Digital Limit
June 24th, 2006, 02:18 AM
Bungie Weekly Update (http://www.bungie.net/News/TopStory.aspx?cid=8471)
Snipped a bit for your convenience.
"Work continues at a frantic pace on single and multiplayer. Sometimes to two collide! Lars, the multiplayer designer was playing through on of the single player missions when suddenly he was surrounded by butterflies. 'I thought I was going insane," said Lars. But he asked a programmer - and discovered that some wit had replaced the normal garbage collection routine (the deletion of unused objects like dead bodies and dropped, spent weapons) with a more elaborate one. The corpses of fallen Covenant currently turn into a "flock" of monarch butterflies, with flapping wings. Bizarre. And I'm assured this took about a minute to implement (this statement to head off the inevitable flames from backseat developers).
Lars also let us try out a new map Sketch and I like to call "Jub-Jub," much to Mr. Bakken's discontent. And it's my favorite new small map. An instant classic like Lockout and on roughly the same scale, with similar pacing and feel, although it looks very, very different.
Our afternoon multiplayer test session/team tournaments have been going slowly. Team Cobra Kai pulled out its second victory yesterday, against Damian and Max on Team AI. We won, in spite of Sketch renaming KP and I's team "Cobra Cry" after beating us the other day.
I am finally starting to love the Assault Rifle (the one from the trailer) in MP. It's good stuff, although weapon balancing and tradeoffs may change its subtle variances between now and launch. And it could even be removed. Who knows? That's the normal course of development, finding what works and what doesn't. Right now, it works great.
There was a short but fierce debate about the pros and cons of ladders in multiplayer this week. I won't tell you how the debate ended, but I will say that I only noticed a month or two ago that there were any ladders at all in multiplayer Halo 2 - in Waterworks, to be specific, in the center structure.
They're taken out to help streamlining the frantic and even pacing of maps. Remember Battle Creek in Halo? Reimagined as Beaver Creek in Halo 2? Well it originally had ladders, but they sloooooowed things down tremendously. Replacing the access to those parapets with ramps helped speed up the pace and give the player more options and escape routes from pursuing players. A ladder is also a honey trap for sniper fodder. That said, sometimes a ladder is a logical part of a building or a scenario. CURSE YOU DONKEY KONG!
In other news, we're working hard to fix the visual glitches now apparent in the E3 Halo 3 HD trailer on Xbox Live Marketplace. It was caused when an update to the video codec caused some incompatibility with video files made prior to that update. The fix will take a little while to implement, but we'll have more news for you on that front very soon. Our apologies in the meantime.
That does however mean that we have to take down the "broken" one, possibly as early as Monday, but we will endeavor to get a replacement up ASAP, as well as the long-promised, HD, 5.1 version of the "making of the trailer" documentary."
It's nice to see that development is going smoothly.
Snipped a bit for your convenience.
"Work continues at a frantic pace on single and multiplayer. Sometimes to two collide! Lars, the multiplayer designer was playing through on of the single player missions when suddenly he was surrounded by butterflies. 'I thought I was going insane," said Lars. But he asked a programmer - and discovered that some wit had replaced the normal garbage collection routine (the deletion of unused objects like dead bodies and dropped, spent weapons) with a more elaborate one. The corpses of fallen Covenant currently turn into a "flock" of monarch butterflies, with flapping wings. Bizarre. And I'm assured this took about a minute to implement (this statement to head off the inevitable flames from backseat developers).
Lars also let us try out a new map Sketch and I like to call "Jub-Jub," much to Mr. Bakken's discontent. And it's my favorite new small map. An instant classic like Lockout and on roughly the same scale, with similar pacing and feel, although it looks very, very different.
Our afternoon multiplayer test session/team tournaments have been going slowly. Team Cobra Kai pulled out its second victory yesterday, against Damian and Max on Team AI. We won, in spite of Sketch renaming KP and I's team "Cobra Cry" after beating us the other day.
I am finally starting to love the Assault Rifle (the one from the trailer) in MP. It's good stuff, although weapon balancing and tradeoffs may change its subtle variances between now and launch. And it could even be removed. Who knows? That's the normal course of development, finding what works and what doesn't. Right now, it works great.
There was a short but fierce debate about the pros and cons of ladders in multiplayer this week. I won't tell you how the debate ended, but I will say that I only noticed a month or two ago that there were any ladders at all in multiplayer Halo 2 - in Waterworks, to be specific, in the center structure.
They're taken out to help streamlining the frantic and even pacing of maps. Remember Battle Creek in Halo? Reimagined as Beaver Creek in Halo 2? Well it originally had ladders, but they sloooooowed things down tremendously. Replacing the access to those parapets with ramps helped speed up the pace and give the player more options and escape routes from pursuing players. A ladder is also a honey trap for sniper fodder. That said, sometimes a ladder is a logical part of a building or a scenario. CURSE YOU DONKEY KONG!
In other news, we're working hard to fix the visual glitches now apparent in the E3 Halo 3 HD trailer on Xbox Live Marketplace. It was caused when an update to the video codec caused some incompatibility with video files made prior to that update. The fix will take a little while to implement, but we'll have more news for you on that front very soon. Our apologies in the meantime.
That does however mean that we have to take down the "broken" one, possibly as early as Monday, but we will endeavor to get a replacement up ASAP, as well as the long-promised, HD, 5.1 version of the "making of the trailer" documentary."
It's nice to see that development is going smoothly.