And more – SiliconDream weighs in with a pretty nice roundup, posted to the R.net forum here. (Where are all the b.org reports, that’s what I wanna know?) Separate pistols for the player and the standard Marine, visual character variations between unit classes, evasive dives and rolls as part of the engine AI… and a playable build the next time we see it (maybe at E3). Wow.

Woohoo! Cunbelin has sent R.net a whole passel of images from the fest… including 5 of those “exclusive” Halo shots! (Yeah, they’re the old engine… but hey, it’s the only engine we know!) Plus a tidbit of artwork that um… is PROBABLY Halo-related… Uh, oh, I’m drooling again.

Update:Harry Al-Shakarchi clarifies that that image was Bungie’s Halo Christmas card, drawn by Shikai Wang. Thanks, Harry!

Thanks to Appleicious, who posted a Fanfest report to our forum. Halo details included:

• In [the] keynote, we got to see about ten exclusivescreenshots from the “old” Halo engine (exclusive = never before seen).
• the Halo multiplayer design doc is almost finished and work on the network code will begin in February.

There’s lots more, so read the whole thing for yourselves! Also, codetoad posted another report over at R.net, with these tantalizing tidbits:

• there’s 3 weapons finalized in halo
• there will be a “halo invasion of the media” (due to MS money) very soon, and we won’t have to worry about getting info on halo, because it will be ALL AROUND us. (Could this mean perhaps there is truth to the superbowl wild rumor? :-P)

Again, there is much more to that report, as well. As mentioned in both, Phoenix was officially announced… though there isn’t much info about it yet, and won’t be for a while. Ack. Why are you reading this? Go read those reports!

… And the fanfest is under way. No, we don’t have any information about it right now… I just thought I’d wish all the lucky festers the best, and remind anyone who HAPPENS to be in San Francisco this evening but DIDN’T know about the Fanfest to stop by the West Bay Conference Center between now and 9 pm PST! Have a blast, folks.

Ack. No sooner posted than refuted. Matt dropped another note to our forum a couple of minutes ago, shooting down the possibility of a live broadcast from the Fanfest.

That was the initial plan but it fell through for a variety of reasons.

All hope is not lost, though… check the rest of his post for a teaser!

Woohoo – nudie pics from Macworld! Well, okay, not really… but it looks like we might get live pics from the Bungie Fanfest tomorrow night. When asked how difficult it would be to bring a camcorder to work, he replied

We are SO far ahead of you on this one. 🙂

Of course, this could be post-fanfest info… but our money is on SF, in less than 24 hours.

Thanks to Tantalum-=SUN=-, who passed along notice of this Telepolis article (in German) discussing the Xbox, and Microsoft’s attempt to use it to change its image. “Crossing a Steam Locomotive with MTV – the Xbox and the Microsft image”… seems about right to us. 🙂 Nice take on the whole spin thing… and anyone who calls Bungie “Game Gods” gets two thumbs up in our book.

Before we forget – there’s a new German Halo site on the scene – Halo Information Network. I thought i was visiting a german version of Battleground: Halo when I first hit the link, but things got clearer after the splash page. Check ’em out!

More clarification from Timothy Wilson about some of the technical aspects of graphics rendering:

Pixel Shaders are a little bit of code that runs per-pixel. They combine textures and may compute lighting. Vertex Shaders are a larger bit of code that runs per-vertex. A vertex shader can move vertices, in addition it may ‘shade’ them. This is not a requirement, as I have written vertex shaders that do no shading at all, but instead let the pixel shaders do the lighting calculation.

Vertex shading is primarily what we have now in current hardware, each vertex is “shaded”, and the values are interpolated across the polygon. Also known as Gouraud shading.

Per-Pixel shading just means each pixel is ‘shaded’ separately, ie the light calculation is computed in one-way-or-another for every pixel.

Just a lot of confusion as to whats-what. Many of the names are similar, and somewhat misnamed even.

In addition, he sent along an example of per-pixel shading, so you can see what he’s talking about. Hope you all read this carefully… there’ll be a test on Wednesday.

Matt Soell popped into our forum yesterday to clear up questions like “who is behind cortana.org?” and “when will www.bungie.com be updated?” (Read the whole thread for more nuggets – it starts here.) Where’s my Big Mac?

Okay, we’re seriously confused. We misinterpreted John Carswell’s comments a little bit, it seems… he wrote to point out the nVidia PR Director interview that MSXbox held this week. There were two quotes that stood out for me:

MSXbox: What is the difference between these 2; Per-Pixel Shading and Bump-mapping?

Derek: Bump-mapping is kind of a hack, for lack of a better term. Per-pixel shading and Vertex shading are more accurate ways of doing texture and coloring. No more helmet head, like in sports games, you always look in the back of the head and [the hair] stands still, but in real life hair bounces. It’ll give images personality, and it’ll give scenes more personality. It’ll make scenes more organic and give it more ambiance.

And then later on:

MSXbox: When are the developers going to get final Xbox development kits- we’ve heard around March?

Derek: That sounds about right.

(That second one was exciting because it means that the final card will probably be in the playable Xbox folks will get their hands on at E3.) Okay, I thought I had a handle on this per-pixel shading/bump-mapping thing, until we got a note from Timothy Wilson (warning – heavy on the geek-speak), which suggested that John was wrong when he said there was no bump-mapping in the Malice shots. NOW who do we believe?

John Carswell, from MSXbox.com, sends in an intriguing observation:

If you have taken a look at the Malice screen shots you might be interested in knowing there was no bump mapping used. What appears to be high quality bump mapping is in reality per-pixel lighting. Thought you might be interested because of Matts “per-pixel everything” comment.

Those Malice shots look fantastic. So we wanna know… what happens when you have per-pixel lighting AND bump mapping? Oops, we’re drooling again…

fAt1, from MPZ Halo, writes to point out that Upwire.com has a story about a playable Xbox at E3:

David Hufford, PR manager for the Xbox revealed that “E3 in May will be the real coming out party for Xbox,the machine will certainly be playable and you’ll be able to get your hands on lots of the games.”

fAt1 wants to know if we’re gonna see Halo running on that Xbox…

Thanks to Ph.D. who pointed out (on our forum) an editorial at Gamespy.com discussing the possible death of PC gaming at the hands of the Xbox, and consoles like it. Now, it has a few problems (as one of the arguments for the Xbox, it discusses the mod community, and how easy it will be to download new mods, created on a PC, for your Xbox game – if the thesis is correct, and PC gaming dies, who’s going to be making those mods?), but in general, it’s a decent read. And it has a gratuitous Halo screenshot, to boot. (An old one… but it’s one of three games mentioned by name.)

Apparently, in a thread over at Battleground: Halo, there was some speculation that a commercial involving Halo characters has been showing on TV. Yesterday, Matt Soell stepped in and squashed it:

No, there is no ad for Halo running on TV. Not even Californian TV. 😉

You can read the entire thread here. (Note: This doesn’t address the ‘Halo to be mentioned in an Xbox Superbowl commercial’ rumor floating around…)

Thanks to Chris Newhall, who sent in another Halo desktop pic for our Wallpapers page. Brings back the old days… Pax.

Thanks to David Bricker, who posted a snippet from the Bangkok (Thailand) Post over at the R.net forum. It does a decent job of summarizing the amazement with Halo, fear that Microsoft would crush Halo, and interest in the 3rd/1st person debate thathas manifested in the past year or so, all in one paragraph. While there’s really nothing new here, the source is interesting enough to warrant a mention. The next question is… where in heaven’s name did David get his hands on a copy of the Bangkok Post?

The Halo SETI Marines received a challenge last evening from the Overclockers UK team… and it looks like we’re not up to it. They’re crunching at a rate of almost 900 units/day, compared to the Marines’ 250 units/day. We’ll be dropping another slot, it seems, by week’s end. Got a few machines you can spare for the war effort?

Thanks to Dispatcher, who sent in a rather… odd piece of artwork for our Miscellaneous Art page. Check it out!

The Halo SETI Marines have a new top cruncher! For the first time in 17 weeks, DarthFlounder has been displaced at the peak spot… congratulations, Lacrymosa! Details can be found on the 14 day stats page.