Editing Development of Halo: Combat Evolved
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The first level developed for the game was B30 - The Silent Cartographer. B30 began as a test map for the developers at Bungie to test weapons, models, textures, effects and other aspects of development on.{{Ref/Reuse|AOH79}} This terrain was rebuilt several times over the course of development,{{Ref/Reuse|commentary}} and was later used for early demonstrations of the game. This mission was the one in which the Forerunner art style was truly developed by artist Paul Russel.{{Ref/Reuse|AOH80}} The mission's original objective was to feature the player hunting down and assassinating a Covenant [[Prophet]] who was trying to find the Silent Cartographer, an idea later reused in ''Halo 2''. The swaying of the dropship in the mission's intro was done just to "look cool", while the marine sat opposite the player in the Pelican in the intro sequence would originally stare forward at the player rather than look out of the drop bay. A level was originally supposed to take place between The Silent Cartographer and the following level "[[Assault on the Control Room]]", but the level was cut and instead replaced by the cutscene of the Pelican descending into the ring's depths through the structure in the center of the Silent Cartographer island. The Pelican did not actually fit inside the structure, and the cutscene never shows the Pelican going through the hole but instead clips between the Pelican on either side to give the illusion of doing so. Despite this, Assault on the Control Room retains the name B40. The decision was made to send the Pelican underground due to lack of matte painting resources available to show the ship flying from a tropical island to a snowy canyon.{{Ref/Reuse|commentary}} | The first level developed for the game was B30 - The Silent Cartographer. B30 began as a test map for the developers at Bungie to test weapons, models, textures, effects and other aspects of development on.{{Ref/Reuse|AOH79}} This terrain was rebuilt several times over the course of development,{{Ref/Reuse|commentary}} and was later used for early demonstrations of the game. This mission was the one in which the Forerunner art style was truly developed by artist Paul Russel.{{Ref/Reuse|AOH80}} The mission's original objective was to feature the player hunting down and assassinating a Covenant [[Prophet]] who was trying to find the Silent Cartographer, an idea later reused in ''Halo 2''. The swaying of the dropship in the mission's intro was done just to "look cool", while the marine sat opposite the player in the Pelican in the intro sequence would originally stare forward at the player rather than look out of the drop bay. A level was originally supposed to take place between The Silent Cartographer and the following level "[[Assault on the Control Room]]", but the level was cut and instead replaced by the cutscene of the Pelican descending into the ring's depths through the structure in the center of the Silent Cartographer island. The Pelican did not actually fit inside the structure, and the cutscene never shows the Pelican going through the hole but instead clips between the Pelican on either side to give the illusion of doing so. Despite this, Assault on the Control Room retains the name B40. The decision was made to send the Pelican underground due to lack of matte painting resources available to show the ship flying from a tropical island to a snowy canyon.{{Ref/Reuse|commentary}} | ||
Another level was cut, that would have served to explain the function of Installation 04 and its status as a weapon. However, this level was cut and the necessary information condensed into a single expository cutscene when John-117 rescues Captain Keyes on the level [[The Truth and Reconciliation]]. This choice was later joked about, with Joseph Staten nicknaming the captain "Captain Exposition" because of the writing in the cutscene. After Keyes picked up a Needler, there was a bug in which Keyes would do the "taunt" animation - in which he would fire the weapon into an enemy corpse repeatedly. Due to the Needler's supercombine functionality, the projectiles would explode and kill the captain, failing the mission. The final cutscene of the level was one of the final cutscenes created, and was done in a short amount of time. Because of this, the final cutscene has little in the way of character animation and doesn't show Keyes' [[ | Another level was cut, that would have served to explain the function of Installation 04 and its status as a weapon. However, this level was cut and the necessary information condensed into a single expository cutscene when John-117 rescues Captain Keyes on the level [[The Truth and Reconciliation]]. This choice was later joked about, with Joseph Staten nicknaming the captain "Captain Exposition" because of the writing in the cutscene. After Keyes picked up a Needler, there was a bug in which Keyes would do the "taunt" animation - in which he would fire the weapon into an enemy corpse repeatedly. Due to the Needler's supercombine functionality, the projectiles would explode and kill the captain, failing the mission. The final cutscene of the level was one of the final cutscenes created, and was done in a short amount of time. Because of this, the final cutscene has little in the way of character animation and doesn't show Keyes' [[Type-25 Spirit|Spirit]] dropship splattering the Hunters on-camera, as the Hunters' collision would glitch and not look good. A further level was cut later in the game, resulting in the part of [[Two Betrayals]] where the player must walk into the [[phase pulse generator]] to destroy it.{{Ref/Reuse|commentary}} | ||
Much of the cutscene work was done by Joseph Staten. A common technique was to "pilot" any given character by taking control of the actor and moving it around like a player, with the system recording his inputs and simply playing them back in-real time during the cutscene. This caused issues in the cutscenes for the level 343 Guilty Spark, in the flashback cutscene showing the marines entering the facility. During the development of the level, Staten manually piloted every marine NPC, but during the level's art pass, a bush was placed in the way of one of the marines and the camera, resulting in the camera clipping through the bush in the final game. Because of this method of recording cutscenes, if there was bad input lag on the mouse the playback animation has a tendency to look jittery - noticeable with Master Chief's walking animation in the final cutscene of Assault on the Control Room. The use of "vignettes" such as the cutscene in the level [[Halo (Halo: Combat Evolved level)|Halo]] in which the light bridge is activated came about fairly late in development.{{Ref/Reuse|commentary}} | Much of the cutscene work was done by Joseph Staten. A common technique was to "pilot" any given character by taking control of the actor and moving it around like a player, with the system recording his inputs and simply playing them back in-real time during the cutscene. This caused issues in the cutscenes for the level 343 Guilty Spark, in the flashback cutscene showing the marines entering the facility. During the development of the level, Staten manually piloted every marine NPC, but during the level's art pass, a bush was placed in the way of one of the marines and the camera, resulting in the camera clipping through the bush in the final game. Because of this method of recording cutscenes, if there was bad input lag on the mouse the playback animation has a tendency to look jittery - noticeable with Master Chief's walking animation in the final cutscene of Assault on the Control Room. The use of "vignettes" such as the cutscene in the level [[Halo (Halo: Combat Evolved level)|Halo]] in which the light bridge is activated came about fairly late in development.{{Ref/Reuse|commentary}} | ||
