Vacation Spots Related to Age Games: My wife and I again vacationed this year in spots tied in some cases to the Age of Empires games and here are a few photos as clues to where we went. The first photo is a reference to a famous classical music piece by Ottorino Respighi. The second photo is related to an event that took place recently in China. And the third photo clue has a relation to Age of Mythology. I’ll explain all at the end of this blog.
Halo Wars Road Shows: We sent team members out to several more venues to showcase the game for a variety of audiences and the response continues to be very positive. Graeme Devine traveled to the Penny Arcade Expo, or PAX, in Seattle and gave a number of full house presentations to the gamers in attendance. From his report to the team about the show- “words can’t tell you how much fans loved the game.” He got cheers when showing a Spartan hijacking a Wraith.
Graeme, producer Chris Rippy, assistant producer Bill Jackson, and Jim Ying of MGS spent two days at the GameStop managers convention. This was a chance to demonstrate the game to a thousand or so retailers who will be on the front lines when the game is published. Graeme reported to us that this went extremely well also, with people showing up in the afternoon after being told they had to see Halo Wars by people who had seen it in the morning.
Executive producer Harter Ryan and assistant producer Brian Lemon drew the frequent flyer bonus assignment, flying to Singapore, Hong Kong, and the International Content Creator’s Conference in Busan, Korea, to show Halo Wars to local press. In his report back to the studio Harter talked about how most of the press came in with preconceived notions of the game but went away with the idea that “it’s fun, easy to play, and has great potential.” Here is a link to coverage from Jimmy Wartooth (probably not his real name), one of the journalists from Singapore.
http://www.gameaxis.com/home/?blog=2484
Halo Wars Update: Since I last blogged about the game we have announced that the Covenant are a playable faction. As usual, we go back and forth on whether the UNSC or Covenant is the screw. Then Tim Deen tweaks the database and the argument restarts :).
The project leads feel good about where the skirmish and multiplayer games is today, and we are concentrating a lot of effort on the single player campaign (SPC). As is usual for our games, the SPC comes together late because it depends to a degree on a complete feature set and a working artificial intelligence, which are difficult to finalize. I got through seven scenarios yesterday and I believe it is/will be an interesting story and challenging series of games comparable to all of our past games.
The SPC team is working to polish their scenarios so that events go off as they should, the challenge is appropriate for the mid and low level difficulties, and players are properly led and given incentives to reach the victory condition. On top of that we are logging and fixing bugs in all parts of the game.
Speaking of bugs, producer Chris Rippy is now regularly reporting the bug count. We have extensive testing being done both at our studio and in Redmond. On a good day more old bugs are fixed than new ones are found. I won’t report the numbers because they sound a little intimidating, but we have been through this before many times and there is nothing unusual about the process this time.
Archive build #983 went by a few minutes ago and we should go past #1000 early next week.
Vacation Photos: Okay, if you concluded we went to Rome, Olympia, and Santorini, you are a winner. The photo of The Pines of Rome was taken from the rooftop of our hotel, overlooking the Borghese Park. A more representative photo from Rome would be of the Coliseum, which I have added at the end. This arena was built around 80 AD and could seat 50,000 people to watch gladiatorial combat and wild animal fights. The building itself is a shadow of what it originally looked like since it was used as quarry for many years. The brick work is a 19th century restoration. But it is nonetheless very impressive. Walking around Rome you keep bumping into ancient sites like city walls, the Circus Maximus, The Forum, the Palatine Hills (home to the emperors), etc.
The photo of the Olympic stadium shows what I believe is the original finish line for the ancient equivalent of the 200 meter dash, the premier event of the time. The stadium and its setting are quite beautiful in their simplicity. Beyond the entry arch is an extensive area of temples, gymnasia, fountains, and other sites, all ruins now due to earthquakes and river floods.
The Greek island of Santorini was probably the most beautiful place we visited. The photo shows the caldera, now mostly under the sea, of a huge volcanic eruption that took place nearly 4000 years ago. The explosion was so violent that most of the island was turned into dust and blown into the air. A resulting tsunami radiated throughout the Aegean Sea, wrecking everything in its path, including much of the Minoan civilization on Crete. The small island in the left background of the photo is the volcano rebuilding again. Many scholars today believe that the Minoans were the basis for Plato’s tale of Atlantis, which is the link between the photo and Age of Mythology. Here is a Wikipedia entry for Santorini.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santorini
I am including one additional photo from the Greek and Roman city of Ephesus on the southwest coast of Turkish Asia Minor. This is the great amphitheater that is still used today for special events and concerts. I believe it seats 24,000 people and the acoustics are said to be excellent. Ephesus is one of the most interesting archaeological sites from the classical era. It was a city of 250,000 people at is zenith and maybe only 20% has been revealed so far. We walked down streets where we were told that notables including Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, and St. Paul had also walked.
Bruce Shelley