Bungie Weekly Update/04-13-01

This is the Bungie Weekly Update for April 13, 2001, written by Matt Soell.

Bungie Update

The Halo Update rolls on for another lucky week.

• Apart from mapping and shaders, most of the Pillar of Autumn's interior is finished - everything but airlocks and doors.
• We got the escape pod to fly this week, though it'll probably only be used in cinematics. John calls it the Bumblebee and that's an apt name, given its bulbous nature.
• Screen flashes (when the grenades explode) work now.
• The amount of dialog the various characters have at their disposal grows daily.
• Chucky continues pounding away at the pathfinding code.
• Mat fixed 90% of the bugs in the editor's cinematic-recording mode, plus all the bugs in the code written by Jason and Matt. Where would we be without him?
• 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.
• Multiplayer is getting better; post-game scoring is in this week, and various tweaks and adjustments make it more fun to play. One of our many rough multiplayer maps is currently titled Beaver Creek - not that you should read too much into that.
• Teleporters work, though they're not placed on any maps yet.
• You can actually grenade hop in Halo, though I don't think you'll ever need to and I doubt you'll ever want to.
• We have dropships docked in a much larger Covenant ship now. Very impressive.
• And speaking of big ships, the full-scale Pillar of Autumn exterior model is a full freakin' kilometer long.