Halo Wars Launch Date: Microsoft has announced that Halo Wars will be published in February of next year. That will give you a month or more to finish all the games you buy in the holiday season and be ready for something new. Our goal is to be finished with it this year if possible, with some leeway for the unexpected.

Halo Wars Collectors Edition: This was recently announced also and it looks like a great package for fans of the Halo universe. Here is brief rundown of what is in the HWCE and an image of the content.

• Halo Wars: Genesis- a new graphic novel by Phil Noto, Graeme Devine (one of our designers and the principal writer of the story for our game), and Eric Nylund. This chronicles the first military campaign against the Covenant and the characters on the Spirit of Fire.
• Unique in-game Vehicle- “Honor Guard” Wraith
• Three new Halo 3 multiplayer maps- Assembly, Orbital, and Sandbox.
• Spirit of Fire patch
• Six Leader Cards.

Coverage of the Collector’s Edition: Here are links to several major game sites where you can check out media impressions of the CE.

http://kotaku.com/5078470/halo-wars-le-sweetened-by-mythic-map-pack

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3171157

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6200689.html

http://xbox360.gamespy.com/xbox-360/halo-wars/927627p1.html?RSSwhen2008-11-06_113100&RSSid=927627

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/927/927533p1.html?RSSwhen2008-11-06_095900&RSSid=927533

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/927/927533p1.html?RSSwhen2008-11-06_095900&RSSid=927533

Focus on Game Performance: Testing of Halo Wars continues at an intense pace every day as we try to find new bugs, isolate and fix old ones, and work on performance. By performance we mean frame rate (frames per second or FPS), how fast the screen refreshes as you play. Fast frame rates make for a smooth looking game while slow rates are jerky and units appear to skip from place to place rather than move continuously. When there are on screen at one time a lot of objects, animating objects, collision detections, weapons firing, special effects like explosions, etc, they all take up central processing unit time. Too much CPU use can slow the game down to the point that the frame rate creeps.

Our programmers are diligently examining all aspects of the graphic engine operations to find ways to save CPU time. In our test labs we monitor frame rates, especially in the single player campaign right now, looking for scenarios or situations within them that are causing the FPS to drop below our minimal acceptable standard. We have developer software running during play that shows on screen what the FPS is.

Improving performance is one of the last steps in polishing a game, because we get a clear understanding of these issues only when everything is in the game and working.

Scenario Contests: This week we are playing scenarios 7, 8, and 9 at Legendary difficulty in co-op mode. I was teamed up with Paul Slusser for the series yesterday and we achieved gold medals on all three (thanks to Paul ). The reports sent out to the company each day show who was on a team, their total score, their individual score, the time it took to finish, bonuses for combat and time, and medal. As of today, contest leaders were Nick Currie and Donnie Thompson of our balance team, with a score nearly 80,000 points above the team in second.

While waiting for our game to start I could overhear Nick and Donnie chatting about how to maximize their efficiency in a scenario. They had played it so much they knew the triggers, where enemy units would be coming from, what things they should do or not do to direct the action in a favorable way, what units to use, what tactics, etc. I had played this particular scenario many times and not learned a fraction of what they had. That is why they are professionals .

Bug Counts: Chris Rippy’s daily reports on bugs are encouraging. The net number of outstanding severity 1 and 2 bugs keeps dropping. Yesterday the net drop was 51, slightly above our goal of net 40 per day.

Tough Times in the Game Industry: The conventional wisdom is that games do reasonably well in bad economic times since they are relatively cheap entertainment. That may be true but publishers seem to be aggressively cutting their costs on the creative side. We heard recently that Electronic Arts is riffing 600 developers and that THQ is cancelling a number of projects and closing 4-5 internal studios. One of the studios being closed is Paradigm, from which we have hired some really great people over the years. This is not a great time to be looking for work in the industry, but we are encouraged by the amount of interest shown by other studios in ES people. We believe that any of our people who want to continue making games will have that opportunity.

Orphan’s Thanksgiving: It has been a tradition that at Thanksgiving someone local invites anyone not planning to travel for the holiday to join them and friends/family for dinner. In the past Sandy Petersen has often done that and this year Ian Fischer (Lead Designer on Age of Empires II and Age of Mythology) has made the offer.

Signs of the Times: Several apartment complexes around our offices have been leveled over the past few years and are now park-like open land. The car dealership next door to the north has moved, leaving a big empty pad. The Circuit City store next door to our south will be closed as part of that corporate bankruptcy. Over the weekend a hotel complex just behind the dealership void was demolished in one of those controlled implosions. A lot of our people came in on Sunday for the view from our office and you can check out UTube videos from Roy Rabey and Mike Kidd here. I also included a photo from Justin Randall below. Dust and debris was blow across the highway that had to be cleaned up before the road could be reopened.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyrCEUDLRyE

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=C5AE2BA0E2077C40

Latest Build: I saw Archive Build #1095 this morning.

Bruce Shelley