Bungie Weekly Update/02-02-01

This is the Bungie Weekly Update for February 2, 2001, written by Matt Soell.

Bungie Update

What better day than Groundhog Day to pull some fuzzy wiggling Halo info nuggets from the earth and hold them up for the world to see?

• The programmers got a development kit update and have spent most of the week making sure their old stuff still works.
• Chucky has been working on controller issues, and as John said All of the hidden little things we're doing to make sure you can play Halo with a console controller in such a way that the experience doesn't suck are already working.
• Matt has revised the particle system so Shiek can really get going on the particle effects. I got to see the wood-impact effect (bullet + speed + wood = splinters flying through the air and bouncing off the floor) and it was quite nice, though probably not the most spectacular application of the particle system you'll see in the final game.
• Jason has spent most of the week working on the long-term schedule for the team. He also mentioned that he's reading Churchill's account of his WWI experiences. Significant clue to possible themes in the Halo story, or just a red herring?
• Work on the map editor continues, with more bugs being squashed and a new paint feature added. Encounters are very easy to set up now, which means it's also getting easier to find and fix bugs in the AI.
• Waves work now. They're not perfect yet but still very sexy. Too sexy for Joe, who made all sorts of lewd comments about how watching the waves made him feel.