GameSpot has a nice feature out that lets you compare in place screenshots from all three Halo games so you can see the changes in the graphics; very slick. Check it out.
The latest Bungie update covers a number of topics, including achievements and skulls, but the real revelation is that unlike most Xbox 360 games, Halo 3's native resolution is 640p, as rumored:
Kotaku notes that the Japanese release of Halo 3 works in US/NTSC Xboxes. Usually the reverse (US releases working in overseas consoles) is true, but not the other way 'round. The only catch is Japanese language audio with apparently some grammatical problems, according to comments.
That's what BeyondUnreal forum poster Quaz51 asserts that these screenshots he's taken illustrate.
If true, might this be the source of all the cantankerousness over Halo 3's "not quite next-gen" graphics?
Ah, aspect ratios and high definition televisions. Just as fans bitched and moaned last month about the fact that both Xbox 360 and PC versions of Bioshock locked displays to a single horizontal FOV setting, whether the user had a 4:3 or a 16:9 screen, now Joystiq is on about how splitscreen works in Halo 3, apparently using two 2.7:1 frames stacked on each other instead of two 1.77:1 frames.
What's the issue, exactly? Unused pixels:
The Seattle Post Intelligencer wonders if Halo 3 can 'turn things around' for Microsoft's Xbox 360.
While I know from personal experience that copyeditors are sometimes pressed for time, I'm still at a loss to understand that headline.
The second part of the new spoiler system is now in place; user account level front page preferences.
Click the My account link near the top of your account box in the lower left-hand column. You should see a tab called "roles". Here you'll see a list of all the spoiler settings, just like on the front page: no spoilers, no H3 spoilers, no old spoilers, all spoilers, and only spoilers.
According to GameDaily Biz, Bungie Studios' own Director of Cinematics, CJ Cowan, will be giving a special feature presentation at ADAPT 2007 in Montreal. The presentation will be on Halo 3, focusing on the in-house use of Maya along with Bungie's proprietary cinematic tools. Cowan's presentation will be on September 27th; the conference runs from the 24th to the 28th at the Hyatt Regency.
I know the last post was too long, so here's a summary. Bottom line, users can now:
I'm now starting to make some of the functional changes on the site enabled by the last Drupal software upgrade.
The first change is probably the most basic. The old image gallery used to display a listing of all galleries, with a sample image, and an image count, which was very nice. However, when you actually got down to viewing the images, the display wasn't very pretty and couldn't be sorted or searched in any way.
Over the last 24 hours I've updated Rampancy.net from Drupal 4.7 to the latest 5.2. To the best of my knowledge, no features have been lost-- drop me a line if something seems broken.
If you look at the top of the page, you'll see the new spoiler system. For years we've tagged items as "spoilers" on the site, but nothing was ever done with that information. Now, the default front page view will include no spoilers, and you can click on a link to change that setting; you can choose to eliminate Halo 3 spoilers, Halo 1 & 2 spoilers, or to view all spoilers.
Earlier this week I experienced something that, up until now, I thought only other people had to go through.
Xbox hardware failure.
I plugged it in, and instead of the familiar sights and sounds of console startup, I got a loud pop and a puff of smoke.
Is it the Red Ring of Death, people ask? Am I going to get a new unit under Microsoft's new three year warranty?
Nope, I say. Because I'm not talking about my Xbox 360. It still works fine.
I'm talking about my original launch Xbox, which gave me nearly six years of mostly faithful service, from December of 2001 until now. Sure, the past three years or so there were periodic disk errors. Sometimes it refused to "recognize" a game disc in the tray. When it was Halo or Halo 2, it was comical; how could the console not recognize those?
Xbox Live is telling you to walk away from the television set and spend time with your friends and family in the real world this holiday season. At least, that's the message one might infer from the fact that for several hours now, subscribers can connect to the services to browse the Marketplace or use voice chat, but not play games.
Spong is reporting that the X06 Korea event gave details on a 100Gb hard drive unit for the Xbox 360. No official confirmation, or word on pricing or availability. Not sure why such news would surface first in Korea, so take this with the usual helping of salt you reserve for Spong stories.
Supernostro pointed out an article at IGN suggesting that in Q1 of 2007, the CPU in the Xbox 360 will get an upgrade that will make the console more reliable: