Halo Wars fatality system – new blog
Once upon a time there was an idea at Ensemble to include a fatality kills system into Halo Wars (think Mortal Combat, Street Fighter). Charles Tinney an animator on Halo Wars talks about what these might of looked like and includes some animation drawings and video. Surprisingly the videos are in Quicktime format, despite the Halo Wars website being a Microsoft owned site!
Heres an extract and a link below:
There are two animations I want to focus on in this production diary. I want to highlight these because I took time to thumbnail and choreograph them; which is typically something I don’t have time to do at a video game studio. So, I really tried to get it right. Both of these are exploratory animations developed to have a loose visual guideline for what the fatality system would look like. Fatalities in Halo Wars happen when one awesome melee powerhouse, such as the Arbiter, kills one of the other infantry units.
http://www.halowars.com/news/devblog/archive/2009/06/12/Animation-Exploration.aspx
New Halo Wars map information – Beasley’s Plateau
Need help negotiating around Beasleys Plateau? Confused about when you should attack the large group of rebels in the middle? Well fear not as Programmer Chris Stark and designer Justin Rouse lay down thier top tips in the latest map blog! :
http://www.halowars.com/GameInfo/maps/beasleys.aspx
Players invited to discuss Title Update 3 for Halo Wars on official community forum
Never say the Robots dont listen! Tim “Timotron” Deen has kicked off a discussion thread on the HaloWars.com forums to announce some of the intentions Robot has for balancing the game in Halo Wars title update 3. The changes suggested so far are as follows:
1. Gauss warthog gauss cannon damage bonus against units with heavy armor (Scorpions, Wraiths, Scarabs, Locusts) reduced so that tanks will stay as a viable option to counter warthogs.
2. Warthog build time slightly increased to restrict how fast players can mass and replace warthogs during the game.
3. Anders bonus to tech build rate reduced to further balance the leader.
4. Base turrets attack and health boosted slightly to increase turret viability in early and late game.
5. Elephant health increased to improve survivability and viability as a unit.
6. Grenade/ Plasma grenade / RPG damage against medium armor (warthogs, ghosts, choppers, wolverines and cobras) increased to both better balance marines/ grunts against warthogs and to improve marines overall against players who try to turtle with wolverines and cobras.
7. Recycle basic cost return fixed to be 50% for constructed buildings. (While a technically a bug, this directly impacts many slightly exploitive strategies)
Any thoughts? You can let Robot know by posting in the official thread over here:
http://www.halowars.com/forums/1/618956/ShowThread.aspx
See you in the discussion!
Robots react to community feedback with Halo Wars title update 3
A third title update is underway at Robot Entertainment and is once again aimed at addressing issues raised by the community at www.halowars.com . Community Manager “Aloysius” announced on the website today that title update 3 will fix some the most talked about issues including the nerfing of the Warthogs. Team killing will also be getting a review. You can find the full statement below, stay tuned for more Halo Wars title update news!
“We’ve been listening to fan feedback since our release of Title Update #2 and DLC pack #1 Strategic Options and are pleased to announce that we are working on title Update #3. TU #3 is aimed at balance changes and a few bug fixes. We’re looking in to a variety of things such as reducing the effectiveness of Warthogs, friendly fire/team killing and a few other balance issues. We’re also planning on making Invisible Unit’s health bars invisible, among other fixes.
Stay tuned for more details on the upcoming Title Update, including more details on the balance changes. “
Graeme Devine working at Apple’s iPhone group on mystery project
Graeme Devine who was Ensemble’s Lead Designer and Lead Writer for Halo Wars has now confirmed that he is working for Apple in the companies iPhone group. It seems yet another ex-Microsoft employee is working for products on Apple’s iPhone along with the Bettner brothers (NewToy) and FuzzyCube software.
What is Graeme working on at Apple? Well we wont have much longer to wait to find out as he is currently preparing for the WWDC on Monday. Perhaps he will be leading a new in house Apple games unit? Who knows, but hes certainly someone to be looking out for at the WWDC.
More news tomorrow when we should find out what hes up to! Good luck at the WWDC Graeme!
Link: http://kotaku.com/5281682/halo-wars-7th-guest-dev-lands-job-at-apple
Lead Designer talks Halo Wars bases
Lead Halo Wars designer at Robot Entertainment Dave Pottinger today blogs about the reasoning behind the socket based bases found in Halo Wars. The forums have often had questions like “How come I cant place buildings anywhere on the map” and “How come the game doesn’t look like it did at E3 2007?” Halo Wars was completed in 2009 so its inevitable there would be some differences between the released version and the E3 2007 demo. However it is always interesting to know how ideas and changes developed and the reasoning behind the changes.
Think of it as a look into a Robots head, here’s Dave Pottinger with the low down and a link to the full blog post at the bottom:
“Most strategy games are noted for their deep city building and economic elements. WTF Halo Wars??? Why don’t you have an Age of Empires-like infrastructure game where the truly skilled players can “out econ” the newbies? The fairly un-sexy answer is that we just wanted a faster game with a larger focus on combat. Okay, fair enough. Let’s look at the iterations that base building went through to achieve those goals.”
http://www.halowars.com/news/devblog/archive/2009/05/18/How-to-Build-a-Base-in-the-26th-Century.aspx
Halo Wars artwork amongst “Into The Pixel” Winners
Congratulations to Corey Butler, Ensemble Studios and Blur who today found out that their image of Professor Anders landing on a flood planet in Halo Wars has been selected in the Top 10 best artwork of 2009. There has been alot of excellent artwork demonstrated in Halo Wars and I am sure you can appreciate that this is a well deserved recognition. You can view the other winning art pieces and an enlarged image of the Halo Wars artwork below:
http://www.intothepixel.com/artwork/2009_contest_winners.asp
Congratulations Corey Butler again!
Familiar faces amongst the Halo Wars developers play night
The Halo Wars developers play night has been buzzing with excitement as people from Robot Entertainment, Bonfire Studios and other Ex Ensemble people came to play with fans. One of those Ex Ensemble’s was ex community manager “Paragon”. The much missed moderator came out to play with fans as he greeted those on the message boards with:
*the cave door opens*
*a bearded figure of a man walks out blinded by the light*
*He is handed a 360 controller and grunts*
“paragon shall play”
Even though I am vastly out of practice, I will try and pop on for a few matches. My gamer tag is ES Paragon (space between S and P no quotes)
Stick around Paragon!
Hopefully there will be more developer play nights in the future!
The Robots come out to play
The Robots are coming out to play Halo Wars on May 27th from 5-8pm CST (GMT -5)! Its you chance to get tips from the pros and see if they can hold off against your tactics! Needless to say playing anyone at Robot will be a very insightful expierence – if you are on the opposing team.. good luck! These Robots have been playing Halo Wars for over a year!
You’ll need to know the Robot gamertags and ive included these below:
I myself had the lucky privilege of playing with Robot C3PO a few days ago. A very fun game!
You can find the official announcement of the developer games here:
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/calendar/gamewithdevelopers/2009/0527-halowars.htm
Designer Justin Rouse talks about Fort Deen iterations
Quick update. The Halo Wars “Fort Deen” map image and information is online complete with a full description from its designer Justin Rouse at Ensemble. Here’s an extract from the page and a link to the full article:
“On this map I love to use Brute commando squads. Since they’re infantry I can put them into the wall towers and block off my enemies ground forces but because of my brute jump packs I can jump back and forth over the walls to get away from danger or to closer to juicy targets coming to shoot my units out of the towers”
http://www.halowars.com/GameInfo/maps/FortDeen.aspx
