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Frankie's Bungie Updates - Search results for Marty
Friday, September 24, 2004
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.
Friday, September 24, 2004
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.
Friday, September 10, 2004
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.
Friday, September 10, 2004
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.)
Friday, September 03, 2004
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.
Friday, August 27, 2004
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.
Friday, August 20, 2004
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.
Friday, July 23, 2004
Marty also let me hear one of the new pieces of finished music from the game. It was perfect. Totally inspiring, a soaring cavalcade of angelic ecstasy, tempered with just a hint of mournful longng, and all this to a totally danceable Euro-technobeat....I'm just kidding Marty. It was great.
Friday, July 09, 2004
Adrian Perez
* Been working with the graphics guys on lightmapping the 'sets' that will appear in some of the cinematics.† They're not BSP level geometry, they're made as objects (so it's easy to use them in multiple levels).† Also I've been working with the artists on specific problems with the lightmapper and fixing them.
* Did some more work on the player training; the user testing we've been doing has been really encouraging.† We had a gamer who had never played an FPS the other day, and after half an hour the game had taught them enough that they were ready to smack down Marty.† After another half an hour they were ready to start tackling the game on normal.
* A bunch of nitty little bugs and features for single player were implemented this week.† Example, if you pulled the trigger back during your ready animation the plasma pistol wouldn't start charging when it was done with its ready animation, things like that.
* In between all that I've been working on the gametypes and the game engine in general.† King of the Hill is back in, just need to get the rendering of the hill re-done with the new shader system.† Started work on re-doing one of our new gametypes, Also been sneaking in little multiplayer polish things, like when you get into a vehicle it shows the names of the other passengers over their heads for a second.
†
Adrian
Friday, July 02, 2004
Staten, Stat!
Joe spent the entire week fixing a... [HEY! Wait Joe, I can't even TYPE what you just said to me. That is the MOST SECRET thing I ever even heard of. I ain't even typing that, I'll get my ass fired for even thinking about it too hard. -Frankie]
Joe also got into a knock down drag out Dynasty-style bitch fight with Marty O'Donnell over something so feminine, that neither dude would tell me what it was. I figure either make-up or tampons.
Joe also mentioned that John Butkus finished the animations for one of the longest and most complicated cinematics in the game and more importantly, running in the game engine. And the animation DOES feature the thing that I censored Joe on, two paragraphs ago.
Friday, June 25, 2004
Marty's Stirring Score
I still remember the first Halo Weekly Update. I was just a wee lad of 64; none of the others who are here now are old enough to have been around back then. That is the advantage of being "The Elder". In those early days I was making music for Halo on a ukulele. Now for Halo 2 I have the power of a Mac SE and an Electronic Casio Keyboard. Progress is a wonderful thing. The dialog files for Halo were around 27 unique vocalizations, all by just one actor (Joe's father) and now we've recorded over 112 different sayings by up to 4 different actors (including Joe's father's son Joe)! All the weapon sounds for Halo were made by pitch shifting one mouth noise I had recorded by accident in the bathroom (...don't ask). Now for Halo2, we've been able to recorded, pitch shift AND filter mouth noises made by not only me, but Jay and C Paul! Who knows where we'll be by the time we celebrate Halo2's 200th Weekly Update?
Marty The Elder
(I'm not losing it,,,)
Friday, June 04, 2004
Cam's Castle
We never talk to the marketing guys, because all they do is drive around in black Porsches, buying martini lunches with their expense accounts, while their Armani suits are tailored and cleaned of weird white powdery residue. That said, without the sharks, there'd be no mystery in the deep blue ocean of Halo 2 development, not to mention metal boxes, TV campaigns, magazine ads, cool storefront displays - in short just about everything related to getting Halo 2 in your face and into your Xbox. So we asked Cam Payne (seriously, that's his name) what's been going down in the world of mktg., for short. This is what he said:
"Do you consider lots of meetings and hundreds of e-mails as something cool?† Mainly this week was a lot of the day-to-day stuff for a game coming out in five months: Coordinating with agencies, reviewing advertising and POP (Point of Purchase) creative, planning and generating assets, working out the details of specific PR (Public Relations) tactics coordinating with the dozens of subsidiaries (countries that is) across the world that will market and sell Halo 2, and so on and so on
I do get to fly down to LA today for a Friday night meeting with Joe, Marty and one of our agencies.† A quick 15 hour trip, as I come back tomorrow morning at 6:30 am to go see the Dora the Explorer (hyperviolent Japanese anime) show in Seattle with my kids (elite squad of Ninja assassins).
In order to save time, effort and transportation costs, I'm staying tonight in the same hotel where Marty and Joe are staying.† Well, you know Marty and his need to be well pampered and taken care of—this means I get to stay in a nice fancy place where every room is a suite that's bigger than my last apartment.† In fact, I mentioned I was traveling with Marty when making the reservation and they called back and wanted to know if I wanted the peeled grapes and hand massages when I arrived or Saturday morning."
Friday, May 14, 2004
FANS
At Thursday night's fanfest event - we surprised the assembled group by letting them into the back rooms to play for a half hour each. Since these were the hardest of the hardcore, we basically didn't have to explain anything. A surprise guest at the FanFest was Char - he of Halo 2 Alpha fame. Naturally he OWNED. I watched him play for a bit. He could throw a grenade into the tailpipe of a speeding warthog as he jumped backwards through a plate glass window (there really is breakable glass in the game of course). But most uncanny was his reload timing. I never even thought about that too much but he was reloading with the same efficiency most people snipe.
Sgt. Johnson made a guest appearance, getting big laughs from the crowd as he continually messed with Sketch's intro. Lorraine McLees made custom drawings for raffle winners, creating original Halo art on the spot. She probably has carpal right now.
Hamilton Chu signed autographs, Jay mingled with the peeps, and everything was going swimmingly until a stern-faced officer of the law showed up asking to speak to Marty O'Donnell. Fearing that Marty's 8-track smuggling business had finally caught up with him, Jay led the officer to the Bungie maestro. "Mr. O'Donnell?" asked the policeman. "I'm a HUGE fan of the Halo soundtrack..."
The fanfest ended on a high note, as everyone got the chance to play the game, enjoy some cool sodas, bask in actual air conditioning, and were there to witness the discovery of the worst pizza known to science. It is bad enough that it might end up becoming a tradition.
Friday, April 16, 2004
Soundscrapes
C Paul and the audio fellas have been doing some very, very, very cool stuff. Fun with real audio, if you will. C Paul and the guys have been tuning the sounds for Ghost and Warthog. Lots of crashes, smashes, explosions, scrapes and sizzles. The vehicle damage is a noisy business!
C Paul has also been thinking about soundscapes, noises to put in one of the new multiplayer levels. To illustrate, the Lockout multiplayer level you've seen has some of my favorites; wind whistling through narrow walkways, really eerie, lonely sounds. They mute of course when you enter a building, but that simply makes you feel more exposed and afraid when you're out in the open. It's a subtle but brilliant touch, and a lot more organic and natural than the sounds in the original Halo. And of course there are simply more of them.
Other than that, the sound guys have been drinking too much coffee and talking about Marty's plans to become a legendary wedding march composer - a reader sent in a brilliant movie of he and his gorgeous wife being introduced at their reception - to the stirring choir and strings of Marty's Halo intro.
Friday, April 09, 2004
MartyMania
Marty claims "lots of things are making noise." Little metal pieces of things get blown off of other things and drop in the mud, grass, or sand make little sounds like metal dropping in mud, grass, or sand. It's cool. The tires sound like they're rolling on gravel, mud, water, you name it and sound like they're skidding at just the right moments. Basically everything is beginning to sound like you think it should sound, which means you won't really notice it. Cinematics, combat, and mission dialog are coming along nicely. We like our cast - a lot.
Music is bringing up the rear as usual. More on that later.
Friday, April 09, 2004
Staten Station
Joe Staten, cinematic guru and friend of the poor, has been making story stuff happen, saying, "This week revisited Earth-City. I finalized the storyboards for a super-duper, "event" intro, and CJ began creating the videomatic."
On other fronts, he's begun to work with the level-designers to organize and flesh-out their "mission-dialog" (basically, all the interesting things that get said in first-person that isn't part of the combat-dialog system) as well as help Jaime and Damian finalize the combat-dialog spec.
Marty, Michel and Joe have also begun to plan for the second dialog-recording session (late May) that will cover cinematic pickups and all mission and combat-dialog. This is going to be a whopper of a session, and will likely necessitate a week or so of hotel-time with Marty (lucky Joe).
Friday, April 02, 2004
Musicisciousness
Marty stopped by to talk about the new music and Dolby stuff going into the game. Marty usually works with the (near) finished product exactly like a top movie composer (he says) so he will be sitting down with finished game and cinematics to score it properly. "Sometimes I'll hear the audio in a game, and just know, right off the bat that it was composed and scored before the game was finished. I can't work like that."
If you remember the Star Wars Episode 1 "music video" with John Williams conducting a live orchestra in front of a screening of the movie ? that's how Marty works, only with a smaller screen and more computers.
Marty's been concentrating on the Covenant musical themes for Halo 2. The Covenant, as you know, is overtly religious, very formal and very serious. Expect to hear all that wrapped up in a ball of alien noise.
Marty has also built a bunch of Dolby surround mixed ambient sounds ? instead of having them be processed on the fly. That means he can build an ambient creepy noise in a room, imagine tinkling metallic alien technology, mixed with a constantly swirling noise of rushing air. Having that kind of control over the ambient sound means that "live" sounds, like a generator your walk by, or a whooshing elevator nearby, can be processed on the fly. Marty says that serves no purpose other than to sound "sweeter."
Friday, March 19, 2004
Sound!
No sign of Marty, probably drunk, but Jay let rip with some cool new stuff. The cinematic dialogs have all been recorded and the actors' voices are being implemented and processed into the engine. But cooler yet, the sound dept. are working on a new way of doing surface/object interactions. In the first game the noise of tires on gravel was one sound in Halo 2, it is, appropriately enough, two sounds. One is the tires and one is the gravel. And they interact. The result is not only better sounding, but technically more realistic. A similar thing is happening with DSP effects for noises. Picture the scene you're in a massive pitched battle and you quickly duck into a building the sound of the continuing battle outside, is processed correctly so that your building muffles it. Not just turning down the volume, but adjusting the acoustics on the fly so that the shift is realistic. The noise of an ongoing battle outside is really atmospheric, instead of just quieter.
Friday, March 12, 2004
Magazines!
We've been preparing for two separate visits from two big gaming magazines. Each will run a story some time in the near future on different aspects of the game. We've got a lot of work to do preparing assets and taking screenshots (yes, it's laborious and sloooow) and as the game progresses, the people who can help us are getting busier and busier. The upside of that is that Brian, Zoe and I are able to get our hands on versions of the game with everything turned on.
Currently we tend to play single and multiplayer builds with bits missing ? like textures that are turned off while an artist tweaks them, or levels with Joe Staten yelling insane inanities in place of real speech. But pretty soon, we're going to have very polished versions of the little bits we'll be taking screenshots of. Multiplayer we're used to, but I can't wait to get my hands on plot-ruining sections of the Campaign mode.
We also have to round up some very busy, very stressed animators, programmers and designers, so that they're available to chat and well-prepared when these crack (smoking?) journalists show up and ask them supertough questions, like, "What's your favorite color Marty?" and, "Will Master Chief fall in love this time?" Luckily they've been "media-trained" so they don't accidentally give away playable builds and hard drives full of source code. Because that's what they'd do you know.
Friday, February 20, 2004
The scripts are finished and the first round of dialog is almost all being recorded this week. Joe Staten, the cinematics guru, lets Bungie folk pore over the scripts and make suggestions or changes ó you'd be surprised how tightly thought out the Halo universe is. A staffer could for example note that a bit of military terminology is being used incorrectly, or that an Elite would never say, 'Ooh, Master Chief gave me an owie!"
Seeing the script, the writing and the dialog are among my favorite aspects of the job ó but it does kinda suck knowing what happens at the end. I mean, who'd ever have suspected that Master Chief was a ghost? And a chick. A ghost chick! Seriously though, it's hard to know whether to be disappointed or excited by scripts. Part of you is like, "Holy crap, this is so amazing!" and the other part of you is like, "Aaw man, I just read 20 pages of spoilers."
Most of the dialog is being recorded in California but a couple of actors are based up here, and a couple more in Chicago so Marty and Jay and Joe are juggling that aspect too. I wanted to be a voice in the game, but my best baritone still sounds like a wasp farting through a harmonica.
Friday, February 13, 2004
He's also been trying to pin down final sounds for objects. The Warthog, for example, is being continually tuned for gameplay, so they're making teeny adjustments to acceleration and RPMs; problem is that Marty's sound effects are all tied into that, so anytime a tweak is made to gameplay, some slight overhauls of how sounds work have to be done. Marty's concerns are slightly different from gameplay — his Warthog has to sound satisfying while still accurately describing what's actually happening on screen. That's a careful balancing act.
Friday, February 13, 2004
Marty and the audio guys are always a wealth of information. This week they've been tuning the script; a lot of the lead voice over work is being recorded in LA next week and everything has to be super tight. There will of course be some returning favorites, like the Chief and Cortana, but there will be lots of new actors and talent too, so Marty's going to be working with a lot of new people, explaining things to them like, "No, Grunts don't sound like James Earl Jones, squeak it up more!"
Friday, February 06, 2004
Marty O'Donnell and co., have been tooling around with footsteps, trying to make sure that when Master Chief walks, runs, sprints crouches and creeps, that an appropriate footfall is heard (or not in the case of creeping). Right now, thanks to some experiments with Dolby surround, it's occasionally possible to think your own footsteps are someone else's. That little "feature" is very easy to fix - but one issue with surround sound is that there's no "down" so Marty's feeling is that footsteps should cue from the front and center speakers since they handle "close" sounds better. But you will be able to detect a subtle difference between left and right footsteps.
Of course, all these sounds are based on the surfaces you're moving on - so different sounds and effects are going to be applied for metal, indoor environments, echoey spaces, gravel, you name it.
Friday, January 16, 2004
Marty also has the dubious distinction of being the current Bungie Halo 2 champeen, thanks in part to a faulty stat measurement. Don't get us wrong, Marty is GOOD at Halo 2 multiplayer, but the fuzzy math they used to compute the winner was faulty. Since he played the most games (when he wasn't composing music) he was busy getting killed a lot more than he was killing back.. In fact, his kill to death ratio was among the worst on staff. Luckily for Marty, I'll be playing next week, so he'll be off the hook (I SUCK at Halo 2 because I don't know the maps).
Friday, January 16, 2004
Marty O'Donnell is very excited about how the physics engine is interacting with sound effects. "I just wasn't convinced by it. I'd listen to how little details sounded, like metal rolling on stone, or rocks on sand and I wasn't convinced. But now I think we've got it down. I'm really pleased. Chucky (Gough) and Eamon (McKenzie) are just doing incredible work with the techy physics stuff."
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