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| Early press, Halo network models | |
| Posted By: Narcogen <narcogen@rampancy.net> | Date: 11/14/01 1:30 a.m. |
In Response To: Yeah it is. (X) : It's proof that many otherwise intelligent folk were led to believe so.
Heck, that wasn't even a trailer-spread myth, that was a flat-out statement. As for MM... the original press release referred to the Halo as a "seamless, persistent world". It was later elaborated on elsewhere that this meant that if you returned to an area after destroying it, it'd stay destroyed. The conclusion that this suggests MM play I think is perfectly valid. It implies that "returning" to an area means you can leave it, travel some distance, and then return, in a sense that is a little different from just having a large level. This, and other statements such as the video where someone from Bungie says "this entire world" and then appears to get kicked under the table seemed to indicate that at one time the idea was to have the entire ring be traversable; meaning by "seamless" In fact, it was quite some time before there was an official announcement that this was not the case. Beyond that, look at some of the earliest screenshots, such as the first one where we see the Covenant flyer, or at the original MWNY demo. A lot of the surrounding terrain in that video looks like it might have been automatically generated. A lot of the hills are rather featureless, and the grass textures a bit more monotonous than seen later. To have a playable area as huge as the entire ring, you'd HAVE to have a great deal of computer-generated terrain. It looks like the decision that this wasn't possible or desireable may have resulted in a lot of the changes we see in Halo now-- not a completely traversable ring, not a persistent online world, and a game broken up into "missions" that was originally supposed to be "seamless". (And no, I really don't think they meant "stutter loads in a few seconds" when they originally said "seamless"). Without the large, seamless play area, "persistent" tends to mean merely "no respawning", which is hardly a feature worth mentioning, since you could turn off respawning even in Doom if you wanted to, and enemies would stay dead. What's more, doors you opened would stay opened unless triggered to close, etc etc. In short, without an online server constantly tracking the state of objects and characters in a large play area, the term "persistent" means so little as to be pointless. One can argue exactly how many players you need to support to be called "massively" multiplayer, but I think inferring a server model more like Ultima Online and less like Unreal Tournament-- or perhaps something in between-- is a fair conclusion based on the early information about Halo. Perhaps far fewer players in a simulated ring environment than in UO, but more than in UT-- and a simulated war campaign that might take far longer than your average deathmatch style game. There were lots of posts about that idea back in the day, and while even we knew it was possible a pipe dream when we talked about it, Bungie was pretty mum about it, too-- nobody stepped in to say, "sorry, you misunderstood what we meant by 'seamless' and 'persistent', what we REALLY meant was 10 missions broken up into stutter-loading segments, no online play at all, and two-player coop on the same machine only." If I had to guess, I think that some form of MM play was originally wanted or considered. How long before that idea was abandonded, only Bungie could say. In fact, it was a little surprising to see PlanetSide announced some time later, because it more closely resembled a lot of the speculation in the Blam and Core forums than Halo currently does. | |
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| Replies: |
| (Mostly) New Review at gaming-age | Flawless Cowboy | 11/12/01 9:49 p.m. |
| Re: (Mostly) New Review at gaming-age | no7orious | 11/12/01 10:50 p.m. |
| Re: (Mostly) New Review at gaming-age | vector40 | 11/13/01 12:14 a.m. |
| Re: (Mostly) New Review at gaming-age | vector40 | 11/13/01 12:14 a.m. |
| AHA! Definate proof!!! | Afoxi | 11/13/01 6:39 a.m. |
| Re: AHA! Definate proof!!! | Lophan | 11/13/01 7:12 a.m. |
| Re: AHA! Definate proof!!! | Djof@School | 11/13/01 8:39 a.m. |
| Yeah it is. | X | 11/13/01 11:16 a.m. |
| Re: cowardice | Nijhazer | 11/13/01 11:34 a.m. |
| Re: cowardice | X | 11/13/01 12:17 p.m. |
| Re: cowardice | Nijhazer | 11/13/01 1:12 p.m. |
| Re: Bust-out!!!!...lol *NM* | kayas | 11/13/01 1:16 p.m. |
| This is just plain wrong. | Louis Wu | 11/13/01 2:01 p.m. |
| Yes, I think he does... | beef | 11/13/01 2:20 p.m. |
| Re: Yes, I think he does... | ApolokiA | 11/13/01 6:36 p.m. |
| Re: cowardice | Mark Levin | 11/13/01 3:17 p.m. |
| Re: cowardice | vector40 | 11/13/01 8:02 p.m. |
| Re: cowardice | Mark Levin | 11/13/01 9:03 p.m. |
| Re: cowardice | vector40 | 11/13/01 10:07 p.m. |
| Re: cowardice | mnemesis | 11/13/01 11:00 p.m. |
| Please remember... | Miguel Chavez | 11/13/01 9:57 p.m. |
| oh yeah, in the good ol days | slumbermonkey | 11/13/01 10:09 p.m. |
| Re: Yeah it is. | Lophan | 11/13/01 12:22 p.m. |
| Re: Yeah it is. | Ferrex (Microserf) | 11/13/01 1:07 p.m. |
| Re: Yeah it is. | ApolokiA | 11/13/01 6:42 p.m. |
| Early press, Halo network models | Narcogen | 11/14/01 1:30 a.m. |
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