Halo Wars Update 02.28.07
Milestones
A milestone is a date at which game developers are to have a specific list of features and art implemented and working. The march to shipping a game can have a great many milestones that developers have to meet, which means that piece by piece the game slowly comes together. This can be moderately less painful than passing a series of kidney stones.
Last week, a bunch of Microsoft Games Studio (MGS) big wigs were down here to view the latest build of our game. This was more than a conventional milestone, as they sat down to play the game and get a hands on feel on how the project is really coming along. Our visitors included Shane Kim, the head of MGS, and a number of his cohorts. We made sure we had a fairly polished build of our game ready for these folks to play, including some wicked new UI work by Ensemble Studios Artist Andy Gotcher and Programmer Billy Khan. By all accounts the Microsoft gang had a good time with the game and was quite impressed with its current state. We’ve got a long way to go still, but it’s very encouraging when a group like this can sit down and have fun beating the hell out of each other so far from any ship date.
With this latest build of the game, everyone at Ensemble Studios was invited to join in on an afternoon of multiplayer Halo Wars! I had a win and two losses, but generally felt like I was starting to shed my newb shoes. Here are a few photos from the event, with a few items possibly censored by “The Man”:
The team gathered around the monitors watching a game go down. On the far right the red shirt is Graeme Devine, Lead Designer on Halo Wars, and standing next to him is Music and Sound Lead Kevin McMullan. (Too many other people to mention!) The TV monitors were blackened on purpose...censoring.
Mr.Smiley is Designer Justin Rouse, a great RTS player.
They’re all looking at a big TV with Halo Wars on it, honest!
Top 10 Most Active Forumers
In just digging through the forums the other day I noticed some serious post counts from some users. That got me wondering who the most active users were. Here’s the list of most active users based on post count as of 13:30 hours 02.20.07:
1) Skita1 – 1832
2) Dmand – 1503
3) UNSC AI #23 – 1498
4) Rotaretilbo – 1399
5) ninjatheory – 1365
6) EYOB – 767
7) newguy2445 – 726
8) Indie – 574
9) toasterking93 – 418
10) Ryce - 413
>FILE ENCRYPTION/1SF021402141. -ES
>DECRYPTION KEY: CLASSIFIED/”UNSCSF”/
>DECODING TRANSMISSION
>ETA 777601 SECONDS…
>DECRYPTION 100% COMPLETE...
>IDENTIFIED - UNSC SPARROWHAWK
