My Halo News.com

The latest news about the Halo series of games from Microsoft

Month: September 2001

  • Re-encoded movie much smaller now

    Okay, the saga of the Interview movie goes on. Bravehamster has re-encoded it from his original source, using DivX. On a PC, with WMP, the sound is there, the video is there… and the filesize has been reduced to 21.6 megs. (Woohoo!) On the mac side, I was able to watch it perfectly with the…

  • Movie update

    Thanks to Psyrixx, who generously offered to mirror Bravehamster’s .avi movie – you can snag it here. No clue how the site will hold up… so if you’re getting horribly slow downloading times, maybe try and hold off for a bit. Again: this movie is 81 megs, in .avi format. On a PC, WMP plays…

  • More screen caps for the masses

    Thanks wholly to Bravehamster =PN=’s conversion of the .wmv to .avi, I was able to use QuickTime (with its much more flexible manipulation tools) to grab a few more screen captures from the interview/discussion movie. There are 18 new shots on this page. Enjoy!

  • DIY Hovercraft

    Man, you gotta love fans. Johann, unhappy that the boat we saw only once, as concept art, might not be in the game any more, modeled his own. You’ll find the wireframe in our Miscellaneous Art section.

  • Interview now 81 MB .AVI

    Bravehamster =PN= writes to say that he’s re-encoded the interview (sorry, Harry – the discussion video) in .avi format – it’s a whopping 81 MB now, but WMP plays it without stuttering. (QuickTime, for some reason, still can’t play it.) He’s kindly made it available via HTTP and FTP… but bandwidth is limited; mirrors are…

  • Flat-shaded polys STILL look good

    It’s the night for Bungie explanations! Chris Butcher steps into a conversation about the quality of the latest movie… and explains thatif you look at all of the scenes outside in the snow, in the angular interiors and out on the bridge, you’ll see that the environment polygons are flat-shaded and all the characters have…

  • Joe goes to sleep

    Joe Staten jumped into a discussion of ‘the Schwartzenegger shot’ to expound on Matt’s ‘cinematics are done’ comment in this week’s update, and to suggest thatHopefully we’ll be able to give you an abbreviated taste of what’s in store (i.e. a new trailer) sometime soon. Certainly before Halo is on the shelves, a date that…

  • Rendered Wallpaper

    Mr. Bill. Jr. V© sends along a homemade (with Bryce and Photoshop) desktop – inexplicably, it’s 500×375 pixels. I’ve taken the liberty of scaling it up to a more standard desktop size, but the original is still available in our Wallpaper section, if you’d rather start from scratch.

  • Attract Mode, defined

    Thanks to both Darwin Campa and Tim Wilson, who both filled me in on the meaning of ‘attract mode’… apparently, it’s a term from arcade games – it’s the footage that plays when there are no quarters in. Canned gameplay, in other words… can you say ‘films’? (hopehopehope) Tim adds:A standout “Attract Mode” from the…

  • BGH cuts 30 MB from your DL

    Coolness. Bounty, of Battleground: Halo, has compressed down the 44-meg .wmv to a 10 meg .wmv – quality is quite good for the size. For folks who can’t handle a 44 meg download… check out the low-res version. (It’s the same screensize as the original, just higher compression.) Note: in BGH’s description of the downloads,…

  • Wallpaper for the slow

    Worried you might forget the Xbox release date? Sikora submits a reminder for our Wallpaper section.

  • Downloadable Interview at BGH

    Thanks to Bounty, and the whole Battleground: Halo crew, for getting a downloadable version of the new Interview.wmv up for the masses. Stop by and check it out!

  • More backstory from Microsoft

    Geez… almost forgot! Another thing snagged from the Flash site, before it went down, was the informational text on each page. Some of this was very interesting… so here it is. Pay particular attention to the cyborg and backstory sections… comments are welcome on our forum. Looks like the Halo/Marathon linkages might be breaking…

  • Screens snagged from MS Flash site

    Well, we can’t do anything about the fancy Flash site being down for now… but we can at least show you the new screens that were included in it. Two of ’em are similar to shots that have already been shown (one was seen in a very small format in the OXBM preview last month)……

  • Marty’s done

    This week’s Halo Update is over at Rampancy.net… looks like we may be in luck, in the near future, with new screens/movies! (Personally, I’d LOVE the 50 meg TIFFs… but I understand Matt’s point.) On other fronts, it’s mostly tweaks… but what, exactly, is ‘attract mode’? And oh, yeah… Matt and Mordia blew most of…

  • Screen captures from the interview

    For all the folks who can’t get the 42 meg Interview, I grabbed a few screen captures. They’re not great – Windows Media Player has almost NO controls when it comes to this sort of thing, and play is really choppy on the mac anyway… but they’re something. The images are 320×240, the size of…

  • MSFT Halo site pulled for now

    Looks like Microsoft has decided to postpone the launch of their new site (due, according to Blue’s News, to this week’s events) – apologies to all who missed the first round. It’ll be back.

  • Interview Video not to be missed

    Wow. Go visit the new Microsoft Halo site, hit the Cortana Transmission link, and watch the the Interview Video. It’s in .wmv format and painful on a mac (can anyone convert this to a downloadable version?)… but it’s amazing. Almost 7 (!) minutes of banter between Marty O’Donnell and Joe Staten, with all sorts of…

  • Official MS Halo page updated

    Thanks to Draikin (and Mavruss, incidentally) for the news that the official Microsoft Halo page has been updated – totally new flash interface, new screens, the works! Check it out.