Category: HBO

Damn, that man’s good. First, Jay Faircloth showed up on the scene over at the Marathon’s Story page, with a stunning piece of Marathon artwork. Then, he entered the Gathering of Developers’ Oni Art Contest, and placed second, with this image. Now he’s turned his sights on Halo… and though the final product isn’t available…

Pheonixmiser writes to say that the Halo Stronghold has come online. Go check it out!

And more – SiliconDream weighs in with a pretty nice roundup, posted to the R.net forum here. (Where are all the b.org reports, that’s what I wanna know?) Separate pistols for the player and the standard Marine, visual character variations between unit classes, evasive dives and rolls as part of the engine AI… and a…

Woohoo! Cunbelin has sent R.net a whole passel of images from the fest… including 5 of those “exclusive” Halo shots! (Yeah, they’re the old engine… but hey, it’s the only engine we know!) Plus a tidbit of artwork that um… is PROBABLY Halo-related… Uh, oh, I’m drooling again.Update:Harry Al-Shakarchi clarifies that that image was Bungie’s…

Thanks to Appleicious, who posted a Fanfest report to our forum. Halo details included:In [the] keynote, we got to see about ten exclusivescreenshots from the “old” Halo engine (exclusive = never before seen).the Halo multiplayer design doc is almost finished and work on the network code will begin in February.There’s lots more, so read the…

… And the fanfest is under way. No, we don’t have any information about it right now… I just thought I’d wish all the lucky festers the best, and remind anyone who HAPPENS to be in San Francisco this evening but DIDN’T know about the Fanfest to stop by the West Bay Conference Center between…

Ack. No sooner posted than refuted. Matt dropped another note to our forum a couple of minutes ago, shooting down the possibility of a live broadcast from the Fanfest.That was the initial plan but it fell through for a variety of reasons.All hope is not lost, though… check the rest of his post for a…

Woohoo – nudie pics from Macworld! Well, okay, not really… but it looks like we might get live pics from the Bungie Fanfest tomorrow night. When asked how difficult it would be to bring a camcorder to work, he repliedWe are SO far ahead of you on this one. :-)Of course, this could be post-fanfest…

Thanks to Tantalum-=SUN=-, who passed along notice of this Telepolis article (in German) discussing the Xbox, and Microsoft’s attempt to use it to change its image. “Crossing a Steam Locomotive with MTV – the Xbox and the Microsft image”… seems about right to us. 🙂 Nice take on the whole spin thing… and anyone who…

Before we forget – there’s a new German Halo site on the scene – Halo Information Network. I thought i was visiting a german version of Battleground: Halo when I first hit the link, but things got clearer after the splash page. Check ’em out!

More clarification from Timothy Wilson about some of the technical aspects of graphics rendering:Pixel Shaders are a little bit of code that runs per-pixel. They combine textures and may compute lighting. Vertex Shaders are a larger bit of code that runs per-vertex. A vertex shader can move vertices, in addition it may ‘shade’ them. This…

Matt Soell popped into our forum yesterday to clear up questions like “who is behind cortana.org?” and “when will www.bungie.com be updated?” (Read the whole thread for more nuggets – it starts here.) Where’s my Big Mac?

Okay, we’re seriously confused. We misinterpreted John Carswell’s comments a little bit, it seems… he wrote to point out the nVidia PR Director interview that MSXbox held this week. There were two quotes that stood out for me:MSXbox: What is the difference between these 2; Per-Pixel Shading and Bump-mapping?Derek: Bump-mapping is kind of a hack,…

John Carswell, from MSXbox.com, sends in an intriguing observation:If you have taken a look at the Malice screen shots you might be interested in knowing there was no bump mapping used. What appears to be high quality bump mapping is in reality per-pixel lighting. Thought you might be interested because of Matts “per-pixel everything” comment.Those…

fAt1, from MPZ Halo, writes to point out that Upwire.com has a story about a playable Xbox at E3:David Hufford, PR manager for the Xbox revealed that “E3 in May will be the real coming out party for Xbox,the machine will certainly be playable and you’ll be able to get your hands on lots of…

Thanks to Ph.D. who pointed out (on our forum) an editorial at Gamespy.com discussing the possible death of PC gaming at the hands of the Xbox, and consoles like it. Now, it has a few problems (as one of the arguments for the Xbox, it discusses the mod community, and how easy it will be…

Apparently, in a thread over at Battleground: Halo, there was some speculation that a commercial involving Halo characters has been showing on TV. Yesterday, Matt Soell stepped in and squashed it:No, there is no ad for Halo running on TV. Not even Californian TV. ;-)You can read the entire thread here. (Note: This doesn’t address…

Thanks to Chris Newhall, who sent in another Halo desktop pic for our Wallpapers page. Brings back the old days… Pax.

Thanks to David Bricker, who posted a snippet from the Bangkok (Thailand) Post over at the R.net forum. It does a decent job of summarizing the amazement with Halo, fear that Microsoft would crush Halo, and interest in the 3rd/1st person debate thathas manifested in the past year or so, all in one paragraph. While…

The Halo SETI Marines received a challenge last evening from the Overclockers UK team… and it looks like we’re not up to it. They’re crunching at a rate of almost 900 units/day, compared to the Marines’ 250 units/day. We’ll be dropping another slot, it seems, by week’s end. Got a few machines you can spare…