Version 0.5 of PhysicsEditorOne for Windows by HogePiyo is out, in English and Japanese. The program edits Marathon physics models, allowing mapmakers to change player physics, monster sequences, sounds and weapons.

Thanks for the heads-up to Marathon Open Source.

Jordan117 has put up a nice bit of analysis in the HBO forum alleging that various artistic and design choices in Halo 2, specifically those made in the Outskirts and Metropolis levels, indicate that Bungie is postulating increasing global warming in Earth’s future.

While probably not essential to the plot, if it’s true it does demonstrate the insane attention to detail that Bungie puts into its games.

Thanks Louis Wu for the heads-up at HBO.

Quint at Ain’t It Cool News has put up part three of five in his interview with Halo movie producer Peter “Freakin” Jackson. Unlike just about everybody at Bungie, Jackson actually likes to talk and talk about Halo, so there’s loads of content in here. It is probably too far out from the film’s expected release to hold him to anything concrete in here, but what comes across loud and clear is his enthusiasm for first-time feature director Neill Blomkamp.

Despite a complete lack of confirmation from Microsoft or Bungie Studios, Jackson appears to have no compunction whatsoever about mentioning Blomkamp as the film’s direcvtor, and addressing the reasons for choosing him:

We certainly didn’t set out with HALO to find a first time filmmaker to do HALO. We wanted somebody on HALO that would have 3 qualities. One, a very important one, is that they wanted to do it really badly. They had to be absolute HALO fans. That was important because there are a lot of people who would be happy to do HALO for the paycheck, there’s a lot of people who would be happy to do it for the publicity they’re going to get from it and the kick it’ll give to their career and all that and all of that sort of stuff. There’s lots of reasons to do HALO that would be attractive if you’re not a HALO fan, but we didn’t want any of those people, we wanted somebody who was a real HALO fan.

Most fans, I think, will be happy if Blomkamp is really as big a Halo fan as it seems, and if Jackson says it’s not a big deal that he hasn’t already done a feature-length film before, then who am I to argue?

For those keen on details, there are a lot of other things mentioned in the interview:

• The film may have a PG-13 theatrical release and possibly an R rated DVD release, but this has not been discussed yet.


• Flood design is apparently being done with CG.


• Jackson and his wife, Fran Walsh, are not actually writing the script but functioning as “script police” and nothing will go in without their approval.

There’s also plenty of talk about what’s going on now. The script is apparently in its third iteration now, Alex Garland‘s being the first, and presumably D. B. Weiss‘ being the most current, although Jackson doesn’t mention him in the interview.

While that’s being done, Blomkamp is working with WETA on the designs, since regardless of how the script turns out, you can be fairly sure about who the major players are, and the games already tell you pretty much what they look like. For the record, Jackson says that in the film we’re going to get:

• Covenant


• Warthogs


• Ghosts


• Scorpions


• Pillar of Autumn

Of course, no doubt Jackson does not intend this to be a complete list, so the fact that Wraiths, Shadows, Spectres, Phantoms, Pelicans are not mentioned doesn’t mean they won’t be in the film. Nor, as unlikely as it seems, does the inclusion of any of the aforementioned items constitute a guarantee that they’ll be in the film, although that would be a pretty good bet to make.

What Jackson does promise is that Blomkamp’s vision for the film will be unique:

We’re still developing a script and we’ve still got work to go on the script and that’s underway, but while that’s happening Neill is just producing his vision of this world. It is original and new and has not been seen before on the screen. It’s not Ridley Scott, it’s not James Cameron, it’s not what we’ve seen before, but it’s something new and fresh and it’s cool. That was important to us. Someone who was going to not go the cliched way, but go in the direction that they had an original vision for and Neill has got that in spades. We’re feeling really, really good.

Think about it, in a couple of years, we all might be able to feel as good about the Halo film as Jackson does right now.