It’s Thursday, which means there’s still three days to go before Jason’s shower day. He’s starting to smell like old bandaids, and I’m stuck sharing a room with him in Santa Monica. He swears he’s wearing a deodorant called “Au Naturale” but I…
-
-
Pop Goes The Sniper
Paul Maestri let us know that Halo Heads 6 has been posted… it looks at online modding. And I must say… that’s a mod I’d actually LIKE to see!(Louis Wu 12:43:19 UTC)
-
Jackson Talks Halo
Over at Ain’t it Cool News, Quint has scored an interview with Peter Jackson – and today’s installment focuses on Halo. Jackson is excited about Blomkamp, Jackson is excited about the script, Jackson is excited about the effects that are under construction. He’s pretty garrulous about it all… it’s a great read! Thanks to Mike Smith for the heads-up.(Louis Wu 12:14:14 UTC)
-
Halo: Portable is back
Mintz writes to point out that Halo: Portable is back on the update kick – new stuff includes imSuck’s HMV Hell, the (late) fourth podcast, xbryboyremix’s “Corrupt” vid, and Walshy’s Montage. What are you waiting for? Go fill your iPod/PSP/whatever.(Louis Wu 12:05:41 UTC)
-
Get A Job At Bungie
KP‘s latest piece at Bungie.net is for all the fans who wish they could work at Bungie like he does. It’s probably fair to say that Bungie has hired more than its share of its own fans over the years, so while it’s certainly a long shot, it isn’t impossible, if you’ve got education, determination, and skills Bungie needs. Check out the article for tips from other Bungie staffers on how to get in the door, how to get noticed, and how to get hired to work at Bungie.
-
Halo No-Shot
A long time ago, Mike Miller released a movie showing a shot-free clearing of the top of the gravity lift in Truth & Reconciliation, on Legendary. I was suitably impressed… but remember, it’s just one room. Took him 4 minutes. Self Induced has now completed a no-shot run… on the entire level of Halo. No shots fired. On Legendary. The whole level. Insanity. (I don’t know that I could do this, even if I had the SKILL for it – just watching him, I was twitching my trigger finger instinctively.) Ducain was impressed enough with this to provide a mirror, just in case. Go watch this… it’s really cool. (75 or 100 mb, WMP9 format.)(Louis Wu 02:46:40 UTC)
-
That’s just the way it is.
Over at Bungie.net, there’s a new article discussing breaking into the industry at large, and Bungie Studios in specific. (‘Breaking in’ as in ‘getting a job’, not as in ‘stealing all their cool HD monitors’.) There was a lot of stuff about education and experience and such, but what I got out of this was that if you wear a dress, you’re in like Flynn. Er, Frankie. There are some good specific “how I got my job” tips from Rob McLees, Joe Staten, and Frankie (though I’m not sure Frankie was telling the truth). The Halo content is really, really sparse… but hey, if you go to work for Bungie right now, the chances are REALLY good you’ll be involved, in some way, with Halo. So… yeah. Go read. darthbob was the forumgoer who pointed it out.(Louis Wu 01:25:55 UTC)
-
Ark ‘N’ Sore.
GAH! I HATE it when I forget to post the day’s One One Se7en. No, it has nothing to do with wanting to bury these puns… really. No, really.(Louis Wu 00:58:44 UTC)
-
Breaking into Bungie
Bungie receives a high volume of emails on the subject of jobs. More than anything, people want to know how to get a job at Bungie. Take a look at Bungie’s shady hiring practices and see if you’re up to leaving behind the concept of “HR violations.”
-
Halo Writer at Austin Film Festival
Looks like Joe Staten will be participating as a panelist at the Austin Film Festival in mid-October – if you’re in the area, and have a few hundred bucks ($200 for students, $400 for a regular conference badge, $600 for producers), sign up now! Thanks, Finn.(Louis Wu 23:06:54 UTC)
-
Halo Unyielding is Out
It’s finaly out after a lot of work and effort. Halo Unyelding is here!!! Make sure to visit the site at www.halounyielding.com and download this amazing and revolutionary Halo Video directed by our Friend Laird with the help of his amazing Team John Webster and Matt Patterson.
What are you waiting for? Check this out now. Also be sure to share this with your friends… They will love it!!!
Check out the forums for more information and discussions about this great video.
-
Halo Unyielding is Out
It’s finaly out after a lot of work and effort. Halo Unyelding is here!!! Make sure to visit the site at www.halounyielding.com and download this amazing and revolutionary Halo Video directed by our Friend Laird with the help of his amazing Team John Webster and Matt Patterson.
What are you waiting for? Check this out now. Also be sure to share this with your friends… They will love it!!!
Check out the forums for more information and discussions about this great video.
-
Halo Unyielding
Laird, of Sponsors vs Freeloaders, has spent a significant amount of time recently putting together Halo Unyielding, Part 1 – it does what very little other Halo machinima has done to date; it focuses on a space battle. Using HaloCE, and some great external effects, this one is full of exploding ships and starfield-filled carnage. Very cool stuff! Swing by the Halo: Unyielding website to pick up a copy in WMP9 format (53.8 mb) or QuickTime format (48.3 mb). To make life a bit easier for them, we’re mirroring both files (WMP9 | QT) – grab them from whereever’s faster for you. Thanks to Yaksha for the heads-up.(Louis Wu 15:35:24 UTC)
-
Terminal Announcements
Jordan117 discovered that the loudspeaker announcements on the multiplayer map Terminal range from the mundane, to the Easter-eggish. I think anyone who’s played the map knows that there are a variety of announcements… but nobody (that I know of) has gone to the trouble of transcribing them before. He didn’t have any way to record them – but he gave such specific instructions on how to hear the snippets well that it was trivial for me to go in and record a bunch. I only let the recording run for 15 minutes, and captured only 18 of the 25 listed – but it’s a fine start, and I’m sure someone else can grab the last 7. Great stuff! Go hear the snippets in our Dialogue Databank. Update: Thanks muchly to Psychophan7, who submitted 6 of the remaining 7 clips. (They’re mixed in with the original 18 at this point.) Marty also stopped by to tease everyone with a question… got any answers?(Louis Wu 15:17:02 UTC)
-
Final Boss Does a Postmortem
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)
-
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)
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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!