Our project is doing an internal move, taking over more of the floor we're on in the Ensemble offices.  Now that the War Chiefs is finished, personnel normally juggle around and so we have a good opportunity to reposition ourselves to take on new folks from the xpack and get ready for expanding (we are hiring, by the way).  Moving always brings with it chaos, so I'm not sure a lot got done today, but I still enjoy the process.  It feels like kind of a clean slate, that some new layout and positioning will break us out of our ruts a little.  I'm sure that I'm reading too much into it but I just really like the vibe of when everyone is breaking down and setting up again.

I did find the time to take a quick look at the forums over at the official Halo Wars site.  Wow!  Hundreds of threads, and just an explosion of interest in the game.  It's #1 in popularity over on Gamestop's site, and I'm told the pageviews on the main site are through the roof.  Exciting stuff.  Ensemble has always had a dedicated fanbase for the Age games that certainly dwarfs anything we had back in the Looking Glass days, but the Halo fanbase is just another order of magnitude beyond that, at least in intensity...

Halo Wars site

Bungie.net announce (link may change)

We've had folks working on this internally for quite a while, and it is shaping up incredibly well.  This is another internal team than the game I'm working on (which is still secret, alas) and they have just nailed the controls and visuals.  I can't wait until I can talk more about some of the things in Halo Wars, but for now, content yourself with some awesome images and a trailer... :)

I've said it many times before, but man, the best part of this job is definitely working with the great people here.  After a few weeks of working on a key feature we realized what we had originally envisioned wasn't going to be quite enough to do what we wanted.  At first I was worried it was going to become a big deal but after a little brainstorming by the people involved we came up with a very nice way of extending the system to push it over the top.  Suddenly from angst to excitement in the span of an hour!  It's such a huge asset to have so many folks on the team who are pro-active about solving problems and undaunted about doing whatever it takes to make a feature really great. 

Today one of the programmers brought in a "Mosquito", this little remote controlled 2-bladed helicopter thingy.  It quickly took the office by storm and everyone was discussing getting one for themselves, tricking them out, making them fight, etc.  Fun to watch. :)

Speaking of fun things, keep your eyes peeled (ouch!) for something very cool happening quite soon....

You can always tell managers that used to be programmers in a previous life.  Sometimes you'll stumble into their field of previous expertise and suddenly they start busting out technical terms and opinions in a way that's totally different from what you normally expect.  As it turns out, Tony Goodman, our studio head, was a database programmer before he founded Ensemble Studios.  I'd always known this, but it was definitely reinforced when in the middle of a discussion about database organization (of the kind that we use in Ensemble Studios Online), and suddenly he busts out a huge list of bullet points about proper database normalization structure. 

I think most of his details were lost on the non-technical designers he was talking to, but it was still good stuff.  I think the mindset of a programmer is something that never leaves you...

Based at least on the first few hours, Okami is genius.  Ok, the gameplay is basically Zelda, and it starts out with a way, way, way too long non-interactive dialogue-fest.  But once you get past that?  Oh, man.  Beautiful and unique art style, very fun gameplay with the brush techniques, and the whole thing just brings a stupid smile to my face.  Whipping out a few well placed brushstrokes and watching a whole field erupt in cherry blossoms is a fantastic moment that will stick with me as a notable gaming moment for quite a while...

The War Chiefs expansion has gone gold!   Woo!  I've had a ton of fun playing this over the past few months and anyone who enjoys Age 3 will definitely find it a welcome addition.  Smashing your enemies with waves of native warriors and your mighty War Chief is just a blast.  Actually my single favorite feature is the dances, that basically let you swap out which uber-bonus you are getting at any given time. 

The recent 1.09 Age 3 patch boosted the XP rate for leveling Home Cities, which I think is a welcome change.  I think we probably tuned it too conservatively originally, and we definitely want people to be able to see the new high tier content for both new and old cities.

I'm sure I'll start up a new native HC once the retail version hits.  Good times.  :)

Spent a long day at the office today... we just got our brand new hardware for our super-duper source control machine.  So after everyone else had mostly left I ran through a lot of maintenance, making sure it was all backed up, etc. then transferring it over to our new machine.  Ok, boring stuff I guess but I find it strangely satisfying.  The best thing, of course, being the awesome specs on the new machine... that things got 1.3 TB (with a T) of space free on it even after moving over our entire current depot full of art assets and code... 

I still remember programming on my Atari 400 and wondering how I could ever possibly use 32k of memory.  Times have changed... :)

Random music recommendation... I recently discovered the Autobots when a track of theirs was played on Sirius radio.  Fantastic stuff, highly recommended if you like Drum-and-Bass style electronica.

Interesting bit from 1UP... apparently the HD version of Gran Turismo will be micro-transaction based, down to the individual car and track level.  A complete set would cost around $400 by the not-very-verified numbers listed in the article.  Obviously that's not really the model they are relying on but it will be interesting to see if this new console generation brings with it any really new business models.  $30 Platinum Hits on the Xbox 360 vs $20 isn't really new, just tuning to see what the market will bear.  XBLA is certainly a new (to the console) model.  But I don't think people are going to go for microtransactions when pushed to that extreme.  I guess we'll all find out...

Meanwhile, looks like the downloading of TGS trailers and demos is starting!  Can't wait to check out Lost Odyssey.  I'm totally a sucker for the way you can play along at home with this big conferences now.  I still want to get out to TGS in person someday though!

Hey cool, just realized that Marc Taro Holmes, the lead artist on my current project at Ensemble has a sketch blog up now.  Very neat stuff though warning, drawings of human anatomy are involved if you're sensitive to that sort of thing.

Link