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Halo Wars Monthly Update 4.28.08

2008-04-28T21:53:00Z

April Madness Halo Wars Tournament (of destruction) Destructed

It always sucks to start off with bad news, but better to give it to you straight. I’m sorry to say that the April Madness Tournament (of destruction) has been postponed, probably until later in the development schedule. I know you were all set to cheer for “Team Who is Chris Stark” and “Team Swanges”, so this is going to come as a major disappointment to you. We have some really cool stuff that will soon be added to the game so we’re going to hold off for now. It only makes sense to have a tournament (of destruction) when we can unleash the game’s full arsenal upon each other right?

As it was, our practice rounds were a lot of fun and teams were using somewhat different strategies which is encouraging. Scorpion tanks were proving to be very strong in the build we were using, mostly due to a bug with an anti-vehicle unit doing less damage than it was supposed to. Air units were also pretty popular, but because of their fantastic hit and run capabilities that could cripple a player’s Command Center, their power has been nerfed somewhat. A small group of these units was able to destroy a key building or two in a poorly defended base and then flee. It’s a good strategy that should be viable, but it was just a little too effective.

Of the strategies that I had been trying I had two that were working out pretty well for me. The first was a delayed rush with infantry. The real strength of this strategy is that it was generally unexpected, unless my opponent(s) were scouting well, because Scorpions were so popular. It takes time to get Scorpions on the field though, and infantry are relatively easy to start training. I’d concentrate on Marines but hold them back and try to time it so that they’d attack while my enemy was happily booming towards Scorpions or whatnot. By holding them back I make sure that I’ve got enough units to really do some damage when I do attack, and if all goes well the other team will hopefully be lulled into thinking that I’m busy booming my economy like they are. I want my opponent to invest in a long term strategy instead of defenses.

I’d have to be doing a good job of scouting so I’d know when to attack. Attack too late and he’s got high end units that will be tough for my infantry to take out, too early and he might be able to recover and fend me off if I don’t have enough units. When my infantry arrive at his base I’d try and kill a key structure, like a Supply Pad or Vehicle Depot, while continuing to stream in more reinforcements and booming in my unmolested part of the map. There’s a little more to the attack than I can safely say, generally revolving around an ability that Marines have, but that’s the gist of it.

I think the real reason I had success with this strategy was the popularity of Scorpions, which take a solid investment of time and resources to field. It was generally a safe bet that’s exactly what the other side was doing, so I could get away with this. When I failed with this strategy it was a glorious fiery end to a short game. Failure usually meant that I was behind economically and would soon get rolled unless my ally carried me on his/her back.

The other strategy that I used is growing in popularity, as it’s a pretty obvious counter to a Scorpion heavy force. I’ll have to leave that for a later time as it makes use of a new unit that I can’t mention.

Halo Wars Alpha

Yup, as you may have seen mentioned on a couple of sites, we are doing an alpha test with some internal Microsoft folks. I’m afraid I can’t talk about it at this time.

Big Al Czechs In

Stephen “Big Al” Rippy, Ensemble Studios Music and Sound Director, is back from his travels to distant lands where he was recording the music for a little game called Halo Wars. Stephen has been making music for a great many years, and has done all of the tunes for our Age of Empires series of games. That makes him an old man, since we’ve been doing those games for over ten years. I jumped into his sound proof booth with him so I could ask him a few questions about he quest for the music…

So I hear you are strong with the music-fu. When did you start creating music?

Big Al: I started messing around with a keyboard when I was 11 or 12; piano lessons, songwriting, and a top-notch pre-teen garage band followed pretty quickly!

What was the name of your first band? If you started a band today, what would you call it?

Big Al: The name of my first band was “Front Page.” If I started a band today…well, I wouldn’t because I’d have to think of a name!

Cop-out! Well how are things in the music department right now? Are you working at a fevered pitch or are you pretty relaxed with the amount of work you still have to do on the game?

Big Al: Things have started to slow down after a pretty busy year and an especially hectic three months. Barring any major changes, all the tracks are now recorded and mixed. The rest of my time on the project will be spent getting everything to play correctly in the game.

The music for the Halo games is some pretty amazing stuff. The Bungie folks may have one of the most recognizable theme songs in gaming, with the monks and the mood setting orchestral tunes. What has been your take on what Halo Wars should sound like?

Big Al: Making sure that the Halo Wars soundtrack fit comfortably into Bungie’s established world was important to me; it would feel wrong to play a game with Spartans, Warthogs, and Elites, and not hear that choral theme. That being said, I did want to expand the edges a bit. It’s kind of hard to describe the difference - maybe Halo Wars sounds a little more tech-y in some places, maybe a little more ambient in others?

We mentioned last month that you were taking off to Prague to do the bulk of the recording for the music for Halo Wars. Why Prague?

Big Al: More and more film and game soundtracks are being recorded in Prague; my first experience with it was attending the sessions for Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties last summer. The city has a rich musical history - there seems to be some kind of orchestral performance happening round the clock, so there are lots of good players there. It’s also very cost-effective, at least for the time being!

What is your role during the recording session with the orchestra?

Big Al: Once the orchestra is running through a piece, I’ll listen to make sure everything sounds like what I had in mind, then try to push for a perfect take…and then hopefully have the sense to know when to stop :)

Then it was off to Seattle for some additional recording and the final mix, correct? When you got to this point, how many minutes of music did you have to mix?

Big Al: Yes – all of the piano parts were recorded at Studio X in Seattle. Then it was off to Microsoft’s Soundlab for a week of editing, and finally back to Studio X for the final mixing. We mixed right at 75 minutes’ worth of music, in both stereo and surround.

You’ve been very open to feedback on your tunes for the game, asking folks here at Ensemble to come up listen to what you had cooking. What kinds of feedback did you get?

Big Al: They helped me make sure that the music was “Halo enough” - though there was at least one instance where I made something “too Halo” :) Graeme Devine, who wrote the story for the campaign, got very involved with the music I wrote for the cinematics. Just about every day, I’d call him in to hear some sketched-out ideas. We’d discuss whether they met his expectations for whichever scene they went with, and I’d make changes based on that. It may be subtle, but I think that kind of involvement gives some sense of unity to the finished product.

Have the folks at Bungie had a chance to listen to the stuff you’ve been working on or offered any thoughts?

Big Al: Marty O’Donnell, the composer on the Halo FPS games, actually stopped by the studio for a listen as we were mixing. He was very encouraging and, happily, seemed to like everything that we pulled up.

While we play on a skirmish map in Halo Wars, the music is going to be changing while we play the game in relation to what’s going on, correct? IE, it will get faster paced as we head into a battle or come under attack. Are there new tricks up your sleeve to help immerse the player or convey some emotion?

Big Al: Yeah, there will be some of that for sure. The different worlds in the game get their own themes and playlists, and there will be “battle tracks” for when the player is in some kind of significant fight.

Cool stuff, thanks Stephen! I’ll let you get back at it.

That is all from us for this for the April update. We'll have something timely and new for you all in May.

Halo Wars Monthly Update 03.27.08

2008-03-27T21:34:00Z

Musical Prague

Ensemble Studios Music and Sound Director Stephen Rippy recently ran off to the Czech city of Prague for a major recording session. Stephen has been busting out the tunes that will score the cinematics in the game as well as the stuff that you’ll hear when you’re busy laying waste to enemy bases. Here is the update that he shared with the team before taking off to finally record his music:

“Next week, as Bill [ES Producer Bill Jackson] mentioned, I’ll be heading to Prague for the bulk of the recording. This session will be for all of the orchestral and choral parts associated with both the cinematics and the in-game music – so about 40 pieces total.

After that, I’ll move everything to Seattle for piano recording and mixing. The mixing process is where everything – the Prague recordings, plus the synth and guitar stuff that I’ve done here - will be forced together into some kind of cohesive whole.”

Rock on Stephen! We hope to share some of the results of his work with you all when he’s finished the final mixes and polished the music to some state of perfection.

Ensemble’s April Madness Tournament (of destruction)

The first Halo Wars tournament in history will be taking place here at Ensemble Studios soon. As a way of taking a look at the state of the current build and getting some competitive spirit pumping through our veins, Producer Bill Jackson is organizing the April Madness Tournament (of destruction) for Ensemble employees here at the office. It will be played here in our playtesting labs and will involve twenty three teams of two. The brackets have been made up and here’s how they look at the moment:

(Click for larger image)

The initial e-mail that was sent to those of us who are participating inspired some teams to create logos and team names for themselves. Here are a few examples of our handy work, you may be able to tell which of us are not artists:

Easily the winner of the best use of real names in a team name, Ben Donges and Karen Swanson make up team Swanges.

My teammate is a fairly new Ensemble Studios employee, and it is customary to make newcomers feel welcome in this fashion. I have about 15 years experience as an MS Paint artist.

…and certainly one of the more intimidating logos.

A few more logos were shared, and then the e-mail thread devolved into cat pictures and the taunting of various teams.

The build of the game that we’re using for this tournament is one that we’ve been working hard on for an upcoming milestone. The team has been cramming in a lot of content and working extra hours to get it in a good state. We’ve been having open playtest sessions here at the office so that we can get a lot of games played on the build to find major bugs. This has generated a lot of strategy talk amongst those of us who usually only play once a week and has also resulted in the nerfing of at least one unit. This is also allowing tournament teams to get some practice games in together to work out their strategy.

Part of our strategy discussions actually revolve around bases in Halo Wars. One of the many changes to the game to come out of our mad iterations earlier this year has been a socketed base system. This is where buildings are constructed in a predefined location as opposed to anywhere the player desires. So far this has worked out pretty well and added a new layer of strategy to the game as you have a limited number of sockets to work with, but we’ll see if it can stand the strain of our playtest sessions.

That's it for now. We'll kick out a new update next month.

Lance Hoke Question & Answer

2008-02-27T22:56:00Z

Lance Hoke is the Art Producer here at Ensemble Studios and a long time employee. Like the rest of the team he's currently putting in extra hours on Halo Wars, but he took some time out to answer a few questions about his job and where the art is going with this game.

Can you tell us a little about yourself, how you ended up in the games industry and at Ensemble Studios? What exactly is it that you do?

Lance: I grew up here in the Dallas area (Garland) and after high school, I attended Texas Tech University where I graduated with a degree in MIS and Management in 1992. I came back to Dallas to work for Texas Instruments as a COBOL programmer. Not a very good one mind you, but I did well enough to get a job at a little consulting firm called Ensemble Corporation in 1997 as an .asp programmer.

As far as gaming goes, I grew up playing board games, pen and paper RPG's, and some of the early console games. I was always a big fan of the Warcraft and C&C games before joining Ensemble Corp. Once I started, I found out that there was a spin-off of Ensemble Corp called Ensemble Studios working on their own RTS called Age of Empires in the same building. I was able to get a Beta disk of AOE (which I still have) to review and provide feedback. I wrote up a couple of pages and sent it back upstairs. I have no idea if they ever read it, but I'm sure it's what put the game over the top. As we all know, AOE was a huge success. Ensemble Studios moved down the street and Tony Goodman (ES Studio Manager) sold our part of the company off to USWeb. By 2001 we'd merged with several other companies and it was misery going to work every day. Luckily, I worked with Julie Ryan, the wife of ES Executive Producer Harter Ryan, and when she heard about an Associate Producer role opening up at ES, she gave me a call and I was able to procure an interview with the Producers. Unfortunately, this was right in the middle of the acquisition by Microsoft and my interviews went on for about 3 months. I did eventually get my foot in the door and started working as an Associate Producer on Age of Mythology in September 2001. I served as AP for about 2 weeks before being asked to "help out" with the Art Department. Eventually, I became the Art Producer and have been doing it for over 6 years now.

An Art Producer is basically the manager of the artists and is responsible for managing the artists, dealing with external contracts, the development and management of the art schedule, communicating with the other leads, and making sure the game is completed on time and at the desired quality level. ES has a great art staff and many have been with the company since AOE. I've learned a lot working with those guys over the years.

Last July everyone got their first look at the game. How has the look of the game changed from what we saw at E3 2007?

Lance: The E3 demo was one of our first real efforts to pull the art together for a presentation. It was a great effort and helped us figure out some of things we were doing right and point out areas that we could improve in. I'd say that the look of the game has improved in all areas since the E3 demo. We've adjusted the scale of the units, improved our map development process and look, and taken another pass (or two) on our unit models and textures. The game improves on a daily basis and we still have plenty of time to polish it even more.

What are some of the challenges of working on a console versus the PC as far as the art goes?

Lance: This is my first console game, but many of the same approaches to art development for RTS's on the PC still apply. It's much easier in some ways, such as knowing the exact platform that you're creating the art for and having a bigger poly and texture budget. I think that the biggest challenge is making the game look "next-gen". Luckily, we have an incredible engine and great group of programmers that help us take the art look to the next level. Whatever technical feature we ask for, we get. Of course they usually come up with more cool stuff than we do. We're like kids in a candy store.

What is the artistic vision for the game? What should players be expecting to see from a battle or a base in our game?

Lance: The artistic vision of the game is to keep it true to the Halo IP, but with enough of ES's approachable feel to help new RTS gamers feel relaxed when playing the game. Players should expect the bases in the game to look incredibly cool, but organized and easy to navigate. Battles are full of armored vehicles, explosions, physics, great animation, great sound and music, all pulled together in an easy to control battlefield. I'm not a big economy guy, so combat is where I spend most of my time.

What’s your favorite color?

Lance: UNSC Green

Trick answer to a non-trick question, good stuff! What is the process of creating a new unit or map? How many stages does it go through and how many people are involved?

Lance: New units are relatively easy. We get ideas and the unit requirements from design, work up several thumbnail designs, present a direction we like, take feedback, and then iterate until all parties are happy with the direction. The design then moves on to the modelers and animators to get it in the game. Maps on the other hand need hours upon hours of playtest on the basic layout before we even worry about how it's going to look. Once we have a map that plays great, we start working up ideas and designs to make it look cool. This goes through concept paintovers, terrains sculpting, terrain texturing, foliage and ambient life design and custom asset development before we have a completed map. It's a long and tough process, but worth it in the end.

Ensemble is very open to giving and taking feedback on various parts of the game. How do you deal with the chorus of subjective opinions on the art that goes into the game?

Lance: I really do enjoy hearing back from the people playing the game. Some are better about expressing their concerns than others, but it's part of my job to listen and try to interpret what their true issues are so that they can be addressed.

Fine, I won't use Pig Latin when giving art feedback anymore. What’s your favorite piece of art from the game so far and why?

Lance: I think that my favorite piece of art from the game is our Harvest map. We've spent a lot of time fine tuning the map style and I finally feel like it's turned into a great looking world. Most of the gameplay is around the polar region, which gave us an opportunity to do some great stuff with mountains, snow, and ice. I've always been proud of our environments and I think that the ones in Halo Wars will be our best ones yet.

Halo Wars Monthly Update 02.14.08

2008-02-14T21:42:00Z

The Core

The middle of February sees the Halo Wars team putting in some longer hours to finish off one of many very important milestones that we have in our immediate future. This milestone falls largely on the shoulders of the design team and will commit them to come to a consensus on many of the game’s core mechanics and units. The designers will certainly be free to continue making changes to the game after this milestone, but the radical churn of units, ideas, and code will lessen as the vision for the game and how it is played gets settled upon.

Attesting to this radical churn of units that end up getting taken out of the game, put back in some other role, and then removed altogether is our new Overview page here on the website. Long time visitors will remember that it once featured a couple of units, the UNSC Cougar and the Covenant Air Artillery, which are units that have been cut from the game in recent months in favor of new ideas.

As we get past this milestone the art team will be able to switch gears from focusing on creating placeholder art and animations to support the designers and their need to try all sorts of new ideas and mechanics to finalizing the look of the units. They certainly have a lot of work ahead of them, and they know it!

Game Length

One of the many balancing acts that the design team has to play is with the length of a multiplayer game. Do you want games to last 15 minutes or 30 minutes or 60 minutes? We’ve been shooting for a fairly fast paced game that if well fought would last in the 15-30 minute range depending on how big the teams are. Naturally, while we’re playtesting here at the office games can be faster or slower than this timeframe as we test out new strategies with new units and continue to refine gameplay, but that’s about what we’re gunning for.

Game developers have to be conscious of this timeframe in just about every aspect of their work, adding in new units, buildings, technologies, or changing unit or building attributes can all greatly effect game length. I guess that involves just about everything a game designer does. So this is one more piece of feedback that we give during playtest sessions, other than: was the game fun, did the art look cool, were the units doing what they should? Game pacing. If games are ending in 4 minutes, that’s potentially not very much fun just as a 50 minute slog against an opponent can get frustrating as you try to figure out how to take him out. We certainly want players to be able to pull off a quick rush strategy or a slow burning economic boom, and there will be certain maps that cater to a longer or shorter game, it’s just about the pacing for those strategies. It’s all part of the fine tuning that goes on as we put this game together.

Space Battles

A subject that a number of fans have been asking about and commenting on is the existence, or the lack thereof, of space battles in our game. You know, the grand ship to ship combat in the vacuum of space, orbiting some distant colony. The fact is that these sorts of conflicts are not going to be part of Halo Wars. We’ve chosen to keep our boots on the ground, so to speak, with this game instead of venturing into ship to ship conflict out in space where the Covenant vessels are so vastly superior to those that the UNSC can put together. The battles in Halo Wars will rage on the surface of planets, where you can make use of Warthogs, Scorpions, and other iconic vehicles from the FPS games.

Crikey - OXM Australia

The Official Xbox Magazine (OXM) in the region of Australia is going to be treating the locals to some Halo Wars goodness. The April issue of the magazine features Halo Wars on the cover, an image created by a number of artists here at Ensemble Studios and one that I hope we can share with you after the magazine has had its run. As for what is in the magazine, I don’t have the particulars on what is covered in the article, so Halo Wars fans in the area will have to have a read.

That is all from here at Ensemble Studios for now, more from us in March!

Halo Wars Monthly Update 01.15.08

2008-02-14T21:40:00Z

And They’re Off!

First let me start off by saying Happy New Year to you all! Our monthly Halo Wars Updates are no longer going to be tucked away in our forum. Starting right here and now we’ll be slapping these suckers right up here on the front page for all to see.

We’re getting back into the swing of things here at Ensemble Studios after time off for the holidays. We’ve got a lot of work to do this year and we’re under no delusions about the pressure that is on us to deliver a great game. The team at Bungie has set the bar incredibly high and we don’t want to let them, or you, down.

Halo Timeline

We’ve added a basic timeline to our website to give everyone an idea of when the events of Halo Wars take place in relation to Halo: Combat Evolved and the subsequent Halo titles. Some of you will likely recognize the majority of the dates and events, especially those of you who have read the various Halo books. It was pretty cool to plug a few of our own dates into the timeline, adding a little of our own flavor to the Halo universe. We may add a few more dates to it later on as we get closer to release.

In putting this timeline together I needed to figure out when the Spirit of Fire was built. I found a mention on a fan created site that listed the year as 2418 and ran that past Lead Designer Graeme Devine. He was a little puzzled by that and asked where the date came from because that sounded wrong to him. I showed him the version of the logo that the fan site had posted which had that particular date on it. Puzzled, Graeme went off to try and figure out what the deal was. Flash forward to laundry night and I’m throwing my Halo Wars shirt in the washing machine when the Spirit of Fire logo that is on the front catches my eye. 2473. The date on the logo had changed at some point! No one is exactly sure why or how, but the date on the logo had been changed from 2473 to 2418. Graeme confirmed that the correct year was indeed 2473 and the date on the logo has been changed to reflect this.

Desktop Wallpaper

Some of you are no doubt getting familiar with the work of our concept team, and my desktop here at work has a rotating theme of pieces from these guys. My current desktop background is currently the image on the left, and we thought we’d share. Some of you might remember this or have it as part of a pack of Halo Wars art that was made available on Xbox Live back in September 2006 when the game was first announced. I hadn’t given the image a second thought until I saw a little thumbnail sized version of it recently. I believe it was the size of the image that’s available in the art pack, so I asked a few artists about a larger version and was steered in the right direction. Bam! It was my new desktop wallpaper as soon as I saw it. It’s a simple image that really boils down the conflict to what it’s all about, survival. You can grab it from our concept art gallery.

You may notice a little bit more variety to our updates here on HaloWars.com this year, rather than just standard issue Monthly Updates. This is going to be a great year, we hope you’ll stick with us and share the ride as we charge ahead on the game.

Halo Wars Monthly Update 12.12.07

2008-02-14T21:38:00Z

The State of the Game

Before we go anywhere I wanted to give you all a status report on how the game is progressing. The team is working towards their last milestone for the year which is on December 14th. There are plenty of milestones still to come, but this year marked a number of firsts for the project, such as the first showing of the game to the press and the public, the first release of gameplay footage and screenshots.

Currently the design team is iterating furiously on a number of game mechanics. Units and buildings that were in the game yesterday may have been taken out today or have had their role changed. The way you construct your base has gone through many changes in the last few weeks as well and has been a focus of a great deal of the design team’s time lately. So far our latest set of base building tweaks seems to be holding up in our playtest sessions, but I’m sure there will be more fine tuning to come.

With the game changing day to day, it may seem overwhelming to some, but right now the designers are truly in their prime. They are free to iterate on just about any aspect of how the game is played, from the smallest detail to high level changes such as base construction. It’s this iteration time, where we get to try new ideas, refine old ideas, and toss out the ones that aren’t making the game fun that is at the heart of our design philosophy here at Ensemble Studios.

Graeme Devine Interview

The team at Halo Wars Heaven sent over some questions for Ensemble Studios designer Graeme Devine to answer. Graeme dutifully responded to all of the questions, but as you may gather from his responses and the state of the game above, we’re still figuring out how some parts of the game will work so we don’t have all of the answers yet. You can read the interview here: http://halowars.heavengames.com/features/interview

Thank you to Elpea and Soc at HeavenGames for putting this together.

Concept Piece

We have added a new piece of concept art to the gallery this month. The piece is the work of Ensemble Studios artist Matthew Burke. I’ll let Lead Designer Graeme Devine give you the introduction:

"Happy Holidays everyone! Here’s a very early concept of a UNSC base and how it might look. When we first started Halo Wars we did a lot of brainstorming about what the UNSC actually felt like as a armed force, what their buildings were like, base layouts, did they build walls, use tents, etc. and the concept team worked on imagining that so we as a team could get on the same page. I can write all I want about how the bases work, but an image says much more than a thousand words here. This image imagines some gameplay elements too, a “parking lot” for vehicles was at one point thought about something we might try and the tightly nit base structures allowed for a lot of beautification thoughts – the roads, lights, fence structures, turrets, etc. and we took a lot from it and those elements are still visible in the game today."

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Contest Winner

Remember the contest where a lucky fan could win the chance to voice some lines in Halo Wars? Well there really was a winner chosen and on December 3rd Adam dropped by Ensemble Studios with Peggy, his mom, to have a tour and do some recording! Adam is a huge Halo fan and he peppered designer Graeme Devine with a great many questions. Thank you both for making the trip and we hope you enjoyed the experience!

Happy Holidays

The annual Ensemble Studios holiday card is heading out in the mail and once again we’d like to share the sentiment and the art with our fans. Here is the piece of art that is on the cover of our card this year, created by Ensemble Studios artist Jason Merck. For those of you that weren't with us last year, here are links to the Grunt themed card art from 2006 as well.

We hope that you all have a safe and happy holiday!

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Halo Wars Monthly Update 11.20.07

2008-02-14T21:37:00Z

Contact Harvest

Some of you may have already read 1UP.com’s interview with Joseph Staten from Bungie, the author of the latest Halo novel “Contact Harvest”. Joseph is Bungie’s Writing Director, the main man when it comes to the events and characters in the Halo universe. A number of key people here at Ensemble Studios spent a long time talking with Joseph and Bungie’s writers about the story that we are telling in Halo Wars, working out things like dates, names, ships, and planets. A few of the designers here at Ensemble also got a preview of “Contact Harvest to help” us set the scene in our game, and as Joseph mentions in the interview, the book really does make a great prequel for Halo Wars.

I recently picked up “Contact Harvest” at my local bookstore and gave it a read for the first time. Harvest is a planet that has been colonized by the UNSC and as the name would suggest it is incredibly fertile, growing food for many of the other UNSC colonies. Staff Sergeant Avery Johnson is on the cover of the book but he is one of many main characters. There is a lot of interaction between alien species, smart AIs, and people that we generally don’t get to take the time to explore as game developers that you can in a novel like this. You as the reader also get to take the time to soak it all in as well.

I have actually read all of the Halo books over the years and Contact Harvest ranks right up there with Fall of Reach as one of my favorites. We are treated to details of first contact between the Covenant and the UNSC, the fall of the first colony and events that spark the war that is to come. All the while, the author sheds light on those dusty little corners of the Halo universe that make it such a deep and engrossing place.

Our congratulations to Joseph Staten, on this his first book if you can believe that! It is a really fun read and a nice prequel to Halo Wars.

Grunt Battle Chatter

We want to thank you all for your contributions to our request for lines that you’d like to hear Grunts say as they make a kill, move, or are gunned down in our game. Ensemble Studios Designer Vance Hampton is currently sifting through those pages and pages of ideas for those gems that you have contributed and I’m sure we’ll also find some inspiration for more lines from your ideas.

We will be recording voice actors saying chosen lines for inclusion in our battle chatter system. Not just the Grunts will be shouting, but we’re going to have quite a number of units helping to set the atmosphere by calling out when they are under fire or score some kills. By adding these sound elements in with the usual cacophony of weapons fire and vehicle engines roaring, we hope to create another layer of depth and emersion to battles in our game.

This system is currently working in our game on a very small scale to shake out any bugs with it. A few of our Ensemble Studios employees were volunteered to act as the voices of marines shouting out as placeholder sounds until we finalize the system and get some real actors recorded.

Those of you in the USA, have a safe and happy Thanksgiving holiday!

Halo Wars Monthly Update 10.31.07

2008-02-14T21:35:00Z

Grunts!!!111oneeleven

There were a few times when I was playing Halo3 that I just about dropped my controller I was laughing so hard. There was the repeated “accidental” killing of the guy I was playing through the campaign with, and that sweet sweet moment of entering a shield that housed five or six covenant with the Brute hammer in my sweaty little hands. There were also those great one-liners delivered by the grunts. Hearing a squawky little voice scream out after the Grunt’s little buddy next to him gets…’sploded…now tat’s some classic Halo right there.

The mix of comic relief, fodder, and danger that the Grunt represents in the Halo Universe is a lot of fun and we need to bring that to the Grunts in Halo Wars. Like the way the Warthog moves in our game, bouncing and fishtailing, we have to get the Grunts right and part of that is going to be giving them some great lines to say. We’re looking for some good ideas for Grunt lines from Halo fans that are worthy of the bar that’s been set. Do you have a line that you think would be perfect for a Grunt to scream when he gets a kill, sees an ally killed, or a move order is issued? Post your suggestions below and perhaps we’ll see some of them end up being recorded and popped into the game!

Visitors From the Outside

One of the local news stations sent a crew over to our offices recently. It’s pretty amazing to us when people take a serious interest in our work, especially since we generally can’t talk about what we’re working on and usually when we do we’re talking to gamers or other developers. When you can tune in to your local news station and not only are they talking about a game, they’re talking about Halo, and they happen to be talking about a game that you are working on, that’s pretty exciting!

The crew came in and talked to Lead Designer Graeme Devine, Programmer Colt McAnlis, and Audio Lead Kevin McMullan about what Halo Wars is and how it fits in with the previous Halo titles. We’re working on getting permission from the guys that did the story to share the clip with you here on our website, but until then you can check out the story streamed from the link below. This is not going to reveal new secrets or give you a huge inside scoop, but it is another glimpse inside Ensemble Studios.

Link: http://www.thedenverchannel.com/video/14376849/index.html

For those of you going out tonight, be safe and have fun!

Halo Wars Monthly Update 09.24.07

2008-02-14T21:34:00Z

A.I.

Artificial intelligence is ridiculously important in games, especially RTS games. There is Entity AI, which controls things like units and how they act/react as well as Computer Player AI (CPAI) that you play against in a skirmish game. I’m sure we’ve all played games where units didn’t move or act the way we wanted them to, or as efficiently as they could. Many a frustrated gamer has thrown their controller or pounded their fists on the desk after getting mowed down by a CPAI opponent that made them look like a Grunt biting the ankle of a Brute.

Like a lot of systems in games, if the Entity AI is doing its job, the player shouldn’t really notice it. Their units are moving where they are told, they target the enemies that they are most effective at killing, and so on. This is an ongoing struggle for developers when a game is being made, as the rules for the game can change daily, as can the role and number of units in the game. Once the game gets a bit more fleshed out, the monumental task of creating what we call the CPAI begins.

Ultimately, the philosophy that we’ve had at Ensemble Studios is that the most fun games are when you think you might lose but don’t. The CPAI should attempt to provide the player with this challenge in each game. We want to set the difficulty levels to where most players will find a challenge, but there will be a level that can beat them if they start making mistakes. Some of the questions that Technical Director Dave Pottinger sent out to the company awhile back to start gathering feedback on how the CPAI should behave were:

What makes a fun AI for you to play against or with?

Do you want the AI to try to coordinate with you as an ally or should it just do its own thing and not much up your plans?

Should the AI beat you?

How do you want the difficulty levels to work?

Game Head

We have had visitors! The gang from Game Head, the show on SPIKE TV, stopped by to film some footage in our office and interview Graeme Devine. I believe they were grabbing this footage for a Halo-themed show that they have coming up, so perhaps they will slip in some stuff about Halo Wars. I believe they do have a new piece of art from the game, a render of the Spirit of Fire, the ship that the game revolves around. Watch for on or around September 25th! (Possibly TONIGHT!) Once the episode airs, we’ll post the image here on the website for you.

Halo 3 Release Day

The release of Halo 3 is coming up quick! We’re all looking forward to finishing the fight and checking out the amazing work that the guys at Bungie have been doing.

We know you’re going to want to discuss the story and scenes from the game, but please do not spoil things for the rest of us. If you create a thread with Halo 3 discussion that contains possible story/plot/gameplay spoilers, please just put a “**Spoiler Alert**” warning in the subject line so that the rest of us can choose not to read the discussion if we want to bury our head in the sand.

Best of luck finishing the fight, and I’m sure we’ll be running in to each other online. Please be gentle with me.

Update 09.25.07

As promised, the Game Head episode aired last night so here is the render of the UNSC Spirit of Fire. It is also available on our Media page. This model will be used in cinematics:

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Halo Wars Monthly Update 08.27.07

2008-02-14T21:32:00Z

We have an abbreviated monthly update for August, because we have a video to do much of the talking for us. That’s right, Graeme Devine narrates a complete walkthrough of the demo level that we put together to show the press at this year’s E3 and Leipzig game conventions! I’m sure all of you got a look at a few small clips from our demo as a small video of a few scenes was released during E3, but this is the full monty.

The Halo Wars team spent several weeks in June/July putting this demo level together. It can be a real challenge to figure out how to show someone what your game is all about in a short demo. I think the demo team did an awesome job of boiling the game down to show both the little details as well as the epic conflicts that will take place in the final game.

Halo Wars isn’t shipping until some time next year, so naturally a lot of what you’re seeing in the video is not final work. For example, the team worked very hard to get this new version of the UNSC building set in the game for E3, which will still likely go through many a polish pass before it’s called done. The first time I got to see all of these new buildings together in the game was actually a week or so before E3 when the entire team was given a walkthrough of the demo. It was incredibly exciting to see such an incredible amount of artwork go into the game all at once, and the collective gasp of from those of us watching must have been very rewarding for the artists, programmers, and designers who made it happen.

I’ll close here, because I’m sure half of you are already off viewing the video and will never read this far, and I don’t want to spoil all of the surprises in the video for you. A great many fans were requesting a look at the full demo, so here it is in all its glory! This is a 10 minute video narrated by the lead designer on Halo Wars, Graeme Devine. We hope you all enjoy it:

Low Bandwidth
61MB, 360p, 828kbps .WMV

Med Bandwidth
141MB, 360p, 1800kbps .WMV

High Bandwidth
482MB, 720p, 6500kbps .WMV

(right-click to save)