Fixed a nitpick in the description.

Preview revision. Will discuss further soon. Addresses a few oversights left behind due to testing. Includes all of the Gearbox Multiplayer levels currently unfinalized due to the reliance on the stock bitmaps, a HUD color adjustment profile and a few key fixes to shader_transparent_generic related tags, bitmaps and assets. Started work on tailoring specific textures to fit the new style.

The title is just HALO NV2A now.

Quick hotfix, although wish there was a bit more to this update it needed to be addressed and it should have been out last week, appreciate the patience. Just didn't have a ton of available resources recently and other projects have peaked my interest, but don't worry this Project won't be going anywhere and the other iterations will follow suite. Stay tuned for groundbreaking stuff. In this consists of rehued cubemaps for the Elites for their new Armor colors to shine the right way, and happy to say they look excellent. They were good before, but the underlying Blue, Red, Yellow coloration for the classes respectively weren't the intended vision you would be able to see upon close inspection nor their looking at fullest potential.

Hadn't gotten done prior due to until recently, didn't fully realize how to compile those assets with indexed permutations or multiple bitmaps per square image in a way the engine properly accepts them or rather utilized properly optimized manner using nothing but in house tools as this is all undocumented territory requiring expert knowledge or trial and error. Very complex, doubtful it is easily known or even explained thus this is purely self discovery using intuition. With that out of the way we can strive to deliver better experiences such as SPV3 or Single-Player version 3 in a much more accessible format. Now it's not just a spraypaint job. Finally there was an oversight with the Xbox ADPCM where in an iteration of the CEXH source files had replaced the Sniper Rifle firing audio with the Anniversary one for use in Custom Edition, but this isn't properly represented in Classic with FMOD sound acceleration being uniquely applied for Anniversary only, which you'd be able to tell side by side thus that's been remedied and now it's the good old fashioned version. Be sure to re-download those files if this is something you'd notice. More content soon

New Update, truth be told it is absolutely huge, be sure not to neglect getting it. Starting off with a revision to the prior change, corrected the dropship and sitting sentry turret overall damage back to a consistent level. This was due to a Multiplier within the actor_variant for the gunner being set from 0.33 to doing Full Output having incorrect behaviour functioning correctly as intended now. Dropship and Banshee are supposed to be fierce and it better to avoid those altogether unless extremely skilled, case in point the Mission New Beginning on HALO, as the player if noticed will desperately need to find cover and proactively crouch hide to avoid incoming fire often only surviving by a sliver of their own hair left to avoid taking any health damage whilst immediately beginning to start picking off those searching Covenant. Also, speaking of a30 the water has been reverted to it's former state, not ideal because it still does have the issue we've previously covered, but even with the bugs and AF sensitivity it still looked slightly better than fixed. Here is to wishing a skilled developer will come along and correct this and other issues for all of our sakes. Next we're delving into the chunkiest portion of this iteration. All shader_transparent_generic rendering interaction has been fully restored. Everything to the inset lighting on the Grunt and Elite to various level device geometry, holographic imagery, shield effects, overshield and invisibility pickups, lighting, tendrils, vehicles and various other relevant aspects should be looking proper and in fact better than ever before without compromising the validity of Gearbox appearance or quality. Done to the fullest extent possible utilizing the original high resolution textures except where they needed to be replaced outright. Still, there are bound to be a few areas which we could further enhance touch up and or fix the appearance of, rather could still be extreme cases where we could further offer a higher quality resolution based on our resources albeit this is more cosmetic than functionality at this point and stock performance unfriendly territory than something an individual will notice. This will also require extensive time to outweigh every single asset with their highest level of fidelity without bias or by adding variables and as previously stated the preference of this project is Xbox with Gearbox uncompressed first with 343 compatibility afterward before to going unnecessarily change the style of that which has already been done better. Biggest thing we're trying to avoid is regression in functionality or interaction. One final change to sink our teeth in is the fog level of detail being fixed in 343 Guilty Spark, it isn't perfect, but it does correct a higher portion of the culling issue until we are blessed with the Anniversary toolset to change it there

Restoration this hotfix, starting off with enemies scaling in relation to Easy, Normal, and Heroic difficulty stock level of health and their output damage very closely resembling this due to popular request. Playing on anything less than Legendary is definately a skill issue, a performance constraint, or potentially both. Would know all too well about it back in 2004 playing on an integrated ATI GPU using Fixed Functioning. Allies are weak enough as it is, those guys are unaffected. Although speed-o-runners won't be able to kill them all off easily in New Beginning on HALO and are in for a nasty surprise when they rather quickly drop the Chief in retaliation. We're already dead on Reach, so the story goes. Proceed with CAUTION. However, crutch or not it's back and better than ever before being able to plough through an entire level as an untouchable God with the added benefit of a consistent level of damage to oneself regardless of difficulty and grenade or rocket jump ability. So that's how he did that. Next corrected an oversight involving the Vehicle HUD using the stock color, this was because they were opened, but not saved correctly. Lower tiered enemy health is now consistent across rank typing. Fixed the dropship tedril appearance using shader_transparent_generic instead of sotr_shader_fixes chicago_extended, however with this being said there is a bunch of those that remain their Gearbox iteration, such as for the characters as they simply look better. More testing will need to be done on the culprit, however it does seem as though it is a visual and variable dependant shader. Before replacing the ones that are left I'll need to confirm they genuinely are an upgrade rendered properly. Also fixed the coolant pool missing shader black square issue in d20 which is excellent. New is both the ENB SS SHADESERIES LITE enhancement addon and the Xbox ADPCM authentic quality replacement, be sure to check the description

Update on the project, discovered that the water rendering is indeed influenced by whether or not Forced Anistrophic Filtering is enabled in the NVIDIA / AMD / INTEL vendor specific control panel. This is similar to the behaviour using XEMU, in that the Xbox version didn't have any at all or is not used on this technique specifically. When enabled, the close wave blending effect will appear incorrectly, being further out especially at higher upscaled resolution, worsening with intensity causing visible tiling of the texture. Not ideal currently as it is nice to use Forced AF 16x with High Quality Texture Filtering to polish everything else up. Done correctly it genuinely appears to be nicely intersecting banded curvature waves in the horizon with the added benefit of appearing a highly shader interactive liquid up close. Currently we are able to choose between Forced Off for an appearance closer to the Xbox version or Forced 16x to take full advantage of the PC ability to have increased detail texturing angled surfaces and objects. Keep MCC setting at High

° Full Support for Forced Off Anistrophic Filtering in vendor Control Panel
° Full Support for Forced 16x Anistrophic Filtering in vendor Control Panel
° Hybrid Gearbox 343 Xbox bsp structure for every level scenario high quality
° Now utilizing shader_transparent_generic instead of chicago full Xbox effects
° Now utilizing shader_transparent_water instead of Chicago_extended for waves
° Bsp structure included 343 water shader, but now with high quality stock 32bit textures
° Fixed Graphical Issue related to intersecting lines in certain textures with or without AF
° 117 now has Cover Art Spec Ops Armor and is properly tinted with darkening cube specular
° Adjustment to Mip level of water a30 and b30 in an effort to reduce tiling bring closer to high res Xbox
° Fixed oversight where there could be two Sargent Johnson in same area due to increased spawns
° Further reduced the intensity of the Alien distance advantage it should be very fair and balanced now
° Quick adjustments to certain spawns to keep the feeling close to Legendary on Xbox, but difficult

Tweaked the increased b30 spawn so there wouldn't be two Sargents storming the beach or one riding with the player. This is because Sargent Johnson isn't supposed be on the beach in case he dies he had dialog and relevance later in the level. Truthfully, wish the rest of the series followed suite to this, it does make sense he could potentially return later recovered after dying in certain levels dependant on unreturnable progression

Fixed the slightly overzealous tuning oversight of enemy weapon damage specifically Needler and Plasma Rifle toward Marines so they stopped dying before stepping foot on the beach in The Silent Cartographer. This was because otherwise they would completely storm and wipe out every last Covenant without a lick of effort from the Player, when it should be a delicate focused effort execution thing to keep everyone alive centred around closing the gap between the Aliens range with the Marines ability to be devastating up close and tuned specifically for every encounter to prioritise targeting

Overzealous tuning of enemy weapon damage specifically Needler and Plasma Rifle

Initial upload with shader_transparent_chicago and Chicago_extended bsp ripped directly off Refined with all of the workarounds except the broken ones discussed in the description which could be relevant for backporting the level onto Xbox 360 version of HALO CE Anniversary