Last week, we mentioned an upcoming product called 3d studio gMAX, a 3D modelling program that Discreet (makers of 3d studio max) plan to distribute free to modmaking communities. Thanks again to Picky, who noticed that Stomped interviewed a Discreet exec about gMAX at QuakeCon earlier this month, and quite a bit more info about the program and its distribution was made known. It’ll likely be available next spring (which means the Halo team will have plenty of time to create a Game Pack for it, if they so choose), and Discreet hopes it will both invigorate the already thriving mod community and create sales for gMAX’s big brother, 3d studio max. Check out the interview!

People are still whining about Bungie selling out to Microsoft, and for the most part, Bungie is still being good-natured about it. Every once in a while, though, they feel the need to respond to a particularly egregious attack. This attack was made on the Rampancy.net forum a couple of days ago… and after a rather large number of fan responses, Matt weighed in with a very nicely written (but slightly bitter) response, here. Max followed up with another, um… serious post. Or not. The whole thread is worth a read… in between the (NT) posts, there’s some good reasoning.

Thanks to Chris Hanel, who sent in a new desktop for our Wallpaper page. Nice compositing job!

Mhaddy =PN= writes to let us know that he’s put up scans of a Halo article from the September 2000 issue of Computer Gaming World at the Junkyard. (There are also scans of a Tribes 2 article, and a funny column that should be appreciated by gamers who are parents everywhere.) The information isn’t new (in fact, it’s no longer even accurate), but there is some good background on the purchase, and it’s a great example of how far behind the print media really are. THIS is why we’ve suddenly gotten a deluge of forum posters and emailers begging Bungie to reconsider and create a Mac/PC version. Thanks, Mhaddy!

Thanks to TomeOne (via email) and edge (via our forum) for pointing out an interview with Marty O’Donnell at MacCentral. A snippet:

MG: What’s involved in creating the alien language we hear in the trailer? It certainly manages to sound otherworldly, but also feels like there’s dialogue and meaning, as opposed to just cool sounding noise.

MOD: Well, for this trailer we were in kind of a rush so the alien language is not necessarily the final content that you’ll hear in the actual game. I’m not going to give away all my production secrets, but what you hear was based on the English language and I believe that we will actually try and develop a true alien language for the game. One of the cool things that the trailer shows is that not only will the Covenant have their own language, but they can also speak and understand English, if they need to.

Read the whole thing… as usual, Marty’s got a lot to say!

Oops, nearly missed this one. Matt answered a few questions about gameplay on our forum… solid info about the mounted gun on the jeep, on the jeep’s winch, and on the player’s interaction with the dropship. Read it for yourself! Thanks, Matt.

Bad news for ultramarathoners… the old pledge of being able to circumnavigate the entire Halo gets shot down by Matt in our forum. Too good to be true, anyway. Nice to hear that Nathan’s promise of no computer-generated terrain is still good, though…

The Halo SETI Marines continue to dog the heels of the TidBITS team… 500 units still separates them from position 46 in the Club Rankings. Welcome to new team members Marvin, Master X, and MKULTRA… hopefully, with these (and several others that didn’t make the top 400 this time around) we can pass them soon! DarthFlounder takes la Crunch Honneur again, and butch takedown climbs past 46 team members to garner the Frogblast Award. Details can be found on the 7 day stats page.

We’d like to take a moment to wish luxor, of Halo Vault, all the best in whatever he chooses to do… it seems he’s leaving IGN. Good luck, luxor!

Dispatcher has pointed us to another pair of images (that he made, this time) pertaining to the celestial positioning of the Halo. You’ll find them here (a view of the close galaxy, showing the relative positions of Iota Horologii and the Galactic Core) and here (an enhanced terminal pic from Marathon 2, showing (sort of) the relative positioning of Tau Ceti, Earth, the Pfhor homeworld, and Lh’owon. These were snagged off the Rampancy Hotline server, and referenced in this post.

Okay, we haven’t asked permission for this, and you should really read the original post for explanations of all the details… but we’ve received a number of notes that the starmap SiliconDream posted yesterday is unreachable in its original location, so we’ve taken the liberty of mirroring it here. (If this is a problem, Sili, let us know… we’ll take it down.) Read the R.net post, look at the pic… then bother Bungie when the world of Halo doesn’t match Sili’s painstaking research.

Thanks to luxor of Halo Vault, who has mirrored the Wazzup movie… if you’re having trouble getting it from our servers, try their (much) bigger pipes. Absolutely worth a look…

Well, quality has dropped a bit, but FINALLY it’s viewable on PCs. Sorry for the delay, and sorry for the quality drop. One of these days, we’ll figure out why moving video files from PCs to Macs and back is so difficult… in the meantime, enjoy this spoof of the famous Budweiser ad. (15.4 MB, requires QuickTime 4.0 or better)

Harry Al-Shakarchi sends in this link to a Daily Radar article about the Xbox XDK (Xbox Development Kit), which includes the current version of what the Xbox looks like. GM J. Allard warns that this won’t be the final version of the product, though. Still, interesting to see where it stands now! Pax.

It’s full of stars! SiliconDream has put together a starmap showing Earth, Tau Ceti, iota Horologii and HD 177830, plus the directions and distances from Earth of the Galactic Core and the Pfhor homeworld. Head on over to his site to see the systems.jpg. More details can be found here. You can blame Miguel and Hamish for starting all this. Corruption of the youth we call it.

The HBO Spin: SiliconDream has way to much time on his hands… but he may be the next Carl Sagan so don’t knock him.

You heretics will burn! Daniel points us to an I, Cringley report from The Pulpet about X Blocks… that’s Xbox for you faithless lot. Olde Bob knows a thing or two though and rightly confesses that Xbox will only deliver if it has “kick-ass games that appear first on the X-Box”. Here’s the quote:

Of course, only time will tell. And the major uncertainty left is in the games, themselves. If Microsoft can convince developers to deliver some kick-ass games that appear first on the X-Box, well then it might have achance after all.

The HBO Spin: In 12 months time we’ll all be playing Halo: The Sims.

Matt Soell wades in on our forums about an overzealous Apple employee with vague memories of timelines… sounds a bit Marathonish to me. Matt obviously hasn’t got his G4 Cube yet… just like the rest of us. Power to the Cube baby.

Kudos to fire phoenix, who wrote to Matt Soell for clarification of yesterday’s eNews tidbit (suggesting that the Mac version would be released simultaneously with the Xbox version). You can find Matt’s answer here at Halo Center.

Daniel Chace sends us this word:

Here is a little quote from an apple eNews email I received today. It seems (according to this) that at least the Macintosh Version will be released the same time as the X-Box version. Here is an excerpt.

3. More Games Coming to the Mac
………………………….

Game enthusiasts didn’t have to wait long for the good news.

During his keynote address, Steve Jobs welcomed Ed Fries onto the Macworld stage. Vice President of Games for Microsoft, Fries reassured the audience. Yes, Microsoft certainly will release Halo for the Mac. In fact, it will be released for the Mac at the same time it is released for X-Box, Microsoft’s new videogame console.

Let’s see if we can get a confirmation to this statement from Bungie Studios….

Ok so who’s going to ask Matt? 😉

According to Matt Soell in aforum post there is no answers as yet to the questions about the creation and use of Halo Mods. There is also noanswer to the question about the inter-playability between PC/Mac and X-Box systems