User:Paradox-01/quotes old questions

http://carnage.bungie.org/oniforum/oni.forum.pl?read=19648
Posted By: chef Date: 7/7/02 3:38 a.m.
In Response To: Oni basic questionare (The best piece of ass in 51 provinces)

: 1.Why is Muro drawn so oddly in the back of the oni box?

Harry is completely correct: we had no control over the actual box that the game shipped in, and it was an eyesore.

: 2. How come all of the scripts are made only for the training level or the 2nd level?

Chapter 00 (training) and chapter 01 (warehouse) are actually level 1 but the player won't notice that easily. Obviously the forum poster didn't know and thought that chapter 01 was level 2. -- Look HERE.

Sorry, but I don't know what you mean by this; every level in the game is fully scripted.

: 3.When is Oni2 coming out? Can you give me any basic information of which you have heard(even if it is not for sure)?

Well, Take 2 is now a major player with GTA 3 under it's control. They might decide to do something with the Oni IP. Then again, they might not!

: 4. How come the Iron Demon was taken out of the game along with several things such : ass blood, multiplayer, some really cool looking levels, more fighting along side team mates : (something I enjoy very much), and some characters that looked cool such as the original form of a tanker.

Again, Harry was right. The Iron Demon never completely worked within the constraints of our animation system. And it would have been hard to fight a robot in hand-to-hand (though we did have a plan for that...). We didn't have enough programmers or time to solve the problems of making the game playable multiplayer over the network. I've said it before but nobody cried harder than me when we lost it! The teammates stuff was put in by the individual level scripters. The reason there's not a lot of it is because it didn't always work like it was supposed to (mostly us designers were using Chris Butcher's AI tools for evil instead of good!). Stil, Chris took a lot of the lessons we learned from designing the Oni AI and used 'em in Halo.

Blood never looked great (though I thought it didn't look horrible), but we decided to pull it out because it didn't really fit with the game we were developing. Since none of the models would actually show damage, blood seemed goofy.

As to the Tanker I guess I'm not sure what you're referring to. There were a bunch of models that had been created for the game that we didn't end up using, mostly in an attempt to preserve the "color-coding" of the enemy characters. Tanker was a human for a really long time until I convinced Chris Hughes to make him some new skin textures to turn him into an SLD...

: 5. What was the original conflict between the architects and programmers : which led to the omitting of several levels?

There was no conflict between anybody. It was just that early versions of the story called for certain locations and (before they knew any better) the architects went ahead and modelled them as "real" spaces (you shoulda seen the fully modelled toilets...very impresisve!). We basically had to go back into every level of the game and completely rip it apart to support the gameplay we were going for or else build them new from scratch. (You're still my hero Dave!)

The change in the level numbering came because the story completely changed from the old stuff into the form that you now know. After the changes one level was out of sequence in the story. It was easier to simply rename that one level in the data and leave a gap rather than rename all the levels to support the new story sequence.

: 6. Is Oni 2 going to be for mac or at least PS2?

Dunno, but if Take 2 makes it they'd be crazy not to support PS2.

: 7. Thanks for the help!

I'm always here!

---

Posted By: chef Date: 7/7/02 10:35 p.m.
In Response To: More questions... (mainly for chef...) (WJTW)

: Hi,
: I realised that I should have post this message as a followup to the post
: "Oni basic questionaire", but this would be better.

: So, here are my questions: 1) What happened to Muro's original look?
: He looked much better then: then the current finalised one. Why take that look out?

There were some issues with a few of the original characters, specifically the way they were modelled and textured. When Chris Huges got around to redoing them to remove sorting issues and correct their "physiques" (which is an 3D animation term relating to the way the vertices interact during animation) he often changed their clothes from the outfits Alex Okita originally gave 'em. Chris and Alex had what you might call a "friendly rivalry" in the art department ;^>

: 2) I've read somewhere that they said the AIs would be able to dodge, run for cover,
: call for help and work in groups. So far, I haven't seen any of these! What happened to the AI?

Well, they can do some of that stuff, but mostly it's internal to the logic and not visible to the player. I'm betting that you pulled a lot of those tidbits out of a very old interview with a programmer named Quinn Dunki that used to work on the project. She made a lot of boastful claims about what the AI would end up being able to do that she couldn't deliver on.

: 3) Why was the AI called AI 2? As in ai2 _spawn in scripting?

Because Chris Butcher rewrote the AI system from the stuff that Quinn had put together. Since it was the second time it had been done Butcher's functions were all AI2 calls.

: 4) Well, why are tankers groaning so much when hit? I mean, Muro would not have said
: "Why bother programming you to feel pain so intensly" when his own SLDs are screaming
: and expressing pain like that... Maybe the developers forgot that they made tankers SLDs : and still thought they were humans(or did not re-voice or re-script the game?)?

Tankers were developed for entertainment purposes (think robo-pro wrestlers). If you saw pro wrestlers that didn't react when they got hit they wouldn't be much fun to watch would they? That's the "fluff" reason, but the real development reason is very similar: the player needs to get positive feedback when they're winning a fist fight, and the sounds that the characters play are a big part of that.

: 5) Was the Science Lab (level 3) originally the BGI(*) Headquarters?

Heh, no but that's a good guess. BGI was cut COMPLETELY. That's the only level out of the original stuff that didn't make it into the game in any form whatsoever.

: 6) On the Science Lab(level 3), I noticed an additional staircase in the area with the firefight
: (where 3 TCTF agents are helping you) leading to the rooftops of that level. But that staircase
: was sealed. Was that part of the original level (the BGi Headquarters)?

It wasn't part of BGI, but yes it did lead to the roof. The staircase WAS part of the complete archtectural layout developed by the artists and hence had to be sealed to facilitate the gameplay.

: Sorry for being longwinded... I had to get these questions out of me.

It's ok, I don't mind!

(*) notes:

- chef: "BGI was the placeholder name that we started using in the story documents before everything was finalized. It stood for Bad Guys International."
- chef: "BGI was cut COMPLETELY. That's the only level out of the original stuff that didn't make it into the game in any form whatsoever."

- WJTW: "If BGI was removed, why was Konoko saying "Musashi is owned by BGI..."?"
- chef: "BGI is in the story, but there are no BGI art assets used in the game."