Bungie Weekly Update/08-17-01

This is the Bungie Weekly Update for August 17, 2001, written by Matt Soell.

Bungie Update

Yesterday I met a cat named Brian who said he's among the growing number of people who enjoy the jokes at the beginning of each Halo Update. I'm glad they're not a total waste of space, although for my money you can't get much better than A giraffe walks into a bar and says 'The highballs are on me' and I've never been nearly that funny. But humor is a very subjective thing. A few days ago I was in a bar on the Sunset Strip, watching a man in a bathrobe conduct an imaginary orchestra on the sidewalk. It seemed funny until I remembered that Marty O'Donnell does the same thing, and he's a serious musician.

Anyway, I hope humor will suffice for content this week because today is the day of Bungie's company picnic and everyone is either out of the office or about to leave for this much-needed afternoon of rest and relaxation. I weaseled some tidbits out of a few people before they took off, but it ain't much - I hope it will tide you over for a week.

• We're reaching the point where people will start a game to test something they just changed and keep playing because the game is starting to come together. Surprised shouts and exclamations like Damn, that's cool! now issue regularly from the same people who've been working on this game for years. This is a good sign.
• Lots and lots of (you know what's coming next) bug fixes, including several little physics fixes - making sure the biped model doesn't poke through geometry if he's crouching and decides to stand up, that sort of thing.
• Ammo works now - meaning you can walk over it and pick it up. No big deal, exactly how you'd expect it to work...I'm just a little short on cool stuff to talk about this time around.
• Chris Barrett, on loan from the Phoenix team, added lush detail to the swamp - lilypads and vegetation and the like.
• The artists, when not fixing things, spend a lot of time making new effects and animation for the Sin-O-MatiXXX team.
• Marty, whose beard would make him a dead ringer for the Unabomber if he wore an orange jumpsuit and manacles to the office and didn't spend so much time working with computers, added 740 megabytes of music to the game this week. For those with poor math skills, that's more than a CD's worth. Lots of other things have sounds attached and in sync now: clambering in and out of vehicles, for example. And every particle of falling glass.