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Halo CE: The Marine Levels

Over the Shoulder Camera Version

Section 1: The Camera.

The normal way people implement a third person camera is to use the digsite camera track. This is all fine and dandy, gives you a nice over the shoulder view. It includes with it a number of problems though.

• The weapon fire does not match the crosshair, instead trending toward the model's line of sight.
  
• Autoaim is also based on eye level and centered to the model, meaning at close range you will miss your shots.
  
• You can't reliably peek in any direction other than to the right. Every corner on the left is a blind corner and you will get seen first.

I have instead chosen to use a centered camera. This also has issues, but they're not hugely gameplay relevant in comparison.

• Rendering. Sometimes, in confined spaces you will need to crouch in order for rendering to kick in. This is engine related, but once you crouch a single time, the environment will render regardless of whether you stand back up.
  
• Clipping. The camera position will sometimes dip out of the level. Also fixed with a single crouch.

Section 2: The Marine

While it is tempting to take a standard marine biped and slap the player's controls onto it, that is not an enjoyable experience. Thus, I have made some quality of life changes.

• Stun animations only trigger when your shield(armor) is drained. If you wanted to play a difficulty higher than normal, the stun animations only effect was causing you to reload a checkpoint. That wasn't fun or challenging, it just meant time wasted waiting for your character to slowly be killed. That, or busting open the menu to speed it up.
  
• Infection forms no longer permanently latch. Much like stun animations, this didn't add much to the experience for the player, instead making it annoying as even letting them touch you forced a reset.
  
• Animations. I have added extra animations to the marines, allowing them to use every weapon and vehicle in the game. They no longer use the scared pistol animation, as it looked stupid and didn't allow crouched movement.

I didn't change the movement. One thing you will notice after playing this for awhile is that diagonal movement is actually slower and easier to track from an enemy's perspective. You will die less often using lateral movement and this is a great trainer to do that instead.

Section 3: Difficulty

Most people default to the mod tools setting of normal. This means they ignore obvious flaws that otherwise would be found and make changes that have a high chance of breaking the AI or damage tables. I test and develop my mods on Legendary, meaning they are balanced to be hard, but fair, and allow the player to lower the difficulty to compensate if they are having trouble.

• Removed actor firing parameter scale by difficulty allowing for a much more consistently engaging experience across options.
  
• Balanced marines toward being an effective ally.
  
• Balanced covenant toward the more tactical play style required as a marine.

Section 4: Weapons

This game, as it was made on a limited time frame, has notoriously bad weapon balancing. You can only carry two and due to this, all weapons need to meet a certain standard of usability. The only exceptions are the power weapons.

• The Assault Rifle has had its spread values tweaked to be actually usable as a weapon. You can rely on it.
  
• The Shotgun has less spread and does less damage per pellet. This means you can aim it and hit at further than tongue wrestling distance.

Absent of these changes, neither of these function as a usable primary. The assault rifle's damage output is so limited it can only be used against fodder. The shotgun's inaccuracy and extremely high damage makes it a power weapon, preventing certain combinations typical of later games in the series. Now, you can conceivably carry a shotgun and sniper or rocket without losing the utility of having a primary that can be used to engage soft targets.

Flaws

• The Master Chief. As this is a quick and dirty rendition more meant to give people a better option for a mod like this, you're going to see the chief during some cinematics. Not all of them, but the ones that rip the players control away and show the Chief playing animations.
  
• Melee. Fighting enemies in melee just does not translate well into a third person perspective. Primarily because your options are: Fire gun, throw grenade, smack guy once. However, with a centered camera you can at least maintain your aim and put them down far easier.
  
• Zoom. Zooming in doesn't work with the supplied third person cameras available. However, it still can be used to increase accuracy and allow autoaim at longer distances.