Rampancy

With the lull in Bungie-related news that inevitably occurs in the void between releases, the natives at HBO have been getting a bit restless in their search for new information.

This search is referred to lovingly as bugging Matt .

Every once in awhile Matt decides to put down the uprising, as he did in this post, which primarily consists of answers to questions about releases with the simple phrase WID (which I assume means, When It's Done , the only official Bungie release date that has ever existed).

However, he did have this to say about Mac/PC Halo:

The last build I saw was really nice, by the way. Much left to do but still playable and cool.

So, we don't know when it first became playable, but it is playable now, half a year or more away from the expected (unofficial) release target.

The original organizers of the Halo Winter Season tournament currently run at iGames locations have resigned over philosophical differences with iGames. Jester and Psyrixx have both resigned; Jester posted about it in the HBO forum, and put his letter of resignation up at The Psyjnir Complex. It reads, in part:

For I have been a part of the Bungie community for five years, and that loyalty has made me extremely hard-headed and diffucult to deal with professionally. My zeal to give Halo players the best, cheapest tournament possible has interfered with my ability to effectively compromise and negotiate with iGames. [...]

Ultimately, I was trying to run a national level business-run tournament on a fan tournament budget. This was both idealistic ... and totally unrealistic. Thus my crusade comes to an end.

He also took a few moments to speculate on what the role of tournaments like the one at iGames will be in the future of Halo competition:

I simply don't think the future of national Halo competition lies in game center LANs. This summer PC/Mac Halo will allow online play. Next winter Halo 2 will support XBL. The online support of Halo will suddenly allow tournament directors like myself to run large-scale tournaments without the hassle of registration fees, finding a venue, securing the necessary equipment, and getting teams to actually show up to a physical venue. There have even been discussions regarding the possibility of the first Halo World Cup based on the popular Myth World Cup series.

He went on to say that he harbors no ill will to iGames, and that his team will continue to compete in the Halo Winter Season.

Thanks to Louis Wu at HBO for the original story.

Oni Breaker is an interesting project created by Pierre Terdiman. He wants to take the best parts of Oni and Max Payne and combine them into a single game. There actual screen shots!. Check out what he has done so far. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page to check out what's new; there is also a new demo.

Oni Central also has updated their exclusive images section with some treats. Go and check it out!

The Cyberathlete Professional Leauge is hosting an event called CPLЃ PentiumЃ 4 Processor Winter 2002, and will take place Wednesday, December 18 and ending Sunday, December 22, 2002. This is useless information until you read the schedule, on December 21 (Saturday) at 2:00pm Gearbox will have a workshop and will feature Halo for PC! Sounds like an intresting event.

Cyberathlete Professional League is the first organization in the world to establish computer game competitions as a viable spectator sport.

Thanks to Shacknews for the info.