In Response To: Bungie Weekly Update!!! (Frankie)
: 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!
:
: We are starting to get cinematics back from the animators all polished up,
: and they look GREAT! It's really cool to see these cinematics come back,
: because we've gotten so used to seeing them in their basic animation form.
: The final animation makes all the characters really come to life, and
: makes them much more fun to watch. Now if we can just get some lighting in
: there…
: 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
:
: The Living Room Simulator is now open and ready for business, and many of the
: single player missions are to the point where we are getting polish level
: feedback.
:
: Aside from grinding on my levels, in the past week I’ve been picking up some
: odds and ends. The Pelican received an update, and can now do more than
: just look intimidating when it enters a hot drop zone. Ditto for its
: Covenant counterpart. Both dropships are now moving around entirely of
: their own accord thanks to Damian and Jaime (and a little Eamon), which
: means we’re updating our levels to make use of that ability.
:
: During some downtime, I spent a bit of time making a human vehicle more
: drivable, and even more destroyable. Happily, it behaves almost exactly as
: you’d expect when someone takes one of its wheels off. Before the day is
: done, I hope to have it a little more stable when taking hard corners—it
: rolls like an SUV right now.
: 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.
: * Did some more work on the player training; the user testing we’ve been
: doing has been really encouraging. We had a gamer who had never played an
: FPS the other day, and after half an hour the game had taught them enough
: that they were ready to smack down Marty. After another half an hour they
: were ready to start tackling the game on normal.
: * A bunch of nitty little bugs and features for single player were
: implemented this week. Example, if you pulled the trigger back during
: your ready animation the plasma pistol wouldn’t start charging when it was
: done with its ready animation, things like that.
: * In between all that I’ve been working on the gametypes and the game engine
: in general. King of the Hill is back in, just need to get the rendering
: of the hill re-done with the new shader system. Started work on re-doing
: one of our new gametypes, Also been sneaking in little multiplayer polish
: things, like when you get into a vehicle it shows the names of the other
: passengers over their heads for a second.
:
: Adrian
: 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.
:
: The way we made Halo into a greased slide for novice gamers was
: user-testing. Lots of user-testing. We brought people in, put them in
: front of the game and watched them from behind one-way glass. We recorded
: them, analyzed them, questioned them and then we took all that
: information, changed the game, and did it all over again.
:
: So that's what I did this week. Adrian got the first version of our training
: system working and we brought in a bunch of people to try it on. I'm not
: talking about hardcore Halo fans. We brought in a 40 year old mother who
: only plays games to make sure they are appropriate for her young children
: (guess what, Halo isn't) and an 18 year old RPG gamer that doesn't like
: anything that isn't turn based and a 55 year old City Councilmen who only
: uses his console to play golf games during the winter. Then we threw them
: into a free-for-all deathmatch game and see how well our training system
: worked.
:
: It's painful to watch. You want to go rip the controller from their hands
: and show them how to play. You want to ask them why in the world they
: aren't reading the help text for dual-wielding. You want to shake them
: and force them to use the look stick and the move stick at the same time.
: But you can't because if they can't figure out how to have fun on their
: own, then nobody else will either.
:
: Luckily, our tests went really well. We had some rough spots, but the 40
: year old mother was gunning folks down with dual-smgs within 20 minutes.
: The RPG gamer was intentionally giving the enemy his Ghost so he could
: board them and take it back. The City Councilman decided that leaping
: down on someone and shotgunning them in the head was better than putting
: for birdie. We've got a long way to go, but Halo 2 is on track to be as
: user-friendly as the first one. Next week we put the tutorial in the
: labs, and since it's only half done, I guess I know what I am doing this
: weekend...
: 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
: Got the rental car at LAX, along with fairly flawed directions on how to find
: the highway. After driving for about a half hour and getting the feeling
: that this wasn’t the way I was intended to go, I turned around to head
: back. (When I finally got to my hotel, morbid curiosity had me pull up
: Microsoft MapPoint with the data overlay of crime rate; I wasn’t too
: pleased so see where I had just been. It reminds me of that time I got
: turned around in Dallas last summer, where in the course of the time it
: took me to make a U-turn in a gas station, I saw three drug deals...)
: Hour 1
: Found the highway
: Hour 2
: Got to the manufacturer, about 50 miles away, and dropped off the tapes
: around 3AM. Found a hotel with Internet; spent an hour on the phone with
: tech support helping them analyze their packet flow to trace a connection
: problem before giving up and using a modem. Found out that the DVDs
: wouldn’t be ready as early as we thought, so I changed my return flight to
: a later one.
: Hour 8
: Got a call that the DVD process would take a little longer than planned.
: Changed my plane ticket to a later flight, again.
: Hour 12
: Decided to spend the afternoon in Santa Barbara, since the weather was nice,
: and the DVDs were delayed, again.
: Hour 18
: You know you should have packed a shaving kit when a street bu... ehem,
: "person on perpetual vacation from employment," tells you that
: you need a shave. (I was supposed to be home 3 hours ago, ok!?) Got a call
: that there was a delay, so I changed my ticket a third time.
: Hour 20
: Another delay, until the morning. Changed my plane ticket for a fourth time.
: Went to Target for shaving supplies.
: Hour 32
: Got the test batch of 250 DVDs, but found out that our delays had pushed us
: right into the middle of a maintenance window for the beta Xbox Live
: network, so I still couldn’t test. Changed ticket a fifth time.
: Hour 36
: Live came back online and I started testing. It took just a few minutes to
: find out that something was wrong, and just a little longer to find out
: that it was a problem in the way one of the game files was signed for Xbox
: usage. Which means, the master tapes were useless and we’d have to start
: over. At least they only made a small test batch of DVDs so far.
: Hour 37
: Found out that due to the previous day’s delay, they had already made all
: 8000 DVDs without waiting for us to give the OK. Changed my return flight
: a sixth time, with a slim chance that the problem could be fixed on the
: server side. I needed an internet connection to test from, so I returned
: to my hotel and asked if I could get a room for just an hour. The manager
: gave me a funny look, and I explained that I need to test some computer
: equipment and needed the internet connection. She referred me to Kinko’s,
: but I added that I actually needed the TV, too, which got me another funny
: look. I ended up taking the room for the full night, and as I left the
: lobby, I heard the manager say to another guy at the desk, "So, you
: think he’ll have a girl with him?" Actually, I was quite pleased to
: hear that as much as I had protested that I was traveling on business to
: test computer software, she still saw me as a lying guy on a tryst rather
: than a computer geek. Or something like that.
: Hour 44
: Heard that the problem couldn’t be fixed server-side, so I arranged to meet
: Frankie at the Burbank airport in the morning to pick up a new batch of
: master tapes, and stay in town to test those. Changed my return flight for
: a seventh time. Went to Target to buy some fresh clothes, etc. Heard from
: Bungie that we need those 8000 DVDs by Tuesday morning, and if they
: couldn’t find a shipper, I’d have to buy luggage and get them on the plane
: somehow (!)
: Hour 56
: Got the new tapes from Frankie and headed back to the manufacturer. Round
: trip, 140 miles of driving before 10AM!
: Hour 57
: Delivered the new tapes, but found out that the DVDs wouldn’t be ready until
: 1AM. Changed ticket an eighth time. But at least they found a shipper,
: preventing me from having to tote about 700lbs. of luggage and discs back
: with me.
: Hour 72
: Picked up the new DVDs for the test pass - they work!
: Hour 81
: Much to my surprise, I actually boarded a plane out of LA! It’s been a long
: 12 hours...
: Hour 84
: Mission completed, 250 DVDs delivered to the office, and time to sleep.
: 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.
:
: Could be better though…
:
: Work is progressing on Earth City very nicely, but there’s still so much
: stuff to do -- it’s a little nerve racking when the guys you’re counting
: on to help you are stuck on their previous levels debugging features with
: the programmers.
:
: Alas,
: wu
: Ryan Hylland
: Shipped the beta
: Posted the autoupdate
: Kicked some n00b asses
: 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…
:
umm, yeah, i'm not the last 2 read the update!!
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