Bungie Weekly Update/12-01-00

This is the Bungie Weekly Update for December 1, 2000, written by Matt Soell.

Bungie Update
Whee! Back to the wild woolly world of weekly Halo updates. At least until I scuttle back to Chicago for the end-of-year holidays. :)


 * ason, Chucky, Bernie and The Other Matt kept themselves busy over the holidays. Point lights. Transparent model shaders. New input code. A revised tag editor. More AI work. A new, more intelligent data structure for the models. Lightmaps work on curved surfaces.
 * Chucky was rather busy when I tried to plumb his brain for news tidbits this week, but he gave me a quick-n-dirty State Of Halo Rendering Address: In the last two weeks, the rewritten Halo engine finally caught up to the old version in terms of rendering ability. Then we surpassed it. Work in the coming weeks will explore just how far we can push the graphical envelope.
 * The Halo team now holds a mission brainstorming meeting every Wednesday morning. This is a little different than the way we've done it in the past and according to John it's working very well. Rather than one or two people deciding how a given level will work, the entire team has an opportunity to think it over and provide some input.
 * One of the missions we're sketching out right now involves a volcano and something I can only refer to as heavy machinery. :)