My Halo News.com

The latest news about the Halo series of games from Microsoft

  • More Bungie Webcam pics

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    Louis Wu
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    Picky mentioned on our forum that he’s put up another 27 webcam pics, showing lots of Halo gameplay. The webcam’s quality is turning most monitor colors to shades of blue, leading PIcky to believe they’re all water shots… but even if his commentary isn’t always right, the pics are intriguing. Next week, of course, we’ll see REAL footage, but until then…

  • For the HBO lover in you

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    Louis Wu
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    Funky. Bongo, our OniShots guy, has sent in a bit of wallpaper for your desktop – clean lines, uncluttered… and it promotes HBO. What more could you want?

  • Halo on Bungie’s webcam

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    Louis Wu
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    Thanks to Picky, who noticed (and archived) a series of Bungie Webcam shots showing Halo in play. Intriguing shots, some of ’em…

  • New wallpaper at Halo HQ

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    Louis Wu
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    Eldar-colonel writes to say that Halo HQ now has official wallpaper – swing by and check it out! The artist is Scythe, who has submitted a couple of his works to our Wallpaper section, as well…

  • Fan Fiction section updated

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    Louis Wu
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    Warrant Officer Jim Trebour Poirot rigged the last cord, drove the light tank a last dozen feet, whispered a final goodbye, and exploded in holy flame.

    Vector40 sends us the third (and probably final) chapter of his piece, ‘HaloStory’ – you’ll find it in our Fan Fiction section. (It reads best all together.)

  • Music in Video Games

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    Louis Wu
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    acrappa, at R.net, noticed a feature called ‘Music in Computer Games‘ over at IMG. It’s mostly an interview with Mike Beckett (the man behind Nuclear Kangaroo Music, making music for Pangea Software) and Marty O’Donnell (a long-time Bungie contributor, currently a full-time employee working on Halo). It’s an interesting look at an aspect of gaming that gets less attention than it might deserve. Marty has some bold predictions:

    Five years is a long time in this industry. I expect that music will respond to the playersÕ actions where appropriate and will encompass all the musical styles that have ever existed. The fidelity will surround the player and the mix between sound effects, dialog, and music will be comparable to the cinematic experience.

    Definitely worth the read.

  • Thanks for the questions – no more, please!

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    Louis Wu
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    Thanks to all who submitted questions for the upcoming Fan-conducted interview – the submission window is now closed. (We’ve got to get through them all so that we can send what we promised.) Any questions received after 20:40:00 UTC will not be considered – sorry. As soon as we know anything about the status of the interview, we’ll pass it along.

  • Halo SETI Team 7 day stats posted

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    Crux Fidelis
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    Blam!… Blam!… The Halo SETI Marines climb two notches to put themselves back into the top 50 in the Battle of the Teams (thanks in large part to Tharkhaad, who has added more than 8800 units to the team – welcome, Tharkhaad!). Total team output continues to be disappointing – only a quarter of the team’s members contributed any units this week, and DarthFlounder, who normally contributes 100+ units, has cut down production considerably, seemingly in answer to Banzif’s plea to keep the total per client to 7777 units. (Hopefully, this will rise again, under a new client name, once another 50-someodd units are added.) Iden takes this week’s La Crunch Honneur, and Smasher picks up the Frogblast award, leaping 40 of his teammates to position 392. Are YOU doing your part? Check the 7 day stats to see who’s crunching, and who’s slacking! Pax.

  • Painted ponies

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    Louis Wu
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    Last Friday’s Weekly Halo Update has been added to the Halo Updates Database. word of the week is ‘shader‘ – how many different types have the Halo team developed, and when did they start? Shaders can be thought of as textures that provide special effects – animation effects, lighting effects, and so on.

  • UGO is lukewarm

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    Louis Wu
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    Thanks to Aginor, who noticed a Halo article at UGO.com – they’re pretty ho-hum about the current build. Basically, though, they’re just not interested in split-screen multiplayer:

    In the end, we’re still interested to see what Bungie will do with the finished version of the game; whether its vast outdoor environments can be put to good use and whether the variety and pace of gameplay can live up to the standards set by the graphics engine. But we’ll probably wait for the Internet-capable PC version to get REALLY excited.

    Fair enough – let’s see if any opinions change after E3.

  • Roleplay.halowar.com back up and running

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    Louis Wu
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    Sterling “DwK” Kaliba writes to say that Roleplay.halowar.com is back up after a long hiatus. New games, new site design. Go visit.

  • A worthwhile read on PC/Xbox differences

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    Louis Wu
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    Over the past year or so, since Halo for the Xbox was announced, a large number of people have publicly worried that ‘the Xbox is just a PC’. Response to this has been either agreement, or some vague ‘it’s completely different, due to the way the Xbox puts the pieces together’… but for the first time, a poster to our forum, katokop1, has laid out some of the real differences between PCs and the Xbox, and explained why some of the reasoning of the first group is faulty. Check it out – we may have to add this info to the FAQ.

  • Halo preview, of sorts, at TotalGames.net

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    Louis Wu
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    Eldar-colonel, of Halo HQ, writes to point out a new Halo preview over at TotalGames.net. It’s a tad short on information – in fact, what little they have is questionable:

    For the indoor areas, other more suitable weapons come into play, such as alien blades and plasma-swords.

    (And don’t forget the foreign cutlasses and the xenolithic falchions.) Pretty amazing what sites’ll put up…

  • Goodies for you

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    Louis Wu
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    arcarsenal sends in a couple of files you might be interested in – the first is the small icon you see here, for use as a system icon (you can either grab it right off this page, or download a stuffed (mac-format) folder (2k) that uses it as a custom icon). Additionally, he’s modified the Mac version of the SETI 3.0.3 client – you can see an example of the end result here (46K .gif), and download the client itself here (205K .sit).

  • Blam Site of the Month… hehe

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    Crux Fidelis
    in
    Woohoo! Sapwood just wrote to tell us that HBO made ‘Site of the Month’ at Blam Gaming. Thanks, guys. Pax.

  • Concept Art page updated with NextGen cover

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    Crux Fidelis
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    To round out the goodies extracted from the May 2001 NextGen magazine, we’ve added their cover concept art of the trooper to our Concept Art page. Man, that’s a nice looking model… Pax.

  • Nextgen screens added to Screenshots section

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    Crux Fidelis
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    Took a couple of days, but we’ve put up the new screens from the NextGen May 2001 article (in higher-res beauty than you’ll find in the press scans) in our Screenshots section. Check ’em out. Pax.

  • Interview with Matt Soell at CoreMagazine

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    Crux Fidelis
    in
    Thanks to fate, who noticed an interview with Matt Soell over at CoreMagazine.com. It’s a pretty nice read – there are some comments that should put to rest fears of some PC gamers, and some discussion of the Xbox capabilities:

    CoreMagazine.com: This is always a hard one to estimate, but can you roughly guess what percentage of the Xbox hardware you’re tapping into for Halo?

    Matt: We’re trying to max it out. Since the day we got the game running on the Xbox the goal has been to push the hardware and see what we can do. We’ve hit a couple limits, but we’re still using devkits operating at 50% of planned capacity.

    Definitely worth a look-see. Pax.

  • CNN checks out Halo beta-testers

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    Louis Wu
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    Thanks to Maestro, who sends in this link from CNN.com, discussing game testing. The last third of it is about Halo.

    […] Creamer’s team created a written overview of its various elements, assigning a tester to each of them. One tester, for example, is responsible for the game’s multiplayer aspect, making sure that different types of controllers, or joysticks, perform the same way in the console’s plug-in slots.

    An interesting peek at the inside – nice to see that all bases are being covered. Check it out!

  • Fan-conducted interview – questions needed!

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    Louis Wu
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    Important: You guys get another shot at questioning the team. We were contacted by a representative of a company that “helps Microsoft keep in touch with the online communities”… and they want questions for a fan-conducted interview. You guys send us questions that cover what you’d like to learn from the Bungie team, and we’ll pass the cream on, and get them answered (hopefully) before E3. Now here’s the rub – we need all submissions in by Monday. So get cracking – mail us your questions!