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Flash Halo teaser at Funxbox.com
Cody Ellis, one of the Flash directors at FunXbox.com, dropped us a note to let us know that he’s put together a little (okay, big) Halo teaser, in Flash. It’s a 3.8 MB file, but it’s a pretty nice presentation of some Halo images over the years. Check it out!
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HQ Halo opens its doors
Andreas den Hertog writes to say that he’s started up a Halo fansite, called HQ HALO. Check it out!
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Bottomless Clips and the Money Shot…
This week’s Halo update is over at Rampancy.net… thanks to Acrappa for getting it up in the face of adversity. The Mighty Chris Butcher is mighty no longer… but Chucky just got Swarthy. (Yo-ho-ho…) A new name pops up – Eric Arroyo. And the shotgun gets bigger… go read all the groovy details for yourself.
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New look at old letters
More than two years after their original posting, Knight Premier sends in some thoughts about the first Cortana Letter (with ramblings about the rest, and a host of other topics, for good measure). Check it out in our Theories section.
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Halo fans smash FunXbox poll
Siva pointed out a poll at FunXbox, asking about the most-anticipated Xbox game… but by the time we went by, it was over. Seems there was a last-minute Halo push, though – because in the hour and a half between when Siva posted and when the poll closed, Halo went from ‘a few percentage points’ behind to a couple of hundred votes ahead. Nice going!
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More Wallpaper for you
Sikora drops off a new wallpaper, showing off the various environments the marine pops up in. You can find it in our Wallpaper section.
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The Xbox shows up on the webcam
Thanks to both Marcus Tacker, and Deacon, who sent in pics of an Xbox from the Bungie webcam. (Marcus’ pic came in first, but Deacon’s was clearer.) That puppy looks MASSIVE!
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Bungie fan poll results posted
Dead Glory writes to say that the results of his Bungie poll are up – he interviewed 181 fans about their feelings for Bungie. Go to dg.rules.it and click on ‘Misc’ or ‘Updates’.
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New Halo sticker for you… to print
Thanks to Tom Van Sinden, who sent in a pretty slick little Halo sticker – anyone got a sticker printer? You’ll find it in our Miscellaneous Art section.
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Halo Development Diary, part 2, at PlanetXbox
PlanetXbox has put up the second installment in their Halo Development Diary, wherein Level Designer Jaime Griesemer talks about training players to use Halo without boring them to death. Instead of step-by-step voiceovers, you’ll learn skills as you go:For instance, at one point you engage some Covenant from down a hallway and the only good cover is a side passage that leads around behind the Covenant, encouraging the Player to come out behind them and see them slowly sneaking up on where they last saw him.
He also talks about the things they DON’T want to have to teach you:
We’re also hoping that some things won’t need to be taught. As soon as you see a pair of giant armored hunters start bombarding the trees you are using as cover, we’re assuming you’ll learn to retreat pretty quickly.
It’s a pretty good read – stop by and snag the rest!
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Fan Fiction continues to grow
It landed on the platform no more than sixteen feet from him, then seemed to stretch its jelly-like mass towards the panel that he had previously been tinkering with. The feelings of anxiety reasserted themselves.
Bob’s in trouble again, in the third segment of Tursas’ ‘Hermes Trismegistus‘. Check it out in our Fan Fiction section.
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The Arrival of something new
Not fully Halo-related… but absolutely worth a look. The visitors of the Fanfest Forum broke down the doors to arrival.bungie.org last night – and discovered some early Marathon memorabilia hidden in the cubbies behind. Level notes, discarded Bob sounds, even a bumper sticker… stop by and check it out. Username is ‘archive’, password is ‘outline’.
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The march of the models
Bosskiller51 continues his modelling spree with the anti-armor rocket launcher – you’ll find it at Halo’s Universe.
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More modeled weapons at Halo’s Universe
Continuing with the older weapons, Bosskiller51 adds the anti-aircraft rocket launcher to the list of modeled weapons. Check it out at Halo’s Universe.
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bad redirects at halo.bungie.com
Eep. Decameron noticed, over on the R.net forum, that halo.bungie.com redirects to the wrong URL. Is someone working on the site? (New content, in other words?) Nah… probably just a mistake. Keep an eye on it, though…
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Ed Fries interview at TeamXBOX
Thanks to Char, who pointed out an interview with Microsoft’s Ed Fries over at TeamXbox.com. It’s a pretty interesting read, full of enthusiasm about the future (what a surprise, eh?). When asked how Microsoft is helping developers get the most out of the Xbox, Fries pointed out thatWe have strong internal development teams with great programmers who know every Xbox trick and we send them out to help our partners. People like Jason Jones, lead programmer for Halo, have had a huge influence on many other games in development.
(This is one of the reasons Jason cited when asked why he wanted to work on the Xbox – the opportunity to shape the console.) Another interesting tidbit:
Almost all of our TV advertising will be devoted to specific games, not generically to the platform. I got to see a very early version of a Halo TV commercial the other day and even in its rough form it totally rocked. It was 95% footage from the actual game and it looked great.
Go read the rest of it – there are some choice nuggets in there.
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Still no SETI stats
As you might have noticed, there is (again) a lack of a Halo SETI update today. The SETI servers are STILL having troubles with their scripts – and there are no statistics available yet. When this changes, we’ll run our stats. Apologies for the delay.
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Is there hope for films after all?
In last week’s Halo Update, Matt saidOn the programming side, we’ve made obstacle-avoidance and time-scale fixes (I’ll leave it to you to guess why time might speed up or slow down during gameplay)
There was some speculation on the Marathon’s Story page that this might refer to some Matrix-like fight scenes… and I’d considered that it might have something to do with long-term real-time campaigns. However, Mr Tree, on our forum, just pointed out what should have been obvious:
This is also a function of the play back in Myth.
(In Marathon, as well, for that matter.) Does this function, then, suggest that films have gotten a firmer foothold in the final featureset? We can only hope so!
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Halo Update Database augmented
Last week’s Halo Update has been added to the Halo Update Database. The neat thing about the search function is that when you see something you think might be an error, you have an easy way to check it. Both Pallor and Hamish Sinclair (both usually very Bungie-savvy observers) questioned Matt’s use of the word ‘Jay’ in this week’s update – but a quick search would show that Jay Weinland was hired for the Cinematics team during the week of April 20th. What other interesting facts can you turn up?
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The latest news about the Halo series of games from Microsoft
