I know the last post was too long, so here’s a summary. Bottom line, users can now:

• Search and sort images
• Send and receive private messages
• Submit site content (news, blogs, images, polls, and FAQs)

Have fun!

I’m now starting to make some of the functional changes on the site enabled by the last Drupal software upgrade.

The first change is probably the most basic. The old image gallery used to display a listing of all galleries, with a sample image, and an image count, which was very nice. However, when you actually got down to viewing the images, the display wasn’t very pretty and couldn’t be sorted or searched in any way.

Click the images link in the top menubar now and you’ll get a new gallery interface. Instead of having several levels (top gallery, nested gallery, image thumbnails, full size image) it presents a pulldown menu to select a gallery and then immediately displays thumbnails, which by default are sorted by date, newest to oldest. You can change the sort order or instead sort them by title if you wish. You can also restrict the display within a gallery to only those images associated (or NOT associated) with one or more games.

I know not every user needs that kind of flexibility, but I think it’s nice to have. I’m sorry that the prettier overview page is gone, but I think the improvements more than make up for that.

The next change encompasses a collection of different things, all related to how content is created and displayed on the site. To explain this change, I may have to back up a little and give some background in a separate post. Basically there’s just so much to keep up with that I’m asking the readers of Rampancy to submit items of interest to the site.

What I’ve done, then, is open up the content management system that runs Rampancy to accept submissions not just of blog posts, but of news stories, images, attached files, FAQ entries, and polls to all registered users. These items will not immediately go on the front page; I’ve created a page two where all the recent items not on the front page will be displayed, and from that, I may end up choosing items to go on the front page.

To use this feature, you have to have registered an account with a real email address, and clicked the confirm link in the message the site will send you. If you have an account already, you’re all set. If not, you can register one today.

Check the box with your login name at the top, and look for the menu item called “create content“. Beneath that you should see options for the kind of content you can create. Please be careful; proper spelling and punctuation are appreciated. Use the preview button! Use the topic and category tags to describe your posting. You can use more than one entry. If your content includes any spoilers, or links to any spoilers, please label it– either as a spoiler for Halo 3, or a spoiler for earlier games (H1 and H2).

As always, you can still submit a blog entry. Blog entries will appear on page two with other content, listed from newest to oldest, and will provide a link to your blog. I’ve also changed the display of blog entries in the right-hand sidebar; the Recent Blogs box is gone, as it duplicated items from the front page. Instead there’s a block that displays the top 15 bloggers by number of submissions, and another block for all recent page two content, blogs included. This links to a page with a similar list of active bloggers.

Even though this site is mostly about Halo, and focused on Bungie and a few other game studios with ties to Bungie and Bungie properties (Ensemble, Wideload, Freeverse, Wingnut) your blog can be about anything you like. If it’s about any of those games in particular, or gaming in general, that’s fine.

News stories are supposed to be just that– news, and they should be about one of the above topics, and stick as much as possible to reportage of facts (or, at least, links to other sites that claim to have facts) rather than opinion pieces. If you want to tell readers how you feel about Campaign Scoring in cooperative mode, that goes in a blog. If you’re letting readers know you just read somewhere that Bungie is confirming that the Campaign Scoring feature exists, then that’s a news story.

If you want to ask readers a question, submit a poll. Right now I’m still working out how these are going to be handled, because by default only the last-created poll appears on the front page, and I’d like each poll to run long enough to get a significant amount of votes. If you submit a poll and then you see it disappear, don’t be worried; I am keeping them on the site, but I’ll spread them out so they all get a chance. If I do this to a poll you submit I’ll send you a private message.

That brings me to another “new” feature. Private messaging is back; although the store of old messages had to be deleted. Since this feature was deactivated quite some time ago I don’t think anyone had anything essential in there, but if there is some saved message you absolutely must have, I can retrieve it for you from the backup. Let me know.

Please feel free to try out the new features, and submit some items– even tests if you just want to see how it works; don’t worry, if you submit something you want to remove later, than can be done. And if you have any questions at all, send me a private message, post a comment, or just drop me an email at .

MR2NoShoes writes a long post in the HBO forum about how he was a Mac-using Marathon fan who drifted out of the Bungie community after the MS buyout, only to find himself roped back in by winning an Xbox. His return was solidified by attendance at a hush-hush backroom Bungie party at PAX. Check out the post for the sort-of sordid details.

XBOX.com is offering a good deal to XBOX Live Arcade fans. Select games are 50% off.

Zuma Deluxe: 400 points!
It takes a quick hand to unlock the treasures in this addictive puzzler. Fire magical balls to make matches, then collect coins and power-ups to clear the path.

Gauntlet: 200 points!
Get ready for multiplayer fun in this retro coin-op classic. Explore mazes together, destroying vile beasts and claiming gold, as a Warrior, Valkyrie, Wizard, and Elf.

Small Arms: 400 points!
Cyborg tabby cats, assassin truffle pigs, and mutant chimney sweeps come to life in this multiplayer shooter that’s a “must-have” for anyone with an itchy trigger finger.

DIG DUG: 200 points!
Experience the fast-paced action of this quarter-cruncher from 1982 as you take control of Dig Dug himself and vanquish Pookas and Fygars.

Xbox.com’s weekly newsletter points out an interview with Frankie about Halo 3. He says the focus in Halo 3 is playing it your way:

I hope that the main thing players take away is how much Halo 3 is their game. That is to say, it’s a game that lets them play it the way they want to, whether that means joining three friends for co-op, or hooking up with eight friends to build a new Multiplayer variant in Forge, or simply share screenshots and movies with their own subset of the Xbox LIVE(R) community. We really have gone all out to make sure this game has more initial impact, and way more replay value than any other Bungie title to date.

There’s also something about looking for two (or is it three?) hidden screenshots that littlebigman pointed out in the HBO forum.

Reverend Anthony at Destructoid wonders out loud how it’s possible to have a satisfying ending to a game narrative that isn’t just a boss battle without taking the sense of control and identification away from the player. He’s got a good point.

The article mentions a wide variety of games, but the Halo series does get mentioned:

To put it bluntly, there will not be a game made in the next decade that cannot be sequelized. In our current “evolution, not revolution” gaming climate, we opt for sequels and spinoffs and clones more than we respect the standalone work of art, in the same way other genres do. As a result, games are almost required to have some sort of open end, which usually involves (A) the protagonist surviving, and (B) the possibility of conflict remaining. Gears of War ends with absolutely nothing solved. Halo 2 ends on a cliffhanger.

Halo 1’s open-ended ending also is mentioned by some of the comments left on this article. Most users felt the combination of The Maw, as a level, and the understated cutscene that ended the game was pretty satisfying. So, Halo 1’s non-ending ending was okay, but Halo 2’s non-ending ending wasn’t.

How will Halo 3 end? A little less than a month left before we find out.

There’s been an awful lot of community discussion around the first version of Microsoft’s recently released Game Content Usage Rules. Most likely a result of Halo 3’s upcoming Saved Films feature, Microsoft is the first game publisher to openly publish such rules, instead of simply remaining silent over copyright violations that do benefit them insofar as they help promote the games.

Shortly after the rules were noticed, some machinima studios claimed that its restrictions against “adding to the game universe” and prohibition against usic “music and audio effects” forced them to close down.

Machinima For Dummies has two news articles on the rules: one, two. Hugh Hancock provided an analysis of the rules, stating that they do need revision but are mostly positive.

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