Matthew Doucette

Did you want 23 more minutes of Halo: Dreamcast Evolved? (Halo DCE for short) Because here it is. Not only with improved framerate... but improved graphics ON TOP! Go ahead and go back and watch the old cutscene and see for yourself. Chief is looking particularly shiny with a visor that is comparable to the Xbox version. I treated his gold visor as the #1 hero asset. At only 104 vertices, I decided it was worth the 4x-16x tesselation with lightmap reflections that change based on the map--just like Xbox. I added graphics options, boosted the visuals, and gained anywhere from 1.5-2x frame improvement in most places. I also added "Fidelity" option for people who like 10 fps but pretty visuals... still trying to find the right balance, so I swapped settings here and there. Here is another 23 minutes of improved footage. I also decided to use a community Halo 2 Cortana model for the cutscenes in this build, but I might actually just pull the real Halo 2 Cortana. There is the "Performance" option that also keeps the game mostly running between 25-60 fps depending on what's going on, and although pared back quite a bit visually, it's there for people who prefer screaming fast input--for everyone else, I recommend starting at Performance and tweaking things to your liking. Personally, I find lightmap lighting (medium draw on CPU) and basic wall reflections (which are essentially free) to be quite nice to have on. At the very beginning you can see my "Halo DCE Map Editor" I had developed that I use to lockdown LODs or hide/replace actors entirely. The hangar bay in the opening cutscene is particularly heavy on Dreamcast, so many assets were converted to card actors (2.5D representations) in the background to improve the framerate. The map editor will come with the game later down the line when it's finished porting over so people can play around with it to their own liking.