[The One]

Как создавалось оружие в Halo 3

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На просторах сетевой версии популярного журнала Wired [Для просмотра данной ссылки нужно зарегистрироваться] статья о том, как создавалось оружие в “Halo 3”. В материале рассказывается о реальных прототипах, поиске баланса и модификациях вооружений в последний момент перед отправкой мастер-диска в печать. Всем фанатам Master Chief и интересующимся разработками будет интересно.

Sci-Fi, Serendipity Spawn Halo 3's New Weapons

"Lemme pull out the big gun," says Tom Doyle, a weapon designer for the videogame Halo 3.

On the LCD screen on his desk he's playing an early copy of Halo 3, and the main character, the Master Chief, is hefting a huge tubular weapon. Doyle presses the trigger, and it generates a thin ray of red laser light on a nearby vehicle -- which abruptly transforms into a searing bolt of power that leaves the vehicle a smoking wreck.

"The Spartan Laser," he says with satisfaction. "One shot is all it takes."

The weapon may be fantastical, but like many Halo 3 weapons, the designers at Bungie Studios -- the company that makes Halo -- actually based it on a real-world object: The Galilean telescope beam expander. Doyle and his colleagues happened upon the Galilean laser while reading journals devoted to upcoming military weapons, and watching shows like FutureWeapons on the Discovery Channel. The research, he says, is intended to guide their design by making sure that the weapons are sci-fi but also vaguely plausible according to the laws of physics.

"A lot of our stuff actually is moored in reality," Doyle says. "It's like Star Trek -- it's pseudoscience."

Halo 3 is well on its way to becoming a top-selling game -- pushing more than $170 million in copies on its very first day. That's partly due to the attractive new array of weapons in the game. Halo's gameplay has always been centered around making strategic decisions on the fly -- figuring out what gun will best win a fight. When Wired visited Bungie this summer, the designers were frantically putting the final tweaks on a sizable task: creating twice as many weapons as in the previous Halo.

"For us, the question was, how do you make it new and fresh for people who have been playing Halo 2 for three years now?" said Jamie Griesemer, Bungie's lead gameplay designer.

For Halo 3, Griesemer said, they made several central decisions. Many of the new weapons have costs associated with their benefits: The Spartan Laser may pack a punch, but it takes a few seconds to charge, which leaves the wielder vulnerable.

Griesemer also decided to reduce the clip size on many guns, so that players will have to more quickly dispose of weapons and try out new ones. This, in particular, will shake up the multiplayer online games, which previously suffered when a single, talented player picked up a gun with a huge ammo clip and executed dozens of players before running out of bullets.

Bungie's designers also decided to insert equipment that didn't kill enemies, but simply changed the way a battle played out. That included "power drains," which suck away the defenses of anyone who strays near, and gravity lifts that let players bounce up to higher levels.

Some of the equipment came about through happy accident. One of the most popular new tools -- the "bubble shield," a pocket of temporary protection from weapons -- nearly didn't make it into the game. Bungie's designers had been bandying it about as a concept, but didn't fully commit to developing it for the game until it was featured in a TV advertisement last December. The ad showed the Master Chief throwing down a bubble shield -- with its distinctive, honeycombed shape -- to survive a missile attack.

It looked so cool that Bungie's employees immediately were sold on it. "Everybody went, 'Hey, hmm, that bubble shield is really awesome," said Joseph Staten, Bungie's cinematic director.

The ultimate goal, Griesemer said, is to give players such a range of options that they develop fighting techniques the Bungie designers themselves could never predict.

This summer, the Bungie guys saw it happen. They were playing a game of "capture the flag" on a multiplayer map, and their favorite technique was to use a gravity lift to bounce over the ramparts into the building containing the flag.

But then a journalist came over to play and figured out a new trick: He shot his way into the building, grabbed the flag and used a gravity lift to bounce his way out. The Bungie crew all stared in surprise.

"Then we were all like, 'Of course, no shit! It totally makes sense!'" said Brian Jarrard, Bungie's head of community relations. "But in all those hours of playing, we'd never thought of it ourselves."