interesting article i just saw on halo 2’s revolutionary matchmaking system
Of course, when the Bungie designers overruled the research team, they weren’t pointing out our methodological flaws or making an argument against affective forecasting. They had a uniquely clear design vision which had been built on solid principles and then hotly debated within the studio, producing a battle-hardened belief on the part of key engineering and design leaders that this was the way to produce a great multiplayer experience. One of them privately told me afterwards that no possible set of results from this study would have convinced them to change course. Almost always, when I’ve presented research findings to teams and been overruled like this, I get to say “I told you so” in some highly professional way after the game ships. But on Halo 2 , the other side of the argument turned out to be correct and the gaming world is better for it.
it’s wild to me that you can just control enemy units as if they’re the player and this actually works. like you can melee, shoot the gun and everything
Not everyone follows it but it’s smart programming to write a character controller that abstracts for NPCs and player, it lets the AI programming focus on more high-level tasks
only if it has those little animations and nice sound effects when you hover, and also the door that glows enticingly and is really just a series of trailers for forthcoming adventure games??
One of my fav things about halo is the way a legendary playthru creates this common experience of memorizing particular enemy spawns, even imbuing them with personalities
I started downloading halo 2 anniversary last night and thought “I’ll just play some CEA while I wait.” two hours later I thought to myself, it’s 2am and I’ve been replaying a 19 year old game instead of going to bed.
while I bag on the CEA updated graphics I will say. for whatever reason, playing last night with those cartoony gfx on really did give me the feeling of being a kid again. wandering around the map, messing with the enemies, not doing any of the skips, watching the cutscenes. what a rare thing that has become forme ,to just play a game with no other ambitions other than just having a good time.
That’s how I end up whenever I play CE “for a bit”. Whether it’s Anniversary, original PC release, whatever. I’m like “I’ll play Silent Cartographer for a bit.” and then I look up and I’m on 343 Guilty Spark.
Just carving through those encounters like a well oiled machine.
It’s amazing for how they spent so much time making the game, going through all these different versions or it recreating it over and over again, and they still managed to capture lightning in a bottle somehow.
Yeah it was just Reach. The sound synthesis engine in Reach was apparently really really weird and hard to emulate, according to all their apologetic blog posts about it.
They keep sharing blog posts explaining what they’re doing to fix the Reach issue. Their last one said they brought in the old sound engine company to advise them. It’s not that satisfying to read their updates until they actually have a fixed version though. My favorite Halo is Reach so I kept checking to see if it was time to replay it yet.
I’ve just set all of them to locked 60 fps and given up trying to go higher than that. Seems like going above 60 creates a “jutter” because different elements are being drawn at different rates. Maybe this is more or less true depending on which Halo you are playing.
The netcode for Halo 2 Classic grenades is definitely very jank right now. Lag interrupting the physics makes ridiculous disasters happen.
