting objects in Halo 2A and Halo 4. They don't even need to be editable. if you add Halo Reach to the collection please link it to the existing fileshare. if you add Halo Reach please increase object limits and add more forge assets. if you include Halo Reach please allow us the full breadth of the editor on all maps. I would also like to request that we be able to access each individual games original custom map databases. I realize that after, in some cases, over a decade many of the users no longer have valid accounts, but that doesn't mean we should wipe the world of their work. Certainly there is a work around for this. One possibility is to create aliased accounts. Though the original fileshare may have the same username as the newer recycled account holder the fileshare does not need to be directly associated with them. Users names are essentially aliases anyway. All we need to do to differentiate the account name/fileshare from current username holders is to append a suffix or symbol to identify the maps as archived. Anyway as someone who still holds the his original account, it is quite frustrating to have to rebuild all previous Forged maps in what is essentially the same game. And no, it not the same as rebuilding it the latest Halo title. I hope that wasn't too confusing to understand. **sigh**
Update: 5/8/2018 MCC INSIDER FLIGHT ONE RECAP The results for the first batch of flighting held last week is out now. The extremely short version is, it was a big success. Match load times have greatly improved and so has the process of playing back to back matches. 2,150 Players attempted over 14,000 matches. The team will be looking to double that player base for the 2nd flighting run. If you were one of the 2,150 players that were invited to the 1st flighting run you will automatically be added to the next run. For a much larger and far more informative run down on what happened, click the link above.
Update 6/05/2018 MCC DEVELOPMENT UPDATE #4 If you weren't already in the know, the 2nd flight has been going on this week. I'm not sure how many people read through my short forms and this update repeated alot of previous info so I'll just mention that there's a few new UI settings screenshots, a storied tech talk on tracking down bugs in Halo 2, and *spoiler* it all comes to a finale with a couple boring game breaking clips.
Update 6/21/2018 MCC INSIDER FLIGHT 2 RECAP The main thing people probably came for was at the bottom of the post: If you were in flight #2 the build is actually still alive and functioning so if you’d like to play a bit of classic Halo 2, it’s there for you, complete with a fresh FEEDBACK THREAD. The current target plan for the next flight is to essentially include the entirety of MCC and it will be opened to everyone in the MCC Insider Program. There's not much else that's exciting unless you like to see stats move around slightly or want to read about Sketch being surprised that players will be players: "despite having nearly 2x the player audience than flight #1 and offering more variety over the course of the flight (which participants specifically asked for), participation was lower than expected and didn’t really mirror the level of engagement we saw during flight #1." while trying to plea to their logical side: "We need the support and participation of the community – please share your input and vote with your play time – if you choose not to play, then you’ve effectively given up your right to complain later and you’ve denied someone else who does care the opportunity to make a real impact." but is ultimately still surprised players will be players: "Perhaps it was naïve to think that after such a great, positive first flight, that we’d double the population and have an even greater, more positive experience in flight #2. Truth is, some people seemed to make it their mission to harass and grief teammates throughout the flight." In the end he settles on giving everyone a warning: "a few of those people were already removed from the program and going forward we won’t hesitate to permanently remove others who also make it their mission to just ruin the experience for everyone else. We're also looking into dusting off the banhammer tools and having it at the ready for future flights." So really it's just BAU in the old multiplayer front.
The latest update is out and since it could possible take upwards of a few days to write a highlight breakdown I thought I would just post the link and write it later. Looks like it may be an interesting read this time around. Update: 6/4/2018 MCC DEVELOPMENT UPDATE #5
Maybe I haven't been looking in the right places as I haven't seen an official update on the MCC status but just as a heads up the MCC flighting is now available to everyone who is in the flighting program. Just head on to your Xbox, pop open your Insider app and "opt in" to MCC Insider to start downloading. At almost 80GB it's a hefty download but after a few gigs you will be given the opportunity to launch the game and once launched you can pick and choose which items you want to download. To do this just select and attempt to run one of the incomplete games, this will prompt a notice that it has not been installed and give you the option of which campaigns and multiplayer packages you wish to download. FYI, To my dismay it seems we can't remove sections of the game as easily after they have been installed. In my limited time I have hopped all over the MCC to try to get a sample of what's been done. So far it seems to be quite stable and the new load times are a dream come true. I was quite surprised to see Halo 4 have such quick load times considering it is now pushing 4K. Speaking of 4K, Halo 4 looked incredible. Between the 4K and the HDR I had forgotten what I hated about that game, well that is until I heard the Unggoy make their noises. Sidenote: I would love to smack whomever it was that had the brilliant idea not to include Covenant and Marine banter. Though there's not much to be done about Halo 3's textures, which are at their best in this iteration, I will give it mad props for the colorful pop that HDR has added to the title. Even though HDR can seem a bit much at times it does hearken back to the days when Halo brought bright colors to a game genre that had, for the most part, been happily living in faded environments. Halo MCC finally feels like it is getting the love that it originally deserved, not that there wasn't love in there before, it's just that it was more like that peck on the cheek while your significant other raced out the door amidst a flurry of instructions about tasks that need completing. So far so good. I'm looking forward to the first official release so that we can start moving past what the MCC should have been and start seeing movement in the direction of what it could be.
Looks like they finally put out the latest news within an hour of my post. I still can't help but feel it was 4 days late. Update: 8/02/2018 MCC INSIDER FLIGHT UPDATE The latest Flight info is mostly a run down on how to sign up, download, and configure the MCC as well as how to report problems. The breakdown is as follows. Beginning this past Monday, 7/30, ALL registered MCC Insiders should have access to this latest build. This latest build will include ALL of MCC in its current, work-in-progress state (minus ODST). Work continues and there are sure to be issues that arise - both known and unknown - but we're excited to get the entire product out into the wild for Insiders to get hands-on. If you've already signed up you can install MCC insider build as follows On your Xbox One, head to the Store. Search for and install the Xbox Insider Hub app. Launch the Xbox Insider Hub app and select Insider Content from the left side menu. Select the MCC Insider icon under Available content. Within the MCC Insider Hub click Join to officially register for flight builds. The build should show up and begin downloading. If your build does not download automatically, you may need to select Show in Store to initiate the install. FEEDBACK To “Report a Problem,” hold down the Xbox jewel, select “Report a Problem”, and follow the on-screen prompts. Please be as detailed as possible. Take a look at the video embedded up above to see this in action. To leave feedback feel free to use the Waypoint Forums – These posts are harder to manage and become more challenging to get meaningful info from as the scale increases but we’d still love to hear from you in our official forums. We’ve setup a few specific forums to focus feedback on three key areas: MCC Insider - Flight 3 Phase 2 - Campaign Feedback MCC Insider - Flight 3 Phase 2 - Multiplayer Feedback MCC Insider - Flight 3 Phase 2 - Misc / Other Feedback Also you may occasionally receive official surveys to gather additional input and feedback, keep an eye on your inbox for these. We may have periodic official play times scheduled to help get players into matchmaking or focus on a specific aspect of the game. For the most part, "Official" recommended matchmaking playtimes are now ongoing, every day! 11AM - 2PM PDT 7PM - 10PM PDT A limited number of playlists will be available and the offerings are subject to change depending on overall player engagement and population levels (just yesterday we cut back on the avaialble playlists to help funnel more players together to improve matching). CONFIDENTIALITY MCC Insider participants are free to stream, post screens and videos, and discuss their experiences on social and on forums. Help us spread the word – we’re always looking for more players to join up and help shape the future of MCC! However, please note that all email communications and official surveys are STILL CONSIDERED CONFIDENTIAL. KNOWN ISSUES With this latest build, we want to call out a few key known issues that the team is already aware of and working on: Corrupted Installation - We are aware of an issue where players may receive "corrupted chunks" of games when installing the MCC Insider build. If you find that maps/modes are missing in custom game menus, languages change unexpectedly when navigating through menus, or are you're unable to launch customs or matchmaking period, you may have a corrupted installation. For more context, check out this forum post. Unfortunately, the only way to resolve this corruption issue is to completely uninstall the MCC Insider Build and re-download it again. The MCC team has been working closely with our platform partners to identify a fix for this issue which is currently on track to be included with the next Xbox update later this month. Until this fix is deployed, there’s a chance that anyone installing MCC may encounter corruption issues. Halo 3 ODST is NOT included in the MCC Insider Build (it will be back in the game by the time the retail update is released) LAN - The new LAN functionality is available in this Insider build and we'd love to get your early feedback on this new feature! Please Note: For these flights, players will still NEED TO BE CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET IN ORDER TO PLAY LOCAL LAN GAMES. An internet connection will NOT be required once the update arrives to retail MCC. Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary - Lighting Issues - We are aware of numerous lighting problems/irregularities present across the campaign Halo 4 - Audio - We're aware of some missing audio for narrated sequences when an on-screen visual shows an actor should be talking MELD - The MCC "MELD" (message of the day) is currently not working/accessible in this build (it'll be fixed in an upcoming update) ALMOST THERE This latest flight is the final step before releasing an official patch. Once retail MCC is updated and the title moves into GamePass, the MCC Insider Program is going to morph into something a little different. We’re still working through some of the final details but a persistent “test realm” is going to live alongside the retail product where the team will continue working and iterating (along with the highly anticipated “Custom Games Browser”). Once that shift occurs, anyone who owns a digital copy of MCC (there’s no viable entitlement system for a physical disc) or is an active GamePass subscriber will be able to continue playing the Test Realm builds and helping to shape future updates for MCC. This test realm is where ongoing work will continue with further patches, fixes and features that will then roll into the retail product.
Update: 8/03/2018 A new update is rolling out today that should address the Halo 4 audio, the Halo CEA lighting issue, and restore Message of the Day (MELD) functionality in the MCC Insider Build. It sits at just over 12GB