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Also lollers at the BR Question
Posted By: FyreWulff <mkidder@gmail.com>Date: 9/5/09 11:33 p.m.

In Response To: PAX Day 1 *Probably Long*IMG* (Devin Olsen)


At the people I've seen posting on various forums, YT videos, and GAF.. I love the people that think it was a dodge or some sort of conspiracy that the BR was removed.

I'll just pull some GAF posts I saw as examples - I'm not singling the GAF thread out in particular, but you can't direct link YT comments yet, so this will have to do. And also the GAF forum mods are on top of spoilers so it's like one of the safe 10 forums I still visit (not even risking mlg's site for now)

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=17445298&postcount=5822

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=17446371&postcount=5834

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=17447147&postcount=5850

Basically, I guess Bungie couldn't win. If he had just said "we weren't going to use it anymore", people would have bitched about them "not caring". And for providing multiple reasons, including the technical reason, and I see posts where people insinuate Bungie is lying or some other conspiracy-theory type idea.

Besides the fact that

1) What would be the point to Bungie telling a lie? It's their game, they make it the way they want to.

2) Weapons have a very real impact on memory and processing usage.

So per his explanation:

a) The BR's role was split into the new SMG and new pistol.
b) the Carbine was already in the game.
c) So with the SMG and pistol filling the BR's role, and we already have a BR-type weapon in the game with the Carbine... there's no reason to have the BR.
d) So you remove a weapon (which are resource intensive) so you can have more detail in the enviroment. Sounds good to me.

As someone who has made and finished two games, weapons are quite some hogs. They're somewhat unique because you have to store in RAM both the first person view model AND the third person view model at all times. Add in their animations, sounds, and so on, and you see why cutting a weapon saves memory.

So by cutting out a weapon, the BR, you can put all that RAM and so on into other stuff.

But I guess these same people probably think Bungie didn't have all weapons on all maps so you could start with all of them just to spite people (like I've seen certain other people say). People that have not made games tend to not realize that you really do have to worry about memory and cpu usage, and that everything has to be balanced (More players = less graphics fidelity for the map/graphics, etc) to work with each other.

So all in all, whoever at Bungie that answered that question - thank you, because I love to hear the technical reasons behind certain decisions because it helps me avoid the same pitfalls in my own game development. It really sucks that I couldn't make it to PAX this year, I would have liked to ask a question about something that can't be found with google..

Message Index



Replies:

PAX Day 1 *Probably Long*IMG*Devin Olsen 9/5/09 3:49 a.m.
     Re: PAX Day 1 *Probably Long*IMG*Pete Cooper 9/5/09 4:18 a.m.
           Re: PAX Day 1 *Probably Long*IMG*Louis Wu 9/5/09 5:22 a.m.
                 Re: PAX Day 1 *Probably Long*IMG*Pete Cooper 9/5/09 5:24 a.m.
                       Re: PAX Day 1 *Probably Long*IMG*John_117 9/5/09 8:55 a.m.
     Double Downs are only in OmahaFyreWulff 9/5/09 5:31 a.m.
           Re: Double Downs are only in OmahaLouis Wu 9/5/09 5:49 a.m.
                 Re: Double Downs are only in OmahaPete Cooper 9/5/09 5:54 a.m.
                 Re: Double Downs are only in OmahaFyreWulff 9/5/09 6:01 a.m.
                 Re: Double Downs are only in OmahaAnton P. Nym (aka Steve) 9/5/09 8:07 a.m.
           Re: Double Downs are only in OmahaCrab 9/5/09 1:21 p.m.
     Re: PAX Day 1 -- image use?davidfuchs 9/5/09 2:58 p.m.
           Re: PAX Day 1 -- image use?devin olsen 9/5/09 3:08 p.m.
                 Re: PAX Day 1 -- image use?davidfuchs 9/7/09 2:37 p.m.
     Re: PAX Day 1 *Probably Long*IMG*General Vagueness 9/5/09 3:48 p.m.
           Re: PAX Day 1 *Probably Long*IMG*Devin olsen 9/5/09 4:21 p.m.
                 Re: PAX Day 1 *Probably Long*IMG*MoltenSlowa 9/5/09 4:31 p.m.
                 Re: PAX Day 1 *Probably Long*IMG*General Vagueness 9/5/09 5:33 p.m.
     Also lollers at the BR QuestionFyreWulff 9/5/09 11:33 p.m.
     OMG LOL!!!chris101b 9/6/09 1:35 a.m.



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