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User-Agent: Microsoft-Entourage/9.0.2509
Date: Fri, 01 Dec 2000 17:23:39 -0800
Subject: Halo Update 12/1/00
From: Matt Soell 
Mime-version: 1.0


Matt's Halo Report - December 1, 2000

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

- Jason, Chucky, Bernie and The Other Matt kept themselves busy over the
holidays.  Point lights.  Transparent model shaders.  New input code.  A
revised tag editor.  More AI work.  A new, "more intelligent" data structure
for the models.  Lightmaps work on curved surfaces.

- Chucky was rather busy when I tried to plumb his brain for news tidbits
this week, but he gave me a quick-n-dirty State Of Halo Rendering Address:
In the last two weeks, the rewritten Halo engine finally caught up to the
old version in terms of rendering ability.  Then we surpassed it.  Work in
the coming weeks will explore just how far we can push the graphical
envelope.

- The Halo team now holds a mission brainstorming meeting every Wednesday
morning.  This is a little different than the way we've done it in the past
and according to John it's working very well.  Rather than one or two people
deciding how a given level will work, the entire team has an opportunity to
think it over and provide some input.

- One of the missions we're sketching out right now involves a volcano and
something I can only refer to as heavy machinery. :-)

-Matt
bungie.org