Rampancy

For those who don't have Finale PrintMusic, I've added PDF and MIDI files to the entries for Covenant Dance, Follow Our Brothers, and To Kill A Demon.

If you want to work with the PrintMusic files you can use the free program Finale Notepad; check How To Open Sheet Music Files for details.

Comic website Earth's Greatest interviewed Eric Trautmann about his comic Checkmate. Trautmann previously worked at Microsoft and was involved with Halo and the Halo novels written by Eric Nylund.

Asked about working on Halo, this is what he had to say:

Helping Eric Nylund craft "The Fall of Reach," the first HALO novel was a treat. Eric's a hell of a writer (and I actually was one of the people who more or less bullied Del Rey into using him in the first place) and a good friend, so that kind of contribution is effortless.

Working on the game itself, HALO: COMBAT EVOLVED, was a considerably less pleasant experience. The deadline pressure was enormous; my co-writer at the time, Brannon Boren, and I had just a couple days to bang out a massive amount of dialogue at the request of the game's designer, John Howard, and Bungie co-founder Jason Jones. Apparently, whoever had written the original in-mission dialogue had not done a job everyone was happy with, and they needed, essentially, a writer or writers who could work fast. We happened to be around and available, so we agreed to do it, but Bungie is VERY secretive, and, despite the fact that we operated under the same non-disclosure agreements THEY did, they can be quite mistrustful.

So, we had three days to bang out some ridiculous amount of dialogue, but they wouldn't actually let us LOOK at the game (which is why some of the dialogue doesn't make total sense; I conservatively estimate we got it about 80-90% right, which I think is an accomplishment given how blind we were flying).
THAT was no fun at all.

Deadlines are never fun. Check out the full interview for more information on some of the work Trautmann is doing for DC Comics and has done on Lucasarts properties in the past.

In this week's Bungie Weekly Update, Tyson "Ferrex" Green gives an exhaustive explanation of how Halo 2's melee system worked, how Bungie addressed its flaws in changing the design for Halo 3, how that design change led to complaints from the the playerbase, and how the Halo 3 Auto Update, due out later this month, will address those concerns.

Bottom line would seem to mean more simultaneous kills, and fewer situations in which the outcome of a near-simultaneous melee contest seems random:

For those of you uninterested in the precise details, the upshot is this: if you close for a melee attack and are at a clear advantage (or disadvantage), the outcome will be clear. If the outcome is unclear, too close to call, you will likely trade kills with your victim. But you should no longer watch your opponent saunter away for no clear reason (and if you do, check the film—it tells all.)

The update is chock full of other technical discussions of things like the Commando shoulders bug, cheating, host migration, and the like.
In particular I found the spread of hit points for the Halo player-- 45 for the body and 70 for the shield-- to be interesting.

I had always thought that since the elimination of the health bar and health packs after Halo 1 that far more hit points were on the shield than the body, but the difference here is less than 100%. And they recharge, too, which I was never sure of.

There's also a Mister Chief masterpiece made to benefit charity. Even if you stopped reading the BWU because Halo 3 came out, you'll want to read this one.