Since its release, Season 4: Infection has been winning over hearts and Iratus has been taking over minds. Although the reception of Season 4 has been great, there’s still plenty to do and we haven’t slowed down or lost sight of that fact.
To help illustrate that point, let’s take a look at some of the additions, improvements, and bug fixes landing next week with the upcoming August Update!
Dredge
Our newest map, Dredge, is entering Halo Infinite’s lineup next week! With inspiration directly from Halo: Reach’s popular map Countdown, this forged homage is sure to make a lasting impression. When diving into the map for the first time, players can expect a new take on the scenery and refreshed gameplay flow.
Starting next Wednesday, August 9, you’ll be able to play Dredge all day long in the Dredge 24/7 playlist!
Community Requests
You asked. We answered.
In addition to a new multiplayer map, the Halo Infinite team has really been focusing their efforts on top community requests. Let’s take a look at the feedback topics they went after!
Improved Pelican Vehicle Drops
After cracking open the code for Pelican vehicle deliveries in Big Team Battle (BTB), we found a few different systems that used specific markers that worked together to deliver vehicles. While predictable, the outcome was not quite the same as the consistent, symmetrical vehicle drops that Halo fans typically prefer.
To bring the Pelican deliveries closer in line with those expectations, we’ve improved the system to deliver the same vehicles on both sides of the map in the same wave.
Please note: due to different Pelican flight paths, there may be a difference in the exact timings of delivery.
BTB Fireteam Improvements
In another effort to improve the BTB experience, the team also tackled a common piece of community feedback around intro cameras. Now, Big Team Battle matches will prioritize placing the members of your Fireteam in your in-game squad of four players. That means during the intro camera sequences at the start of each game, the line up shot with four Spartans will also prioritize showing members of your Fireteam.
Extermination
There are not many feelings that can match the rewarding sensation of taking down an entire enemy team and hearing Jeff Steitzer say, “Extermination.”
With the introduction of the Elimination and Attrition game modes in Halo Infinite, there was a desire to help make that medal moment even more special by attributing it to Overkills that helped end a round. However, many of you expressed that this made it feel too tucked away and asked for it to return to all game modes – and that request was heard loud and clear.
We’re happy to say that with the launch of the August Update, the Extermination medal will be available in all multiplayer modes. We look forward to you all sharing clips of your favorite clean sweeps online!
Death Cam Improvements
While this topic was a bit more niche, we saw the posts and comments asking for improvements in this area and the team was happy to jump on it.
Our reasoning for going with static death cams was to help ensure a fair environment in which a team only gathered information that was earned. However, we heard the feedback around the static death cams and we went after it for this update.
Starting next week, after you’ve fallen in combat, you’ll be able to rotate your death cam to look around while spectating teammates – much like in previous titles. We expect this extra bit of freedom will encourage even better teamwork and improve communication while players wait to respawn.
Additionally, to help make sure you can spectate your teammate’s even faster, we’ve increased the speed at which you can cycle through players on your death cam. Now, with this additional layer of player agency, you should always be able to help a teammate in need.
Reactive Water Plane
Season 4 brought the first appearance of a placeable and scalable water object in Forge – the static water plane. Being a static object, it didn’t react to gameplay interactions such as footsteps, bullets, or explosions and was more applicable for map aesthetics. It was a big step forward for Forge, but we knew that having a reactive water plane would be the next big leap.
Next week, you’ll be able to take that leap with the addition of a scalable water plane in Forge. This new water object will react to players, vehicles, and projectiles just like it would on any of our dev maps!
Forge QoL Updates & Bug Fixes
In addition to the introduction of the reactive water plane, Forge will also get some extra love and polish in this update. A quality-of-life (QoL) update for our Forge menu folders means that creators will be able to expand and collapse all the folders in that section with a single action. Beyond that, the team went after numerous community-reported issues for the August Update.
Much like all our updates, the focus of the August Update was to continue addressing top community requests across the board. In addition to the few topics we've covered above, we’ll have even more fixes for top community reported issues such as Personal AI voice resetting, bringing slide back to parity with its Season 3 behavior, multiple Observer and Theater bugs, and stability improvements for all platforms.
As a reminder, the full list of fixes – with additional context – will be available on Halo Support’s Patch Notes page (https://aka.ms/HaloInfiniteUpdate) when the update launches next week.
While we know there will always be plenty more to go after, we’re excited to release this one and share these improvements with you. Thank you for your continued support and constructive feedback as we continue to update Halo Infinite!
There's more summer goodies coming! From Merchandise to K-Ching, sign up for our Summer Pre-registration to enter the raffle to win these prizes! Just signing up will earn you a Hair Color Palette Cube!
To pre-register, head to the link below, log onto the website, and click the Pre-register Now! button at the bottom!
Welcome to Forensic Friday Friday- Fri- F- day----- what -Pd- I don't know---- RESTARTING... RESTARTING... RESTARTING...
WELCOME BACK...
Oops I seem to be broken, much like our development currently! But not to fret, we are merely overexaggerating. This week we have been stuck in the metaphorical hole of development hell. Hell because we are not enjoying ourselves in the slightest? Why? Rewrites and Bugfixes! That's why! But as the week comes to a close, we are finally starting to climb out of the hole we dug ourselves by not researching effective designs for AI systems :/
Anyways, what's important is the news! The news is both good and bad. Starting with the bad news: We are behind on the roadmap! But the good news: We are nearly done with revamping our NPC AI, and with that will come a significantly smoother development. With any new system, it takes a bit of beating in before its robust and reliable enough, which is what we have spent most of the week doing. A mountain of bugs and issues, is surprisingly a good thing, as it just means we are finding all the possible edge cases and extreme scenarios, and pushing our new AI system to the limit.
So in lieu of that... we will get back on the road(map) soon! We may need another week or 2, but hopefully in no more than 2 weeks time, the roadmap will resume in all its glory, and maybe at an accelerated pace.
Multithread pathfinding
In other news... pathfinding is multithreaded. NICE. Or at least the code exists to support it, but it hasn't been meshed into the game yet, but eventually it will make its way through!
Recreational Activities
NPCs also now can watch TV, using the new AI system. Once all the bugs have been ironed out with the underlying system, this kind of activity could probably be done in half an hour (probably less) of development time which is a good feeling. This also led to a discovery that NPCs could see through walls placed diagonally to one another, so now NPCs detect if they can see a location using a modified version of Bresenham's line algorithm that gets all tiles between themself and the location they are looking at correctly! Many thanks to this) lovely blog post for the idea!
Anomaly Poll Winner
And to end on, the anomaly poll winner for this week is... _drum roll_
S-0133 - "The floor between floors": S-0033 appears as a completely normal elevator/lift from the outside. It can effect any lift by random. so doesn't have one defined appearance. Using the effected lift allows access to a whole new floor, only accessible through the lift.
(sad 119 noises)
Many thanks to all that voted, and we'll see you in the next Mechanical Monday in 2 weeks to show off the document in full!
Case Closed
Time to file this case, and close it for good. Thanks for reading, and your patience. We hope to get back on the roadmap as much as you guys.
-Buffed several early-game enemies. -Fixed some spelling mistakes. -Hopefully addressed an issue where the game would sometimes crash at random points.
NOTE: Please save as often as possible to prevent any unnecessary loss of data/progress!
I'm beyond thrilled to share that Abalon is now officially Steam Deck Verified! This is a goal I've been striving for ever since I heard about Steam Deck back in July of 2021.
The first major milestone was integrating Steam Input controller support back in October 2022. It turns out this was a lot more challenging than I initially estimated, but well worth the effort and a fantastic learning experience. The second milestone was adding Native Linux and Steam OS support, which I was very proud to accomplish this year in early July. Finally, my latest push to add UI scaling and controller glyphs this month finally saw my goal realized, and I couldn't be happier to bring you a turn-based tactics and card strategy experience that plays great on Deck!
Achievement Unlocked: Steam Deck Verified!
I hope you enjoy and I can't wait to hear about your experiences playing Abalon on Steam Deck :)
Hiya everyone! Apologies for the delayed Forensic Friday post, but we're here now. There's not too much new content this week, but still some interesting parts nonetheless (at least in our opinions! :D). Happy reading!
NPC AI Overhaul Begins
There's not too much more to say on this that wasn't described last week. However, in case someone decides to use this blog as inspiration for their own game, we'll describe a couple of the quirks we have encountered along the way, and our solutions so far.
The "tunnel-vision" NPC problem
One of the biggest issues we've encountered has been the "tunnel-vision" NPC problem, that occurs when NPCs in game start one task, and fixate on it until it's conclusion, without considering other relevant factors in their environment. This can make NPCs appear stupid, as they fail to react appropriately to changing circumstances or prioritise tasks effectively. While in other games, like the Sims, this is just passed off as "dumb" behaviour, in our game this may often be the difference between life and death, or successful containment and containment breaches.
Therefore, to counteract this problem, we now make NPCs rank and choose their preferred task every game tick. However, due to the random nature of NPCs choosing one of their top 3 ranked tasks, we've made it so NPCs only change tasks if a new task is made available that an NPC ranks higher than their current task. By making it change every tick, NPCs now will be able to react to events in real time, which hopefully makes them more flexible and adaptive. For instance, a builder may stop by a coworker for a chat, before continuing with moving materials to a construction site, or someone taking a shower will now stop if someone starts shooting at them - all common-sense and realistic behaviours.
Fighting for tasks (Race conditions)
Another issue that arose came because of this change to reranking and choosing tasks every game tick. Depending on which NPC executed its code first, that NPC would get first choice for every task available in the world. However, since the order in which NPCs execute code isn't always the same, this would lead to high rated tasks constantly switching hands between NPCs, all relying on the lottery of which NPC would choose first. In real game terms, this could mean a bunch of NPCs constantly getting in and out of a shower every tick, as they jostle over the highest rated task - showering - in the area.
Therefore, we have introduced a task reservation system, whereby an object advertising a task keeps track of the NPC that is carrying out its task. This advertisement is then temporarily locked for 2 ticks to the NPC in question. If the NPC decides to stop the task, then 2 ticks later, the object can advertise to everyone again. Meanwhile, in the more common case that the NPC would continue its task, it has special priority to choose its current task, creating more seemless task completion, and less tug-of-war style situations!
Social Media Revival Underway
We've also been starting our slow social media revival over the last week, with daily posts on Twitter (yes, we're still calling it that). Whether it's bad memes, blog post announcements or just general updates, give us a follow for some of the content of all time! (plus likes and retweets for the algorithm are much appreciated)
The first twitter post
Case Closed
And that's a wrap for this week. Not too much new content to show while we continue Utility AI, but we hope to have this finished by next Friday! In the meantime, thanks for reading as always, and we'll see you on Monday in our Discord for the next anomaly poll!!