Bungie Weekly Update/06-09-01

This the Bungie Weekly Update of June 9, 2001, written by Matt Soell.

Bungie Update

Busy week, long hours. Here's some of what we've accomplished:

• A buzzword-happy Marty placed more scripted, context-sensitive, interactive music in the game.
• Matt Segur has the beginnings of precipitation effects in the game. Presently we have no snow art, so when we test it shell casings rain from the sky.
• Bernie's doing more work on detail objects.
• The Mighty Chris Butcher is giving Halo's AI the capacity know when it's in a battle it can't win (for example, when it's being fired upon by an enemy out of its range, or when you've mowed down thirty of its friends with a chain gun). As a result, encounters are more challenging, and much more fun.
• Shiek did some more explosion effects, and also worked on getting the control room (from the first Halo demo back in '99) back in the game. He's also tweaking the plasma pistol and plasma rifle so you can tell the difference between their projectiles.
• The skull model is done but not properly textured yet.
• Two more missions are quickly approaching playable status, and the artists are refining some existing areas, like the mazelike corridors of the Covenant ship and the swamp - adding dense undergrowth, stuff dangling from trees, that sort of thing.
• Craig Mullins sent in some of his beautiful matte paintings.
• An interesting tidbit: the six-point type Rob wanted to use for the flamethrower's trigger was illegible in English, so you'll see that button labeled in Chinese - which is perfectly legible as long as you can read Chinese.
• There's a rocket launcher in the game as well.