I don't know who it is or where they are, but the rumored Xbox 2 specs are clearly evidence that somebody is ingesting dangerous quantities of some mind altering substances.

Let's take this "information" apart piece by piece.

The first point is the lack of a hard drive. The article says on this point:

The current Xbox has an eight-gigabyte hard disk drive. That drive is useful for online games and storing game art, but many developers chose not to make use of it. As a result, Microsoft seems to have decided that saving the $50 the hard drive costs outweighs its benefits.

This makes no sense on its face, the only question is whether this is a bit of bogus information that just proves that the media will snap on any scurrilous bit of rumor they get, or evidence that after a fairly good showing with its first gaming console, Microsoft is headed for a sophomore slump of Biblical proportions after having failed to learn anything, even from its own marketing hype.

The killer advantage of the Xbox was supposed to be the ethernet port, for online gaming and downloadable content. Unless this thing is going to have a built-in optical drive with write abilities, the removal of the hard drive means no online updates, no downloadable content. Perhaps that experiment has been abandoned, although it was only a few short weeks ago that the company was talking about the success of the program with MechAssault, the first Xbox game that offered downloadable content.

Even with the platform a static development target, console games are reaching a point of complexity where bug-free games are hard to make, and the only way to fix them is online patches. No hard drive, no patches.

The speculation that this move is to control console costs and reduce loss makes no sense. All the console makers take a loss on the hardware and profit on the games. If you can't do that, you don't have a console business. Also, targeting Sony for the next round of competition is premature. Microsoft largely failed to position itself as a clear #2 in the market, in many places running neck and neck with Nintendo, except in Japan, where they got trounced. If anything, they should continue to offer superior value and a good price point-- even if that means significant losses on hardware-- and use their ability to subsidize their gaming studio with their other businesses to drive Nintendo into a software-only role like Sega. It's unlikely that will ever happen completely, as Nintendo virtually owns the portable gaming space, but still, the nearest target for Microsoft in the market is Nintendo-- not Sony If Microsoft thinks that a photo finish for second place in a three-horse race is good enough to start worrying about being a market leader, they've got another think coming. Perhaps someone should look at the Sony sales figures again.

And lastly, it isn't clear if Microsoft will include the current DVD video technology or Blu-Ray, its successor. Blu-Ray will hold much more data, but it's unclear when it will be ready for market.

This also makes no sense at all. Both the Xbox and the PlayStation 2 have DVD drives; the GameCube uses a proprietary media format that stores less space. Halo, which shipped for the Xbox on a DVD and for the Mac and PC on a single CD, is still the console's best-seller. There's absolutely no indication that the limits of the DVD format are being approached, storage-wise. There's also no indication that there's any correlation between the amount of storage space a game requires and how good it is; if there were, then companies would still be making FMV games. To top it all off, this tidbit is in direct conflict with the goal ascribed to Microsoft elsewhere in the article, which was supposedly to control the hardware costs of the box. A Blu-Ray drive would almost certainly be more expensive than a normal DVD drive; even if is equal to the price of a current-spec DVD drive by the time the Xbox 2 is being produced, a standard DVD drive would still be cheaper. So let's sum this up: there would be no point in decreasing the cost of the Xbox 2 $50 by removing the hard drive and then losing that advantage by including a more expensive optical drive that is in no way necessary or demonstrably better.

Compatibility with the original Xbox, which is based on Intel and Nvidia chips, isn't guaranteed. Microsoft is concerned it would cost too much money in hardware or in licensing fees to enable the Xbox Next to play old Xbox games. This is risky in part because Sony's strategy has been to maintain compatibility with its old consoles.

I'd like to just dismiss this as bull as well, but unfortunately there might be a basis for this. In burning its bridges with Intel and Nvidia, it may very well be true that whatever licensing they'd need to do to make the Xbox 2 backwards compatible with an older console based on a different processor architecture and a different GPU vendor might be prohibitively expensive. The original deals for those technologies might not have included future hardware, allowing them to put the squeeze on Microsoft as punishment for abandoning them as vendors. Of course, any x86 compatible processor vendor would probably do as a replacement for the Intel chip in the original Xbox, so it's not likely that Intel's position is a factor, unless there are specific new technologies in the Xbox that were licensed separately. The GPU might be an issue, but this also seems unlikely: as the Nvidia chip in the Xbox was supposed to support a special new superset of DirectX as well as OpenGL, it would simply remain to ATI to make a chip that supported the same instructions. Millions of PCs around the world play the same PC games (with varying results, of course) on video cards designed by these two manufacturers, because they're using the same APIs.

Well, if you haven't already read any of my previous blog entries then you should likely not care about this one either, but just in case you were interested you can read parts 01, 02, 03 and 04 at your leisure. That being said I will continue with part 05. The focus of this final installment will be possible plot connections to the Halo storyline.

Marathon, er.. Halo Connections:

Taking into account all of the possible unknowns regarding the Halo storyline I feel that the only true suitable scenario for a mod such as this would regard the time directly after the Covenant discover (or vice-versa possibly) humans along the outlying colonies. In this manner there would be less reliance upon Spartans and upper echelon Covenant soldiers.

So far my favorite scenario would entail a small interplanetary group of civil and military humans exploring a few of the outer worlds in search of more habitable environments. In their searching they come across a small moon (one of se7en?) orbiting above a gaseous planet. As they set out to explore the moon they uncover the remains of a civilization. Without the proper means to decipher or interpret what happened to the now abandoned settlement the group decides to gather what information and artifacts they can and take them back to their colony after completing their survey mission(s).

Back upon their ship, one of the crew accidently(?) activiates one of the artifacts, which begins to transmit a subspace signal to an unknown source. As the crew frantically attempts to shut down or at least determine what the signal is transmitting, they decide it would be best to return the artifact to the planet and report directly back to their colony. With little to no mishap the crew reports back to their colony and decides to continue with their survey mission after a short hiatus.

Continuing on Parts 01, 02 and 03, Part 04 will discuss the workings of the Covenant class structure and how it relates to the Human/Spartan Combat Model.

Covenant Class Structures:

Although creating a formal class structure would be nice, it is only possible to create classes within the guidelines provided by Halo's storyline and within the balance limits of a multiplayer match. What this means is that specific sub-races of the Covenant, such as Grunts may not be well suited for multiplayer matches (at least not within their current format). The result is that the number of classes used will be quite limited overall; mainly to the Jackal, Elite and Hunter.

The Jackal may be the most interesting multiplayer class in general provided that they meet a few key restrictions. First, they can never drop their shield; and second, they can only equip one-handed weapons (maybe even only the plasma pistol). The key strength of this class would be their shields. The Jackal shield is very resilient and is quite possibly more useful than the Spartan's energy shield due to the fact that it can resist all types of human ballistic weapons.

Another key feature to the Jackal would be the block feature. Whenever the Jackal uses the crouch funtion they hold up their shield allowing them to become defensive in nature. While in this position they can still overcharge their pistols but cannot fire them until they stand upright. As always, an overcharged plasma pistol shot will render their shield ineffective for a time so this would be a major weakness to this class.

The Elite would likely be the most similar class to the Spartan. Ideally this class would be broken down into three smaller classes: Elites, Gold Elites and Cloaked Elites. If possible it would be nice to seperate each Elite subclass as its own class provided that they have enough differences.

Hopefully you have read my notes on the Human/Spartan Combat Model (H/SCM) previously blogged(?) in Parts 01 and 02, if not you might get a little bit lost when reading this entry. Regardless, my topic for this blog will be possible gameplay scenarios and their implementation.

Gameplay Scenarios:

The first and most obvious would be Human/Spartan teams engaged against other Human/Spartan teams. Weapon and vehicle sets could be restricted as required. So basically we have a basic yet diversified blend of players all fighting to be the few lucky Spartans, right? Maybe. The trick here is to allow each server to run with its own server restrictions. That way you could restrict access to the Spartan players in any number of ways. The most obvious being first-come, first-serve based upon the total number of players each team can support (server max / 2). Secondary means may include a max number of Spartans per team or even 1 Spartan per every X human counterparts. You might even see a few human-only servers up and running.

Which brings us to the next possible setup: human versus human. Sure it would be nice to have a few Spartan buddies to take hits for you while attacking the enemy base, but if people are going to fight over it, why not forbid the use of Spartans altogether. Besides, if you want all Spartan combat, play Halo and not this mod!

Human versus human combat would be what this mod is designed to exploit. Imagine a team of 10 human soldiers, all with various and diversified skill levels simultaneously switching roles on a continual basis in order to compensate for or assist their fellow teammates. Neat huh? (If it works.) The prime motivator would be powering up your player's proficiencies and gaining as many or very high skill levels as quickly as possible. The secondary motivator would be to actually play as a team. Sounds somewhat backwards, right? So how do you encourage teamplay above and beyond everything else? If there was a simple answer to this then clans would never exist.

Hopefully you have read Part 01 of the Human/Spartan Combat Model (H/SCM), if not please read up. The topic of this next blog will be how gameplay will be affected via this free-form class structure.

Proficiency Based Gameplay:

Ultimately the goal of this mod is to provide players a chance to jump into combat with little to no previous experience of Halo and end up with a character customized to meet their own strengths. Weapons, vehicles, maps and gametypes will all have their own balancing factors. The bonuses that players get from these items only helps to improve their own individual characteristics when using them. What this translates to is that if a player does not use a given weapon/vehicle, expect a player that does to be much better when using it.

Unlike most Role-Playing Games (RPGs) these skills will build up rather quickly. Considering that most matches last 20-30 minutes, you would expect players to gain a proficient level when using a single weapon after a very limited time. This is not to say that higher levels would be easy to attain, but only that shorter periods of time are needed to gain the most basic upgrades.

Example: A player begins the game with a pistol and proceeds to gain a few quick kills. If the requirement for the first pistol proficiency upgrade was 5 kills using that weapon, a player could easily attain it at a rather quick pace. Note that only the killing shot must be from the pistol, so feel free to use any other weapon to weaken your opponent first. After reaching 5 kills the player goes from skill 0 (zero) to skill 1 with the pistol and a bonus, such as an extra clip of ammunition is added to the pistol every time the player picks one up. Keep in mind that these bonuses are quite arbitrary at this point and only the general concept is important.

As a player's proficiency increases with a given item, it would be easier for them to gain that next skill level when using that item. Of course, the curve for attaining the top levels will be much harder than the more basic ones, so the rewards or benefits will be much better as well.

After posting a few of my personal viewpoints in a recent thread, I have finally decided to catalogue my ideas for public opinion. These ideas will be formed from an ongoing series of blogs that will be refined and broken down into simple sequences of information. Refining and extrapolating of individual ideas will occur on a regular basis, but hopefully I can maintain a focussed and informative dialog from my ramblings.

Overview:

The basic idea is to create a realistic combat modification (mod) that places human soldiers fighting alongside Spartan class models. The difference here is that human soldiers lack shields and would likely be more vulnerable to death. Likewise they would also be faster than your normal Spartan. Spartans act exactly like the Master Chief, but are limited to say 1 per every 4 players on the Human/Spartan side (possible server-side setting).

As I would prefer to avoid class-based structuring I think it would be necessary to incorporate a skill based system in the game. This would work by encouraging players to assume roles and then gain improvements based upon their performance within that role.

An example would be a basic class sniper. Imagine a player that picks up a sniper rifle and then proceeds to gain kills with his new rifle. As the player gains kills using his sniper rifle, he also improves his reload time and decreases his body movement while scoped-in.

Instead of limiting the player to the class of sniper, the system works to encourage players to work together and support one another. This is not to say that upon dying you lose your abilities, so a player could and should take multiple roles upon themselves throughtout a battle in order to improve their own skills.

Pilots/drivers could allow their vehicles to take more damage before being destroyed based upon the distance they travel in them. Gunners gain more accuracy from their weapons while hitting targets from a vehicle. The structuring is somewhat free-form in this regard. If medkits could be equipped you could even add a field medic role into the mix, etc. There could even be smaller bonuses for players such as increased speed or stamina (if running is possible) for traveling a given distance on foot.