I read it for the articles

Anybody catch the playboy interview with Marty and Jamie? Very interesting read… a variety of topics including some bits about Bungie. I actually admire how they are approaching development of the game. For instance, very little focus testing.

http://www.playboy.com/articles/highwire-games-golem-interview-virtual-reality-bungie

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That was fascinating. They seem genuinely really excited about what they're doing in a way that doesn't seem canned like it does all too often anymore.

Golem might honestly sell me a PS4 and PSVR.

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It seems like they really thought about all aspects of the studio and what they had to do with it. Makes me sad I'll never be able to play the game.

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2 parts of the interview really stood out to me:

Jaime, Golem is your story, right?
JAIME: I was driving [it], yeah. I usually work kind of from the player out, so I almost always think about the controls and camera and the core gameplay loop before anything else. Lots of people start with story, but I just feel like story is so flexible, and ultimately it’s easier to match a story to gameplay than it is the reverse.

So we were like, OK, we want to have a game [you play] sitting on a couch, otherwise it’s not safe and it’s exhausting. So what is the story conceit where that makes sense? How about you’re in bed and you can’t get out because you’re injured?

Stuff like this right here is why I think Jaime is such an incredible developer. He just has these great instincts for how games work, and how game development works. How many games have we all played where you can just tell that the story got hacked to pieces right before release, and both the game and the story suffer for it. But this idea of creating story in service of the gameplay is exactly why Halo CE worked so well, even when large changes/cuts had to be made. Every now and then you get a developer like Naughty Dog who is able to put story first, but for the most part game development just doesn't work out that way.

2nd thing:

JAIME: Bottlenecks.

MARTY: Yeah, things get backed up. And you suddenly see all these really talented people just waiting in a line, ‘Well I need to get approval for this thing.’

JAIME: Or leaving, because they’re sick of getting yelled at because they didn’t read the director’s mind.

MARTY: And even worse is when you’ve been backed up for a long time and you finally get up to present and they say, oh yeah, that’s not going to work. Or it goes through but is reconsidered later—like, yeah, we gotta start over from scratch on this huge thing. That’s not a good healthy way to make progress. And I just think the bigger the project and the more people there are, the more you can’t be that kind of a leader.*

*emphasis mine

Does everyone else think he's talking about what I think he's talking about?

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2 parts of the interview really stood out to me:

Jaime, Golem is your story, right?
JAIME: I was driving [it], yeah. I usually work kind of from the player out, so I almost always think about the controls and camera and the core gameplay loop before anything else. Lots of people start with story, but I just feel like story is so flexible, and ultimately it’s easier to match a story to gameplay than it is the reverse.

So we were like, OK, we want to have a game [you play] sitting on a couch, otherwise it’s not safe and it’s exhausting. So what is the story conceit where that makes sense? How about you’re in bed and you can’t get out because you’re injured?

Stuff like this right here is why I think Jaime is such an incredible developer. He just has these great instincts for how games work, and how game development works. How many games have we all played where you can just tell that the story got hacked to pieces right before release, and both the game and the story suffer for it. But this idea of creating story in service of the gameplay is exactly why Halo CE worked so well, even when large changes/cuts had to be made. Every now and then you get a developer like Naughty Dog who is able to put story first, but for the most part game development just doesn't work out that way.

2nd thing:

JAIME: Bottlenecks.

MARTY: Yeah, things get backed up. And you suddenly see all these really talented people just waiting in a line, ‘Well I need to get approval for this thing.’

JAIME: Or leaving, because they’re sick of getting yelled at because they didn’t read the director’s mind.

MARTY: And even worse is when you’ve been backed up for a long time and you finally get up to present and they say, oh yeah, that’s not going to work. Or it goes through but is reconsidered later—like, yeah, we gotta start over from scratch on this huge thing. That’s not a good healthy way to make progress. And I just think the bigger the project and the more people there are, the more you can’t be that kind of a leader.*

*emphasis mine

Does everyone else think he's talking about what I think he's talking about?

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Kermit, I never realized you were a Geth!!

[image]

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2 parts of the interview really stood out to me:

Jaime, Golem is your story, right?
JAIME: I was driving [it], yeah. I usually work kind of from the player out, so I almost always think about the controls and camera and the core gameplay loop before anything else. Lots of people start with story, but I just feel like story is so flexible, and ultimately it’s easier to match a story to gameplay than it is the reverse.

So we were like, OK, we want to have a game [you play] sitting on a couch, otherwise it’s not safe and it’s exhausting. So what is the story conceit where that makes sense? How about you’re in bed and you can’t get out because you’re injured?

Stuff like this right here is why I think Jaime is such an incredible developer. He just has these great instincts for how games work, and how game development works. How many games have we all played where you can just tell that the story got hacked to pieces right before release, and both the game and the story suffer for it. But this idea of creating story in service of the gameplay is exactly why Halo CE worked so well, even when large changes/cuts had to be made. Every now and then you get a developer like Naughty Dog who is able to put story first, but for the most part game development just doesn't work out that way.

Even the folks at Naughty Dog admit that, until the last month or so, they're all worried it's going to be a horrible mishmash of crap rather than a cohesive game.

Personally, I like developing a vague concept first, then core mechanics, then story, then ancillary mechanics to fit the action of the story, and then you brainstorm to see what else you can do with what you currently have. But all of that needs to happen well before actual coding.

2nd thing:

JAIME: Bottlenecks.

MARTY: Yeah, things get backed up. And you suddenly see all these really talented people just waiting in a line, ‘Well I need to get approval for this thing.’

JAIME: Or leaving, because they’re sick of getting yelled at because they didn’t read the director’s mind.

MARTY: And even worse is when you’ve been backed up for a long time and you finally get up to present and they say, oh yeah, that’s not going to work. Or it goes through but is reconsidered later—like, yeah, we gotta start over from scratch on this huge thing. That’s not a good healthy way to make progress. And I just think the bigger the project and the more people there are, the more you can’t be that kind of a leader.*

*emphasis mine

Does everyone else think he's talking about what I think he's talking about?

It certainly sounds like he's experienced what he's describing, and since he's only really worked at one place big enough to have that sort of problem... Yeah, it really does.

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Personally, I like developing a vague concept first, then core mechanics, then story, then ancillary mechanics to fit the action of the story, and then you brainstorm to see what else you can do with what you currently have. But all of that needs to happen well before actual coding.

What's weird is that this approach seemed to have been taken with Black Ops 3's campaign, and while the gameplay is fantastic and the story interesting, it is so far detached from the previous games that it might as well be in a completely different universe story-wise (there are only two references to the previous games, and one of them is a buried text file within the game's Grimoire). I feel that they tacked on the connection with the previous games late into development because they focused on core mechanics and their story before finding a way to tie it into the established Franchise (heck, the "Black Ops" in the title is used in a completely different context than the last two games).

Then again, that makes the story more accessible to a bigger crowd (and the ancillary material in the in-game Grimoire completely turns the story on its head).

PS. Since I never answered the "Five games in one" thing about Black Ops 3:

Campaign (+Survival missions),
Nightmares campaign,
Zombies,
Multiplayer (+Freerun),
Dead Ops Arcade 2 (complete with driving minigame!)

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Personally, I like developing a vague concept first, then core mechanics, then story, then ancillary mechanics to fit the action of the story, and then you brainstorm to see what else you can do with what you currently have. But all of that needs to happen well before actual coding.

What's weird is that this approach seemed to have been taken with Black Ops 3's campaign, and while the gameplay is fantastic and the story interesting, it is so far detached from the previous games that it might as well be in a completely different universe story-wise (there are only two references to the previous games, and one of them is a buried text file within the game's Grimoire). I feel that they tacked on the connection with the previous games late into development because they focused on core mechanics and their story before finding a way to tie it into the established Franchise (heck, the "Black Ops" in the title is used in a completely different context than the last two games).

I totally agree. It felt more like I was uncovering black ops than a part of them, and while I had a lot of fun with it, there really was zero sense of connection.

Then again, that makes the story more accessible to a bigger crowd (and the ancillary material in the in-game Grimoire completely turns the story on its head).

Does CoD need that? It's one of the biggest games there is.

PS. Since I never answered the "Five games in one" thing about Black Ops 3:

Campaign (+Survival missions),
Nightmares campaign,
Zombies,
Multiplayer (+Freerun),
Dead Ops Arcade 2 (complete with driving minigame!)

Ahh, yes. I have never actually played the Dead Ops Arcade 2 stuff and totally forgot about it.

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Does it need that? Yeah, of course. There are tons of new gamers showing up all the time. Kids, people getting back into games, et cetera. I've never played a Call of Duty game since the first one until a few months ago. I'm continuing to not bother because I don't know the story. It kept me out of Assassin's Creed until Syndicate, because I understood that it was a side story, a little easier to pick up, and it was set in Victorian London. So obv gotta play it.

So you need to be able to get people in who haven't played the games before. My nephew just got Halo 5 for some reason and has NO CLUE what's going on. And I can't really explain it to him because I don't have the game and can't be bothered ot watch him play and explain every bit that's happening.

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Does it need that? Yeah, of course. There are tons of new gamers showing up all the time. Kids, people getting back into games, et cetera. I've never played a Call of Duty game since the first one until a few months ago. I'm continuing to not bother because I don't know the story.

This genuinely surprises me. I played every Call of Duty up through the first Black Ops. I could not tell you a goddamn thing that happens in any of the stories. I didn't realize anyone really cared. None of them seemed all that interesting--it always seemed like it was just there because it was expected.

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Does it need that? Yeah, of course. There are tons of new gamers showing up all the time. Kids, people getting back into games, et cetera. I've never played a Call of Duty game since the first one until a few months ago. I'm continuing to not bother because I don't know the story.

This genuinely surprises me. I played every Call of Duty up through the first Black Ops. I could not tell you a goddamn thing that happens in any of the stories. I didn't realize anyone really cared. None of them seemed all that interesting--it always seemed like it was just there because it was expected.

I never played modern warfare 1 (I know, blaspheme since I worked on earlier CoD titles, but whatever), but jumped straight into MW2 and it didn't bother me one bit. Each game has its own story. Maybe it's nice to know how it relates to the other games sometimes, but that's not needed at all. You shoot the bad guys.

---

That being said, the ending of MW3 was one of the most satisfying video game endings I've ever seen (right up there with Silent Hill 2). Christ it was good.

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Does everyone else think he's talking about what I think he's talking about?

The move to an FPS for Halo? Yeah, for sure. Or was it the move to a console?

Or are you talking about the trashed multiplayer for Oni?

Halo 2's New Mombasa level?

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Does everyone else think he's talking about what I think he's talking about?

The move to an FPS for Halo? Yeah, for sure. Or was it the move to a console?

Or are you talking about the trashed multiplayer for Oni?

Halo 2's New Mombasa level?

Forerunner Tank
Scrapping Halo 2 and starting over with a new engine
Scrapping Halo 3's engine
etc
etc
etc

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Scrapping Halo 3's engine

Huh?

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HE SAID SCRAPPING HALO 3'S ENGINE

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this was taunted as "in-engine" when released with real-time reflections.

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this was taunted as "in-engine" when released with real-time reflections.

It probably was. But that doesn't nessesarily mean it can be rendered in real time.

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this was taunted as "in-engine" when released with real-time reflections.

It's a fairly simple technique, and we've been told the functionality still exists in the engine but that it was unused for performance reasons, suggesting that it was used as a bonus to create strong marketing material and exist as a just-in-case option* rather than part of a failed development branch.

It's entirely possible that Halo 3's engine had a rocky development, but that real-time reflection isn't evidence of it.

*Which wouldn't be a first for the series. Halo 1 stuck planar reflections in a few spots it could get away with, but didn't use it as any kind of standard thing across the game.

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Didn't Halo 1 cheat by mirroring the entire world on those planar surfaces, though? H3 would use actual reflections instead.

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Didn't Halo 1 cheat by mirroring the entire world on those planar surfaces, though?

I'm not sure as to the exact implementation details, but Halo 1 definitely doesn't simply have a flipped copy of the world existing in the same rendering space as everything else. That just plain wouldn't work on the control room catwalk where you can see below the reflecting surface, and (I'd have to check again what it looks like) I think there'd be occlusion issues on the transparent surfaces in Silent Cartographer if they were simply rendering flipped transparent objects.

H3 would use actual reflections instead.

"Actual reflections" is nebulous. The implementation of real-time cubemaps is often very similar to "proper" planar reflections, and the results are technically less precise, since parallax makes the cubemap less correct the farther you get from its rendering point (although this doesn't cause significant issues when the reflecting object is tiny relative to the space it's in, such as helmet visors).

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I read it for the articles (Gaming)

Wow.

They seem like smart guys.

Amazing interview

Amazing interview

Amazing interview

Amazing interview

Amazing interview

Amazing interview

Amazing interview

Amazing interview

Amazing interview

Amazing interview

Ha, good point :)

Amazing interview

Amazing interview

Amazing interview

Amazing interview

Amazing interview

Amazing interview

It was heavily implied, IIRC

Amazing interview

Amazing interview

Amazing interview