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Bungie Weekly Update!!! | |
Posted By: Frankie <frank@bungie.com> | Date: 7/9/04 7:25 p.m. |
Weekly Update: July 9th, 2004 Mammoth update this week kids. So enough with the intro - dig into all this good stuff: Greg Snook I’m going to go out on a limb and say we have too many animations in this game. Most people would consider that a good thing, but when your job is to make sure all those animations fit in memory and play back silky-smooth; having this many animations just sucks. Perhaps it’s a problem with Canadian math skills, but Butkus has authored some 881 animations for the Elite alone. We have more characters than the original Halo, and each one performs far more actions than the previous game. The end result is a fine looking game which requires the memory of three additional Xboxes :) So, this week was spent looking into new animation compression schemes and devising a system to cache animations off disk while the game is in progress. Luckily, much of this work was already in place to handle the metric ton of geometry and textures we have, so caching animations slipped right in. The end result is that the levels now fit in memory and look fantastic. W00t! CJ Joseph and I killed three videomatics this week, which could be a new record for us. The first one was the intro to CENSORED, which has a touch of grunt comedy, and should get some laughs. The second one is also in that level, and has nearly every major character in the game in it, which was...uh..."fun"...to set up. The last one is the cinematic that proceeds the final CENSORED, and should nicely build the tension before that fine piece of gameplay. We are also starting on a short one this morning, so maybe we'll try to get four done this week! Woohoo!
Nathan Walpole Wow, what a week. I have been putting out fires, starting new ones, making friends, making enemies and eating crappy food...ain't crunch-time grand? Animation this week has been working on a variety of things. John is still going strong on cinematics, Mike is pounding on what could be one of the coolest characters ever known to man – and taking boarding to the NEXT level. Bill is hard at work finishing the Grunt and the CENSORED and will be pitching in his great timing sense towards Brute animations. I am hard at work on the Brute, and the CENSORED…both of which are shaping up to be formidable and unforgettable. Nat King Cole ‘Unforgettable’ it will not become, the Brute could never be that smooth, but they should be unforgettable nonetheless. Jeremy is trucking away on varied bug fixes and miscellaneous animations in the game. So we have a god amount of work ahead of us. Yes, I said a ‘god’ amount of work. Normally we would need to be Gods like Vulcan to be able to pound out this massive charge. Gods we are not, but Cananimators and Amanimators we are… Oh, just one more thing. I would like to publicly remind Paul Bertone to stop pinching my nipples. Chris Butcher Been working on the beta... the data mine gives us the tools to analyze our users’ play patterns, see which bugs they’re encountering and whether they brushed their teeth in the morning.
Tyson Green
Adrian Perez * Been working with the graphics guys on lightmapping the ‘sets’ that will appear in some of the cinematics. They’re not BSP level geometry, they’re made as objects (so it’s easy to use them in multiple levels). Also I’ve been working with the artists on specific problems with the lightmapper and fixing them.
Jaime Griesemer I am convinced that the primary reason Halo 1 was a success was that it was extremely approachable. Many games are almost sadistic in the way they abuse novice Players. They throw you into a confusing high-pressure situation with almost no guidance and then punish you with long load times and loss of progress when you inevitably fail. Halo, on the other hand, was a greased slide that took novice gamers, hooked them, introduced them to the controls and the game mechanics and taught them how to have fun with the game. When they die, Halo gets them back in the action within seconds, without losing any progress or abilities. It doesn't punish them or make them feel incompetent. That means that Halo was played by a lot of people that would be turned off by most game experiences.
Roger's LA Oddyssey "12 Hours in Los Angeles" Last week, when Harold, our Test Manager, asked me to make a quick trip to Los Angeles to prepare for our upcoming internal-only Halo 2 beta, I was perfectly happy to go. The plan was, I would pick up the master data tapes from Microsoft’s lab on Wednesday afternoon, hop on a flight to LA, drop them off at the DVD manufacturer around midnight, get a little sleep, pick up a sample batch a few hours later, give them a quick test to see that they worked, and escort about 200 DVDs back to Redmond after about 12 hours in L.A. It would be a nice way to wrap up the week before a holiday weekend, right? Hour 0
Hour 1
Hour 2
Hour 8
Hour 12
Hour 18
Hour 20
Hour 32
Hour 36
Hour 37
Hour 44
Hour 56
Hour 57
Hour 72
Hour 81
Hour 84
Frankie So Parsons sticks his head out of an office at around 7pm on Friday night, just before 4th of July weekend and says, "Frankie! Is Mrs. Frank in town this weekend?" I was all, wow, the bossman is gonna invite us to his BBQ! Career advancement here I come! So Parsons instead tells me he has this "Great opportunity." Which as it turns out is the "chance" to wait around until 3am for replacement code to be ready, stay up all night and then fly it to Roger in Burbank at 5am on Saturday morning. I was then trapped in Burbank airport from 9am til 2pm. And the airport's single espresso machine was broken, so I couldn't even get a coffee. Thanks Parsons. Still, 12 hours of screwing around with tapes, DVDs and no sleep is still better than a Parsons sushi fart. Michael Wu OK, so something magical must have happened to the lightmapper or the lightmapper farm – you’d have to ask Adrian and Zach to find out – but my lightmap jobs are flying through the farm these days. Now, I changed a couple settings, so maybe it was as simple as that, but I haven’t had a failed job in a week. This is how Boeing must’ve felt when their test planes stopped crashing and they just flew. I mean my jobs went from all night long to about 4 hours. This compares very nicely to Halo 1’s 12-36 hours per BSP. Plus our BSPs are much bigger than Halo 1. So this is very good.
Ryan Hylland Shipped the beta
So one last thing: Check out THIS LINK for an amazing opportunity to win a Halo 2 LAN party. And check out this hideous vision of Mister Chief enjoying his time in LA. Sorry bout the Speedo…
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Replies: |
Bungie Weekly Update!!! | Frankie | 7/9/04 7:25 p.m. |
Re: Bungie Weekly Update!!! | Captain Spark | 7/9/04 7:26 p.m. |
Whoa, thats a long one! *NM* | K-Twizzy | 7/9/04 7:40 p.m. |
Re: Bungie Weekly Update!!! *NM* | HAmmEr AS AlwAyS | 7/9/04 9:48 p.m. |
Re: Bungie Weekly Update!!! | SF Legend | 7/9/04 7:28 p.m. |
Only four *CENSORED*'s Woo! *NM* | GhaleonEB | 7/9/04 7:29 p.m. |
Re: Bungie Weekly Update!!! *NM* | haloguesser | 7/9/04 7:29 p.m. |
I picked a great time to post my wallpaper here :D *NM* | Silent Hunter | 7/9/04 7:32 p.m. |
LMAO!!!!! | alstrong | 7/9/04 7:32 p.m. |
Re: LMAO!!!!! | umm bob? | 7/11/04 12:07 a.m. |
Re: LMAO!!!!! | Fatty | 7/12/04 2:29 p.m. |
The Mister never looked so good ;-) *NM* | meleeman | 7/9/04 7:33 p.m. |
thanks for the update frankie *NM* | haloguesser | 7/9/04 7:34 p.m. |
Wow! Great update as always! *NM* | Ducain | 7/9/04 7:40 p.m. |
Re: Bungie Weekly Update!!! | polysign | 7/9/04 7:44 p.m. |
Thanks, Frankie! *NM* | GhaleonEB | 7/9/04 7:45 p.m. |
Poor Roger... :( *NM* | Zero Flaw | 7/9/04 7:46 p.m. |
"Roger's LA Odyssey: The Movie"... | Anton P. Nym (aka Steve) | 7/9/04 8:06 p.m. |
hehehe, I'd see it! *NM* | Silent Hunter | 7/9/04 8:31 p.m. |
Subtitle; "Dude, Where's My Halo?" *NM* | Anton P. Nym (aka Steve) | 7/9/04 8:34 p.m. |
Re: Bungie Weekly Update!!! | Elliot | 7/9/04 7:49 p.m. |
Re: Bungie Weekly Update!!! | Hendrixx | 7/9/04 7:51 p.m. |
Re: Testing? | NickLee808 | 7/9/04 7:58 p.m. |
few neat things | chief sparten | 7/9/04 8:10 p.m. |
Re: few neat things | splinter271 | 7/9/04 8:21 p.m. |
Re: few neat things | Anton P. Nym (aka Steve) | 7/9/04 8:27 p.m. |
Re: Bungie Weekly Update!!! | daedalus @ home | 7/9/04 8:08 p.m. |
Re: Bungie Weekly Update!!! | MthdDirector | 7/9/04 8:30 p.m. |
Re: Bungie Weekly Update!!! | Wolfy | 7/9/04 8:33 p.m. |
clap clap clap clap clap *NM* | Usil 666 | 7/9/04 8:51 p.m. |
HA, better then FSW | Master Elite | 7/9/04 9:07 p.m. |
\( ^.^ )/ | BOLL | 7/9/04 9:11 p.m. |
Re: \( ^.^ )/ | Eclipse | 7/9/04 9:14 p.m. |
Re: \( ^.^ )/ | dizzy [subnova] | 7/9/04 9:48 p.m. |
The Boll strikes again... | meleeman | 7/9/04 9:55 p.m. |
Hey, Boll... | Silent Hunter | 7/9/04 10:33 p.m. |
BTW, Nice, with the 'Back to HBO' thing... *NM* | Silent Hunter | 7/9/04 10:35 p.m. |
Now if it was just a game...*NM* | funkmon | 7/9/04 10:41 p.m. |
Re: \( ^.^ )/-cool the eyes move :) nm | vshields ash | 7/10/04 9:46 a.m. |
Oi! He stole my cursor, he did! *NM* | Owl | 7/10/04 11:33 a.m. |
Re: \( ^.^ )/ | Dill | 7/10/04 12:25 p.m. |
Re: \( ^.^ )/ | Wolfcott | 7/10/04 2:09 p.m. |
Move your cursor around the top of the page : ) *NM* | Gothmog117 | 7/10/04 5:57 p.m. |
Very nice Boll | Grey Wolf | 7/10/04 7:33 p.m. |
Holy Shit! He ate my mouse!!! *NM* *NM* | Pico | 7/10/04 11:34 p.m. |
Re: \( ^.^ )/ | Wolfcott | 7/11/04 12:15 p.m. |
Re: \( ^.^ )/ | Frankie | 7/12/04 12:46 p.m. |
I thought BOLL was busted!! whew! *NM* | jammerfer | 7/12/04 12:53 p.m. |
Re: \( ^.^ )/ | Lambda | 7/14/04 7:06 p.m. |
W00t! Frankie's a Pimp! *NM* | Pico | 7/9/04 9:18 p.m. |
havin fun down at bungie? | spec_op_elite_man | 7/9/04 9:45 p.m. |
Re: Bungie Weekly Update!!! | MrGlubGlub | 7/9/04 9:55 p.m. |
Re: Bungie Weekly Update!!! | oDiN | 7/9/04 10:06 p.m. |
Re: Bungie Weekly Update!!! | Fatty | 7/12/04 7:32 p.m. |
Gah! the speedo reminds me of the beach in france | Halo fangirl | 7/9/04 10:05 p.m. |
Re: Bungie Weekly Update!!! | Slimby | 7/9/04 10:27 p.m. |
That's gigantic. Do more like this. *NM* | funkmon | 7/9/04 10:30 p.m. |
Re: Bungie Weekly Update!!! | Kenshi | 7/9/04 10:37 p.m. |
SUH-weet! *NM* | Halo_grunt | 7/9/04 10:41 p.m. |
now I just hafta become a mom, rpg gamer, or ... | Tar | 7/9/04 11:15 p.m. |
w00t w00t! *NM* | Jamirus99 | 7/9/04 11:30 p.m. |
Re: Bungie Weekly Update!!! | aznthunder | 7/10/04 12:28 a.m. |
yo........................gi | Sharpshooter | 7/10/04 11:00 a.m. |
I'd give anything to be a 40 year old woman right | Dom Dunc | 7/10/04 1:12 a.m. |
awesome update *NM* *NM* | Gil27 | 7/10/04 4:57 a.m. |
Co-op | Ossi Mattsson | 7/10/04 2:32 p.m. |
Re: Co-op | Fatty | 7/12/04 7:36 p.m. |
Re: Co-op | Slothboy | 7/12/04 7:39 p.m. |
Re: Bungie Weekly Update!!! *NM* | khoi Bui | 7/10/04 3:39 p.m. |
Love the update!!! | Distain | 7/10/04 5:37 p.m. |
of course ther'll be co-op | Virus 232 | 7/10/04 7:16 p.m. |
Re: Bungie Weekly Update!!! | Deon | 7/11/04 4:30 p.m. |
Tagged. | Louis Wu | 7/11/04 4:37 p.m. |
Re: Bungie Weekly Update!!! | a Bomb | 7/12/04 5:36 p.m. |
Re: Bungie Weekly Update!!! | KORHAL | 7/11/04 9:02 p.m. |
Re: Bungie Weekly Update!!! | Nodly | 7/13/04 12:39 p.m. |
Re: Bungie Weekly Update!!! | Guardian | 7/13/04 1:09 p.m. |
I think I read somewhere that there won't be... *NM* | Arashi | 7/13/04 1:27 p.m. |
The weapon is strong enough with just one. *NM* | Vitron | 7/13/04 1:32 p.m. |
Re: Bungie Weekly Update!!! | Nodly | 7/13/04 4:08 p.m. |
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