Rampancy

Bungie Studios' title takes first place, 45% of vote

http://www.voodooextreme.com/i/mcblinks/AC_mage.gif alt= hspace= 15 vspace= 15 align= left" >Xbox-related poll at


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Attend and you could win an Xbox and Halo

Louis Wu's bungie.org alerted us to Matt's bungie.net that the Halo Launch Party has been booked and scheduled.

Please mailto:narcogen@rampancy.net target= _top" >let me know if there is anyone who deserves credit for this item that I haven't mentioned.

Here are the details:

Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Be thee advised that Bungie is throwing a party to celebrate the launch of their game Halo, and YOU are invited! The party will take place on Saturday, November 10, in the Paris Room of the bungie.net.

Bungie decides against changes to keep teen rating

Since pre-ordering Halo-- including box art-- some fans have been wondering about that big M seen there, because it looked disturbingly like an http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005NZ1G.01.MZZZZZZZ.jpg alt= align= left hspace= 15 vspace= 15" >Well, it is.

Matt has b.org Halo's original rating of Teen -- which still shows on their site-- and upped it to Mature . While they could have made some changes to keep the T rating, Bungie decided against it.

Although the Xbox does have a built-in parental control, Matt would not have affected the rating, which is based on the content at the maximum allowable level. So in Halo there is no such control.

The new rating will mean that Halo will not be available in some locations, and purchasers will need to be at least 17 years old.

Two screenshots, some backstory, and detail galore

In the Haloplayers on Friday-- and now Haloplayers to read the update and check out the screenshots to find out what the secret is...

Perhaps in the PC/Mac version? Please?

Matt Soell has forum. It seems that it's not that Halo couldn't have the capability, but that it couldn't be finished in time:

The question is not whether films are possible, but whether they could have happened in a reasonable amount of time. The answer to that question turned out to be No.

In theory, we could hold off on shipping Halo until we'd added every feature we'd like to include - but by the time we finished, it's doubtful anyone would care anymore.

I haven't seen anybody talk about it anywhere else, but I'd like to suggest that recording capability would have been of far less use on the Xbox version of Halo than in the PC and Mac versions anyway. How many people record films just to watch themselves play? Not many. OK, perhaps you could make a recording and bring your friends over and watch them later-- but the real use was always to have a small file you could email somewhere or upload to a website so that any member of the community could watch.

How would you have done that with the Xbox? Even if Bungie wanted to add a film-swapping capability directly into Halo itself, the Microsoft online service that would need to support it doesn't even exist yet. What's more, it might not ever have been designed to handle such file-swapping, given that it could potentially be used as a vector to deliver malicious code.

Here's hoping that the extra time to do the Halo release for Windows and MacOS also means time to finish the film feature.

Myth 3 editors require 3D Studio Max plugin

RHL resident ax pointed us to this InsideMacGames. Donges works for Mumbo Jumbo, developers of Myth 3, the upcoming prequel to Bungie's Myth series.

A lot of the article focuses on what mapmakers can expect from Myth 3. While it will ship with editors for use on the PC and the Mac, Donges warns that to get graphic models into the editor, you need a plug-in for 3D Studio Max-- a package that doesn't exist on the Mac. However, Donges thinks that someone should be able to make a tool to do the necessary conversions.

For the rest of us, perhaps this is the meat of the article:

IMG: Are you in beta yet? When do you expect the game to ship?


Donges: We are currently deep in Beta. The game is slated to ship on the PC by the end of October (as in this year). I'm not exactly certain when the Mac version will ship, but it should follow shortly.

Great news, as that puts the PC release about three weeks away.