Price points, smack talk, mac talk, and rip, mod and burn today in a specially-compressed E3 2005 random edition of Narc's Rants. I'm not at E3, so the rose-colored glasses are off.

As the world bathes in the offwhite glow of the Xbox 360, take a moment to ponder one of the hidden sources of the Xbox's rise from unknown quantity to major player, as a sometimes-partner, sometimes-rival of Microsoft's gives an unintended boost to the company's fledgling game console.

Robert X. Cringely's latest I, Cringely column looks at three major changes, or "inflection points", as he refers to them with all due credit to Intel's Andy Grove, happening in the computer-audio-video-entertainment convergence we've all been waiting for now for nearly a decade. Those changes involve Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo and Google. He's predicting an Airport-Express like device for audio and video that will turn the Mac Mini into a PVR, coupled with an iTMS-like store for HD movies, designed to pre-empt what Microsoft is trying to do with the Xbox 360, which is basically the same thing except with gaming as the test case.

Just a short while ago, Apple released version 10.4 of OS X, codenamed Tiger. One of the new features it introduced was Dashboard, a controversially Konfabulator-like feature.

Lacsap has created a Dashboard widget that displays your Halo 2 ranking. He announced it in an HBO forum post; you can download it from Dashboardwidgets.com.

[image:9359 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] Sabata00 found and posted a link to what appears to be Alex "The Man" Seropian's blog. Seropian's company, Wideload Games, is making Stubbs the Zombie in 'Rebel Without a Pulse' which is being published later this year by Aspyr for Xbox, Mac and PC platforms. It seems Seropian intends to have a Perl script randomly capture his desktop image and post it to the blog. We'll be watching to see if any interesting images pop up to add to our Wideload gallery.

Destineer has acquired the makers of Close Combat, a series of military games, according to GameSpot. Destineer was founded by ex-Apple and ex-Bungie employee Peter Tamte. Tamte also hints at "next-gen systems" plans for Destineer.

Stosh over at Bungie.net passes on word that one of the latest nightly builds of Aleph One, the open source engine for playing Bungie's Marathon trilogy, has gained several new features more common among modern networked shooters: in this case, chat and server browser features.

In other Marathon-related news:

• Alexander Smith, disillusioned with the Aleph One engine, moved his scenario, Infested, to the DIM3 engine.
• Just a reminder that one of the longest-running Marathon scenarios, Eternal, was in fact released late last year. If you haven't yet, check out Eternal Mk V.

VersionTracker recently noted the release of version 2.2r2b of OpenPlay, a cross platform networking library originally designed for multiplayer games.

Why is that of interest to Bungie fans? Because Bungie was actually the original user and co-developer of OpenPlay with Apple, which at the time was called Uber-- the foundation of the cross-platform networking used in the award-winning Myth RTS games.

[image:8460 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]Stubbs The Zombie has a new website up, part of Aspyr Media's campaign to promote Wideload Games title, due out for Mac, PC and Xbox this fall. The site has new videos and screenshots, some of which we've added recently to our very own Stubbs gallery. There's also the promise of new material every two weeks for members of the Zombie Army. Or, just check in here at Rampancy.

Over at IGN's RPGVault, Richard "Jonric" Aihoshi got a chance to interview writer Matt Soell of Wideload Games about the studio's expected fall release, Stubbs the Zombie in "Rebel Without a Pulse". One thing touched on that hasn't been mentioned before is that Michael Salvatori of Total Audio will be contributing:

Music and sound is a huge part of any good game; ask anyone who's played Halo. In Stubbs, the audio takes on added importance because it's another tool we can use to make people laugh. There will be plenty of custom music courtesy of Mike Salvatori, who was responsible - along with Marty O'Donnell and the rest of Bungie's audio team - for the sounds and music in the Halo and Myth games.

The article also touches on the project's technical foundation, the Halo engine. Wideload is extending the engine in many areas, adding more AI states and normal mapping. New screenshots of Stubbs in action have recently been added to our Stubbs the Zombie gallery.

Stubbs is expected for a Fall 2005 release for the Xbox, Mac and PC platforms.

Project Magma has released version 1.5.1 of Myth II: Soulblighter. There are downloads for a complete demo, as well as the updater for the full game that fixes many "long-standing bugs".

Nick at HaloDev has announced Prometheus, a map editor for Halo engine games. The editor isn't quite available yet, but information about the upcoming application is available at HaloDev; the team says they expect to provide updates on their progress at the site about twice a month.