What Makes a Bungie Fan?
Miss Pallor's editorial summing up the fan reaction to the Bungie purchase and the period of doubt about Halo's development that followed has a number of important points that I thought were worth responding to.
Rampancy
Death by intelligence.
Recent Videos
| Title | Date |
|---|---|
| No Man's Sky: Cosmos Pt 1 | 09.19.26 |
| Halo Campaign Evolved Pt 4 | 09.05.26 |
| Halo Campaign Evolved Pt 3 | 08.29.26 |
| Halo Campaign Evolved Pt 2 | 08.22.26 |
| Halo Campaign Evolved Pt 1 | 08.15.26 |
| Planet of Lana Part 2 | 08.08.26 |
| Planet of Lana | 08.01.26 |
Sheet Music
| Title | Transcriber | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Halo 5: Advent (String... | cwhiterun | 06.07.16 |
| Halo 5: Blue Team (Str... | cwhiterun | 10.22.15 |
| Halo 5: Light is Green... | cwhiterun | 10.20.15 |
| Halo 5: The Trials (St... | cwhiterun | 10.12.15 |
| Roll Call - Price Paid | pimpnmonk | 06.02.14 |
| Behold A Pale Horse Fo... | pimpnmonk | 01.24.14 |
| Farthest Outpost/Mercy... | pimpnmonk | 12.30.13 |
Rampancy Podcast
| Episode | Date |
|---|---|
| Sony Acquires Bungie (mp3) | 02.02.22 |
| Let's Play Mass Effect 3 #27 Final... | 06.02.17 |
| Anger, Sadness and Envy Ep. 27: Craig Ha... | 05.08.13 |
| Anger, Sadness and Envy Ep. 25: Destiny... | 03.05.13 |
| Anger, Sadness and Envy Ep. 24: Halo Ann... | 04.21.12 |
| Anger, Sadness and Envy Ep. 23: Halo Ann... | 06.26.11 |
| Anger, Sadness and Envy Ep. 21: The Wint... | 04.18.11 |
Mullins Does Halo
The fellows at halo.bungie.org have obtained a piece of early Halo artwork from the digital ink master Craig Mullins. Depicting a confrontation between a few marines and something with big claws, the picture is apparently a rejected piece, but what Mullins considers a reject is still beyond the ability of most mortals. Here's hoping we see more of his work in the future!
Loyalty of Bungie Fans Questioned
Miss Pallor has written an editorial at the corporation site about all the recent developments in the Bungieverse over the past few weeks, with a particular slant towards the fan reactions. It's well worth a read, although sure to incense a certain segment of the community.
Here's an excerpt:
The fans folded their arms and pouted and refused to accept any Bungie Software game not for play on a Mac. They threw these hissy fits of enormous size not because Bungie Software wasnТt going to continue making riveting, great games, but because of the platforms they may or may not support. The (ex)fans were so sure that Microsoft would corrupt Bungie that they ignored Bungie's announcements that they would be making their own decisions about platforms. In a time when Bungie needed the fans' support the most, the fans disowned them.
In the very near future I hope to abuse my inconsiderable power here at Rampancy.net to reply; in the meantime, just hop onto our Forum and post a reply if you feel so inclined.
Fanfest Movies
Kudos to Cannibal Harry, who has digitized and posted several movies from the MWNY Fanfest on his site. The high quality videos are for the Halo 'Wassup!' and nVidia commercial movies, as shot with his camcorder at the event, and come in high quality and high compression versions. Well worth the downloads, especially if you're looking for a chuckle. ;)
- Forum: Fanfest movies
FanFest Tidbits
We've already remarked on the amazing success of the NY FanFest this past Friday, but here are a few of my personal observations:
Firstly, a huge Action Sack o'kudos is owed to Miguel (Freewill) for organizing the whole thing, from getting the pizzas to arranging for the location (Neutral Ground on W. 122nd Street).
The festivities started with a viewing of the complete E3 trailer from a DVD, and segued through pizza eating and some network games of Marathon to some fantastic giveaways of games, t-shirts and other invaluable Bungie paraphernalia. In addition to the Don't make us kick your ass Bungie t-shirt, there was a special edition Ling-Ling's Head t-shirt that on the back featured a photostat of the sale agreement of Bungie to Microsoft and a checklist of steps towards world domination-- the second to last of which was stage a bloody coup of new parent company. This item got a huge cheer from the FanFest crowd.
Hamish Sinclair of the Story Page, who won second place in the unofficial traveled furthest to come to the FanFest contest, was on hand in his first US appearance to hawk his incredible, limited edition Marathon Story t-shirts (of which only 49 exist in this universe or any other). Yours truly is the proud owner of one.
Just before adjourning, a special delivery FedEx package arrived with a special surprise for the fans who stayed until the very end. More details on that later.
Lastly, a big hello to everyone I met at the Fest, as well as everyone I didn't get to meet. Hope to see you around the forums or on the Hotline server.
Bungie Does the Right Thing
We've already posted an item on Matt Soell's near-confirmation of Halo for the PC platform, but perhaps more importantly, later in that same thread he sheds some light on the on-again, off-again, on-again decision-making process regarding Halo's development. This has kept lots of us scratching our heads for the past few weeks, coming to a head with Alex Seropian's affirmation of Halo for the Mac during Steve Jobs' MacWorld keynote on Wednesday.
From The Man himself, in the thread on the halo.Bungie.org forum:
Saying the decision hasn't been made was probably the wrong way of putting it since it was so open to negative interpretations.We knew what the right thing to do was. We had to figure out how we were going to do it before we said anything.
You also have to understand that these sorts of things have more of an impact when Steve Jobs announces them to the world in a keynote address. :-)
Always nice to see Bungie Do the Right Thing.
Fanfest Aftermath
And it's done. With an astonishing turnout of over 150 people, the MWNY Bungie Fanfest was the most successful to date, which is all the more remarkable when one considers that Bungie wasn't even exhibiting this time around. Bungie Sightings and Marathon's Story will doubtless be updated soon with more great stuff from the gathering, but in the meantime, we've scored some swag of our own.
Kudos go to Cannibal Harry, who was in attendance with a video camera and who managed to pick up (among other things) footage of a new, Halo/GeForce2 promo parody. Said video is currently being digitized for those of us unfortunate enough not to make it to this gathering, but we've got a screen or two coming out early, like this one--a shameless product shot if ever I've seen one! ;)
Stay tuned for that footage, which should be up today at the latest and mirrored where possible!
b.net 2 back up
According to the bungie.net website, Myth II's servers are now operational.
MythII's servers are alive and well, and anyone who has an unmodified installation of version 1.3 or higher should be able to log on with no problems. If you have removed/modified certain files from your Myth II plugins and/or preferences, you might not be able to log on. While there are various fan sites posting their own patches to allow you to get onto bungie.net which you might be considering, please be advised that these are not official Bungie patches and may not work as expected! Use them with caution (if you must use them at all). We are working on a patch that will fix up anyone who is having difficulty connecting to bungie.net, and appreciate your patience.
Myth TFL's servers are apparently also up, but won't work for everyone until all internet systems become aware of the their domain name change. It's not yet clear how long this will take.
Peter Tamte starts his own company
As seen on MacCentral, MacGamer's Ledge, and Inside Mac Games (thanks to Char the Pirate for pointing out the last two on our forum):
Peter Tamte, Bungie's former executive vice president of publishing, has started his own games company. Although his most immediate plans are to publish recent and upcoming Microsoft games like Age of Empires 2, Flight Simulator 2002 and Links LS 2002 on the Mac (aiming for simultaneous release whenever possible), his long-term vision is much more ambitious, as this excerpt from a MacCentral article makes clear:
Tamte also says that while the Mac will be a cornerstone of his new company's success, it won't be limited to the Mac alone.We're building an Internet-focused, culturally relevant, broad appeal, multiplatform digital entertainment company, said Tamte. Tamte indicates that his company will also develop games for the PC and next generation video game consoles, as well.
We'll build original content and we'll port games, as well, said Tamte.
Tamte plans to use outside contractors to develop some games, but also plans to hire developers to do in-house work, as well.
It hasn't yet been decided whether Microsoft will publish the Mac version of Halo directly or give the rights to Tamte's as-yet-unnamed company; however, Tamte has exclusive rights to the future M$ titles for the Mac, making him the logical candidate to publish Bungie's future games. This is one to watch.
It should be emphasized that Tamte's company is fully owned by him and completely independent from Microsoft.
- Forum: more on MS games on mac
Aleph One for OSX
An interesting item on the Aleph One project at Marathon Open Source from Aleph One codewarrior Steven Bytnar. Paving the way for future Aleph One work, he has started work on a port for MacOS X:
I've got a working pure Marathon 2 version for MacOS 10 (Carbon CFM & Carbon Mach-O). (w/o Aleph extensions and w/o networking.) When the quality level is good enough, the source and binaries will be made available. So you say, when will that happen? Real Soon Now. I didn't want to say anything till the outstanding issues were fixed, but hey, why duplicate the effort, right?
A native version of Aleph One would be a boon for developers wanting to avoid using the Classic environment in OS X, and it is entirely likely that Aleph One will eventually move completely to the new operating system in time.
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