Halo Navigation

Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 19:31:47 +0100 From: modulo <modulo@bigfoot.com> X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: halo@bungie.org, slltan@chello.nl Subject: reader-submitted theories: Halo navigation Halo navigation Hello, I'd like to offer a way for all the online teamplayers to navigate the Halo. If this subject is already covered, I didn't know about it. If my system of navigation is unnessesary because of a game feature, it's my bad luck. I was wondering about how people were going to navigate on (the) Halo. As there is probably no magnetic core of the Halo construct, there is no North or South. How do you know in which direction you are travelling? Sure you can take the human mother ship as a reference point and say: "I'm at 10 kilometers (I'm Dutch) from the mothership" but that still wouldn't give your teammate the right direction because there are two directions to take away from the mothership on the Halo ring. Then I thought about the the way Halo gravity works, the ring rotates like a wheel and that motion pushes you against the inside of the rim (centripetal force). Well in real life the air just above the ground would stick to the ground just like the humans would, but the air higher up in the sky would stick less to the ring, and the higher you get, the harder it gets for the air to move with the same speed as the ring. This would create a constant wind high above ground with a constant direction too (opposite the direction the wheel is turning in). The same phenomenon can be observed on earth, there is a constant stream of air high in the earth's athmosphere that airline pilots use to get from Europe to America faster (I don't know the stream's name in English). So, If we fanboys and girls can convince Bungie to implement this physics feature into the Halo game-engine, WE WOULD HAVE 2 DIRECTIONS ON THE HALO RING: - Upwind (the direction the wind is coming from) - Downwind (the direction the wind is travelling in) In that case, you could say to your teammate: "I'm 10 klicks Upwind from the mothership" On top of that, you could instantly see which way you are facing by looking at the direction of the clouds and not on your instruments. There are two problem with this theory: 1: If there is enough weather on Halo, the weather might reverse the wind direction in certain areas of the ring, this would screw up our lovely navigation system. On the other hand, Halo hass less surface than the earth has and it seems the surface is mostly land with just a few spots of water. This would make the weather more even than on earth, and this might be an excuse for a constant wind direction. 2: Bungie must implement this feature into their game-engine. I don't think their physics engine is simulating this phenomenon all by it's own yet. A way around this problem would be to E-mail Bungie, but let us debate this theory first okay? maybe it's not such a good idea at all, or maybe my theory is just WRONG. We now have a system to navigate the lengt of Halo... and that was my main point, but the rim of the Halo "wheel" has with too! So we need names for the width directions people !! Also, we need names for the diagonal directions. Here on earth we'd say South-South-West. But what would we say on Halo? I noticed in the movie (which I can download in realtime from home *brag brag* =) that the star is not in the middle of the Halo ring but a little bit beside it. So you could use the the Star and moon as reference points BUT if Peter Streicker's observation in his "reader-submitted theory" (on halo.bungie.org/theories.html) is correct, the Star might not stay at the same side of the Halo, if that is true... the star is not a suitable reference point and we can't say stuff like: "I'm ten klicks Upwind, 3 klicks Starside of the mothership" I'll mail this message to Bungie and post it on the forum of halo.bungie.org modulo modulo@bigfoot.com

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