Hello again! After a customarily extended amount of time, we've finished work on TSC:E's follow-up patch 1.4.1. Along with several dozen bug fixes, we've prepared a customarily generous amount of bonus goodies:
- MCC-compatible map releases of Truth & Reconciliation: Revisited and Precipice!
- New behind-the-scenes retrospectives and design insights from the core team!
- Updated source releases, now even more stable, sanitized, and MCC-friendly!
You can find release notes and download links for all of the above on our website: Tsce.info
✨ We'd really like to highlight the new behind-the-scenes material: ✨
- Silicon has written a thorough, highly visual overview of the deceptively difficult and complex work that went into map-wide lighting and BSP overhauls for patch 1.4!
- Dafi has written an "explanation" of how and why we designed the Shredder, as an excuse for a deep dive into our sandbox design, and the tools we used to fulfill its goals!
- Lag has written a personal retrospective on how TSC:E developed its creative identity, how that informed the increasing scale of patch 1.4, and how our work fits into the broader context of Halo!
If any of these topics interest you, head over to this new page on the website, and look for the 1.4 Postmortem Articles: Tsce.info
Lastly, an update about TSC:E-on-MCC:
The situation hasn't really changed since we last revealed it, but in case you missed that, we have an internal fork of TSC:E that runs without issue in the MCC HEK's halo_tag_test. This can't replicate every feature from the full Open Sauce map, but we've found clever substitutes for many key systems, and have done our best to keep the necessary cuts as clean and seamless as possible.
Unfortunately, we can't currently build a shippable map for MCC. As of the last update, MCC H1's tool.exe still has not raised its vertex / index buffer size from the stock limit of 32 MB -- TSC:E relies upon the expanded Open Sauce limit of 48 MB. Cutting nearly 16 MB of model data from the map isn't categorically impossible, but it would be a very painful and protracted effort, and we're all exhausted from the last year-plus of keeping TSC:E, its source releases, and multiple bonus maps up to date with the current state of Halo modding. So, we're still waiting to see if 343 will simply raise this limit in a near future update, as they have with most other map limits.
We're aware of community tools that could get around this, but we're committed to creating a version of the map that can build, run, and be picked apart by the community with nothing more than the official SDK. Further, this gives us a little more time to decompress, consider even cleverer ways to restore parity with the Open Sauce edition, and generally ensure that the MCC audience -- players and modders alike -- can enjoy the same high standard of quality we've worked so hard to set with our previous releases.
