Bungie Weekly Update/09-21-01

This is the Bungie Weekly Update of September 21, 2001, written by Matt Soell.

Bungie Update

An eerie calm settles over Bungie HQ as we approach the moment when we start calling them release candidates instead of just builds. A sense of quiet contemplation sets in, and the silence of employees hard at work is only broken by the occasional cry of DIIIIIIIIIIIIIINK! as a rocket launcher or sniper rifle does its dirty work. This is what Bungie is all about.

• The Bear fixed a longstanding bug that allowed vehicles to push bipeds through the map. We fixed a few geometry issues as well; nothing major though.
• Still fine-tuning performance and optimizing things all over the place for the benefit of our framerate, which is (in Hardy's words) very playable, and only getting better.
• There's a lot of multiplayer testing going on at any given moment, and some heated rivalries have emerged as a result. One group of people dubbed themselves the Halo Dream Team. Some claim this name refers to their dream of one day winning a match.
• Just because Marty is done doesn't mean he can't stay here until 2 in the morning adding 131 new Covenant Elite pain and death sounds to the game. Jay claims that he and Marty have added 15,500 unique pieces of audio to Halo at one time or another over the last four months; he figures that works out to ten sounds an hour, or one new sound every six minutes, every day for the last four months. Marty said, It's an incredible, ridiculous workload, like doing sound for ten really complex feature films at once...like ten Star Wars movies all in a row. At this point Joseph interrupted Marty's philosophical reverie with a cry of Hey George Lucas, could you shut up for a second and help me with this sound problem over here? It's this sort of team spirit that has propelled Bungie to the forefront of the industry.
• There are many elements of Halo we haven't discussed in public - and we don't intend to start until long after everyone has played the game, lest we spoil a cool surprise for someone. So it's understandable that I haven't said anything about the many easter eggs in Halo. I'm not about to start either - but I will say that it pays to look around. And you haven't really won Halo until you've won it on the highest difficulty level.