Bungie Weekly Update/08-31-01

This is the Bungie Weekly Update for August 31, 2001, written by Matt Soell.

Bungie Update
Folks, I gotta be honest with you: I am rapidly running out of Halo Update material. Not because nothing is happening - in fact too much is happening - but everything we're working on is either a fix for existing content or new stuff (mostly cinematics) that I can't discuss without ruining a couple key surprises. In the very near future we're going to cross that magical line in the sand where we stop adding new stuff and concentrate entirely on bug-fixing and playtesting. At that point there won't be much at all for me to say in these Halo Updates...and that's GOOD because that's when the REAL interesting stuff will begin.

Here's what I can tell you this week:


 * We're balancing difficulty levels, trying to find that equilibrium between a little too easy and a little too hard - which is sometimes a hard call to make. Jason Jones has been spotted in five to ten-minute battles with individual Elites while using the tougher difficulty settings.
 * We've changed the Ghost physics in a way that makes it much more fun for the player to fly and less easy for the AI to accidentally obliterate themselves.
 * The AI units have a new vision system; now it's harder for them to catch sight of you when you're being sneaky.
 * Multiplayer is much more stable than it used to be. Testers can play for hours at a time - as all Halo players must.
 * Adrian devised a lovely visual gravy effect to replace the load progress bar. Not much point in seeing a bar since you won't have much time to look at it - thanks to our mad caching skillz, load times are shorter than ever.