Rampancy

Kudos to Mumbles, who pointed out Myth's presence in a Gamespot list of the 15 most influential games of all time. While Myth didn't make the cut (it's one of the 10 runners-up), neither did arch-nemesis Star/WarCraft (Dune 2000 recieved the nod for the RTS genre). Only a short mention, but not bad for a casual click and read.

Kudos to Cyberbob, who pointed out a handful of news items at www.bungie.net. Of particular note concern Bungie's hiring of an interface designer, while the coveted web engineer job remains unfilled. Dust off those resumes, folks.

Second up are hints that the Bungie Store may ride again in the near future... certainly something to watch for if you've accumulated Bungie points and not yet put them towards the purchase of some controlled substances (you just need to know where to look...)

For this week's Halo Update, Rampancy.net has gotten the nod. And so without further ado, here's the latest on Bungie's jaw-dropper straight from Matt Soell:

Another dose of that What The Hell Is Bungie Doing This Week? goodness. Back for a return engagement at Rampancy.net, where men are men and women are Pallor.- Jason wanted me to point out that much of what the Halo team is doing right now is long-term stuff; certain things will take weeks or months to finish, and some weeks there won't be much to say except Still working on the same stuff. Unfortunately this is one of those weeks. Most of you know that Bungie tends to keep its mouth shut when it has nothing important to say, but Jason wanted me to make it clear. So. Are we all clear? Wonderful.- The development team will be spending the next several weeks reattaching all the things that fell off during the engine rewrite. Boring little things, like bullets. :-) (And if you don't think bullets can bore, you've obviously never been shot.)- The new visualization code is up and running. Much work remains but a big hurdle is behind us. Chucky and Matt Segur gave me a quick demo, running a camera across a test landscape and then up over it to give some sense of scale. Yum.- You'll all be happy to know that Chucky's spirits have lifted immensely since your collective outpouring of love last week.- I was hoping to excerpt some choice bits from a lovely essay about Seattle penned by our own Jason Jones. He asked for a little extra time to review what he'd written and add more profanity where necessary; as of this writing I do not have it. Perhaps in a future update.-Matt

Hope Jason doesn't mind if we have to edit that update for a PG-13 audience. Thanks, Matt.

The German Halo site, Planet-Halo.de has just opened a contest, and among the prizes are a Razor Boomslang 2000 mouse, a Deus Ex hintbook, and a DVD of The Moon Project . (No word on what region this DVD is for-- nor whether they are willing to ship internationally-- we will keep you posted.) You can view a Babelfish translation of the site, but be warned this is more of a freeform work of literature based on the page than an actual translation.

The picture can be a comic, wallpaper, or something like that. Submit your images, along with your name and full address, to picture@planet-halo.de. The entries will be put on their site for their visitors to vote on; most votes wins. The deadline for submission is October 31; voting begins November 1.