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Frankie's Bungie Updates

Friday, November 5, 2004 (TeamXbox)

The Last Update!!!

This really is the last Halo 2 Weekly Update ever. Starting next week, three important things will happen. One, Halo 2 will come out. Two, the former weekly updates will become something quite different. But still weekly. And three, there will be a lot of interesting stuff on this website that might even distract you from reading the updates. You can see some of it right now by clicking on our all-new stats page.

• Now, the stats you're seeing right now are kinda placeholder. The games you're seeing and Gamertags are largely test cases, but we've been playing at home against other Bungie folks, so a lot of the games are legit. Come next week, however, we're going to add a whole new layer to this that will literally make your face fly off and stick to the ceiling.
  
  The stats that ARE there are pretty cool though. Feel free to explore them, and don't worry too much if they disappear from time to time this weekend. We're going to reset them before the real games start on the 9th (Yes Kiwis, that means your stats will be counted early).
  
  
• Remember to go pick a Clan on the 9th. Lots of them will be taken very quickly. We've picked a couple early, but most everything will be available. And you can only have one Clan, so take care of it and make it a thing of awesome power and beauty.
  
  
• The reviews are all coming out, and some of you have seen the scores, so you know we're pretty stoked. We worked incredibly hard on the game and we think we got it right. We finally got our own retail builds of the game (long after French pirates!) and we've been playing at home every night – ostensibly to gather test data – but really to kick ass and get our asses kicked. We are, at the end of the day, fanboys.
  
  
• Next week, you're going to have a LOT of questions. We are expecting literally DOZENS of people to be online playing Halo 2. We're sure all 24-ish of them will have questions. We're going to be updating a lot of the site content – as well as adding aforementioned surprises and try to keep Halo 2 an organic, growing experience. If you don't normally visit Bungie.net, but you are planning to play on Live, you would do well to sign up and join Bungie.net – since it don't cost nothin' and there will be some very specific benefits regarding your Xbox Live functionality. You'll be able to see your stats, track friends, build a Clan, all that kind of stuff. But you can't do that unless you sign in. So do it.
  
  
• It's been a long time. I've been here to witness just a fraction of it. These men and women have always done everything they could to make Halo 2 the best game it could be. They have worked incredible hours and made huge sacrifices. Their families too have shared all that burden and to them and theirs I say thank you. The game is a wonderful achievement and a thing to be proud of.
  
  
• On the street last night, as rain started to fall on a crisp fall evening, a surly businessman looked at my Halo 2 T-Shirt and suddenly brightened. "Taking the day off on Tuesday, buddy?" he winked.
  
  Well, I actually won't be taking the day off, but maybe I'll see some of you on Monday at the launch FanFest event. And if I don't, I'll see you online. Probably in Lockout. You'll know me by the constant stabbing. STAB! Anyway, it's been an amazing year, and a privilege talking to you all. Thanks for your support and your kindness throughout.
  
  

And here's Mister Chief, frozen in Carbonite. Who knows what will become of him...

Friday, October 29, 2004 (Red vs Blue)

This was originally posted at Red vs Blue - we mirrored it (and so did HALOChat) for folks who couldn't register there because of free email accounts.

• Red Vs. Blue came in today. They're great. They're great in a way that works independently of Halo and Halo things. As a matter of fact, it troubles me sorely that they could up and leave us any time, and make their amusing pastiches of human foibles on some other game. Seriously. They're smart and talented enough to make Red Vs. Blue work on any game with pro and ant agonists. Conceivably, Red Vs. Blue could be done with Pac-Man and Blinky. Obviously it would be called Yellow Vs. Blue, but I digress.
  
  They came in for a preview of what they can expect for future generations of the series. Think about that. They now have access to emblems, custom colored armor and even Covenant models. All the new levels and features might give them something to think about - like an explanation for the fan in Zanzibar...
  
  Now, I can't pretend to know what they're going to do. All this new stuff might inspire them, or they might simply look for ways to hide it all. But what I do know, is that while they were positioning characters, working through script ideas and planning the next episode of the series, Cam, our marketing manager, blundered into their game and started sniping them. We somehow don't expect that footage to make it in there.
  
  
• Mat Noguchi is bored. Which is roughly equivalent to a wasp being angry, or a pitbull being bitey in terms of its overall effect on a household. He wanders over here, on the hour, every hour, to announce that he has nothing to do. Normally Mat is in charge of tools for the game, which means he's up to his elbows in audio, engine and graphics code. Mat, as it turns out has a mind exactly like his desk - filled to the brim with everything he comes across. One unexpected bonus on that front is his knowledge of cool Halo 2 secrets. He showed us something on Old Mombassa that made us pee, just a little bit.
  
  Mat, to sate his thirst for distraction from the boredom of an empty office, is going to be answering your questions either today, or early next week. That should be interesting.
  
  
• Brian and I are still working on marketing and PR support. All those print ads, TV campaigns and magazine articles need information, and we're the gatekeepers for a lot of that. Which means that every time we check our email, somebody wants a 600 word description of something. Or a render. Or our blood plasma. And we give, generously.
  
  We're also working on a heavy content schedule for the launch of the game. When a bunch of our online stat and clan features go live, we're expecting heavy traffic to the site and we want to be prepared. There are some neat features in stats - including one (and this could change before launch, guys) that lets you see what emblem you were wearing when your individual stats were recorded. Cool and useful.
  
  
• Piracy and spoilers continue somewhat abated. Most players are either hiding from spoilers or doing their best to avoid accidentally seeing stuff they don't want to. We've had a couple of readers point out that they think the TV spot is full of spoilers, but we can assure you, it's not. There's a lot of teasers in there, but nothing to ruin a plot twist or surprise. It was carefully vetted and edited with that in mind, so feel free to go through it frame by frame if you like.
  
  

Halloween is coming, so our office is decked out all spooky by Amanda and Alta, the only two real adults in the studio. Now, as some of you may know, I'm foreign, so while we had Halloween in Scotland, it was a very minor business and there was no trick or treating. Not when I was a nipper, anyway. So when the children of Seattle get to my door and I hand out hot steaming morsels of fun-size Haggis, eat it up and you'll grow up to be pale and angry, just like me.

So, in this, the penultimate update before the game launches, we appreciate the spookier side of Mister Chief, and happy birthday to Shishka.

Friday, October 22, 2004 (Subnova)

Short and Bittersweet

• I'm all alone. Sketch is out of the office today because he just got back from a New York press thing, and his dog's face had swelled up to the size of a soccer ball. Meanwhile, Halo 2 is all done, and our work continues apace on the new features for the website, and they are COOL. Zach, Doug, Roger and the rest of the web and web test guys (currently the only employees here on a regular basis) have been slaving away over hot keyboards trying to implement not just detailed stats and clan stuff, but some genuine surprises.
  
  
• With any luck, Halo 2 on Live and Bungie.net will become like peanut butter and jelly. Like cookies and cream. Like Ben and Jerry. I feel suddenly very hungry...
  
  
• The countdown to launch is excruciating. Now even the staff (who could technically play whenever they want) are jonesing to get their hands on the finished game. There's a difference between playing at the stark, dull confines of your desk and sitting in the comfort of your own home, screaming abuse at the TV while some stranger pumps SMG rounds into your already shattered corpse. So, in a very real sense, we know exactly what you're going through.
  
  
• The PR department at MS made that 1.5 million preorders announcement earlier this week, and I have to tell you, that feels just a little bit unreal. Like they're talking about someone else's game. We're massively superstitious and as a rule, kinda pessimistic. We're always trying to keep our heads down and just do our best, but you hear numbers like that, and it's suddenly a lot of pressure! Sales figures are for other people to worry about — right now, we're much more concerned that people genuinely enjoy the game.
  
  
• Cam just told me that the TV campaign starts next week but he won't tell me (or doesn't know) what channels, times and dates there are. So I guess I'll just have to suck it up and watch America's Top Model and Dawson's Creek in the vain hopes of catching the (rad) 30 second and 60 second TV spots. There's something simultaneously cool and lame about seeing a commercial for a game or movie you like. I guess at heart I'm a fanboy.
  
  The ads will run globally, starting this week and next, and we've also been hammering away on a couple of TV shows for the launch period. They should be pretty cool. Lucky viewers will get to see how tall, handsome and luxuriantly coiffed I am. Think Tom Cruise with the brutal charisma of Sonny Chiba. Totally hot. We had to play a lot of multiplayer, record tons of cool footage and you'd be surprised how easy it is to convince the team to get online for a few taped games...
  
  
• Butcher came and watched us playing today. He said he couldn't even look at my screen because of my play style. He noted that I can watch the screen or the motion tracker, but not both simultaneously. It's pretty depressing to have your entire gameplay skillz pwned by a Halo 2 lead.
  
  

Boll, who is actually a talented artist, made this sad, poignant guest rendering of Mister Chief, who realizes, that on November 9th, when people have their Halo 2, he will no longer be needed. And so he will fade away....

Friday, October 15, 2004 (R.net)

You ever have one of those weeks? You know, the kind of week where you try to start your car, and it explodes in your face because the mob wired it to blow up and hurl your broken body across the street and through the plate glass window of the local acid factory? Well that was kinda like my week this week, but with the following metaphorical caveat — my broken, glass filled, acid-ruined body became a perfect fertile bed for a glorious, colorful display of flowers.

What is Frankie going on about this time? The horrible leak of the French PAL build of the game, and the impressive, wonderful, heartening reaction from our fans — who have been closing forum threads, slapping posters on the wrists and even reporting folks who broke the law. Community sites are all over it, and the big sites have been helping too, so a HUGE thanks to all of you guys.

Whoever did this is a criminal, plain and simple, but this isn't a pulpit from which to spew a sermon. Suffice it to say that stealing a traceable, Live Aware video game isn't the smartest thing you could do. But the way our community rallied to our support yesterday and the day before was incredibly gratifying. And a note to otherwise regular folks who might be tempted to download a copy — don't. It's really not worth the risk. Fines of up to $100,000 and all sorts of other legal remedies can be assessed against even individual downloaders.

You know, we're not Metallica. The cost of this is emotional, not fiscal (jerks would just hack and pirate the game on Nov 9th anyway). Bungie is mostly concerned that this event is going to ruin the plot of the game for the 99.9999999999% of fans who buy the game on November 9th. As you know, we've spent three tortuous years preventing story leaks, hoarding screenshots — not because we want to — but because they'll reveal twists and surprises. Now a few jerks have ruined that for everyone. It's one thing to sneakily pirate software — quite another to yell spoilers from the rooftops. As Napoleon Dynamite would say, "IDIOTS!"

Anyway, I'm making myself vomit with my combination of preachy outrage and quilted two-ply, absorbent love. Back to the matter at hand — the Bungie locomotive. Let's call it more of a monorail right now, since about 80% of the office is in Hawaii (if they're smart) or in Rainhole, Alaska (if they're married).

• This week was another out of the office week. I accompanied ten copies of Halo 2 to San Francisco so that they could be reviewed over a period of nearly a week by gathered luminaries from various gaming, entertainment and technology publications from all over the US.
  
  Everyone who played seemed to have a good time. Everyone had LOTS of questions about plot twists, new characters etc. I had to help out once or twice when people got stuck, but mostly it was eerily quiet, as the journos sat around in our special E3 chairs, with wireless surround headphones on, in front of 30 inch widescreen sets (CRT for maximum awesomeness and maximum Teamster complaints — since they weigh 200 pounds.) Actually, widescreen is a very cool feature, since the multiplayer game can then split vertically (for two) giving each player a great deal of real estate in co-op or MP.
  
  The event was long enough for people to finish the game on NORMAL difficulty level, but then go back and try HEROIC: "Wow, that was freakin' hard!" And then they tried LEGENDARY: "What is wrong with you people!?" We should note that nobody completed it on LEGENDARY or frankly, more than a couple of levels. LEGENDARY is a whole new sick twist on game difficulty. LEGENDARY includes bizarre stuff like perma-death for co-op players — meaning that you can't hopscotch like you can on other difficulty levels. Once a player dies on LEGENDARY, both players are hurled back to the last checkpoint. It's brutal. Also, that place where you encountered two grunts and a flowerpot on NORMAL? Well now they're Hunters, high-ranking, sword-carrying Elites, and they're all PMS-ing. Seriously, sticking your head around a corner on level two can get it shot clean off.
  
  Multiplayer was a blast. Like we'd hoped, players spent a long time exploring new modes, and enjoying them. As suspected, Swords is a huge favorite, but we (I was only HELPING!) played a lot of Assault, Territories and Juggernaut. Folks love NinjaNaut — Juggernaut where the Jug is invisible, has triple overshields and is the only player with a motion detector — you don't event WANT to find him!
  
  Nobody would tell us what they thought, so I guess we'll find out in a couple of weeks.
  
  Special props to Mister X — who, having only 24 hours to visit, played the game as a speed run, and pulled in the fastest completion time — though he missed about half the game doing that, and Mister Z — who, being hardcore as all getout, completed it on Heroic — and in a pretty respectable time. Epic, considering that was his first time playing.
  
  

Anyhoo, this week was short (game is done folks) and a downer, sorry, so here's a sad picture to make you feel even worse

Monday, October 11, 2004 (bungie.net)

The special video edition of the Bungie Weekly Update is here and ready for your viewing pleasure. Get a glimpse inside Bungie as Frankie and I give you a virtual tour of the Studio and chat with a few familiar faces along with way.

In light of Halo 2 going gold, we decided to up the ante for the latest weekly update. Mere text alone just wouldn't suffice for something of this magnitude. So, we've harnassed the power of Windows movie maker and our trusty handicam to bring you inside Bungie for a personal tour. You won't find any beautifully choreographed shots or well timed cuts and fades in this video. To be clear, Joe Staten had nothing to do with this. =) Instead you'll find me shakily walking around laughing in the background as Frankie unleashes some comedy gold. Hopefully you'll enjoy watching it as much as we enjoyed making it.

Currently we've only got Windows Media Player versions available for viewing - a big one and a small one. Our friends at HBO and Mythica.org are working on creating additional formats as well as setting a BitTorrent seed to faciliate easier downloads. We didn't want to make you wait a second longer so while they are busy doing that we're going to release what we've got for now.

You can download the following by right-clicking the link and choosing "save as" or you can simply click it and let it stream to your computer. And don't worry about the bandwidth, these are hosted deep in the depths of the Microsoft data center, well beyond our own servers.

Without further ado, here's the video:

Windows Media Hi-Res (640x480 90 MB)

Windows Media Low-Res (320x240 40 MB)

Saturday, October 9, 2004 (HBO)

What Gives?

This week, because our fingers hurt from typing obscenities, we decided to not only do the update in video form, but also to give you a chance to tour the (admittedly empty) Bungie offices, see who's still around now that most of the hard work is out of the way, and let you in on a few staff secrets. But something happened today, something so awful that we can't begin to describe it.

Wait a minute. That's a lie, I can totally describe it. So, we made this video update, with all this cool stuff in it, and then the Webmaster shows up. You know the Webmaster right? Drunk dude in Gorilla suit?

So we have two problems during our Halo 2 is Nearly Done Sushi Party. The first is that there's no sign of the Webmaster. The second is that the pressure on the keg is off. We have a fresh keg of Asahi Super Dry for the party, and there's no pressure. The beer is dribbling out like a bad prostate, and the crowd is getting angry. They want their beer. Then Sketch looks under the keg. Webmaster is there, passed out, having used a second copper line that he had wired into ours to steal all the booze. You have to admire his ingenuity, but he could have just asked...

Anyway, to cut a long story short, the Webmaster's state of disgrace means that you'll have noticed our site has been acting CRAZY all day long. As a result of the high craziness, we were unable to post our long-planned spectacular video update. So to make it up to you, here's a sneaky little screenshot from a new Multiplayer map called Ascension, which you can read all about (and see more exclusive shots of) in the latest issues of XBN and EGM magazines, both available to subscribers right now, or very, very soon.



As for the update. It's gonna be there on Monday. And it's gonna be HUGE. The biggest, most important update ever. Now, there. No pressure...

Friday, October 1, 2004 (bungie.net)

Septultimate: The Last Update

It isn't literally the last update of course, since there's lots to do and say between now and November 9th, but I can honestly say that there's no more updating on the progress of the game, since the game is done. Finished and shipped to a nebulous region known as RTC (Release To Certification) where it will be dumped from eight digital tapes onto a DVD and go through some final testing. Usually that's just a matter of routine, but we'll be watching our email carefully through next week...

• Roger handed off the tapes in LA yesterday, and as I write this, Alta, the Bungie Princess, is picking some discs up at Seatac Airport. And the office is eerily quiet – the calm broken intermittently by the rustle of a tumbleweed, or the rhythmic "barrrrrump" of a Parsons Sushi fart. Terrifying as it is to me, Parsons ordered Sushi for the celebratory lunch today.
  
  
• There are still many steps between now and the game's arrival on shelves, including the not-insignificant process of actually manufacturing MILLIONS of copies of the game.
  
  
• Yesterday was a total loss – everyone who was here simply sat around playing Halo 2 all day. There were some epic CTF battles, lots of Assault games and a ridiculously long fight between Artists and Programmers (thanks for booting me out of the game, Noguchi. You just made yourself a terrible enemy.) that ended with a programmer victory. Now I know why Noguchi (programmer) kicked me off the ART team. Actually he has a point. The only game style I can win regularly is Swords. As a matter of fact I have a Halo 2 profile on the Xbox called "Stabby," with sensitivity jacked up to like, a squillion.
  
  
• Folks here are starting to pick clan names for use here on Bungie.net, and we imagine that good ones will be snapped up pretty quick. I myself have dibs on Deathkillaz: "We Kill Death!" and "FrankieNauts: "Make with the stabbing!" although I am a spaz, and will probably forget to register them. You guys should seriously start thinking about clans now, since when the game goes live on November 9th, you'll want to pick a name right away.
  
  But don't just pick a clan and let it languish. If you create a clan, do it because you intend to use it, and enjoy the camaraderie that Clan membership brings. We have systems in place to deal with "dead" or unused Clans. Unpleasant, pointy systems that reek of rust and blood and horror. Think Silent Hill meets Autocomplete.
  
  
• Folks are taking off on vacation. Most people will take a week or two, some up to a month, but almost everyone will be back here in time for the game launch, to witness it first hand. Keep an eye out for roving Bungie employees at midnight madness events here in Washington. We wanna see the folks that love our game, up close, personal, and maybe just a little bit stalky. You'll know us by our lack of hygiene.
  
  
• Sketch and I are now fully swamped with PR and marketing stuff, as the wave of publicity and promotion enters its main phase. We'll be traveling to places good and bad, and basically being used, abused and spat out by the dainty PR ladies (yes, that includes you Shon).
  
  
• We're also entering our busiest phase of site development. The sadly neglected Bungie.net is about to emerge like a butterfly from a chrysalis as we work towards the full integration of Halo 2 and bungie.net. This, for example, is where you need to come to build, maintain and track your clan, although clan creation is built into the game.
  
  
• The guys have been playing enough variants of the myriad gametypes that I'm starting to settle on some favorites. I LOVE Assault, but only on certain maps, and I love Fiesta King of the Hill (we'll reveal what Fiesta means later) on ANY map. And Fiesta Crazy King is totally mental. But where on Halo one, my fave event was CTF on Blood Gulch – this time it's leaning towards Swords on Lockout. I can't get enough, although Sketch has a homemade variant he calls pistols that's pretty fun.
  
  
• As for single player, I am getting my ass handed to me by Legendary. I got to a spot, about ten minutes into the game normally, and have spent three hours trying to beat it. I am not kidding. I foolishly wasted some weapons early on, and now am paying the price. I may start again, take a deep breath and hit it more strategically. Or get someone to coop with me...maybe even Jen from PR or Alta, who actually learned how to play. Finally.
  
  

Next week's update will be kinda special, so keep an eye out for it, and in the meantime, we'll keep you posted with every granular detail of what to expect from Halo 2. And it wouldn't be an update without the Mister.

Friday, September 24, 2004 (Subnova)

This week's update comes from Frankie who is in Tokyo showing off Halo 2 at TGS. He has spotty internet access so I'm posting this for him. Enjoy!

BUNGIE WEEKLY UPDATE

• So Parsons comes up to me and he says, "Frankie, do you like kimchee?" But more on that later.
  
  
• Hao Chen and Roger Wolfson are working with the cinematics guys to build a predictive graphics routine that lessens or eliminates the occasional pop-in as the level of detail on objects increases during cinematics. This little engineering project addresses one of the weird vagaries of making your cinematics use the game engine. Since the camera viewpoints in cinematics can hop from point to point instantly, it's tough for the CPU and GPU to predict what areas of the geometry need to be drawn next.
  
  
• Marty and the guys are often pigeonholed as another part of the art team, creating something that can live independently of the game. Now elements of that are true, but the audio is usually, and particularly in Halo 2, part of the gameplay (as indeed are the graphics). Not only are the lines of dialog amusing, or atmospheric or scary, they're often essential to the mission at hand. When Sgt. Johnson yells, "They're coming in high," he is not simply letting his lips go flippety-flap, he is telling you that if you don't look up, that scary new alien is going to stab you in the face with whatever that is he's holding.
  
  The game sounds fantastic in stereo, and the stereo balance is such that you can use positional cues to figure out where trouble is coming from. But to fully enjoy the Halo 2 experience, I'd personally recommend using a Dolby 5.1 system, and totally crank it. As each day passes, the changes to the game builds are smaller and smaller. Invisible bug fixes, small elements of gameplay tuning and lots of new sound and music mixing are typical elements. Now, when Sgt. Johnson tells you to smile, he sounds like he's standing in front of you. Unless of course, you turn your back on the good sergeant.
  
  
• I have actually turned my back on the Studio for a week, to head out to the Tokyo Game Show, which takes place over three days at the sprawlingly futuristic Makuhari Messe, which is no more in Tokyo than Poughkeepsie is in Manhattan. Here, Japanese game developers will show off their wares to a completely suspecting public. Unlike the glitzy marketing hoo-hah of E3, this glitzy hoo-hah is open to the public. I loves me some public. We're there to show off Zanzibar again. I know! I know! Zanzibar! But it's the only thing we've got that's functional to show to the public. It's grating in a way because we have much more advanced stuff that just isn't set up for public consumption. Until November 9th, that is.
  
  That said, the first day of TGS went off swimmingly. The Japanese press and the few consumers who saw it today - Friday - seemed to love it. We did some interviews off of the show floor, and the Japanese press seemed to be very interested in storyline, plot, clans and the localized Japanese build (which is my favorite foreign language build). Interviews were a little embarrassing, because I had to act (truthfully) as a member of the Bungie family but bask (untruthfully) in the talent of the team around me. But everyone seemed to enjoy it.
  
  One slightly embarrassing moment was playing in a short multiplayer game on Lockout, against one of the Japanese Halo champions, who, having never played the map,. The rules or indeed, Halo 2 ever before, proceeded to own me, 25-20. We now refer to this situation as being, "j'pwned." And believe me, it'll happen to you guys every now and then when the game goes live.
  
  So this week has been frantic - late to bed, early to rise, rush hour Tokyo traffic, complete with white gloved attendants shoving is onto trains. But the funny thing is, back at the ranch, things are starting to cool down. Some people amazingly, even have nothing to do. That's only a few people, but gosh-darn it if that Halo 2 game ain't nearly finished...
  
  
• So, about that kimchee. If you're a regular reader of the updates, you'll know that within Parsons beats a tiny black heart, shriveled by eons of relentless evil, fluttering inside his ribcage like a frantic vampire bat. Well, nothing makes his heart swell (admittedly to a slightly less papery husk) than acts of purest evil. He tells me I may have to fly from Japan to Seoul, Korea, to get the game rated. It's midnight here in Tokyo, and I'm at his mercy. More news next week.
  
  
• "I'm bored," says one of our artists. Admittedly, even now, that statement is something of a rarity, but it's a fair generalization to say that this week, the pace for some has cooled considerably. Artists are slowing down. Animators are making slight adjustments to cinematics, and even engineers are easing back on the throttle, just a little bit, as the game goes from insane crunch mode, to dense bug-fixing and final testing.
  
  
• This new easy street, is not, of course, for everyone. Poor old Joe Staten is still hammering on cutscenes and cinematics, as last minute direction goes into making drama resonate and humor pop. Marty, Jay, C Paul (congrats, by the way on C Paul's new permanent full time position with Bungie audio) are swamped. All the music composed, all the dialog recorded, they must frantically balance out voices over music, reposition some 5.1 effects and generally apply a thick coat of aural paint to the house the rest of the team has built. Audio is always the last major chunk to go into the game, and requires delicate fine tuning. Last, but not least is the mighty Bungie test team. Fueled by an enormous appetite for ice cream and pizza Harold and his band of test brothers are using the latest technology to try and see what breaks so the team can fix it. In the final stretch the test team is kicking truckloads of ass and working nonstop to polish the game and make it the best it can be. Multiplayer system link games, online games, solo campaign and co-op sessions are underway and literally everyone on the team is helping out in one way or another. And keep in mind there are 8 different versions of the game - all needing thorough testing. It's a daunting task but luckily we're dealing with the best of the best...and free beer is a great motivator.
  
  

Until then, another trackpad-creation, and if I do say so myself, the worst Mister Chief ever. I'm kind of proud. And Lorraine will be pleased.

Friday, September 17, 2004 (bungie.net)

Bungie Weekly Update : Special Q&A Edition

For the latest Weekly Update we decided to mix things up a bit and try something a little different. With poor Frankie stranded in LA going on his fourth day without sleep and everyone else in the studio madly crunching away on the game, a traditional update looked very unlikely. So, instead of Frankie's usual insightful and witty commentary on the latest happenings within the studio, the forums were used to take questions from Bungie.net members. The flood gates were opened around noon and within 2 hours we had over 16 pages of questions. Then, for the next hour, Frankie and myself went into New Mombasa and did our best to answer as many questions as we could.

To make things easier to digest for those who weren't here to experience it live yesterday, I'm recapping the whole thing here in this handy top story. And, as an added bonus, I'm even going back and answering a few additional questions! (though obviously there are dozens and dozens that we can't or won't be able to answer just yet...)

So, without further ado, here's the special Q&A addition of the Bungie Weekly Update!

• Q: KPaul asks: Does Shishka still have that evil look in his eye despite the fact that he's working at his dream job?
  
  A: Shishka is as evil as ever.. in fact, he's got a new nickname courtesy of Frankie : Evil Lord British (look it up). Though his eyes are now mere narrow slits due to his lack of sleep and being overworked like a kid in a Cathy Lee sweatshop.
  
  
• Q: TRfeuer asks: uhmmm...exactly how many guns will be usable in multiplayer?
  
  A: We're not able to give a specific quantity for this, but if you do some research with all the coverage from the recent Beta, you'll see quite a few covered. (the latest reveals are things like the Covenant Carbine, the Covenant "Beam Rifle" (aka Cov Sniper Rifle), the Brute Shot, Magnum (pistol), etc..)
  
  
• Q: Sticky Fingaz asks: Can I block the plasma sword?
  
  A: No, you can dodge it, but there's no block button. Quick horizontal dodging is essential. And you need to remember that they can dart at you vertically very quickly.
  
  
• Q: ApoX asks: Is it still possible to do wacky stunts? Is it still a mind blowing game without Live?
  
  A: Yes and Yes! Frankie himself has already launched Warthogs way over the sea wall in Zanzibar and we've had fun blowing ghosts through the wheel. With explosives and a little creativity, let the good times roll.
  While there are a lot of new features designed for Xbox Live, rest assured that the team has spent a lot of time ensuring that Splitscreen and System Link games are better than ever. With up to 16 players on a system link, LAN parties will now be taken to whole new levels.
  
  
• Q: akba asks: Will the shade be featured in multiplayer for the Covenant? I've never heard or seen anything about it in a while, so I was just wondering if it's been dropped.
  
  A: A Covenant turret does still exist and yes, it is able to be used in multiplayer. Turret type can be configured via the variant customization settings, which now have a lot more options compared to Halo 1.
  
  
• Q: Smoke Dog 4 Ever asks: Will there be more than the Ghost in terms of flying vehicles?
  
  A: Nope, just the Banshee. The other flying vehicles are humongous and would basically carpet bomb the whole map at once. Which would be fun, we admit. But a little unfair.
  
  
• Q: doesitmatterno asks: Will there be the old version of the Assault Rifle in Halo 2?
  
  A: No, the assault rifle as it was known in Halo 1 will not be back in Halo 2. For high rate of fire shenanigans, the SMG is now the go-to gun. The Battle Rifle also rocks and is better suited for longer ranged opponents though the rate of fire is slower.
  
  
• Q: Hammurder asks: How exactly does the Guass Hog work? It seems to me like it would be overpowered, at least in multiplayer. Is the Wraith's cockpit open like the Scorpion or closed like in Halo 1? Can the Banshee fire it's weapon while boosting?
  
  A: 1. The Guass Hog is indeed powerful, though it requires precise aiming and doesn't have much of a damage radius. The designers put a lot of testing time into making the game as balanced as possible so you won't see something like the pistol from Halo 1 this time around.
  2. The Wraith has a closed cockpit, like in Halo 1, but it can be boarded still.
  3. The Banshee, like the Ghost, can not fire weapons while boosting. It's a trade off.
  
  
• Q: mr2t159 asks: Will the Banshee in Halo 2 have a plasma mortar like in the PC version?
  
  A: Yes, it will. As a matter of fact I just pulled off a nice barrel-roll and plasma mortar bomb in Campaign mode.
  
  
• Q: BadKarma asks: what's the word with the health system?
  
  A: You've probably read this already in the flood of beta coverage that's come out recently but I can clarify a little bit... There is no health meter like in Halo 1. You now only have a shield meter. As you take damage your shield meter will deteriorate until it runs out, then it flashes for a few seconds and you can only take a little more damage before you die. If you retreat and take cover, your shield will fully recharge within a couple of seconds.
  
  
• Q: MasterChief420 asks: 1) I know and understand (I think) the ranking system that Bungie is implementing, and I think its a good idea. However, will Halo2 still track indvidual stats, such as total kills/deaths, number of melee kills, or number of times I've been splattered under an enemy's 'Hog tires? Since Halo2 is using an 'experience point' kind of ranking system, tracking these kind of stats seperatly when playing with your buddies is possible, right?
  
  A: The post game carnage report has been beefed up from Halo 1 and will feature a lot of new tidbits of information about the game you just played. On Bungie.net, we will be tracking a variety of player and clan stats, but the final details aren't locked yet. The good news is that we can continue to roll out new goodies on Bungie.net even after the game has been released.
  
  
• Q: Battlecruiser asks: Can you import your own emblems for use on Halo 2?
  
  A: No, because the first emblem imported would be either a swear or boobs, neither of which would make it past muster. He also asked if players could high-five each other. Which I will not dignifty with an answer
  
  
• Q: mrbuchanan117 asks: why didn't u guys release a demo of Halo 2 to the public?... I could understand not releasing a single player demo, but I thought u guys should have released a multiplayer demo...
  
  A: There are a number of reasons why we didn't release a public demo for Halo 2. Like Halo 1, it's possible one will come out sometime after the game is released. Creating a fully self sustained polished demo takes a lot of work and is a big distraction from working on the core game itself. It would have been a big drain on our resources to split off and focus on a demo and frankly, it's not really necessary.
  
  
• Q: EastBeast asks: Wow, thanks Bungie! I'd like to know more about the Bungie team's background. Where did everyone go to college? What did they major in? Do you guys have days where you wake up and smile because people like us love you?
  
  A: Well, we have a big and diverse group of people that come from all over the place... Some people have posted some info about themselves on our bio pages here on Bungie.net and you'll also get a behind the scenes glimpse at the team in the upcoming Halo 2 bonus DVD.
  I wake up and smile every day because my job kicks ass. Right now people are exhausted and not too many smiles are going around. However, in a few weeks, we'll be all smiles. =)
  
  
• Q: Spartan287 asks: will old multiplayer maps like Blood Gulch still be in the game?
  
  A: We're not ready to commit to the full scope of the maps but the team has heard everyone's wishes and requests for some of the old favorites so who knows, it's definitely possible.
  
  
• Q: LooseShooter asks: Can you use all vehicles on all levels?
  
  A: No, like Halo, you can only use vehicles on levels to which they are suited. You cannot for example, use a Tank in Lockout. On levels where vehicles are enabled you will be able to customize them with any vehicles that we've tested to work well on that map. Just like Halo.
  
  
• Q: Rcop asks: How much better is the shield on Mark VI than on Mark V?
  
  A: The Chief's new Mark VI armor kicks ass. The biggest difference in the armor is the new faster recharge rate on the VI... plus it just looks cooler.
  
  
• Q: Juicy Poot asks: Is there going to be a way in multiplayer to choose which weapons u can have in the game, like lets say i just wanted to take the rocket launcher out and leave the others in. Is that possible..... And is there a way to take the goodies out like the overshield and camo. If not there definetely should be a way to take those out for your own gametypes.
  
  A: The different settings available to be customized in multiplayer games is greatly expanded over the options in Halo 1. You will have control over various starting primary and secondary weapons and various weapon sets. And you can also choose whether or not to have power-ups in your game.
  
  
• Q: Vmax asks: Will Bungie staff be playing on Live?
  
  A: Yes, as a matter of fact, Sketch and I both plan on pwning people for about a week or so while we have the advantage of knowing what the heck is going on. After that, we'll be doing some public events, secret enkillenating sessions and maybe even tournaments.
  
  
• Q: Several people asked: Will the Boxer control scheme be available in Halo 2?
  
  A: Yes, Boxer is back.
  
  
• Q: Swift asks: ok well my questions are what is the best part about working for bungie and about how much do you get paid?
  
  A: I'm sure everyone here would have a different answer, but for me, the best part of working here is just being a part of this awesome group of incredibly talented people making kick ass games. Playing Halo 2 every day for months and months before it gets released is a very nice perk. =) Huh? They pay people to do this?
  
  
• Q: AtlasGod asks: How does the targeting on the Wraith plasma mortar work?
  
  A: Think of it like launching a grenade - you practice until you can shoot three point plasma shots accross the map. There is an arc indicator on the reticule, but you'll eventually learn to shoot instinctively.
  
  
• Q: RCOP asks: Who does the MC voice in Halo 2 and can I see the person's picture?
  
  A: The same voice actor from Halo 1, Steve Downes, is back again as Master Chief. And no, you can't see him.
  
  
• Q: Spartan 42 asks: Will there be a map editor on the bonus DVD?
  
  A: Nope. As a matter of fact the bonus DVD is a real-life DVD, NOT an Xbox game disc. It contains documentaries, featurettes and galleries deadling with the making of Halo 2. And it's rad. There is no planned map editor for Halo 2. We will have downloadable content in future, however.
  
  
• Q: Durandal217 asks: Now that you guys are so close to the wire, what are the things you guys are tweaking? Are damage values for weapons and all that basically set in stone? Are there any features in danger of being cut?
  
  A: The end is in sight, but fine tuning and balancing will continue up until the last possible minute. The guys here are total perfectionists and will literally use every last second to make the game as good as it can be. Right now a lot of bug fixing and testing is commencing - people are playing the game with a magnifying glass looking for the occasional weird texture or unproperly lit corner of a room.
  
  
• Q: Mjo1nir Hammer asks: What is the first thing ya'll are (Bungie people) going to do when the game is relesed?
  
  A: I'm sure it's different for everyone and we're all on different schedules... some people will be taking time off in just a few weeks but Frankie and I will be gearing up for the various marketing and PR stuff surrounding launch as well as finishing work on all the new Bungie.net stuff that will debut in November.
  When the game is out, I'll be playing it online, taking advantage of my 1 year head start and pwning noobs as much as I can before everyone catches on and eventually eclipses me. =)
  
  
• Q: Halodude12344 asks: Ok...Will there be downloadable content? If so, how much?
  
  A: YES. Halo 2 will take advantage of Xbox Live's downloadable content functionality. Exactly when and how much hasn't been finalized yet. There will be enough there on day one to keep everyone happy for a while. I'm sure we'll have more to say about this in the months ahead, stay tuned.
  
  
• Q: TriGun TTR asks: How many guests can I have on my machine on Xbox Live?
  
  A: You may have three other players, using split screen on Xbox Live at this time. The game is of course still under development, but yep. Three guests, plus you.
  
  
• Q: The Twist asks: When is Bungie going to do a sequel to ONI or Marathon?
  
  A: Actually, ONI belongs to Take 2 Interactive now, Marathon we can't rule out completely, but there are no plans at this time.
  
  
• Q: pckl300 asks: Why does the Halo 2 earpiece/headset cost about $50?!?
  
  A: I have no idea. The Halo 2 cutom earpiece/headset is made by Plantronics. We don't have anything to do with it. I can say that it's a super high quality headset like what you would find at a high volume call center. I can only assume that such a high quality comes at a higher price. For what it's worth, it is comfy and has better pick up and sound than the generic Live headset.
  
  
• Q: Clefton Twain asks: Since vehicles are able to be destroyed, will they respawn in multiplayer or are they gone forever?
  
  A: Well, it depends. When you create a game, you can specify some vehicle respawn times and options in the game variant settings (similar to Halo PC).
  
  
• Q: RCOP asks: Will the grunts still be cowardly and scream hysterical lines?
  
  A: Yep, those lovable Grunts are as funny and cowardly as ever, though some have learned a few new tricks since the last encounter.
  
  
• Q: Halo2UMan asks: Can I just tool around in multiplayer maps on my own?
  
  A: Sure, you can do it two ways: Start a System Link game and never fear any intrusion (unless a burglar is upstairs and plugged into your LAN) or start a Live game on your own.
  
  
• Q: Ringer asks: Nades - Capacity, still 4 conventional and 4 Covenant?
  
  A: Yup.
  
  
• Q: empy asks: Are there enemies, guns and Vehicles that haven't been shown in any demos, magazines and websites interviews etc. Basicly are there more secrets :)?
  
  A: Yes.
  
  
• Q: Metaphyber asks: Can you dual-wield a wepaon and a flag?
  
  A: Nope. You can't. Then it would play more like Team Slayer than CTF. There has to be a balance. Plus, that flag is heavy.
  
  
• Q: Warbow asks: 1. Having seen Frankie's luck with women have you considered shaving your head? 2. Did the prizes for the Avatar contest ever get sent out?
  
  A: 1. Luck? You apparently don't know Frankie that well....
  2. And regarding the avatar contest... My apologies to everyone who worked so hard to do a great job making killer avatars. I'm not gonna lie - between being slammed at work and then being out for 2 weeks to get married and then being slammed again, I have not mailed out the promised prizes yet. Rest assured that those of you who did get back to me with your mailing info WILL GET A PRIZE. This year. You have my word. I hope to get those prizes out by the end of this month.
  
  
• Now here's a few bonus questions we didn't have time to get to on Friday:
  
  
• Q: slothboy asks:To what degree will we be able to edit gametypes in Multiplayer? For example, will be be able to specify different combinations of vehicles, i.e. Chaingun 'Hogs and Ghosts only, or Scorpions and Banshees only, and etc.? Or will it be more akin to Halo: Combat Evolved?
  Also: Should we wear boxers, briefs, or "go commando" whilst playing Halo 2 Multiplayer?
  
  A: I talked a little bit about some of the variant options above, but yes, you will have a greater ability to control the vehicles that appear in your multiplayer games. Right now you can pick a primary and secondary light vehicle in addition to choosing which heavy vehicle you want (i.e. Scorpion, Wraith, Random, None, etc..) The player definitely has more control than in Halo 1.
  I'm not sure I'd recommend going commando while playing Halo 2 MP, in fact, I might recommend a good pair of depends, because you just might soil yourself when things get crazy (as Frankie has been known to do).
  
  
• Q: videogamespaz asks: Will there be unranked games on XBL just for nice games of multiplayer you wanna play uncompetitively with friends?
  
  A: Absolutely. If you don't want to play in a ranked/matchmade game, you can easily just create your own game, set your own rules and invite your friends in for some fraggin' fun.
  
  
• Q: Logical Mayhem asks: How many whiteboards do you have in the studios and how many of them are used primarily to write mike is a tool (or other tom-foolery.)?
  Does everyone at bungie have naturally colored hair or do some of you have purple/green hair (Or scalps in Frankie's case ;) )?
  
  A: Let's see...including the whiteboards in our conference rooms, we currently have 7 primary whiteboards (no, really, we do). Most of the ones in the conference rooms are used for real work-type stuff like meeting notes, level designs, etc.. but the public ones tend to gravitate more towards the tom-foolery of which you speak. The two boards across from Dave's desk are generally the funniest/most offensive.
  We don't have anyone with purple or green hair at the moment, but hair changes pretty frequently around here (not just Alta). Yours truly has even dabbled in some colors outside of my normal dull brown. There are also a couple more folks sporting the clean shaven head look in addition to Frankie.
  
  
• Q: Shiach writes: I was wondering what software you guys use to create the graphics for the game? Maya, 3dsmax, other?
  
  A: Quite a bit of different software is used depending on what's being done. 3d Studio Max, Maya, and Photoshop are all used liberally in addition to some custom tools and programs.
  
  
• Q: dali the llama asks: How will the aiming reticule work when dual wielding?
  
  A: It works just like it does when you are holding one weapon. You will always have one reticule and you can only shoot at one target at a time.
  
  
• Q: Dinaden asks: Will there be 2 different Human Pistols in the game? Redone M6D, and a "Magnum". Or will they be one in the same?
  
  A: There is only one Human pistol. The Magnum is the new pistol. It's fun to use, but as has been said already, it is not the overpowered death machine it was in Halo 1 and it can non longer zoom. However, with good aiming (i.e. at the head), the Magnum can still dish out some pain, especially when wiedling two at once.
  
  
• Q: Frenck asks: Will the HUD change much until release? Is the MP HUD different from the SP HUD? Can the tank be destroyed?
  
  A: 1. The HUD is done. However, the HUD that was shown in the Beta has changed.
  2. Yes, the MP HUD is slightly different - if you saw the Beta HUD, you probably noticed that a score indicator appears in the lower right corner.
  3. With enough punishment, the tank will eventually get destroyed.
  
  
• Q: GhaeleonEB asks: It has been stated that to begin dual wielding, you need to "walk over to a weapon that can be dual wielding, and hit Y." My question is, can you be carrying two one-handed weapons (say, two pistols) and toggle from single to dual-wielding without picking up a new weapon?
  
  A: If you are carrying two pistols, you can drop one by doing a melee attack. If you press Y to switch to your secondary weapon, you will also drop the pistol you were dual wielding and be left with one.
  
  
• Q: OmegaProtoman asks: Of the weapons revealed so far, what is your favorite?
  
  A: Personally, I'd have to say the Sword. There's just something extremely satisfying about dashing into battle and killing your opponent in one deadly slice. My next favorite is probably the good ole' Battle Rifle - I just love the way it feels and sounds.
  
  
• Q: zechs12 asks: Are the remote control plasma grenades still in that we heard about from a magazine?
  
  A: I'm not sure which magazine said this, but there have never been any remote controlled plasma grenades in Halo 2. Sorry.
  
  
• Q: Drox asks:When your on Xbox live to talk to ONLY your teammates do you have to hold down the white button or can you toggle between team speak and the other type?
  
  A: You don't have to hold down the white button to team speak. When you press it once, it opens a "channel" to your team and you can then begin talking. Once you finish talking, the channel will automatically close. You can't toggle between teamspeak and proximity voice.
  
  
• Q: impurity asks: Will we be able to use our Bungie logins as our screennames for multiplayer? Or do we have to stick to our gamertags?
  
  A: While playing on Xbox Live, you will always be known by your Gamertag. Obviously when playing a system link or split screen game, you can go by whatever name you like. =)
  
  

Whew...There are now 26 pages of posts in the original question thread. Unfortunately we can't answer all the questions right now. If we didn't get to yours, it doesn't mean we don't love you, it just means it was either covered in another question already, we can't comment at this time or we simply ran out of time. A big THANK YOU to everyone who got involved and submitted some great questions for this experimental Q&A. I have to say that this worked out very well and we'll definitely have to do this again in the near future.

And the Weekly Update wouldn't be complete without Mister Chief, so here he is! Note: Frankie had to create this masterpiece using the touchpad on his new laptop, which explains why it's his best one yet. =)

Friday, September 10, 2004 (Halo Babies)

I had to catch a 6am flight this morning, and it was full of giant chicks. Seriously. I don't know what the deal was, but there were about twenty women, of various ages and demographics, whose only common feature was sheer giganticness. Seriously, the smallest one was about six foot two. And they weren't basketball players either they ranged in age from about 15 to 70. But they were humongous. I was totally afraid. What if they were planning on jacking the plane and flying us to their giant Lady Kingdom?

• Speaking of flying - I'm lucky enough to go to Japan at the end of the month for the Tokyo Game Show - so we may have a brief intermission between updates. The schedule is kinda brutal though - I fly there, arrive exactly in time for the start of the show and leave exactly as it ends. Book-ended with 11 hours each way in coach, middle seat, near toilet in back. But as usual I will try my best to grin and bear it as I am crushed between a perspiring real estate salesman flying to Japan for the Grengarry Reads, and a drug-addled linebacker from the '76 Broncos. So if anyone from United can get me a free upgrade, I'll make it well worth their while...
  
  
• As I write this, I'm in a video editing studio in LA putting the last finishing touches to a number of projects. One of them you already know about - the special limited edition DVD. The documentary stuff on there is really cool and perfectly captures the mood and drama of daily life at Bungie. It's 100% realistic with the following exceptions: Hardly any swearing and all of the really obscene graffiti from the whiteboards has been cleverly removed.
  
  The documentary was a real eye-opener even for me. It gives a true insight into the process here: The ups, the downs, the struggles, the triumphs, and the constant drive to make everything great. And Parsons' spastic-colon gets a whole chapter. I expect the FCC will kill that part.
  
  
• The documentary footage is being mixed, edited and perfected at a studio in Santa Monica, and I'm just down here to make sure they get the latest footage from the game to implement in the video, and also help with a slightly weirder project - the attract mode.
  
  Most video games have some kind of attract mode - the part of a game's title screen where it starts some kind of footage loop, showing off cool moments and teasers from  nifty parts of the gameplay. So I'm down here to play, test and make sure the guys have everything they need. It's an awful lot of effort for a couple of minutes of footage, but like everything in the game, the Bungie team is obsessed with making sure all the details are taken care of.
  
  The attract mode will be cool, but pretty much what you'd expect - moments of single player, multiplayer and Live, strung together with some bangin' choons and fast paced cutting. What's more exciting (to me) is the nifty backdrop we've created for the main title screen. I heart it. And it goes beautifully with Marty's new music, all of which is composed (but still being implemented in the game and cinematics.)
  
  
• The cinematics too are reaching a final level of polish. A lot of them are 90% done and are being tweaked and tuned. They're also adding things like depth of field effects, fog and clever lighting. They're light years ahead of the old ones, and tell the story with more fluidity and drama. Joe Staten is a genius. Wait, that's hyperbole. Joe Staten is OK I guess. And one of our PR people actually teared up at a scene (no conspiracy theorists, it was NOT a death, she cries at almost everything.) thanks to its stirring music and immense drama!
  
  
• Marty O'Donnell is OK I guess too. And I am especially into saying he's OK I guess, because he just cave me all the music in MP3 format to listen to. Here, I'll hum you a bit: "Aaah, ooooh, ah, ah, ah, ooh..." which is from an as-yet unnamed track. Marty is letting me help choose names for the pieces. He thinks very literally while composing, to get into the meaning of the music, so his original titles are things like, "Sad Voices" or "Fast Drive" and then after the fact, he comes up with better, more appropriate names, and he's letting me help. So expect tracks to be called stuff like, "Space Shenanigans" and "Astro-Ass-Blaster." I'm basically a poet.
  
  
• Now here's a warning. If you pre-ordered the special collector's edition, with the metal box (I call it InfiniSteeluminum to make it sound like it's from the future) then you should be aware that the DVD that accompanies the game contains tons of spoilers. Seriously, big-time spoilers that could ruin the plot. So don't watch it 'til you've played it! But then watch it hard-style, since it's going to be packed full of really cool stuff.
  
  
• You know what else is packed full of really cool stuff? Apart from Parsons body part fridge, that is? The game. This week I downloaded the first build of the game with every level, every cinematic and every encounter in it. That was a pretty big deal. That meant I was finally able to play through the entire thing at the correct pace, fighting bad guys where I was supposed to, watching the dramatic cinematics when I was supposed to, and getting a true feel for the length of the game. Which I will not discuss here. Because I've been playing the levels out of order, I had entirely the wrong idea about the pace, and instead of doing my normal crap - that is, playing the bits that the job requires me to in an order that isn't always best suited to the narrative. I've been diligently going through one level at a time, in the correct order and watching all the cutscenes in their entirety (another first for me). I love them.
  
  
• So that's it. I've been out of the office so long, I don't really know what's going on anymore. Sketch is back next week, and things should get back to normal, but seriously, this game is nearly finished. I'm super excited. And wicked busy.
  
  

So until next week, here's Mister Chief, enduring airplane horror.

Friday, September 3, 2004 (HaloPlanet)

Today is officially designated "Final Push" day, which means that there is about a month of hardcore development left, followed by success and joy, with any luck. Which means this update is short!

• Screenshots! We've been taking screens for upcoming magazines and we had to enlist some help. Brian is STILL getting married, or making a baby, or whatever it is you do, and so we're short handed. So we press ganged a lucky (kinda!) old school 7th Column member who was only too pleased to run around some multiplayer levels, blowing stuff up, sniping Lorraine and generally causing cool stuff to happen so we could take screenshots of it. We also forced him to sign an NDA so restrictive, that he has to breathe a certain way for the next six months, and is only allowed to wear elastic-waist pants.
  
  Asked to describe the game in three words or less (and remember CENSORED has seen things nobody else has, he replied, "Oh. My. God."
  
  
• The game continues to come on in leaps and bounds. It's advanced enough that we were even able to start work on an upcoming strategy guide. Certainly the multiplayer aspect of the strategy can be written right now, since very little is going to change in terms of rules, weapon placements or map layouts. Multiplayer strategy itself is a cavernous, never-ending thing. There are so many rules, gametypes, variants, weapons and vehicles, that even a simple list of "things" takes up a few pages, never mind the strategies that accompany them.
  
  Single player strategy is another matter entirely, but lots of stuff is pretty far along, and some levels are being described as mostly finished. Yesterday I found a Carneyhole* that let me wander the rooftops of Old Mombasa, making hairier and hairier jumps. It was kinda scary, and completely pointless. But I do love a good Carneyhole.
  
  
• Nathan's has two 6am deadlines coming up. Both Saturdays. Now think about that for a moment. 6am? Saturday? Who schedules deadlines like that? I mean, why not noon on Friday? Or 10am on Monday? Does anyone even know what 6am on Saturday looks like? For all I know (and I am colossally, impossibly lazy) 6am on Saturday could be bright green, covered in Chia and spew flaming Pez into a sky filled with barking helicopters.
  
  Anyhoo, Nathan's two deadlines are - content complete for gameplay, this Saturday, 6am. That means, any animations or animation fixes for gameplay, will be complete, on Saturday, at 6am. The next deadline is the same thing, but for cinematics. If you look at the gameplay right now, you probably wouldn't be able to spot a single problem with animation (which is good, since his deadline is in about 12 hours) but there are still tweaks, additions and fixes to be made to the cinematics, which are coming along beautifully.
  
  
• Mat Noguchi's desk is like Satan's underwear drawer. If you want to know what the universe will look like when the Big Crunch finally sucks the entropy back to a singularity, just go over and look at his desk. Honestly, it's like a Hieronymous Bosch painting of Toys R Us. It is the messiest desk of all time, piled high with garbage, layers of paper, veins of old snack substances, and supported by an intricate network of columns...well, technically they're half full cans of Mountain Dew. Soon it will collapse, and certainly it will destroy us all.
  
  Ironic then (you knew I was getting to a point, right?) that Noguchi spent this week cleaning up Halo 2 code of what he calls "Two years of crap that people filled up our code base with." Basically Noguchi's task is to ensure that the game fits on the disc, which won't affect the game performance (none of the extraneous messages to PookySchnookums, dead-end utilities or unused graphics actually affect code) but it may have some effect on loading speeds, since the disc sectors are bound to be more efficiently jammed with Halo goodness.
  
  Mat promises never to clean his desk, saying that he will instead "wait 'til it becomes something new, evolves and escapes from its terrestrial prison."
  
  
• Adrian Perez has been fixing little gameplay exploits - or "features" as cheats call them. One of these is one some, but not all of you will know about from Halo one. If four players stand on the respawn point of an active camouflage power up, and they are all there at the same moment it reappears, you guessed it, all four become simultaneously invisible and take off on a rampage of destruction. Halo 2, for what it's worth, checks to see how many jerks are standing there, and awards the power up to whoever is most on it.
  
  
• The manual shipped. Completely. Now I'm getting more of those strange requests from Japan asking what "jerk-face" and "ass-clown" mean. The manual looks great. I think. Anyway, if you enjoy the manual, just remember, it's about the only aspect of your Halo 2 experience I had anything positive to do with. Congrats to the UX team for going above and beyond the call of duty. On November 9th, you'll have a better idea of the hard work and talent they put into it.
  
  
• Jay points out that they still have dozens of scenes of cinematic foley to implement, but was glad to report that they had recorded a crowd scene at last. The crowds in this case being Jackals and Grunts, played by Bungie employees, yelling at the top of their voices in an acoustically correct makeshift recording studio. Much to the annoyance of the people working in the offices connected to it.
  
  
• Marty is putting music in the game. He is 95% composed. And by that, we mean of course that he has composed 95% of the music, since he himself may or may not be composed. I have only seen him once this week, and he was gripping his coffee cup very hard, so I was scared to ask how he was. Jay says the final deadlines for audio are about a week away, but that he and the audio team will be tuning, tweaking and perfecting until Harold physically drags them away. Technically, all the raw data should be done in about a week, but there will then be lots (a relative term these days) of time to manipulate stuff that's already in the game.
  
  
• Jay brought his inflatable queen sized bed. He had to measure his office first to make sure it fit. It does.
  
  He also recently added some effects to the Rocket launcher projectile sound. The new-improved noise includes a kind of hollow echo as the rocket tube empties. It basically sounds a lot more dangerous. The rocket itself sounds absolutely terrifying and leaves you in no doubt that it is headed straight for your face.
  
  
• Dave Dunn and the invincible environment artists are fixing bugs. Bugs of course in environment art can mean all sorts of things, including missing textures or odd lighting effects. No new content is being created, except to patch holes in things, or fix faults. But the basic upshot is that apart from some wacky lighting and two or three transparent green placeholder crates, all of the environments look finished, to my eye at least. The artists, being artists are lovingly poring over every pixel.
  
  

--

Carneyhole* - Imaginary hole placed in geometry that Chris Carney hides in his multiplayer maps so he can hide, popping up occasionally to snipe. The hole is full of guns and health and ammo.

So here's Mister Chief, searching, futilely on Zanzibar for Carney.

Friday, August 27, 2004 (bungie.net)

Although there's more than a month of actual mind crushing work left, this week is a real milestone in my mind, and so we bring you a special, extended update, because Halo 2's campaign mode is not only playable, it's fun. Actually, fun is the wrong word – since some of the levels left me sweating, awed and terrified by turns. Caveat: As well as an employee, I'm still part fanboy, so read this with that in mind.

• BUS STOP
  
  I've been getting up very early, coming in and playing the latest test build. It's always full of surprises. One bizarre way to tell how advanced it is is to look at the buses. They started as large oblong crates, completely flat but with the candy-cane default texture that's used for unfinished objects. One morning I loaded it up and the candy cane texture was gone. Replaced with a sort of vaguely instructional "Large Dias" emblazoned across it. A few weeks later, it kinda looked like a crate with wheels. Then, a passable bus. This morning, it wheels, glass, and does something very cool if you lob enough grenades at it. It's a bus. Keanu Reeves would drive it. But like, you can't really drive it. Before you ask.
  
  Surrounding the bus, which I admit is kind of a boring thing to watch over a period of months, is some dramatically detailed city environment and architecture. You've already got some idea of what the landscape of Earth City looks like, thanks to the year and a half old E3 demo, but there are varied elements to the city environment, and there are plenty of graphical and environmental surprises in store for you. You'd be surprised what a difference a few power cables make.
  
  
• BUILD QUALITY
  
  The system kind of works like this: We have a general resource at Bungie where the latest builds of the game are located. One is recommended as stable by the test department, while others may have been built to test or debug a specific problem. The testers get the stable build and rampage through it, looking for any problems, "bugging" them (that is, saving their exact position in the game, noting what the problem was, and entering it into a database.) and then play on, looking for problems.
  
  Parsons has asked Brian and me to get stuck into that process as well. He thinks I'm basically stupid though, so while Brian has been asked to look for "clipping errors, instance geometry problems and physics anomalies," Parsons told me to "watch out for colors that aren't pretty," or "scary things that make you want to go wee."
  
  
• Speaking of Brian, he's getting married today. So congrats to Brian from everyone on the team, except the hardcore dudes who're all like, "Dude, you're gonna be so whipped man," and "this is the end of the party, brah!"
  
  
• Harold the test manager, who's as evil as Carrot Top's Y-Fronts , explained that he's basically been staying until 3am and then arriving again about four hours later. He's opening and closing bugs at a ferocious rate. One horrible thing he did this week to the test team was open 478 bugs at once, using an automated process. That far outstripped the entire output of the rest of the test team. You could hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth. Still, they were minor fixes. Hundreds more will be opened and fixed between now and the game's ship.
  
  
• MANUAL TRANSMISSION
  
  Speaking of ship – the game will leave these hallowed halls weeks before it arrives in stores. It takes a long time to manufacture and distribute that many games. I'm no logistician, but I reckon they're going to have to make DOZENS, no, HUNDREDS of copies of the game. With that in mind, I am pleased to announce that the manual, one of the few things pertaining to the actual game that I have anything to do with, is complete and going through its last round of revisions.
  
  The manual is a complicated beast, since it has to be complete before the game. So matching features and interface details is tricky. The UX team (User eXperience) in charge of manual production has been a dream to work with, and you can tell they're used to creating manuals for works of progress. The manual is also a good example of how detail-oriented Bungie is. It should, if we do our job right, be a cool thing in itself, with one or two surprises for people when they first open their copy on Nov. 9th.
  
  It's also been going through a ton of translations by our localization group. Occasionally I'll get email questions from other countries asking for detailed explanations, like, "What do you mean by 'Nipple'?" and "What does, 'Where the sun don't shine mean?'"
  
  Every major language gets its own version of the manual, and there are even four Nordic language versions of the text, so you can imagine how much work that takes. Be sure to let us know, if you're French, Spanish, German, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Norwegian et al, how cool you think it is in November. Or stupid. Whichever you decide.
  
  
• HEADSHOT HEAVEN
  
  Nathan and the animation crew are making final tweaks and modifications to the in-game animation – for example, there's now a very nice player reward for good headshots (not excited about saying this), but much of their work in the last stretch will be creating entirely new animation for the cut scenes and cinematics. Although all of the cinematics happen in the game engine, the cinematic events contain motions, movements and events that simply don't exist in the largely hand-animated game code. They've also been handling and managing the contract animators.
  
  So the animators have a hefty, but rewarding task ahead of them (with constant dips back into turning game animations) as they make the cinematics dramatic, foreboding and occasionally funny. Recently, the animation on the cinematics has increased exponentially. Characters that formerly slid down corridors now walk or skulk. Characters who once stood static above their script captions, are now eerily lip-synched to real, acted dialog. Poor old Joe Staten, he's been putting this cinematic stuff together forever, but he and CJ get no props in the weekly update, because everything they're working on is plot-related, and therefore secret.
  
  
• The voice stuff in the cinematics is astonishing. We've picked some brilliant voices for the game. My favorite voice sounds like (but isn't) John Hurt (we should ask Joe about this) and the sheer variety of voices is outstanding. This becomes especially important in scenes where there is more than one alien character – it becomes easy to identify who's speaking by voice alone, which in turn lubricates the drama. And it is dramatic, I guarantee it. It helps now that the voices are lip (or mandible) synchronized, and of all the graphical improvements over Halo, cinematics may have benefited the most – if only because they were done under fierce time constraints for the first game.
  
  
• MARKET THIS
  
  Cam and the marketing team have been going all-out, with new consumer events, trade shows and demos in the works. TGS is coming up soon and Bungie will be there in some form, showing off Halo 2 to Japanese press and gamers. Cam also had the pleasure of doing the first consumer gameplay demo at Leipzig in Germany. Brian and I did the second (kind of) with a mini tournament at an MLG event last weekend. Both events used the E3 Zanzibar build, which now looks kind of old and crumbly to us.
  
  Actually, we were very pleased by the reaction of the Japanese and Korean press when they played the beta build at a recent press event. I got the feeling they really enjoyed the competitive aspect of the game and would literally cheer when a skilled player pulled off some cool stuff, like vehicle-boarding or especially violent swordplay. Hopefully they'll enjoy the new multiplayer stuff we'll show at TGS too. I think the old stereotype that the Japanese don't like first person shooters is either fading, exaggerated or plain wrong – since some of the guys and girls who visited us from Famitsu and other magazines, were pretty good players.
  
  Cam's been tracking weird Halo 2 mentions in the media, and noted that famous chick magazine, "Jane" ran a piece on the game in its September issue (go buy it guys!) saying, “The Halo 2 game is finally here.  Tough-chick Cortana is still calling all of the shots.”  And running a nice little shot of everyone's favorite hologram.
  
  
• ART ATTACK
  
  Lorraine is SWAMPED. I mean, hardcore swamped. Since Zoe left (and moved outta town, and got her work ripped off by some jerk on eBay) Lorraine is the sole go-to girl for art needs. That means marketing, PR, advertising, internet and random jerks from the street all demand art and assets from Lorraine. She's posing 3D max models, fixing huge Photoshop files and still trying to find the time to make new screens for the launch time frame.
  
  She's been hustling on our coffee table art book, which should be available at game launch, and features lots of really cool concept art and stuff from Halo with a little Halo 2 thrown in for good measure.
  
  
• MULTIPLAYER MADNESS
  
  Chris Carney, he of all things multiplayer is, and Parsons will HATE me for saying this, nearly finished. Multiplayer is almost complete. From 2pm today, when some final lightmaps are applied, the multiplayer game will be all but content complete. That means the maps are finished, the layouts complete and everything after that will be fine-tuning and testing.
  
  Chris says that the multiplayer team will even have some time (a rare commodity) to go in and do some extra tweaks and additions they didn't think they'd have time to do, including res-ing up some textures, sharpening some graphics and improving some visuals just for the hell of it. Of course, there's still lots to do in terms of testing and tuning of gameplay on those maps, but some of the new levels are amazing.
  
  The use of big, big maps is going to make for some very interesting scenarios. One particularly massive map has enough indoor and outdoor locations for totally different game styles to break out. There could be Banshee dogfights going on in the sky, shotgun deathmatches in a building and sniper matches on the rooftops, all while Warthogs race each other around the same level. It is considerably bigger than the relatively large Zanzibar.
  
  There's even an indoor space big enough for vehicle fights and full of potentially explosive moving objects. Which ought to make for some interesting and pyrotechnic matches. And all told, the biggest spatial innovation in Halo 2 multiplayer, is the increased use of asymmetrical maps, which makes objective-based gametypes, like CTF, all the more fun. Also, asymmetrical maps tend to "feel" more like real places. The varied architecture and geometry in Halo 2 MP tends to be much more realistic than some of the very simple, older maps from Halo.
  
  Dave Dunn and the environment guys are also reaching a stage where they're not really creating new art or objects, merely fixing problems with existing spaces. Asked which of the levels was the furthest from completion, Dave paused, reflected, ran his hands over his plush new Mohawk, and said, "Well really, there isn't a space in the whole game that hasn't been 'touched.' There's a couple of things here and there, but mostly we're fixing bugs."
  
  
• PERFORMANCE TUNED
  
  The most visible ongoing process from here on out, will be performance tuning. Lots of things affect frame rate, stability and general performance, and these are going to be addressed until the last possible moment to make for the best possible experience. Increases come from all over the place. The engineers and designers are making very specific speed increases with code changes and tweaks. Moving objects, fiddling with AI, everything has an effect on speed and frame rate so performance increases are coming from all over the place. My favorite bit of performance overall, is the loading speed. Like Halo, we load bits of levels on the fly. In Halo there was a brief pause. In Halo 2, there's no significant pause at all, at least, not one that I noticed.
  
  
• MUSIC MAN
  
  Marty has been busy, stressed and busy. Now that the game is in a state where he can properly score it, he's been pretty much locked away in the studio. When he does pop out, he looks much older than his 26 years would imply, and it's usually to ask about paper towels – something that's becoming a sore spot around here.
  
  Anyway, there's music in the game. Music! For the first time, the compositions are being dropped into the missions and the difference is astonishing. A previously exciting and fun mission now takes on mysterious overtones as the music foreshadows events that are about to happen, or suddenly kicks into overdrive when the crap hits the fan. Before joining Bungie, I was a huge fan of the Halo music – not just the actual melodies, but the way they integrated with the pacing and the drama. I have to say, I'm a bigger fan now.
  
  Although there are some familiar cues (as with any good movie sequel) there's an awful lot of completely new music here, some of it associated with new characters, some with new environments, but all of it perfectly suited to what's going on.
  
  But lord knows, the last thing Marty needs is unqualified praise, so maybe I should point out something mean to even it out. Hmmm. Yeah, where's the Halo 2 ringtone Marty? Get on the stick you lazy communist.
  
  

One last thing - A big shout out to the Fable team this week, as their game shipped to manufacture, and the first reviews started rolling in. It's getting great scores, and, speaking personally as somebody who never likes RPGs, I am loving it. Lots of action, and lots to explore, which is the way I like all my games.

And one last thing. We're going to be at PAX – the Penny Arcade expo on Sunday, so keep an eye out for us there, and make sure you have a great time, it looks like they've got a lot of cool stuff lined up.

And one other last thing. Mister Chief is off this week, replaced by his brilliantly-named evil counterpart, Evil Mister Chief.

Friday, August 20, 2004 (HBO)

After the phenomenal success of last week's Bungie Princess update, we decided to keep the momentum going with a special in-depth superlook at Bungie Hair. First up, the highest maintenance haircut - NOT what you'd think. Although Alta's is often the most complicated aesthetically, it's actually Frankie's that requires the most upkeep. Bald, thanks to a bite from a radioactive turtle, Frankie is forced to shave his head each morning, except when he's hungover. He also rubs it with balms and ointments to make it shiny and smooth for "the ladeez."

Brian's hair is newly shorn so that his fiancée will agree to go through with it. The wedding that is. He gets married next week, so ladies, he's off the market, like old fruit. Based loosely on the relaunched version of Duran Duran his new hairstyle borrows heavily from lead singer Simon Le Bon's coif of choice and stopping just shy of feathering.

Alta has been switching rapidly from loose curls to neat bob, with a nifty purple streak, which while sounding garish out of context, is surprisingly subtle and almost elegant. Amanda's is currently tied back for efficiency, while Lorraine sports a layered bob, with bright, caramel highlights.

Now, if you read this far, you probably pay attention to things, understand English and have that rarest of gifts, patience. Unlike the giant wad of flamethrowers who went bananas last week when the update was posted by a guest star. An update I'd like to point out that we provide, voluntarily, free of charge and with frightening regularity. So for you, the proud, the patient, we now present a regularly scheduled update. And I'd also like to mention, just for the heck of it, that calling people names because they don't do exactly what you want them to do, is what very small children do. In supermarkets. Just before they pee themselves out of spite.

• But today is actually a pretty big day. Harold, our test manager has mandated that we have to stay here until midnight to finish up some really cool milestones. That means tomorrow morning, extra cool stuff will be available for me to play around in.
  
  The graphics have taken a massive leap since I went on vacation. It was kind of nice to come back and see levels that I'd previously enjoyed with placeholder graphics, suddenly populated with dust, smoke, trees, grass, trucks, roadsigns - all the detail and drama that makes a level exciting visually.
  
  There are tons of new effects in the game that give it a new layer of flavor. Water, for example is a lot more detailed, while particle effects like the aforementioned dust and smoke add atmosphere and gameplay subtleties in equal measure. On one early level, the addition of distant buildings, telegraph poles and overhead wires and cables makes an astonishing improvement to an already pretty level. I often find myself pausing the game and just checking things out. More than cool looking, the buildings and objects look convincing, like this is a real, working city in the 24th century. Albeit one that's been smashed all to hell by marauding Covenant scum.
  
  
• The pace here has picked up tangibly. Bungie people always put in crazy hours, but from now until the game ships, it's going to be hardcore. People will eat, sleep and breathe Bungie. Food will be eaten on site, people will sleep on beanbags, and hopefully find time to shower. It's going to get crazy.
  
  Speaking of eating here, Alta, the Bungie Princess, and Amanda, the Bungie Baroness, went to get a month's supply of snacks for the Bungie snack station. She took a photograph to emphasize the sheer amount of wanton snackoonery that goes on here. Note: Snacks may include beer.
  
  
  
  
• Marty and the audio guys have basically gone into hiding. Although music scoring happens very close to the end of the process, there's now enough game for Marty to really get his musical (false) teeth into. We've already been treated to some sneak peeks (listens?) and it will not disappoint.
  
  A lot of the other audio stuff is near completion. All of the voice recording is done and dusted (there may be some teeny additions or changes) and has been implemented in game. That means the cinematics are in a watchable state. Some of the voice acting is a revelation - you're going to hear some quality acting in this thing without a doubt. After years of badly dubbed Japanese games, and plenty of lousy US ones, it's always nice to hear good acting in a game. It helps you forget that you're just playing.
  
  As far as the updates are concerned, that means that people will have less time to talk to me, and less bandwidth to report what they're doing. We'll try to keep these as detailed as possible but it's going to be insane.
  
  
• Lorraine McLees Implied...
  
  I threw a kick at the advertising guy.  In jest of course, but he didn't look none too happy.  But apparently, the kick was authentic enough that his companion (who had been trained in martial arts) asked me if I presently studied.   Sweet!  I shouldn't have been honest and said that I study martial arts... flicks.  However, the largest sharp-edged weapon in the studio is in my cubicle...
   
  I had to say good-bye to a very talented 3D artist and web designer on Monday.  I hustled off reference material to the sculptor for the next round of action figures and am trying real hard to get through the second pass of the art book without passing out.  The workload is not easing up.  I finished the geometry to something that will hopefully make it in.  Shi Kai was pleased to see it and hopefully will be able to mount it on a Brute's shoulder.  With luck, the highest LOD of the little thing might make it into a cinematic sequence somewhere...
   
  Hey, we're averaging about 100 hours a week here!
  
  
• Ryan Hylland Said...
  
  Doing some testing, you know
  Beta ends this weekend
  Played a lot of CENSORED 1 flag CTF
  Test team opened tons of bugs that we will close
  
  
• Michael Wu Quoth...
  
  We're going to land without wheels.  Making our final pass on some polish items.  CENSORED work here and there.  Lots of lighting added to several BSPs - to make it spooky. Earthcity gets it's final pass from me today and then it's on to CENSORED.
  
  
• Robt McLees Whispered Softly...
  
  This week I suddenly realized that most of us are working 100+ hour work weeks - I put in 116 hours last week.  I've been looking to the future, polishing weapons, stenciling crates, abandoning facilities, repurposing trashcans, bad-mouthing journalists, dredging up the past, juggling corpses, narrowing my eyes, crushing bugs and providing liquid refreshment for all my buddies.
  
  
• Chris Butcher Starkly States...
  
  Been working on performance this week, trying to cram as much cool stuff into the buffer as possible. I am working on the game simulation side while Ben Wallace is working on the graphics side. We have a lot of new things in our game and with all the added stresses on our engine it's starting to creak at the seams. Still only a 733 MHz processor in this thing, but we will work it out. Our three biggest consumers are animation, AI ray tests for perception, and visibility / rendering. The test guys keep posting graphs of framerate over the course of a level and I'm going to make it all better.
  
  
• Jen Martin Silkily Implied...
  
  So - PR is feverishly working away on any possible coverage at all...doing our best to ensure world domination by the Halo franchise.  
   
  We've come up with a new campaign - which is to get Halo as an officially sanctioned sport in the 2006 winter Olympic games.  
  
  We think it's actually a fabulous idea...and are ready to pitch to the IOC any day now...  
  
  
• John Butkus Grimly States...
  
  Okay, since I haven't contributed to one of these things in who knows how many weeks, I'll give it a shot this week.  Since we last spoke, I've just finished my 12th minute of cinematic animation with an average of 6 characters in each scene.  Naturally, my eyeballs are pretty much melting out of their sockets and I've developed this nagging face-ache in my right cheek/temple area.  A tumor, perhaps? The animation is looking pretty good, but of course the perfectionist in me wants another six months to polish it to death.  Bill and Mike are also working their asses off on cinematics, and Mike just finished a scene last week that looks $#@#$%!! sick.  Actually, my face hurts right now and it's kind of a throbbing sensation, so for all I know a family of spiders could be living in one of my sinuses and they're just waiting for an opportune moment to erupt from my face in a geyser of filth and horror.  Where was I....oh yes - Bill is working on what has to be the most difficult cinematic of all time, and it's looking great. The light is at the end of the tunnel, so soon it'll just be miscellaneous bug fixes and polishing work until we ship.  After we RTM I plan to do three things... F, RT, DN.  In that order.  I think one person out there knows what that means.  I'll let the rest of you figure it out.
  
  

And last, but not least, here's Mister Chief, unhappy at his latest hairdo, which we call, "The Scout."

Friday, August 13, 2004 (bungie.net)

Note: Frankie is out of town this week and the Bungie Princess is our special guest author.. (I'm just posting it). Now brace yourselves for the most fact-filled top-secret-spoiling update EVER!...

BUNGIE WEEKLY UPDATE - August 13th

Frankie's in Mexico and I'm in charge! So, listen up...we are taking a break from all that blah-blah about Halo 2 and we are discussing a truly important topic...HAIR! I will be devoting several hours of my Saturday to some serious "diva-time" along side my best friend at Joel's salon. There will be lots of girly-girl talk and wine to be had for all. The only dilemma is what color should I do my hair? Anyone who has known me longer than about a month knows I absolutely love to change my hair color. It is a running joke around here. I am currently blonde, but am thinking it is time for a change. In the spirit of by-passing all that typical video game talk I think we should devote a forum to helping me choose my new hair color. But seriously, I am supposed to be giving you some weekly information about our big project over here in Bungieland.

• Biggest news of the week involves the rancid Bungie refrigerator. We are bursting at the seams over here and need to find some space to sit some more people helping out on the game. So, I figured what the heck why not the fridge...that is some prime real estate. But seriously, the dev team doesn't know it yet but they have lost the battle of the fridge and it's pungent odor will soon be seeping onto their side of the room.
  
  
• I ate dinner with the boys tonight (frightening). Have you ever had the pleasure of attacking a taco bar with 70 hungry men...hhhmmmm, let me be the one to tell you this is not a pretty site. Amanda has quickly learned that food is the precious commodity in this office. The way to a man's heart is most certainly through his stomach. We will be making the ever dreaded Costco trip next week to stock up on goodies. The people at Costco, employees and customers alike, hate me. When I roll up to the check out lane with two industrial size carts stacked to the point of towering over my head and a flat bed stock piled with beer in tow...let's just say I am not typically greeted with a warm "How are you?" but rather an overwhelmed look of panic.
  
  
• So, my week has not solely revolved around food and nasty refrigerators. In addition to feeding the masses, Amanda has been hard at work helping Harold keep a running inventory of about a thousand computers...man, these guys are expensive. She has also called all over the world in search of elusive Xboxes from other countries...so if you have one that you don't need, feel free to send it in...kidding. I just got the 2nd pass of the art book back...looking very cool guys...keep your eyes open come November 9th (oh yeah and Halo 2 will be on shelves as well). The rest of my time this week was spent modeling Dunn's ever-growing collection of crazy hats. I have been a cowgirl, a gardener and Frank Sinatra so far.
  
  Okay, okay enough my drivel, here are some updates straight from me to you on this game everyone keeps talking about (stage whisper..."Hey Brian, what's the name of that video game we're working on again....oh yeah...Halo 2...thanks!)
  
  
• So Butchie put the beta out on a branch this week and really wants the code to stay jolly and happy until he goes to RTM...wherever that is...and what is he doing taking a vacation anyway?! All of the levels are undergoing performance reviews (are they even eligible for a raise?) and things are shaping up nicely. Even though Jaime's running around his level with ¾ of his screen filled with debug info, we still have trouble getting him to stop playing so Butchie can run his analysis tools. He's evidently having a blast, and that's a good thing.
  
  
• Luke has been integrating our aiming code withhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, huh!?!? Ooops sorry drifted off there where was I...something about sniping and intending to shoot ...I don't know sounds, pretty cool and I guess the Counter-Strike and Quake people will really like the fact that you can't snipe through walls. Which seems kinda lame to me, I think Master Chief should have x-ray vision and be able to snipe through walls, because then he could really wail on those damn Elite bastards.
  
  
• Ryan, a very verbose gentleman, a man of many words has this to say regarding test:
  Testing next beta update
  Emblem Pass (it failed but no bugs encountered)
  Working on test cases for release
  Thanks for that lovely, in-depth update Ryan, it was truly moving.
  
  
• Apparently, Adrian has some serious termite problems at his house because he is fixing bugs like a machine and patching all the holes in the drywall. He is having a really hard time determining if his house has too many holes or too many walls, but says it is gonna be so cool, so he must be having fun! Keep us posted Adrian and let me know if you need some help selecting new paint color and curtains when you're done patching those walls.
  
  
• Last, but certainly not least, Nathan would like to take a jab at "Pistol Pete" -- Pete apparently did some dorky thing when he introduced himself to someone last week and made pistols out of both hands and pointed and said "Pete Parsons"...I personally did get to witness a later revival of the pistol gesture and it is pretty lame. Nathan also mentioned something brief about "his first man hug with Chris (butcher)." Aaahhhhh.
  
  

Well, boys and girls, that's it for me this week. I am sure you are sitting on the edge of you seat waiting for the next installment of the Weekly Update with special guest writer Bungie Princess...So far we haven't heard a peep out of ole Frankie and it's highly likely that he's in a small village in Mexico lying in a bathtub filled with ice minus a few internal organs. Don't worry, I'll keep bringing you the best updates ever until he surfaces again!

Ciao!
Yours truly,
Bungie Princess

Friday, August 6, 2004 (VideoGamesNewZealand)

I'm back, and so is regular style weekly update stuff. Next week I'm gone again, in the Yucatan Peninsula. I may report from there. An update for conspiracy theorists:  I've sorta been following the fuss - too busy to really get into it, but Halo 2 will still release on Nov. 9th in the US and most other places, and Nov. 11th in the UK. Nor will we release a playable demo, anytime soon. In fact, we're so busy with the game that there's no chance we'll even think about a playable demo until after Halo 2 ships. And that is official. It isn't happening folks. The game is however, happily on schedule for November 9th. As this week's update will demonstrate.

• Greg Snook's Plea
  
  DEAR GOD HELP US (and send Pocky!)
  
  Send all Pocky (including unusual Pocky variants to: Greg Snook, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052
  
  
• Michel's Crunch-Nearing Antics
  
  Michel Bastien, in full producer mode, has been as busy as a wasp-like honey-gathering creature, but still took time to note some of the team's achievements this week:
  
  Michel pointed out that the 3D artists are supporting the environment artists for final polishing on two of the single player missions.
  
  The animators are almost all working on character animation for cinematics, meaning that more than 95% of game play animations have been put to bed. Jeremy is holding the fort on the gameplay animation front, and authoring cool combat dialog animations.
  
  Chris Carney decided to come back from his trip. he's back to close on MP maps with Cotton and they've been working on a very cool secret map, that everyone will love.
  
  Hao is supporting the artists with scene-specific lighting.
  
  
• Chris Butcher's Authoritay
  
  Chris, we should mention to the New Zealanders reading this, is FROM New Zealand. Go New Zealand!  
  
  I've been finalizing the beta, working on adaptive network detection code, arguing with beta testers on our newsgroups. Just making sure we can ship.  
  
  Damian has done a bunch of cool stuff lately, including making the AI know how to pathfind up and down gravity lifts which is super cool.
  
  
• Nathan Walpole's Laundry List
  
  We are off our rockers over here.
  The team has been doing some killer motion and cinematic ownage. Stuff is starting to get really exciting. John Mike and Bill are heavily into the cinematic glut while I am working on special Brute stuff and another wicked CENSORED...um...thing. Jeremy Fones, our resident resident - no I did not stutter - is firing on combat dialog animations for all necessary characters. I am so excited about animation in Halo 2.
  
  It is a very electrifying time of development around here, where everything becomes better, broken, bombastic and beautiful all at once...bursting your bubble with a big bang...we are abuzz with fun and fury!
  
  I am starting to get nostalgic about the days when I was merely a Halo fan, before I became a part of the team. I guess the current state of the game, with all the elements coming together led to the return of this fanboy! Coupled with a frenzied AI, animation is going to rock. It has every opportunity to make you feel like the center of attention, which could lead to an interesting laundry day if you are wearing your Sunday best. I cannot wait until November 9th.
  
  Edooba Docku,
  
  Nathan
  
  
• Mat Noguchi - Audio Wizard
  
  Haha. I called him an Audio Wizard because that's the kind of thing a newspaper that really didn't get it would call him. Anyway, Mat points out that localized combat dialogue is in the following condition: 4526 File(s)  4,170,768,287 bytes  
  
  And that's only the European languages. No Asian included yet.  
  
  Mat interjects, "Oh, I also spent the last two weeks making the sound engine 1,000,000,000 times better. That's right, a billion."
  
  Score between Mat Noguchi and Jason Jones: 1 - 0 respectively. No further explanation necessary or impending.
  
  
• Max Hoberman's Update within an Update
  
  The past couple of weeks have been alternately thrilling and frustrating. Getting close to the end is bittersweet. On the one hand you get to see a ton of hard work come to fruition. On the other you have to make some tough decisions, weighing finishing the game and making sure there's time to polish what you have against adding new features and changes that you know would make the game cooler, more fun, more user friendly etc. We're now almost beyond the process of making it cooler, friendlier, whatever, at least in significant ways, and are in the midst of shifting to the process of making it work and getting it done. Fortunately for all you weekly update readers Halo 2 is already damn fun!  
  
  Lately it has been a crazy mishmash of work in multiplayer and UI land. Dave had to tear out a system in the UI visuals that he put a ton of work into, but fortunately it's on the way out to make way for something much bigger. Bigger is cooler, of course, but I'll always have a little nostalgia for what we had, it was ... slick. Dave has also been knee deep in bugs, including a lot of fine tuning work on the HUD, UI changes to make room for localization, blah blah blah. After we ship remember to ask him about that damn shield meter.  
  
  In the meantime Steve has been a busy wasp-like honey-gathering creature, putting the polish on a big outdoor map that I can't talk any more about for fear of excommunication. Suffice it to say it's looking damn good! I'm looking at a reflection on the ceiling right now. Ooh! Ah! Where was I? Oh yeah, it seems like the rest of the project will be finishing polish for Steve. I think that's in his job description. Of course polish for multiplayer is more than just visuals, especially since we'll be online. I was just using an analogy I stole from Charlie and repurposed, about how our maps should be like a watertight container. Well, not that they should look like a watertight container, but they should certainly behave like one when it comes to restricting where players can go. (Sorry, taking all the fun away, I know.)  
  
  Carney just got back from a research expedition to North Carolina, where he was gathering valuable information on weather systems. We had to call it a vacation to get The Man to give him leave, that's how dedicated he is. Oh wait, did I say weather? That's a big thumbed nose to the censors. Bleep that out, I dare you! Bring it! Anyway, he's back and back to work on our final and our grandest multiplayer map. This one is coming in a little late, but considering the fine state of our other multiplayer maps we're pushing it some. It's going to be worth it, but there's still a lot of hard work to be done.  
  
  Wow, a lot happens in two weeks. Well, I'm making up for Frankie hijacking last week's update. I've been up to my neck in 1) continuing to help drive the Beta and gather useful data, especially about matchmaking and stats. Yes, that involves a certain amount of playing the game on the Internet. Far and away the hardest part of the day. 2) Trying to save the tiny handful of relatively easy UI and MP features that are on the chopping block. 3) Making our multiplayer game fun fun fun fun fun. The way the weapons, vehicles, starting locations, etc. are configured play an enormous role in the enjoyability of a map. Take Zanzibar, for example. Our first playable version of the map, before E3, started with the defenders having a whole slew of vehicles to counter the attacker vehicles. CTF games invariably turned into giant confusing vehicle smashfests. While these certainly have their place in our game, we also care a great deal about making Halo 2 a thinking man's game. Strategy is king, and in this case shifting the vehicles all to the attackers and giving the defenders the tracking rocket launcher to counter made all the difference. I just made a change on another map that I suspect will do the same.  
  
  -Max
  
  
• Brian Jarrard's Ahi Feast
  
  Wow, there's so much going on lately it's a whirlwind of crazy excitement around here...As launch nears, a number of events are popping up, like the media shindig we hosted here last weekend. We had over 60 members of the press come in and spend the day playing our ongoing internal Halo 2 beta. The entire room was macked out with flat panel TVs, bean bags, Bose systems and plasma screens...basically gaming nirvana. Some of you may have even witnessed some of the action via our webcam which was stealthily placed at the front of the room. After a quick speech (which got translated on the fly into Japanese) and some rules of engagement, we turned the unsuspecting press loose amongst our thousands of frag-thirsty testers. We had a blast and everyone left with big grins on their face...even Frankie, who finally found opponents worthy of his skillz (i.e. noobs). Also, it's now official, "Swords" is an International hit. We've got a lot more events coming up, near and far, as the Halo 2 hype machine picks up momentum.
  
  Beyond that, I've also been busy with the Bungie Princess working on cool stuff for our upcoming brand new Bungie Store, getting the Halo 2 strategy guide off the ground, testing take home builds as often as I can and of course, herding a few goats here and there. Good times.
  
  

Well that's all for this week folks, and in preparation for my trip down Mexico way, here's a "tribute" to Mexican artist and icon, Frida Kahlo. I call it Frida Halo.



Querido Mexico, disculpame por lo de Senor Chief, y por ofender a la memoria de Frida Kahlo.

I also promised I would give a shoutout to Halobabies. And here it is.

Halo Babies Right Here

Elle est magnifique, ses cheveux sont rouges comme les feux de l'enfer, et cela décrit également à quel point elle chaude est. Scout.

Friday, July 30, 2004 (bungie.net)

Bungie's Euro Dash

First things first, this is an unusual Halo update. It's unusual because there's almost no Halo 2 info here, thanks to the fact that the team was on a very intense crunch to complete a very important stage oif development. So if that's the kind of thing that makes you mad, relax, take a week off and things will be back to normal next week. But if for some reason you're curious to know what I was up to this week, then read on.

 

It began not with a bang, but with a whimper. In this case, the whimperer was Parsons, known colloquially, for terrifying reasons, as "Mango." Mango, you might be aware, is the Studio Manager, which gives him unlimited power. When he barks, we mew, submissively. Now, as Spider-Man noted, with great power comes great responsibility. Parsons must have been watching a chick-flick that day however, since he's about as responsible as a drunk Terminator in the John Connor Children's Library.

"Frankie," he says, his eyes narrowed to hide whatever emotion might be lurking in his beady, reptilian eyes. "Do you have a passport?" he enquires.

"Why yes, I do!" replies I, still bubbly with the effervescence of youth and stupidity. That was a big mistake. As a matter of fact, from now on, when Parsons/Mango asks me a question, I shall simply respond with the opposite of whatever the truth happens to be that day.

"I need you to run a little errand," he says. "To London, and Germany, and you need to leave on Saturday." This was of course, Friday afternoon.

So the next day, I'm off to dear old England, with a bag full of underwear and a relatively complete (although sometimes broken and occasionally untextured) build of Halo 2 on the hard drive of a large and suspicious-looking Xbox Development kit.

The build I took was picked from the last few days of progress for the simple reason that all the blood, expletives and crunching noises were functioning perfectly.

Most of you probably have experienced the joy of carrying an Xbox around. Well a dev kit is heavier, bulkier, and impossibly, sharper. I actually have grooves on my shoulder from lugging it around Europe. But we're not in Europe yet, so we'll get to that.

Going through airport security with anything sharper than a Nerf hackey-sack is cause for much wand-waving, shoe-searching and sphincter-tightening these days. Going through with a huge, heavy, electronics packed box of mystery is always a crapshoot. On one hand, if the security inspector is a young guy, you might squeak through with a couple of game-related questions. On the other hand, if it's an older lady with a distractingly large mole and a bad attitude, you're headed for the ergonomically correct cavity-search station.

At Seattle's security station, they've seen plenty of Xboxes. "That's weird," says the inspector, "The debugs are green and the dev-kits are usually crystal. Why's this one two-tone?" he asked, with altogether too much expertise.

"I don't know," I replied, "I think it's because it's a Euro version."

"Aah, PAL devkit with SCART video kit. Gotcha." He says. Creepily.

So onto the airplane I get, for a ten-hour flight in coach class, near the rear of the aircraft (See: "Mango"). Luckily my view of the toilet was partially obscured by two hysterical toddlers, who proved that kids actually will not stop screaming when they're exhausted. As a matter of fact, eight hours into the flight when one of them paused for a minute, the wit in the seat in front of me muttered, "Thank God. One of them's died."

So why am I going to Europe, you probably asked about a minute ago? Well, the game has to be certified for sex, violence and mild antics by European censors. In this case, the Video Standards Council in Borehamwood, near (allegedly) London, and a German outfit known by the catchy title, Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle, or USK for short.

Now the problem I faced was getting to Borehamwood from Heathrow Airport, since the one train service that goes there, happened to be on strike that day. Cue hilarious race across London and then through ever-narrower country lanes (think Death Star trench sequence), stick-shift, right-hand-drive and wrong side of the road escapades. Everything was fine until I hit my first roundabout (four way stops are an exceptional UK rarity) and totally forgot which way to go around. As the old dude in Indy and the Last Crusade said, "You chose....poorly." Sorry London. I promise not to scare everyone next time.

If they check the left hand side of that car they'll see that I hit every curb in central London as I hilariously misjudged the width of the car.

The demo in London was fairly straightforward. I sat with two very polite English chaps and ran them through much of the game. I was especially careful to show them how many human allies you could kill and using what brutal methods to do so. I had to force some characters to swear. One of the marines, as you'll find, doesn't take too much prodding.

Actually, I noticed, going through single player for the first time in ages, that the Marine voice work is awesome. Not so much what they say (some of it is incredibly funny though) but more the way they react properly to circumstance. Even staring at a character for a long period of time will illicit different responses, depending on the circumstances.

The VSC was totally unconcerned with the murderization of Covenant forces. Apparently, if the game didn't allow you to turn on your allies, we'd have gotten the UK equivalent of a PG, regardless of the galloons of alien blood we had flooded the Galaxy with. Britain is now completely unconcerned with bad language, as I discovered watching BBC TV in the hotel that night. Just as well, since every other word out of our game seemed to be bastard., asshole or bullshit.

I did point out that technically, you can kill tens of thousands of Grunts, Elites, Brutes, Jackals and "others" while playing a typical game. "No problem, as long as they don't look human," said one of the chaps.

As I liberally coated every surface of New Mombassa with human blood just to show it could be done, the two fellows hummed and hah-ed, but clearly knew exactly what they were doing. Just as I was explaining that you could continue to blast corpses after they'd fallen, but that they wouldn't move, an animation bug kicked in and caused the poor cadaver to twitch horribly, whether I blasted him or not. It has been fixed.

In the end, after seeing tons of game, checking out a few very shocking twists, and finally agreeing that it was not in your best interest to kill all your buddies, they let us squeak by with a UK 16 rating, thanks to blood, swearing and violence.

To be honest, I was glad to get out of London. The city itself is hip and cool, but airport hotels SUCK and the only local entertainment was a gas station. I d