Chronique:BWU 16/12/2005

Posted by Frankie at 12/16/2005 4:23 PM PST

Bungie Weekly Update: December 16, 2005

Marty hints at a date for Halo 2 Soundtrack Vol. 2, I hint at some new Halo novel action and do a little social engineering, in a weekly update destined to languish in mild obscurity for thousands of years.

Marty finally, definitely, absolutely and positively confirmed that the Halo 2 Soundtrack, Vol. 2, will go on sale "Um, maybe, sometime uh, first quarter? Yes. First quarter of 2006 for sure!"

Could you be more specific? - I entreated the wizened one. But nope, first quarter is as specific as we're going to get. All I can say Marty, is that this had better be a masterpiece. Maybe Marty is just master showman who knows how to string an audience along. Or maybe he's just senile. Perhaps we will never know.

After the success of the Halo novels by Eric Nylund and William Dietz, we're currently having discussions internally about what direction the next Halo novel(s) should take. There's a lot of cool story ideas out there (and in here) and we're looking carefully at our options. So, novel fans, there is momentum…but no promises yet. We won't do anything that isn't super sweet. In the meantime, you should read this book: GREATEST BOOK EVER WRITTEN BY DUDES and learn about Ninjas.

This week, every day has felt like a Friday. We did a thing called the "Bungie Fair" which as really a big show and tell where the various groups – art, design, engineering, all showed off their work from our next project, some of it in the form of multimedia presentations, some of it in very real, discernable graphics, running as actual gameplay with placeholder graphics. Some of it even had sound effects and music.

Naturally most of the stuff is still shrouded in secrecy, but I did get to see a taste of a lovely user interface. It's amazing what you can do with higher resolutions and lots more power. My favorite UIs ever include TiVo, PSP and of course the 360 "blade" interface. The UI I saw during that demo was every bit as elegant and in some ways, more dramatic than any of those. And simply because of the nature of UI – it looked "finished." Which was kind of shocking, although in reality, it was very early, and it will probably undergo many, many complete overhauls before it ships.

But ironically, the way we're prototyping aspects of this next game mean that even some gameplay tests, demos and experiments, are surprisingly polished and playable. We're all in the giddy position of being "forced" to play moments and elements from the next project.

Studio Manager Pete Parsons thought it was a Renaissance faire, and even though we explained it to him, he still ate too much fried dough and threw up after twirling merrily around the maypole. Tra-la-la.

I've been playing around in Halo 2 for a while on Live, mostly on 360. For the first time since Halo 2 launched, the majority of my Friends List is playing something else – usually Geometry Wars, COD2, PDZ or PGR3. A significant number of them actually appear to be in the dashboard. One started a private chat with me while he watched a DVD and I played Geometry Wars. Which was kind of surreal.

Still no shortage of IDIOTS on Live though. One complete assclown spent the entire game belittling his own team for not being as good as him, even though we were handily beating the rival team. It would be one thing if he were one of those twelve year old screaming Saturday morning idiots, but this was a 20-something dude, trolling Team Snipers and plainly acting like this in every game he played. I hope he's reading this. And I hope he examines his life. Here's a laundry list of his qualities for him to ponder:

1. I am a 20-something year old male professional.
2. I log onto Xbox Live and yell at strangers who are trying to enjoy themselves.
3. I belittle players who are actually helping me.
4. I ruin the experience for everyone.
5. I gain nothing from this other than the disrespect and hatred of those I encounter.
6. This is plainly a big part of my life.
7. I am a thoughtless, lonely bigot with no friends or life.
8. If anyone I knew saw me behave like this they would never speak to me again.

Most games I've played are pretty mellow though, and I'm surprised that I still play Halo 2 as often as I do. One problem with that is that I expect all online games to sort of behave like that. So I have a devil of a time with every new UI I encounter, and I have a huge stack of games I really should be playing, and am not. It looks like this:

Animal Crossing (DS)
GTA Liberty City Stories (PSP)
Perfect Dark Zero
Kameo
Ridge Racer 6
Condemned
Shadow of the Colossus (PS2)

I should get to them during the Holiday break (sorry Bill O'Reilly, but they GOT to me).

The Bungie Princess has been very busy. She arranged a special private screening of King Kong for us, which WOULD have been the greatest thing ever – the studio (thanks to the guys from Universal for flying up especially) got us a studio print – which entails much better colors, almost no scratches and better color matching between reels – except that the movie theater, bless ‘em, loaded the reels in the wrong order. The first part of the movie – up until the arrival at Skull Island, was fine, then it suddenly cut to a fraught, dirtied Naomi Watts and we were all "whaaaaa!?"

We had to leave the theater while they spent a couple of hours re-threading the reel. I was busy so I missed the second half. I heard there is a monkey in it. Are we spoiled babies? Oh yes indeed. I will go and pay $9 to see it myself this weekend. I was very excited.

Bungie Princess has also been putting together plans for our holiday party, which is apparently at a mountaintop hotel resort called the Overlook, where a Mr. Torrance will be our guide. Sounds safe enough. He says entertainment will include The Twins, Bath Lady and a "Crazy Maze!" Seems like it should be a blast.

No new movement on the movie front, or at least, nothing we can tell you about at this time. As a matter of fact, we've been quite busy on movie stuff this week but it's just not our secret to share with you.

I did get this mail today – and it's typical of a number of mails I've gotten on the subject:

Snipers rank system should be reset because 90% of the people that have these ranks dont even deserve them and their destroying everyone else stats because of this. I was a 31 when i started and now im a 28 because everytime i go in by myself i get matched with people that are like 27 and up but they play like their a 3. These people are screwing everything up and it should be fixed. The only way to do this is to reset everyones snipers ranks and go from their. Even though their will be stand byers and modders like their is now that's why i dont go in with a party because 99% of the time you get cheated. So if you and everyone else can reset this me and my friends will be thankful. please reset them thanks.

The short answer is no . We are not going to reset the ranks because you're upset that your rank fell. Folks like you specifically requested that Snipers be ranked and now it is. You will have to endure the normalizing of the level system which means sometimes you will lose a game. You will lose a game because your TEAM did not perform as well as the other TEAM which statistically had the same likelihood of containing less-skilled players as yours. Your rank is designed to match you with similarly skilled players, and after a period of ranked games, it should do so smoothly. So deal with it. Patience please.

We also are still receiving complaints that Snipers is ranked at all, from folks who enjoyed it when it was a more leisurely, less competitive environment. All we ask of ALL our players is that they treat others with respect. If you're unhappy with a less skilled team mate, keep your opinion to yourself or how about this – give the other player some pointers?

Personally I tend towards preferring Snipers unranked because I am a huge baby, but I will be perfectly happy once my skills are "normalized" by the ranking system. It's also nice to go into ranked games as the weak-but-careful link in a party.

And to the endless, endless letters I get about – "I thought Modding was fixed," or "I thought standby was fixed." Let me say this one. Last. Time:

Modders get banned. All of them. If they go on Live, their account is spotted and banned. It takes a week or two. Then yes, sometimes they get a "2 month," and sometimes they learn their lesson. We don't control the two month accounts, so there's not much we can do.

We also got a lot of feedback about the "SlugFest" Spartan in Dead or Alive 4. One common theme was that this was a "cash-in" thing – I should reiterate, not a penny changed hands, we did this because we (Team Ninja and Bungie) wanted to do it.

I will keep you guys updated should anything fancy or awesome happen next week, but don't count on it. It's Holiday time (sorry Bill) and Bungie folks will all be kicking it with our loved ones, and I will attempt to emulate that by standing near people who can tolerate me.

Finally, somebody asked me to strip Mr. Chief down to his basic components (you know, because he was so sophisticated and complicated before). So here it is. Shudder.