Bungie Weekly Update/12-08-00

This is the Bungie Weekly Update for December 08, 2000, written by Matt Soell.

Bungie Update
Another fansite joins the elite circle of hosts for my weekly Halo update. Someday Soon we'll all look back on these days and think Remember when those weekly Halo updates were the best Halo info the fansites were getting? Things are MUCH cooler now.

So what's new and interesting this week?


 * Most of this week's programming involved fixes and improvements to the stuff I mentioned in the last update. Jason's still working on the AI. Chucky promises me more exciting programming news soon.
 * We hired our tools programmer. His name is Mat. Yes, just one T. This makes three of us, so wee tied with the Pauls (Bertone, Russel, and Clift) and just one behind the Chris clan (Barrett, Butcher, Hughes and Lee).
 * The art team worked out a long-term milestone schedule, dividing the big huge tasks into tiny little ones. According to Marcus, the main benefit to this is increased morale: tasks that were daunting before seem possible now.
 * Right now our primary goal is a mission that is playable start to finish. Marcus showed me one of the outdoor structures he's working on for this mission, as well as the general environment around it. His words: Beach to drive around on, cliffs to marvel at.
 * Stephen is working on animations for the AI: surprise, sleep, suspicious sneaking around, that sort of thing. He's also begun the walking animation for a new (non-human) character.
 * Rob showed me the latest iteration of the handgun (the sixth, to be exact), which is still a work in progress but quite groovy nonetheless, especially with the extended magazine. He explained how the left side of the gun will have a little divot in the side so you could actually see if there's a bullet in the chamber if you looked at it up close. As he put it, We're relying way less on textures and much more on geometry. The number of polys and vertices for each weapon is pretty close to the poly/vertex counts for the characters.
 * We should have some nifty idle animations involving the weaponry. For example, if you stand around long enough and you happen to be holding the handgun, you might idly tighten the nuts that clamp the sight to the barrel. Attention to detail.
 * One of the things we're talking about right now is melee attacks for all weapons. Not sure if it's going to happen, but we'd love to read some of your thoughts on the topic so feel free to discuss on the forum of your choice.
 * Oh, and the poly counts for some of our characters just doubled.