There's been a bunch of questions floating around the team, ever since the project was first started. Big questions like "How do we translate events from the book to a game?" "Who's designing what?" "When is the HEK coming out?" (an old favorite, that one)
Some of these big questions are now starting to be answered. Our organisation is becoming tighter, and goals are being set. There is a definite taste of anticipation in the air, as we start to make dents in the huge mountains of work we have in front of us.
This week, we gained some useful new members. Our new concept artist, Chaos, has been a very valuable addition to the team. His skill in drawing, combined with his imagination and knowledge of the Halo universe will become indespensible. As a taster for the quality of design that you can expect to see, take a peek at this Dr. Halsey drawing.
Level Design
Crispy published a major drawing this week, an overall plan of the first half of the game, showing an outline design for every level, and how they join together. Having completed this first piece of top-down design, the next step is much more bottom-up. Everybody on the team is designing small pieces of levels, without concentrating too hard on the overall plan. The aim is to amass a large library of rooms, combat situations or scripted sequences that can then be slotted together to create each level. This approach is intended to overcome the level-design-fatigue that can set in, when levels are designed from scratch. As a result of this method, each level should be fresh and you will run into a new style of play around every corner.
Graphics
Vice has been getting to grips with the UNSC 'look'. As an exercise to illustrate the style, and to test out texture designs, he has been working on these cargo containers. You cannot hope to be a self-respecting FPS without crates. These are ours.
Farsight has been working on a new Covenant weapon, that has already been seen by the wider Halo world, can you spot where?
He's also been getting the other modellers in shape with some good organisation and prioritising of work. Wraith has reanalised the Covenant needle launcher and is currently remodeling it. He has also completed a model for the "Lotus" anti-tank mines from the books.
Sound
Jatin and Krekc have started experimenting with music. We want to try and find a good style for each area, before we commit to a full piece of music. At the moment, wooden percussion and possibly woodwinds are sounding good for the forest sections. Crispy is polishing his didgeredoo skills in readiness!
We have also started the tireless task of scripting the battle dialogue. Each of the marine variants in Halo has around 600 individual combat lines, covering all aspects of battle. For every new character that fights in First Strike, we will need to record a similar number of lines. This will also be a totally collaborative process - we are using a wiki to host a page that any team member can add their own lines to.
Finally, there is some light at the end of the website tunnel. We have a couple of leads on some people who may be able to create our public website. The weekly update will then move to this new home, and you will be able to browse past updates and images. Touch wood, next week's update will be on its own website. See you all there!
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First Strike is a Single Player mod for Halo PC, based on the novel of the same name by Eric Nylund. All trademarks copyright their respective owners (Microsoft and Bungie, really...) Contact RunningRiot (mabrowning@hotmail.com) or Crispy (tomnewsom@fastmail.fm) if you wish to contact us/help out.
i realy hope you guys can make all this come true.
