Author: Louis Wu

Thanks to Ph.D., who pointed out an interesting article on The Elements of Gameplay, over at Gamasutra. It’s a good read, and hopefully gives the Halo dev team a few things to think about!

Jay Weinland, audio engineer on the Halo team, dropped into our forum to clarify his job description. The Elderly One will probably be thrilled to hear that Jay describes his job asSound Designer, Audio Engineer, and all-around Marty slave(That means he gets to carry around that huge horn that Marty holds up to his ear…

It was all over in a moment. The sharp pain he felt in his chest and neck turned to dull warmth as it tore him to the ground, ripping limb from limb, guzzling his intestines and other organs.Poor Bob. This guy needs a smiley-face sticker, don’t you think? Go read Chapter 3 of Hermes Trismegistus,…

Apparently, the ambient life seen in the E3 trailer is not currently in Halo. Matt Soell stopped into our forum to pass along this note in answer to the question about whether ambient life would be present in Halo:Ambient life is still on the To-Do list, and it’s not that far down either. I can’t…

Sometimes, people just lose it.

Ph.D. has taken it upon himself to put together a full list of Halo Development Team members, along with their job descriptions, where available. Pieces of this have been floating around the net for a couple of years now… but nobody’s ever put it all together in one place before. Once finalized, this information will…

As several people noted last week, the SETI servers finally started crunching stats again, so we’ve gotten to the Halo SETI Marines 7-day stats (this time out, 21 days) again as well. Looks like crunching went on as before – numbers are roughly three times the normal weekly output. (This is good – it means…

Last week’s update has been added to the Halo Update Database – and man, it’s getting big. Sounds like this week most stuff is unmentionable… but one thing has changed – the Mighty Chris Butcher is Mighty no more. The end of a 4-month era…

Over at Rampancy.net, there’s a very interesting post from Chris Butcher, currently working on AI in Halo, about the direction this field is going. Definitely worth a read.

Cody Ellis, one of the Flash directors at FunXbox.com, dropped us a note to let us know that he’s put together a little (okay, big) Halo teaser, in Flash. It’s a 3.8 MB file, but it’s a pretty nice presentation of some Halo images over the years. Check it out!

Andreas den Hertog writes to say that he’s started up a Halo fansite, called HQ HALO. Check it out!

This week’s Halo update is over at Rampancy.net… thanks to Acrappa for getting it up in the face of adversity. The Mighty Chris Butcher is mighty no longer… but Chucky just got Swarthy. (Yo-ho-ho…) A new name pops up – Eric Arroyo. And the shotgun gets bigger… go read all the groovy details for yourself.

More than two years after their original posting, Knight Premier sends in some thoughts about the first Cortana Letter (with ramblings about the rest, and a host of other topics, for good measure). Check it out in our Theories section.

Siva pointed out a poll at FunXbox, asking about the most-anticipated Xbox game… but by the time we went by, it was over. Seems there was a last-minute Halo push, though – because in the hour and a half between when Siva posted and when the poll closed, Halo went from ‘a few percentage points’…

Sikora drops off a new wallpaper, showing off the various environments the marine pops up in. You can find it in our Wallpaper section.

Thanks to both Marcus Tacker, and Deacon, who sent in pics of an Xbox from the Bungie webcam. (Marcus’ pic came in first, but Deacon’s was clearer.) That puppy looks MASSIVE!

Dead Glory writes to say that the results of his Bungie poll are up – he interviewed 181 fans about their feelings for Bungie. Go to dg.rules.it and click on ‘Misc’ or ‘Updates’.

Thanks to Tom Van Sinden, who sent in a pretty slick little Halo sticker – anyone got a sticker printer? You’ll find it in our Miscellaneous Art section.

PlanetXbox has put up the second installment in their Halo Development Diary, wherein Level Designer Jaime Griesemer talks about training players to use Halo without boring them to death. Instead of step-by-step voiceovers, you’ll learn skills as you go:For instance, at one point you engage some Covenant from down a hallway and the only good…

It landed on the platform no more than sixteen feet from him, then seemed to stretch its jelly-like mass towards the panel that he had previously been tinkering with. The feelings of anxiety reasserted themselves. Bob’s in trouble again, in the third segment of Tursas’ ‘Hermes Trismegistus’. Check it out in our Fan Fiction section.