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Oni: Difference between revisions
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However, unbeknownst to the public, development of Oni was troubled from the start. The team was young and inexperienced, and development suffered from a lack of direction. A great deal of code had been written, and assets created, without producing a playable game with a story. By mid-1999 it became clear to management back in Chicago that the game was not going to be ready by year-end, so Hardy LeBel was added to the team with the goal of bringing focus to the development efforts and producing a shippable product. | However, unbeknownst to the public, development of Oni was troubled from the start. The team was young and inexperienced, and development suffered from a lack of direction. A great deal of code had been written, and assets created, without producing a playable game with a story. By mid-1999 it became clear to management back in Chicago that the game was not going to be ready by year-end, so Hardy LeBel was added to the team with the goal of bringing focus to the development efforts and producing a shippable product. | ||
At the same time, turnover at the Bungie West office began with the departure of the AI programmer in the summer of 1999 (a replacement would not be hired until January 2000<ref>[http://carnage.bungie.org/oniforum/oni.forum.pl?read=1808 OCF post by Freewill, "I'm pretty sure Chris Butcher has joined Oni", Jan. 23, 2000].</ref>). The end of 1999 saw the departure of one of the level designers and then Brent Pease himself (with his Project Lead title being passed to Michael Evans). | |||
LeBel and the team began honing the gameplay, shaping the final story, and figuring out what features or content would have to be dropped in order to ship the game before it was too late; Bungie was secretly suffering from serious money problems (see "Buyout" section below). In May of 2000, it was announced that multiplayer was being removed from the game due to latency issues and lack of time to create suitable arena levels for network play. | |||
In June of 2000, it was announced that Bungie had been acquired by Microsoft. This caused an upset among Bungie's fan base, which mostly consisted of Mac users. They considered Microsoft to be Apple's nemesis, and now the company behind the upcoming Xbox console had taken the most popular game developer from the Mac world and would be incorporating them into their office complex. The effect this had on Oni's development was dire: it meant that Bungie West needed to finish their work as soon as possible in order to join the rest of Bungie in Redmond, Washington. | In June of 2000, it was announced that Bungie had been acquired by Microsoft. This caused an upset among Bungie's fan base, which mostly consisted of Mac users. They considered Microsoft to be Apple's nemesis, and now the company behind the upcoming Xbox console had taken the most popular game developer from the Mac world and would be incorporating them into their office complex. The effect this had on Oni's development was dire: it meant that Bungie West needed to finish their work as soon as possible in order to join the rest of Bungie in Redmond, Washington. | ||