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Why Halo 2 Was Delayed - updated

Beertiger

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Beertiger

Beertiger

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The environment artists comprise my favorite area at Bungie. Why? Because they speak in a language I can completely understand. "Look Frank, a building is kind of like a square with holes in it so people can walk in and out." Sure, they're patronizing me, and even making fun of my accent, but they still do cool stuff. Why just this morning I was admiring a building on an Earth level when I noticed that there was ivy hanging from it. It wasn't hanging there last week, and here it was, green and leafy. One of the artists pointed out something neat too the ivy only hangs on one side of the street, the shady side. That's because ivy won't grow in ferocious, constant sunlight, which is just one of those details that makes a place feel more real. Actually the shadows on one side of the street make for a compelling gameplay experience too, since your foes dart in and out of the shade, making themselves more difficult targets. Jerks!

And that's just one example. The ivy in this case is just one of the things that are placed carefully in the world to make it more "organic," like shrubs and grass and plants and stuff. The ivy is actually a BSP (Binary Separation Plane) with an alpha channel to make the gaps between the leaves transparent, but not all decorators will use this technique, some will be 2D sprites, some shader effects and others simply textures. Basically whatever looks best in any given circumstance, or causes the least impact on processor overhead.

The levels shown featured very nice lightmaps, but look even more impressive with the addition of dynamic lights, everything that's turned on improves the big picture.

Wow talk about attention to detail. It seems like they are going around trying to make this the best game ever.

I wonder if people would've noticed had the put ivy where ever they liked. i'm glad they delayed the game to get the positioning of the ivy right though.

here's the rest

Animation!

The Animators have been going through lots of different animations, tweaking, tuning and adjusting some for purely aesthetic reasons and some tied directly to gameplay. The short struggle that happens during vehicle boarding is just such an example. It has to be clear what's going on, and the animation has to be tied in directly with the pace of the game. All Bungie animations are hand-animated, and that's a time-consuming process. Motion capture has its advantages and disadvantages, but hand-animated stuff gives Bungie animators much more control over the process, and motion capture doesn't help when your character is a three foot alien with back problems.

They've also been fiddling around with the way Chief holds the flag. That's right, the flag is being improved! The animation for his run while clutching the flag is being tuned, and the way he grasps it is definitely improved from Halo. Perhaps more interestingly (not that the gripping's not, wellgripping) the flag has improved cloth physics! Har, not exactly mind-blowing, but since you're going to see an awful lot of the flags in CTF, they may as well look cool, right?

One of last week's tasks the dual wielding animation is now getting close to perfect. The change we mentioned in a previous update, to show more sky or ground, depending on where you're pointing, is complete, now the guys are tightening up his arm movements. I have to be honest; it looked pretty much perfect to me already. He also, I should point out, throws grenades in a much more convincing way this time around.

Testing!

Harold and the test teams he heads up both Halo 2 test AND the new Bungie.net re-launch test teams, have been attacking bugs on both the game and the site. The test team basically checks both the game and the site for bugs, checks those bug into a system called Product Studio and passes them on to the appropriate person to get it fixed. A bug can be anything from a typo to a hard crash, and the testing process is really the blood of the production cycle. Without hours and hours (literally man-years) of testing, nothing could ever really get fixed. Wrangling that process is an epic task of cat-herding proportions.

Other Stuff!

Jaime has been working on enemy AI, tuning the aggressiveness primarily to make them melee-attack a little more. My efforts to prevent this fell on deaf ears. I'm scared of Elites you see, ever since that one jumped out at me on Truth and Reconciliation. I nearly filled my pants

Jaime is also working with the team on honing weapons, including the Battle Rifle and the Rocket Launcher, the latter of which has been improved upon in a number of significant, but non-jarring ways. Basically you should enjoy using it more, without knowing exactly why. The Battle Rifle is of course brand new, so you'll probably just enjoy the experience. Right now it's my second favorite weapon. Can't say what my favorite is. But I can tell you that the Battle Rifle makes one of the best noises ever. Brap!! Blapp! Blam!!!

Sound!

No sign of Marty, probably drunk, but Jay let rip with some cool new stuff. The cinematic dialogs have all been recorded and the actors' voices are being implemented and processed into the engine. But cooler yet, the sound dept. are working on a new way of doing surface/object interactions. In the first game the noise of tires on gravel was one sound in Halo 2, it is, appropriately enough, two sounds. One is the tires and one is the gravel. And they interact. The result is not only better sounding, but technically more realistic. A similar thing is happening with DSP effects for noises. Picture the scene you're in a massive pitched battle and you quickly duck into a building the sound of the continuing battle outside, is processed correctly so that your building muffles it. Not just turning down the volume, but adjusting the acoustics on the fly so that the shift is realistic. The noise of an ongoing battle outside is really atmospheric, instead of just quieter.

So in conclusion and why Halo 2 will be the best game ever

Ivy grows on the correct side of the building

The flag cloth has much better animation

The gravel and tire sounds are seperate now not just one sound effect for driving on gravel.

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Beertiger

Beertiger

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it's not really hype is it, Bungie do this every week. They just let you know how development on the game is going.

i can't see how telling you what they've done in the week is hype. They not exactly like those people who go around saying the Killzone is a Halo killer.

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DJ Sack

DJ Sack

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It is all hype, seeing ivy on a lit wall would not make me think 'This game is utter crap, cant even get the ivy right pffff' Its all details 99.9999999% of people would not even notice or even care about. Personally if im shooting something i am not admiring the scenery and little touches like that just go unnoticed to me and the rest of the population.

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Beertiger

Beertiger

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really? so when people talk about what they're doing in the dev forum they are hyping up their own product, well ok they are in a basic sense but they are also just letting people know what's going on.

personally those little details mean everything to making a natural feeling game world. can't wait to play it and see if it works but it obviously shows just how much they care about the game.

go back and play an uncaring EA game.

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scottcr

scottcr

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really? so when people talk about what they're doing in the dev forum they are hyping up their own product, well ok they are in a basic sense but they are also just letting people know what's going on.

personally those little details mean everything to making a natural feeling game world. can't wait to play it and see if it works but it obviously shows just how much they care about the game.

go back and play an uncaring EA game.

sounds nice...

but didn't Metroid Prime have similar extreme levels of detail. I remember going to the Chozo ruins for the first time and was absoloutely blown away with the attention to detail... Never has my flabber been so ghasted.

Looking forward to H2.

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DJ Sack

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Actually EA put a lot of effort into their graphics and their looks so there is really no need to cuss them. I dont see how little details make the world more natural, i never ever see ivy on buildings unless its some sort of garden or something.

Its the way they mentioned it, if they said 'we've even doing little things like putting ivy on the walls in the shade to add to the atmosphere' that'd be fine, but he then goes on to mention how they are using every super duper technique to make it look nice. He doesnt even mention any of the game play, you can make a game look as nice as possible, but if it plays like crud, whats the point. You cant say Gameplay without Game, If games were about graphics they's be called Graps or something.

But as i said if im shooting people down im not gona care about tiny bits of scenery, and some scenery while looking nice can often result in a distracting enviroment.

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Beertiger

Beertiger

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few FPS games can touch Metroid Prime artistically. I mean that game is gorgeous in every respect. i'm just glad Bungie are taking care designing the levels. Been playing Halo again (about the 10th time through) and i finally see what the problem people have with the game.

So yeah Metroid Prime, i guess the second one will be unsurpassable too.

The more immersive and and atmospheric they make the game the more peoples jaws are going to drop.

The thing is you don't notice it until you've played it and then gone back to a lesser game. I can't play many FPS just because of Halo, Far Cry and the rest of the bunch just because they do everything so well.

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Sng

Sng

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I'm glad they delayed the game over a year so the ivy grows correctly and the flags look nice... :P

From what I heard, Halo 2 was delayed cos MS were really not happy with the MP side of things. Whether or not this had anything to do with Ed Fries leaving I don't know. But the delay is due to the MP aspect, and I'm sure on that!

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Liquid Myth

Liquid Myth

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really? so when people talk about what they're doing in the dev forum they are hyping up their own product, well ok they are in a basic sense but they are also just letting people know what's going on.

personally those little details mean everything to making a natural feeling game world. can't wait to play it and see if it works but it obviously shows just how much they care about the game.

go back and play an uncaring EA game.

I don't know about you, but I'd personally feel so much better with myself if I could find these little touches out for myself (although the ivy thing is a bit technical) instead of saying, "Yeah, the game will be a bit late, but that's because we're adding these cool little things that you're meant to find yourself!". I could live better with vague hints like "technical stuff" or "we've been pissing about on the Eyetoy".

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DJ Sack

DJ Sack

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Does he need to? It's Halo 2 fer chrissakes!

I think this is just a case of Bungie telling people what they want to hear. I know I can't wait...

Yes as id like to play a game, rather than have a panning camera go around all these worlds...ala MGS2 :P

It May be Halo 2, but you never know they could so easily mess it up, how many games have been said to be the next coming of jesus and then found in the bargin bin 2 weeks later as they are utter crap.

Not saying Halo 2 will be, but id like to know a little more about how it plays rather than a bit of ivy which does nothing to enhance the gameplay at all.

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dan_tm

dan_tm

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Its all details 99.9999999% of people would not even notice or even care about.

Little touches like that just go unnoticed to me and the rest of the population.

Actually I don't think they do.

99.9999999% of people on here seem to dissagree with you.

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Wiper

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Yes as id like to play a game, rather than have a panning camera go around all these worlds...ala MGS2 ;)

It May be Halo 2, but you never know they could so easily mess it up, how many games have been said to be the next coming of jesus and then found in the bargin bin 2 weeks later as they are utter crap.

Not saying Halo 2 will be, but id like to know a little more about how it plays rather than a bit of ivy which does nothing to enhance the gameplay at all.

Aye, but isn't this just a post of updates from Bungie? I mean, if this was a full preview I'd understand your grievance, but their hardly going to talk about gameplay when they haven't updated it are they? :P

"Well, nothing's fundamentally changed in the way the game plays, but we'll tell you all about it anyway"? I think not :P

Oh, and I'm with YaWdiB on this one - while ivy may not be the most exciting thing in the world, it is often the small things that maketh the game - the more stuff like that you have, the more of an overall effect it can have on the player - without them necessarily realising it. Attention to detail is god ^_^

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DJ Sack

DJ Sack

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But i dont care about the ivy and how they are using sprites and texture's (ooo errr!) i want to know about new gameplay, like how he mentioned the shadows playing a more important role in gameplay. Besides i was agreeing to a post before its all just hype.

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dan_tm

dan_tm

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The gameplay is probably complete. Probably 99% of the entire game is complete. They are just adding these little touches now it is virtually finished.

For all we know this could have already got the best gameplay ever, so why would they want to update it, if that was possible?

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