A standout “Attract Mode” from the early 80s was Bezerk. The machine would say: “Quarter Detected in pocket! Play Bezerk!”
Good to know… and glad Bungie is collecting footage for this!
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Attract Mode, defined
Thanks to both Darwin Campa and Tim Wilson, who both filled me in on the meaning of ‘attract mode’… apparently, it’s a term from arcade games – it’s the footage that plays when there are no quarters in. Canned gameplay, in other words… can you say ‘films’? (hopehopehope) Tim adds:
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BGH cuts 30 MB from your DL
Coolness. Bounty, of Battleground: Halo, has compressed down the 44-meg .wmv to a 10 meg .wmv – quality is quite good for the size. For folks who can’t handle a 44 meg download… check out the low-res version. (It’s the same screensize as the original, just higher compression.) Note: in BGH’s description of the downloads, these are listed as .MPG files… they’re not. Both are still .WMV files, and you’ll still need Windows Media Player to watch ’em. Update: MPG designations removed – apparently, Bounty was doing his best to re-encode them, but without success. Thanks for trying!
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Wallpaper for the slow
Worried you might forget the Xbox release date? Sikora submits a reminder for our Wallpaper section.
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Downloadable Interview at BGH
Thanks to Bounty, and the whole Battleground: Halo crew, for getting a downloadable version of the new Interview.wmv up for the masses. Stop by and check it out!
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More backstory from Microsoft
Geez… almost forgot! Another thing snagged from the Flash site, before it went down, was the informational text on each page. Some of this was very interesting… so here it is. Pay particular attention to the cyborg and backstory sections… comments are welcome on our forum. Looks like the Halo/Marathon linkages might be breaking…
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Screens snagged from MS Flash site
Well, we can’t do anything about the fancy Flash site being down for now… but we can at least show you the new screens that were included in it. Two of ’em are similar to shots that have already been shown (one was seen in a very small format in the OXBM preview last month)… but one shows off the sniper rifle’s rangefinding screen. (As those who’ve seen the Interview movie know, this is different from how it looked there – it’s possible there are multiple modes, or it could just be that the screenshot is newer – Ferrex has said that the build used in the Interview movie looks to be about 3 weeks old.) Go visit our Screenshots section!
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Marty’s done
This week’s Halo Update is over at Rampancy.net… looks like we may be in luck, in the near future, with new screens/movies! (Personally, I’d LOVE the 50 meg TIFFs… but I understand Matt’s point.) On other fronts, it’s mostly tweaks… but what, exactly, is ‘attract mode’? And oh, yeah… Matt and Mordia blew most of yesterday playing Halo. The bums. Go read the details for yourself!
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Screen captures from the interview
For all the folks who can’t get the 42 meg Interview, I grabbed a few screen captures. They’re not great – Windows Media Player has almost NO controls when it comes to this sort of thing, and play is really choppy on the mac anyway… but they’re something. The images are 320×240, the size of the movie – I’ve captioned them; just click on the thumbnails. Hope this helps a little!
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MSFT Halo site pulled for now
Looks like Microsoft has decided to postpone the launch of their new site (due, according to Blue’s News, to this week’s events) – apologies to all who missed the first round. It’ll be back.
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Interview Video not to be missed
Wow. Go visit the new Microsoft Halo site, hit the Cortana Transmission link, and watch the the Interview Video. It’s in .wmv format and painful on a mac (can anyone convert this to a downloadable version?)… but it’s amazing. Almost 7 (!) minutes of banter between Marty O’Donnell and Joe Staten, with all sorts of new footage, backstory, information about gameplay… a goldmine.
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Official MS Halo page updated
Thanks to Draikin (and Mavruss, incidentally) for the news that the official Microsoft Halo page has been updated – totally new flash interface, new screens, the works! Check it out.
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No Mexican wrestlers here…
“Master Chief”? Matt Soell stops into our forum to clarify that this sobriquet, first mentioned in the Gamespot preview, is actually your rank as player, not your name.
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Wallpaper Section updated
Sikora (alias bsotizz) sends in an enigmatic desktop image for our Wallpaper section… it’s beyond us.
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X-Day at IGN
Wow. Yesterday was X-Day. Microsoft stopped by the offices of IGN as well as Gamespot…and not one, but four IGN staff writers wrote up their impressions. Attitudes can be summed up in one word – awed. Lots and lots of spoilers here… but lots and lots of info for those starved for Halo details. Story details, gameplay details… go read it. Wow. (Thanks to CrimsonT for the heads-up in our forum.)
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Ever wondered about game AI?
For the serious techno-geek: Michael (a.k.a. Ph.D.) writes to point out a pretty heavy-duty article on Terrain Reasoning for 3D Action Games at Gamasutra. This one’s only for the hardcore “how do they do it?” crowd… it gives a very good overview of how AI designers might prepare their creations to act more realistically based on the environment they find themselves in. One would assume that this was read by the Halo dev team programmers when it first appeared in the 2001 Game Developers Conference proceedings last March. (It was posted on Gamasutra for the first time yesterday.)
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New Halo Preview at Gamespot
Woohoo! Fuolornis Fire Dragon points out a new Halo preview at Gamespot… and it’s a doozy! Seems they spent a goodly chunk of time playing… and have revealed a couple of previously unknown facts. (Folks who don’t like any spoilers at all should stop reading now.) One interesting tidbit: after you leave the Pillar of Autumn,It’s up to you to escape with the ship’s AI, which is saved conveniently onto a credit card-sized device.
That’s a nice way to explain why YOU have access to Cortana, but the rest of the fighters don’t… There’s quite a bit more, so go read it for yourself. (Or don’t, if you want the whole thing to be a surprise on November 8.)
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More Fan Fiction rolls in
“Primary intel reports tell us they took over this abandoned base in sector 7 here”, he says while pointing somewhere on a holo-map,” and they have already attacked an armed weapons convoy in this region. Their weapons technology and tactics seem superior over what we had before.
The Emperor (General of the Roman Federation) sends in the first chapter of a new story, ‘New Wave’ – you’ll find ‘The First Encounter‘ in our Fan Fiction section.
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One FF Author takes a break
Tursas sends word that he’s suspending work on the Hermes Trismegistus saga (temporarily or permanently, he hasn’t decided yet) – he feels that continuing would show disrespect for the current situation. We accept his decision… but hope that he comes back to it at some point.
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HaloBunker moves
Christian Bender writes to say that his website, which used to be at halobase.here.de, has moved to either www.halobunker.de or www.halo-bunker.de. (I can’t get anything but the news to show up on either version… but maybe the rest is coming.)