Halo: The Master Chief Collection Windows, XONE game

What is RedShift?

RedShift is a large open-ended Halo campaign that can be played either solo or cooperatively with up to 4 players. This is a brand-new campaign. All of our levels are being made from the ground up, with a completely unique story and new set of characters. While we are drawing our inspiration from Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2, we are particularly looking far beyond the world of Halo to make sure we have an experience that is completely unique. We don't want to give everything away just yet but if you haven't seen it, you should check out our Reveal Trailer.

Meet Blimp Brigade

We had to call our team something, Blimp Brigade is what we have decided to call our team developing this project. Let's look at some of the individuals working on the project:

Ki11a_FTW/Rich - I am the Project Lead for RedShift. I am the Director of Environments of the project, which means I design, build and art up all of our levels and worlds. I am also one of the primary 3D artists, meaning the bulk of our custom assets (Elites, Grunts, etc.) also were built by me.

Mortis - Second Project Lead for RedShift. Mortis is the Head of Materials and main lead for all 2D related art. Mortis is primarily responsible for all of our Hard Surface materials such as our brand-new library of Forerunner materials. We have a massive collection of great materials being made, and none of them would exist without him. He is also the UI lead, so when we are ready to reveal our HUD and PDA, Mortis will be the one behind all of the icons and textures used to create these.

ShadowSpartan - Programming Lead. Throughout the release of the various modding tools for MCC, ShadowSpartan has been working on new sets of tools for us, strictly compatible with 3DS Max to make our lives a bit easier. He has also developed various applications for us to easily transfer animation data from other Halo games to our project.

Adumbass - 3D Artist and Shader Programmer. Adumbass has been busy writing a bunch of new shaders. While most of these did not make it into the trailer, the work he is doing will bring our quality bar to the next level. Some examples include a true PBR material system, rain shaders, and object projected decals, and much more. He has also worked on some assets for us, which we chose to not show until a later date.

Ivanovich - 3D Artist. Ivan has been helping us with some 3D assets. The DMR and the Pistol that we are currently using are both his creations.

Dragonballsagna/Matt - Audio Lead. Matt is a personal friend of mine and I have known him for many years. He is in charge of all of the music - from composing, recording and implementing.

Crow - FX Lead. Crow is our newest member to the team. Over the years, he has been some of the best FX and particles in the Halo 1 engine that we have ever seen. Recently, he decided to integrate his work with ours, so we are very excited to see what he comes up with. FX range from things like the visual explosion of a grenade to the muzzle flashes on your gun when you fire.

What about Halo: Composition?

So, I am making this a main bullet point here because I know the question will be asked. Composition started development back in 2012 - and was sort of just my "for fun tinkering" project in Halo 1. It wasn't until the CE3 2014 demo where things started to get more serious. After the showing I did in 2014, the entire project was ultimately scrapped except for the levels. In truth, the sandbox and art style were just a mess, which you can kind of see in the demo. The project started coming together again in 2017, where a new sandbox was made and near finalized, and by 2019, multiple levels had been in a near completed state. However, as some of you may have heard, I underwent a hard drive crash around this time. All progress between 2017-2019 was lost and not backed up. I don't look at this as a bad thing, as I learned a lot from the project. With whispers of MCC tools on the horizon, it was decided Composition would not resume any kind of development. Here is the thing, all of the good ideas from Halo: Composition have been integrated into RedShift. For example, the first level in Composition was set to be an autumn level, just like Redshift and most of the level/play spaces were ideas I had already worked out on paper and was easily able to make those designs compatible for RedShift. This means that a large chunk of the play spaces in RedShift did not have to be thought up from scratch, which was a huge time saver - and don't worry, we have systems in place so our working files for RedShift will never be lost.

Closing Thoughts

To be as honest and up front with everyone interested in our current project, we are far, far away from any sort of official release. This is a passion project for me and the others onboard. Our team consists of people with full time jobs, families and even other projects. That being said, we were prepared to show a full mission at a recent event that was postponed. Large chunks of the project are playable and fun, most of the art has been concepted out and is ready to be made or put into the game if it hasn't been already. So we may have something else to show soon.

Until then - join our discord at: Discord.gg to be a part of our community where you can be the first to know about any updates.

Thanks everyone!

-Rich