Hi there! Welcome to the first weekly update for the First Strike mod project. The project aims to re-tell the two main story arcs from the novel of the same name by Eric Nylund. The first half will be played from the POV of Spartan-104, Fred, as he crash lands on Reach, finds the other Spartans, rescues marines, kicks covenant butt, and discovers something very strange, deep in a secret ONI base. The second half will be a return to the POV of the Master Chief, as he rescues the survivors from the wreckage of Halo, picks up the Spartans from Reach, and takes the fight to Covenant home turf in a First Strike against their deadly armada.
After the Halo Editing Kit (HEK) is available, we will release a demo of the first level and launch a shiny website. Until then, we will do our best to release an update once a week to keep you up to date on our progress. Seeing as this is the first update, it's more of an 'edited highlights' of the development of the last month or so. Enjoy!
A large portion of our time has been spent talking about just how rigidly we should follow the book. Whenever translating a story to a different medium, it's important to play to the strengths of that medium. In our case, this means discarding some elements of the story entirely. In other places, events that occur over one or two paragraphs are being expanded into whole levels. The focus is on the gameplay, however, and the story should be told through interaction wherever possible. We don't know if full cutscenes, with camera movement and custom animation, are even possible; so in-game storytelling will have to be carefully fitted into the technical restraints.
Level design is progressing from design notes, to sketches, to 3d models. The first segment of Level 1 has been modelled and textured, after some careful planning of gameplay flow, narrative and environment.
Work on the new props, vehicles and characters is a less pressing priority, seeing as these objects are always easily tweaked at a late stage of development. However, this does not mean we are not building up a library of geometry and textures. We already have models for the new SMG and Battle Rifle, as well as one or two other more secret offensive weapons.
This update is a bit spartan (hah!) but expect the content and writing quality to slowly rise over the coming weeks as Halo : First Strike comes to fruition.
In closing, we'd like to extend an invitation to you all to join the team. We're only looking for committed, sensible, talented, and preferably experienced people. If you think you know what it is that makes Halo a fantastic game, and you have the ability to replicate it, please contact us through this forum, or by email to tomnewsom@fastmail.fm or mabrowning@hotmail.com
More next week!
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