Matt's Halo Updates - Search results for chris
Friday, September 14, 2001
Work continues on optimizing framerates. We're at the point where we can run through the game watching for drops and then use a variety of tools to pinpoint the problem, be it a bunch of textures loaded off the disc or a cinematics script creating fifty objects at once. Once we know what the problem is, we can fix it. Sounds simple, doesn't it? And yet we must call upon the mad skillz of Chris Butcher to make it happen.
Friday, September 07, 2001
The crewmen fight better - better than the Bobs in Marathon, notes Chris Butcher.
Friday, August 24, 2001
Chris Butcher continued to solidify the framerate and also taught the Jackals to use the overcharger on their plasma pistols. The Bear made vehicle-on-vehicle collisions work nicely. Jason insisted that I refrain from naming the CD he was listening to.
Friday, August 24, 2001
This update was delayed for the better part of an hour while Chris Carney and Mat Noguchi handed my ass to me over and over again on the Boarding Action map. Deep space, two huge ships floating beside each other, teleporters and sniper rifles. The map should really come into its own once the rocket launchers are enabled.
Friday, August 17, 2001
Chris Barrett, on loan from the Phoenix team, added lush detail to the swamp - lilypads and vegetation and the like.
Friday, August 03, 2001
Chris Hughes added a bunch of marine heads to the game (some of whom look familiar) and tweaked Cortana's face.
Friday, August 03, 2001
The Marines are much better about getting out of your line of fire than they used to be, thanks to Chris Butcher.
Friday, July 27, 2001
Having introduced the AIs to the concept of driving, Chris Butcher is now teaching them how to drive different kinds of vehicles.
Friday, July 20, 2001
Chris Hughes built a bunch of little things, including runway signal batons to be used in one of the cutscenes. He also reworked some of the models to show how bullets modify chests.
Friday, July 13, 2001
Chris Hughes is working on a pilot model for one of the cutscenes. It began its life as the Marcus model, and kept his face even as Chris feminized the rest of her body, which was rather unnerving. Thankfully, as Chris put it, "hormone therapy for the post-op Marcus" was successful, and she has her own face now.
Friday, June 29, 2001
Chris Hughes did some nice modifications to Cortana, as well as a bunch of other stuff I can't tell you about. Let's just say it involves two of the major characters in Halo's story. He showed me a sheet of paper covered with the equations that explain how Bernie's shaders work. "The scary thing," he said, "is that I almost understand it."
Friday, June 22, 2001
The Artist Formerly Known As The Mighty Chris Butcher And Now Known Simply As Chris Butcher delegated his title to Chucky. He also did a bunch of stuff for the Sin-O-MatiXXX team, making sure the communication system for AIs is in proper working order and working on the scripting tools.
Friday, June 15, 2001
The Mighty Chris Butcher convinced AI characters to give you a yelled warning when they toss grenades, and gave them the brains to dive out of the way when a vehicle tries to run them down.
Saturday, June 09, 2001
The Mighty Chris Butcher is giving Halo's AI the capacity know when it's in a battle it can't win (for example, when it's being fired upon by an enemy out of its range, or when you've mowed down thirty of its friends with a chain gun). As a result, encounters are more challenging, and much more fun.
Friday, June 01, 2001
The Mighty Chris Butcher has done the work necessary for AIs to fight in midair. He's also created a bunch of tools for Jaime to use when populating the human ship and assigning behaviors to its inhabitants.
Friday, May 25, 2001
The Mighty Chris Butcher is doing stuff so mighty it must remain secret for now. The only thing he's done lately that I'm allowed to comment on is allowing designers to specify AI behavior in scripts.
Friday, May 25, 2001
Speaking of multiplayer, Chris Carney is the latest addition to the team, designing new multiplayer maps.
Thursday, April 26, 2001
The Mighty Chris Butcher has given the AI a knowledge model. This means, for example, that if you're a traitorous turncoat who picks off a Marine when no one's looking, when the other Marines discover the body they'll go looking for the slain Marine's killer without knowing that it's you. Of course, if someone were to SEE you doing this, the Marines' reaction would change appropriately.
Friday, April 20, 2001
The Mighty Chris Butcher was asked to stop playing CounterStrike and actually start working on Halo. His reply "maybe next week".
Friday, April 13, 2001
The Mighty Chris Butcher retains his AI SackMaster crown for another week. There's a race you haven't seen yet who carry a rechargeable shield, and what they'll do when they see you is deploy in packs with their shields activated, and as you deplete their shields they'll retreat behind something and wait for them to recharge again. The net effect is a force of enemies who are tough to dispatch because the weak ones are constantly dropping back to recharge, then running back to relieve their weakened fellows.
Friday, April 06, 2001
The Mighty Chris Butcher has taught the AI about short bursts, long bursts, wide sprays and tight streams of weapon fire, and when each is appropriate.
Friday, March 16, 2001
The AI also behaves differently based on their awareness of their vulnerability. For example, the grunts tend to travel in packs, and run away pretty quickly once you start blowing holes in them. But they'll dig in and make a nuisance of themselves if there's a Covenant Elite nearby. Likewise, if you then kill that Elite, they'll lose their nerve and run for cover. When demonstrating this to me, Chris noted that one of the grunts was obstinately firing at me even though all his buddies had bailed; this was because the grunt was positioned in such a way that he couldn't see the freshly ventilated Elite corpse lying nearby, even when he popped up to take a shot. Fleeing grunts will eventually verbalize important information to help their buddies avoid those unfortunate situations.
Friday, March 16, 2001
The Mighty Chris Butcher continues to improve the AI. It now looks at interesting things: rather than just staring straight ahead and running through it's idle animation, AI units will look around at their friends, or other units walking around, or nearby machinery control panels.
Friday, March 16, 2001
Chris Hughes is adding some nice detail to the Marine head permutations.
Friday, March 09, 2001
The Mighty Chris Butcher has the AI communicating target info to other AIs now; as a result they're getting much craftier about finding ways to sneak up on you.
Friday, March 09, 2001
Marcus and Chris Lee are working on a new mission, the first big exterior mission you'll play in the game.
Friday, March 02, 2001
The Mighty Chris Butcher advanced in his quest to make the AI rock by getting the Bobs to operate the jeep's chain gun. There's nothing quite like driving the jeep through a building with an AI Marcus behind you tearing through anyone in your way with the chain gun...rushing out the door and jumping the jeep off a ledge while Marcus and the chain gun face the opposite direction, blasting away at your pursuers...I don't know what to say except it gives you a warm fuzzy feeling inside.
Saturday, February 24, 2001
The mighty Chris Butcher is beautifying the AI. He's revised and expanded Jason's AI plan, which was pretty extensive and impressive to begin with. Jason is spending a lot of time ducking behind various objects to show Butcher how he wants the AI to behave. That's his excuse, anyway. The AI is already much more intelligent than it used to be, surrounding the player from multiple elevations, picking the best spot from which to fire at you, and generally making your life unpleasant.
Friday, December 08, 2000
We hired our tools programmer. His name is Mat. Yes, just one T. This makes three of us, so wee tied with the Pauls (Bertone, Russel, and Clift) and just one behind the Chris clan (Barrett, Butcher, Hughes and Lee).
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