Kudos to Freewill, who shared this tidbit with the regulars at CPHL a few minutes ago. For you lucky sots who will be at Macworld San Fransisco a week from now, there will be a get together at Club-I on Wednesday, January 5th, 7pm till closing.

There is a $7 per seat charge, but there will be a few dozen computers with Myth installed on hand along with a few Bungie folk. A small price to pay for a night of enlightenment and mayhem, there may even be other surprises in store. Stay tuned for an official announcement sometime in the next few days.

A bit more clarification from Bungie's Matt Soell on halo.bungie.org's forum tonight, regarding Halo's presence at MacWorld San Francisco. Asked whether or not there would be any hands on Halo, Matt had this to say:

Halo will be there in some form, but you won't be able to walk up to a machine and play it.

Bad news for some, but I must admit I am sourly pleased, given my inability to attend this particular event. Grumble... bah humbug, too. ;)

Kudos to Mark Mezzetta, who pointed out a news item at MacGamer's Ledge describing Bungie's plans for MacWorld San Francisco. In a nutshell:

Bungie Software will be simulcasting a MACWORLD show over the Internet right from their booth and talking about the latest developments in Oni and Halo.

A webcast from Bungie's booth? If nothing else, let's hope the world doesn't end on New Year's Eve just so that we can keep an eye on that one.

But of course. Marathon's Story reports that Bungie is has been praised in a Macworld Top 10 Mac Gaming Thingies of the Millennium article for their track record of raising the bar every time they enter a genre. Also noted is a MacGamesNews review of the Action Sack... an unusually active Saturday, isn't it?

While Butcher has advised me that this is old news, I'm posting it in blatant defiance of his better judgement. Inside Mac Games has posted an item on Microsoft's DirectPlay, and Apple's answer to it:

A couple of years ago, Bungie developed a cross-platform game networking API called Uber ...

[whack]

Completely off topic, but noteworthy nonetheless. Inside Mac Games is reporting that Half-Life for MacOS has been cancelled, abruptly and unexpectedly. The reasons center around cost concerns, which is understandable, but this is still a disappointment for Mac gamers, Half-Life being the excellent game that it is.

Still, it isn't like we have nothing to look forward to. Overshadowed by the bombshell report is an interesting note about Oni, which is more appealing with every outing. Win some, lose some, I guess...

Heh, not often that we see the misinformation going in this direction. Kudos to Supercobra, who points out a slight error in a recent Australian Halo preview:

Not quite Halo, but hey, we're dying here. Kudos to Legend, who pointed out and made a forum post on the rumors (or are they more than that?) about nVidia creating drivers for Macs, bringing some of their PCI cards and their excellent preformance over to our acceleration starved platform. Now, we just need AGP card drivers...

• Forum: Can Anyone Say nVidia?

Kudos to Locklear, who pointed out an interview of Bungie's Peter Tamte at Mac Gamer's Ledge. Not much in the way of Halo here, but worth reading for the background information.

Direct from the keynote webcast comes the long awaited announcement, and the beginning of something new (or the continuation of something great).

In a demonstration that (despite the two interruptions, 2 fps, and the fact that I'd managed to see it before) floored me, Bungie's Jason Jones unveiled Halo, their new in development game. Halo, nee Blam.

Completely non-Blam related, Biodegrader is a Deathmatch fixer plugin currently under development and testing by Badlands, as well as a brave few others. Due to the lack of a major HL distribution center, I've posted a copy of it here, so anyone willing to try it out and file bug reports is welcome to grab it and give it a whirl.

MacOS Rumors had an interesting tidbit in their news today (nice of them to come back from vacation with such a generous offering), which Marathon's Story has also already delved into. According to MOSR, Bungie has been hinting at having Myth II, Oni, and even Blam demos ready to ship with MacOS X at MWSF in January 2000. As if we didn't have enough things to wait for.

Mojo of Halam, who pointed this out to me, summed it up best: heh...just when you look away.

A report handed in to bungie.org is raising some eyebrows about the use of Blam in an upcoming iMac commercial (stop by and read the report for the low down). Certainly an interesting possibility, though it is heavy on the speculation side right now.