Over at MLGPro.com, there’s an interview with Final Boss. They took a solid look at their loss to Carbon at MLG Orlando – I found the tone of their analysis to be an interesting counterpoint to the attitude Carbon took when they looked at the situation. It’s pretty clear why these guys have dominated so long – they take this stuff pretty seriously. While you’re there, check out MLG’s new site design! (Seems a lot of people are going the VBulletin route these days…) Thanks, 3Suns.(Louis Wu 15:16:27 UTC)
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HDR The Bungie Way
Eastbeast314 noticed that Dave Weller, a Game Developer Community Manager, was providing media from a whole lot of talks at last month’s Gamefest 2006 – one of those talks was part of the Graphics Track, and was called ‘HDR The Bungie Way’. It was given by Chris Tchou, who works for Bungie doing graphics for Halo 3 – he came to Bungie after working on a program for High Dynamic Range image editing. This talk is really technical – as in, most people will be lost really, really quickly. If you’re interested in how games handle lighting, though, it’s fascinating. The PowerPoint presentation is 40 mb, the audio for the talk is another 25 – but you have to download the entire 500 mb Graphics Track to get your hands on this. And all actual Halo 3 content shown during the talk has been pruned; what’s left are the science slides. Do NOT grab this if you’re looking for a sneak peek at Halo 3 – you’ll be sorely disappointed. DO grab this if you’re involved in game programming (or want to be), and you’re wondering why Bungie is making some of the lighting choices it’s making for Halo 3.(Louis Wu 13:30:23 UTC)
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HDR The Bungie Way
Eastbeast314 posted up links from Let’s Kill Dave to the PPT presentations at this year’s GDC, as offered by Microsoft. The Graphics Track (caution, direct link to large file!) includes a portion called “HDR The Bungie Way” about HDR lighting. The files are huge– about 500Mb, though, so be careful.
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Recon 54 Must Stop Them
The latest Community Spotlight at Bungie.net by KP is on Recon54, who is currently on an extended mission ordered by th’ greybeards o’ auld school Bungie fandom t’ observe noobs in their natural habitat, interactin’ with Microsoft’s “magical hummin’ box”. In addition, he drives th’ Spambulance and has a healthy fear o’ Shishka, which certainly any rational person can reckon. Head o’er and give it a read if ye ha’nae already.
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Letter To Bungie Reopened
Gravemind wrote up an extensively compendious piece on the Halo franchise, posted it on GeoCities, then linked it in the HBO Forum, with predictable results. When HBO front-paged it the next day, the site quickly exceeded its bandwidth quota. HBO had a mirror up by that time, with simplified HTML for quicker loading.
I decided what the article really needed was easier reading, so in addition to stripping out most of the extraneous HTML, I split it into seven easy pieces: Introduction, General Gameplay, Multiplayer, Campaign, Weapons, Vehicles, and Miscellaneous. An Open Letter to Bungie now has a mirror in our Halo 3 Articles section. So now if you know there’s one particular part of the article you want to look at, or you’d just like to break up your reading into convenient chunks, here’s your chance.
We’d love to have explicit permission from the author for this, but we can’t reach you by e-mail, so please, Gravemind, drop me a line at if you’re OK with this or you’d like me to take it down.
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Two More Tidbits For Marathon Fans
A new Marathon film (in Marathon recording and .mp4 formats) called Spectral Falls and a new map pack called Fabrecation are available at Marathon: Aleph One. Check them out!
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Long Lasting Rampancy Bar
DoomBatINC created this image for a SomethingAwful Photoshop Phriday feature fusing food and videogames. Certainly, the “long lasting rampancy bar” enriched with “Strauss protein blend” must be how an ordinary cybernetic security guard was able to face down the Pfhor and two rampant AIs over three games without ever once sitting down to a real meal.
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Long Lasting Rampancy Bar
DoomBatINC created this image for a SomethingAwful Photoshop Phriday feature fusing food and videogames. Certainly, the “long lasting rampancy bar” enriched with “Strauss protein blend” must be how an ordinary cybernetic security guard was able to face down the Pfhor and two rampant AIs over three games without ever once sitting down to a real meal.
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Submit Stuff for Episode 81: Customs and Callins!
Wow, time flies! I guess it’s because we’ve been really busy at Podtacular improving the show, working on our new fall 06 season tournament, lining up interviews and guests, etc. Ok, focus, Foo Mo, focus.
I got this great custom called totem pole. Everybody stands on eachother’s head for 90 minutes! It’s a blast!
Hopefully you have a better custom than this. If you do, send it in! Just click the submit news and tips link on the right and send in your custom. We read the top few customs of the month so if yours is good enough, we’ll read it on the show! Even if it isn’t we put it in the show notes so it will help someone out. Just don’t give us every single game option though, give us about a paragraph summary of the game with your gamertag. Gracias!
Episode 81 with special guest host: you!
This is the show where we play back the best voice mails for the month, so you can get your voice on the show! Just call 206-888-HALO and leave a halo-related message that’s 3 minutes or less. If it’s decent, we’ll play it for the world to hear!
This one time I threw a sticky and it bounced off a wall and stuck me! ROFL!
We’re looking for tales from the foxhole this week. Better ones than this. If you have a story of an awesome or funny thing that happened in a Halo game, let us know! Just send it in with your gamertag so we can give you credit.
Deadline is Thursday Night
and when I say that I mean I start putting show notes together at about 5:45pm EST. The earlier you get your submission in, the more likely it will get on the show. So hurry up and get typing!
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Bananas… and screaming.
Over on Bungie.net, there’s a new Community Spotlight – KP sat down with Recon #54, known to most Bungie.net forumgoers (because he’s a moderator there) and to some HBO forumgoers (because he delurks here sometimes). Go read the story of someone who’s been part of the Bungie community since there’s BEEN a Bungie community (and no, that doesn’t mean 6 months before the release of Halo) – and you’ll come to understand WHY he’s stayed.(Louis Wu 21:19:38 UTC)
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Submit Stuff for Episode 81: Customs and Callins!
Wow, time flies! I guess it’s because we’ve been really busy at Podtacular improving the show, working on our new fall 06 season tournament, lining up interviews and guests, etc. Ok, focus, Foo Mo, focus.
I got this great custom called totem pole. Everybody stands on eachother’s head for 90 minutes! It’s a blast!
Hopefully you have a better custom than this. If you do, send it in! Just click the submit news and tips link on the right and send in your custom. We read the top few customs of the month so if yours is good enough, we’ll read it on the show! Even if it isn’t we put it in the show notes so it will help someone out. Just don’t give us every single game option though, give us about a paragraph summary of the game with your gamertag. Gracias!
Episode 81 with special guest host: you!
This is the show where we play back the best voice mails for the month, so you can get your voice on the show! Just call 206-888-HALO and leave a halo-related message that’s 3 minutes or less. If it’s decent, we’ll play it for the world to hear!
This one time I threw a sticky and it bounced off a wall and stuck me! ROFL!
We’re looking for tales from the foxhole this week. Better ones than this. If you have a story of an awesome or funny thing that happened in a Halo game, let us know! Just send it in with your gamertag so we can give you credit.
Deadline is Thursday Night
and when I say that I mean I start putting show notes together at about 5:45pm EST. The earlier you get your submission in, the more likely it will get on the show. So hurry up and get typing!
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Community Spotlight: Recon Number 54
We took some time this week to speak with Recon Number 54, long-time Bungie fan and one of our Master Forum Ninjas. Read about how he first became involved with the community and what’s kept him coming back all these years.
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Colors
Crossfade, from QsKGlobal.Com, put together ‘Colors’, a vid that tells the story of a lone soldier who must leave his family and friends to go to war. The MPRRS liked the cinematic effects, and the editing in general. Check it out! 32 mb for the WMP9 version, 31.3 mb for the QuickTime version.(Louis Wu 19:29:11 UTC)
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Halo 2 dress up doll
I know you have all been waiting for this moment with intense anticipation. Refreshing the page every 10 seconds. Skipping lunch. Well the wait is over: the Master Chief dress up doll is LIVE! Now you can dress up the chief as a ninja, a tennis player or even a fairy! WOW! I can’t wait to make a tennis-playing ninja Master Chief! Thanks to Anjo Banjo for this awesome new Halo resource. Run, don’t walk over to cartoon doll emporium and make your own special master chief doll now!
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Halo 2 dress up doll
I know you have all been waiting for this moment with intense anticipation. Refreshing the page every 10 seconds. Skipping lunch. Well the wait is over: the Master Chief dress up doll is LIVE! Now you can dress up the chief as a ninja, a tennis player or even a fairy! WOW! I can’t wait to make a tennis-playing ninja Master Chief! Thanks to Anjo Banjo for this awesome new Halo resource. Run, don’t walk over to cartoon doll emporium and make your own special master chief doll now!
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Showdown
xbryboyremix submitted ‘Showdown’ to the MPRRS – it’s a samurai movie. A lone samurai that confronts the enemy in a showdown for honor. Nice atmosphere, great camera angles, short, stays on point. Fun film! Grab it in WMP9 format (15.2 mb) or QuickTime format (15.4 mb).(Louis Wu 15:53:14 UTC)
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Happy Birthday, CapnKrunk!
CapnKrunk, our webmaster, just turned a year older today! The capn is the guy that created this web site and continues to improve it as time goes on. Let’s join in and wish him a happy birthday. Party at the forums! BYOBR!
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Happy Birthday, CapnKrunk!
CapnKrunk, our webmaster, just turned a year older today! The capn is the guy that created this web site and continues to improve it as time goes on. Let’s join in and wish him a happy birthday. Party at the forums! BYOBR!
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Podtacular Ep 80
Foo Mo Jive points out that Podtacular Episode 80 is out (yeah, we were late on 79, but hey, it’s nice to catch up) – it’s a tip show, focusing on Lockout, and there’s an interview with the creators of the Codex machinima series. A bit over an hour, 57 mb. Get to downloading!(Louis Wu 13:59:32 UTC)