This is a test Halo 3 spoiler. You should not be able to see it.

With Halo 3 not only stealing the thunder from every other game on the Xbox or Xbox 360, but personally tasked by Bill Gates with submarining the PlayStation 3 launch (guess he didn’t know about the proposed $600 price tag, or else he wouldn’t have bothered) it’s not surprising that a little studio called Wideload that made a funny little game called Stubbs the Zombie might, for at least, awhile, go unnoticed.

Stubbs sold well enough, to be sure, but the gaming press often spoke more about the studio’s outsourcing-heavy business model than the game itself. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

So while the hype over Halo is such that Bungie gets taken to task by supposed fans even when they don’t say a word (because saying nothing is the best way to hype a game, didn’t you know?) then the silence must be deafening in Chicago, where Wideload was actually able to update their website last month without scarcely causing a ripple.

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According to Frankie in Bungie’s latest Weekly Update, the artificial intelligence in current builds of Halo 3 seems to be quite a step up from the previous games.

The progression of talent in Bungie’s AI drivers is well-documented; marines, for instance, could only handle Ghosts in Halo 1, often with disastrous results. Vehicles were thrown open to all kinds of units in Halo 2, as marines would drive Warthogs and Scorpions if given the chance, Grunts would take turns in Ghosts if opportunity arose. Having a passenger (preferably with a sniper weapon or a rocket launcher) as well as someone manning the chaingun in the Hog really gave the vehicle quite a presence.

Gunners in Halo 2 were often not quite as effective as they might have been. There was no real way to control what they were firing at, except to get closer to the intended target. Often they’d ignore clearly visible enemies because they were “out of range”– even though the weapon itself would have been quite effective.

And Frankie says that’s getting better in Halo 3:

In previous Halo games, the gunners were smart and would pick off targets in a logical fashion, but this time around, and it could be my imagination, the gunners are more precise and easier to influence. You can target individual bad guys by steering the Hog and even “convince” your gunner to pick a more relevant target and have him stop trying to blast a lone grunt hiding behind a rock when a bigger menace approaches.

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The AI still has ages of tuning left to go, and the bad news is that if your AI gunner is too good, he’ll be dumbed-down to make the game more balanced. That said, the scale and ferocity of the current encounters (read: more bad guys than ever before) mean that you were going to need more capable AI anyway.

The previously Halo-themed mod for Command & Conquer Generals might not have a Bungie flavor anymore, but the request to cease development using Halo intellectual property does not mean the project is dead.

Halogen lead Dispraiser said in an interview with GameSetWatch:

Luckily, though, everyone on our team is devoted. When I posted in the staff forums about the email, the thread was titled “What now?” not “It’s over” or anything of the doomed sort. Most of our models are original units, including every structure but two, and even some vehicles. In fact, some of our most popular units, the Skyhawk, Hammerhead and Firefly, are all original units that we designed. Without saying too much, I hope everyone doesn’t leave and miss the real show…Definitely keep your eyes on Slipstream Productions and the ex-Halogen crew.

So it looks like Halogen– whatever it eventually ends up being called– won’t be Halo-themed, but fans will get a chance to play it.