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New Wallpaper submitted
Shaun Brookman sends in a Halo collage, in three sizes – see the range of where Halo has been, and how far it’s come! It’s available in our Wallpaper section.
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1st Anniversary Halo Update Finally Posted
Two screenshots, some backstory, and detail galore
In the Haloplayers on Friday– and now Haloplayers to read the update and check out the screenshots to find out what the secret is…
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Halo Update… mmmm
MASSIVE Halo update, finally, at Haloplayers – GO NOW. Two gorgeous screenshots (in two resolutions each, to be nice to the bandwidth impaired and the broadband-enabled both), an entertaining tale giving you a bit of the backstory behind the halo updates, and, finally, a few tidbits that might be recognizable as a Halo Update (but mostly not). They’ve gone out with a bang, folks – go read and enjoy it. Thanks, Matt! (Update: Louis doesn’t seem to be around, so I fixed the links myself. –CZ)
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Poll smash at VoodooExtreme
Thanks to Aginor, who pointed out a new poll over at VoodooExtreme – ‘What Xbox game are you most looking forward to?’ Let ’em know what you think of Halo… but remember, keep it clean and honest. Remember the LAST VE poll… (Halo is currently leading this one, with 43% ofr more than 800 votes.)
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Never the same…
Putting the new ‘Commander’ shot to good use, Allenthar creates a new wallpaper for your desktop – you’ll find it in our Wallpaper section, in 4 sizes. Enjoy!
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Film Capability in Halo ‘Unfinished’, not Impossible
Perhaps in the PC/Mac version? Please?
Matt Soell has forum. It seems that it’s not that Halo couldn’t have the capability, but that it couldn’t be finished in time:The question is not whether films are possible, but whether they could have happened in a reasonable amount of time. The answer to that question turned out to be No.
In theory, we could hold off on shipping Halo until we’d added every feature we’d like to include – but by the time we finished, it’s doubtful anyone would care anymore.
I haven’t seen anybody talk about it anywhere else, but I’d like to suggest that recording capability would have been of far less use on the Xbox version of Halo than in the PC and Mac versions anyway. How many people record films just to watch themselves play? Not many. OK, perhaps you could make a recording and bring your friends over and watch them later– but the real use was always to have a small file you could email somewhere or upload to a website so that any member of the community could watch.
How would you have done that with the Xbox? Even if Bungie wanted to add a film-swapping capability directly into Halo itself, the Microsoft online service that would need to support it doesn’t even exist yet. What’s more, it might not ever have been designed to handle such file-swapping, given that it could potentially be used as a vector to deliver malicious code.
Here’s hoping that the extra time to do the Halo release for Windows and MacOS also means time to finish the film feature.
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InsideMacGames Interviews Mike Donges of Mumbo Jumbo
Myth 3 editors require 3D Studio Max plugin
RHL resident ax pointed us to this InsideMacGames. Donges works for Mumbo Jumbo, developers of Myth 3, the upcoming prequel to Bungie’s Myth series.
A lot of the article focuses on what mapmakers can expect from Myth 3. While it will ship with editors for use on the PC and the Mac, Donges warns that to get graphic models into the editor, you need a plug-in for 3D Studio Max– a package that doesn’t exist on the Mac. However, Donges thinks that someone should be able to make a tool to do the necessary conversions.
For the rest of us, perhaps this is the meat of the article:
IMG: Are you in beta yet? When do you expect the game to ship?
Donges: We are currently deep in Beta. The game is slated to ship on the PC by the end of October (as in this year). I’m not exactly certain when the Mac version will ship, but it should follow shortly.
Great news, as that puts the PC release about three weeks away.
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New Wallpaper uploaded
Joker111481@aol.com sends us a monochromatic desktop for our Wallpaper collection. Similar to, but different from, an older submission by genohunter… check it out!
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Screenshot requests!
Wonga – we’re probably too late, but you never know… Joseph Staten jumped onto our forum about an hour ago, and asked for requests for tonight’s screenshot subject. It’s likely that the job is done… but add to the thread if you’d like! (The update, if all goes according to plan, should be at Haloplayers tonight.)
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New Halo spoof available
Dorram posts on our forum that a new Halo spoof/rant has gone live – it’s two and a half minute long MPEG, available as a 44 meg, 320×240 format, or an 8.4 meg, 144×120 format. Footage from a number of different films has been spliced together, and put to a new soundtrack, with a very cool 3D logo animation thrown in for good measure. Warning – the javascript on the page is pretty Netscape-unfriendly; I was unable to follow the movie link using Netscape (or iCab). Opera and IE work fine, though… A big thanks to Psyrixx and B-Sharp for their generous mirroring of this movie. (The mirror links hold a zipped version of the large movie – it’s 32 MB.) Go take a look!
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Saving money, Bungie-style
A tidbit of good news, in the face of the disappointments yesterday: Matt Soell, in defiance of Microsoft corporate policy to milk gamers of every possible dollar, points out that the ‘System Link Cable’ that Microsoft packages for the XBox (sold separately for, generally, $15) is, in reality, just a 20′ crossover cable. These are generally available for much less than $15 – for example, a quick web search turned up this company, selling them for $5. Interestingly, they’re no longer listed in the hardware list at xbox.com.
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Coop = splitscreen, sorry
Details on gameplay continue to emerge – Rampancy.net gets confirmation from Matt Soell (via email) that cooperative mode is limited to two players, on a single XBox in splitscreen mode. This is the only multiplayer mode with this restriction – all others can handle up to 16 players with a maximum of 4 linked XBoxes, with no splitscreen requirements. (Of course, if you’re putting 16 players on 4 boxes, you have to employ splitscreen… but you can play 4 players on 4 screens if you choose. Coop play, in contrast, cannot be played on two screens.)
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Fan Fiction – lost one, gained two
Lots of action on the Fan Fiction front today. Mr Bill Jr V has asked us to pull his story, ‘The Answers’, because he didn’t think it was up to snuff… but he’s submitted a new one, ‘Escape‘, to replace it. Almost simultaneously, Jasper, whose last story came in back in May, dropped us another fun one – ‘Elevator‘. Be sure to use the comments system to let the authors know what you think!
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What – no films??
Aaauuggghhhh! No films. 🙁 Matt Soell dashed hopes for one of the most commonly desired features today – Halo will NOT have a method for saving films. A sad, sad day for Bungie fans…
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It’s MUCH older than last year
Not that you should listen to the man, or anything – and it’s not as though it’s the first time he’s said this – but Matt Soell steps into a thread about Halo’s gameplay to smack down the theory that Halo was converted to a first person view (from third person) in order to fit better with the Xbox controller. As Matt says,The decision to go first-person was made before MS entered the picture.
But Matt, you know, is full of it – he’s just making it up because he already sold his soul to Bill Gates. Or something.
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Hmm…
Not sure how long this thread will exist… or how many of you want to read it if it’s full of spoilers… but someone who obviously playtested Halo recently has broken his NDA and described his experience on the IGN Forum. The link (for now) is here. It’s all multiplayer stuff…
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Gamespot pics are OLD
Before we get MORE mail about it – it seems that Gamespot has updated their Halo screenshots recently (yesterday, actually)… but all the new shots are OLD. There are some from October 1999… others that are screen captures from the E3 2000 movie… they’re ALL old. (Interestingly enough, the screen grabs from E3 2001, listed as having been posted May 18, have some very nice shots in the collection… The fun stuff starts on page 4, and runs through the top of page 7.)
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Halo Developer Diary 4 at PlanetXbox
PlanetXbox has published Part 4 of their Halo Developer’s Diary, and this one is chock-full of details about what makes Halo different from other games of its genre. There are some really fun bug-discovering snippets:Two days ago some crazy (but diligent) tester stacked enough Warthogs to jump on top of an ‘unclimbable’ cliff on one of my levels.
There are descriptions of the complexity of gameplay, in both solo and multiplayer modes:
The guy riding shotgun in your warthog during a multiplayer game can toss a grenade into the enemy base from his seat, then leap out of the warthog, grab the flag, use the flag to smack another defender and jump back in without you even letting up on the accelerator.
And there are accounts of the dramatic nature of Halo:
I’ve seen a warthog drive out of a second story window, do a complete back flip and land right in the middle of a squad of Covenant just as one of them said “Does anybody see him?”
All in all, chock full of good info. (Unfortunately, it seems to confirm that cooperative play is limited to two players.) Go read the whole thing!
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New Fan Fiction
Death and destruction on the Halo fill Mr Bill Jr V‘s latest story, ‘The Answers‘. Related to previous works… yet different. You’ll find it (and many others) in our Fan Fiction section. It appears that the new comments feature is a success!
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Where’s Ripley when you need her?
Yesterday the Marathon’s Story page mentioned an interesting little comparison between the Covenant and the Pfhor, from the Marathon series, created by fan Joseph E. Haake. Today, Joseph points out a modified version… which implies a different connection.
The latest news about the Halo series of games from Microsoft
