Deimos Fawkes from Subnova heard over in HBO's IRC channel, #HBO, that Cananimator BentLlama of Bungie is auctioning off a Limited Edition 2004 Xbox with a bunch of goodies, including orange and red prototype 'S' controllers, a DVD Playback Kit and Halo emblems for the 'S' controllers. Check it out!
...or, too many secrets.
There's a bit of buzz being produced right now over Digital Extremes' recently-announced FPS, Pariah. If you thought Bungie could be secretive, apparently this game has been in development for over two years. Ever wonder what the team that used to be working on Phoenix is doing now?
Fonix, the company that developed the VoiceIn command technology currently available in the Xbox Developers' Kit, has produced a version for the PC and PlayStation 2. Keep in mind, this is not the voice communication used on Xbox Live, this is the voice interface used in games like Rainbow Six 3. Thanks XboxSolution.
Narcogen has posted the sheet music for Enough Dead Heroes (transcribed by me) and are avalable by clicking on the "files" button on the upper option pannel. To download them, you need to sign in or create a profile or whatever. Go Get it!!!!!!!!!
Spencer Anunsen
(Poop Scoop)
vshields ash pointed out in the HBO forum an article from SPOnG.com that says that Microsoft's XBL servers have begun querying consoles for information about their hard drives.
So far, the article says, no one with a modified hard drive has been denied access, but they speculate that this could be the start of searching hard drives for modified versions of system or game files, such as Halo's cached .map files.
HBO's Louis Wu pointed out a Halo multiplayer strategy guide by Kris Hull, who apparently knows a secret or two about Marathon, if the URL is to be believed. At the end of the guide is an interesting little glossary; I think Mulganistan borders Kazakhstan somewhere. They only play Counter Strike.
GameSpot has come up with the stunning revelation that Halo is, in fact, one of the top ten all-time first person shooters, ever. How do they come up with these?
okay this is really weird on Assault on the control room a marine jumped on a ghost and attacked a tank. TRIPPY
HBO and Mythica are hosting, via BitTorrent and Two Degrees, a new version of a great behind-the-scenes vid released during E3 in 2002 but just recently put out in high resolution on CD by PC Gamer in the UK.
It's got commentary from Marty O'Donnell, Shikai Wang, Rob McLees and Paul Russell. HBO has a list of mirrors. We don't have a version to host over here yet, but we hope we will soon.
Bungie Weekly Update March 05
Busy, busy week at Bungie! Tons of stuff going on! Number of deadlines all converging! No sleep for many! I managed to stick my head in the middle and glean some goodies though. Check it out:
* Michael and the other environment artists have been tooling around with some very human geometry. A gorgeous bridge, worthy of a glossy spread in any architecture magazine, has been profoundly torn up by Covenant attack. The futuristic surface of the bridge is composed of bonded interlocking panels of a space-age material, and the damage is being carefully honed so that it reflects the rending blasts of Covenant energy weapons and the warping of the structural panels and concrete elements.
The bridge can be driven on too, so the gaping holes have to be both obstacles and gameplay elements, so some of the bent panels can be used as ramps. That means there is a profound danger that you could eat it and plummet into the sparkling waters below either through the gap itself, or as the result of a poorly aimed jump.
And on the subject of water (a personal favorite of mine) the placeholder water I thought looked pretty freaking good, is being replaced with what the graphics guys say is a much more convincing wave-based shader system. It's so far below that most of it will go unseen – but the designers know that players will go take a closer look when they get a breather, possibly with a sniper scope, so they're making sure everything looks good from any distance.
Why bother with realistic placeholder water at all? The designers could make their job a bit easier by simply inserting a big blue sheet of nothing. It's so that when designing levels, and tuning graphics, everything has the correct context for color and geography.
* Over at the Cananimators' lair, things are progressing shockingly well. Looks finished to me boys! Ship it! But no, tons of work still to do, although you wouldn't know it to look at the brilliant new dual-wielding animations. Nathan has been tuning the idle animations and aiming stuff – and he's made a few subtle, but vital changes.
The Inquirer is reporting that the SDK for Microsoft's next generation Xbox is being released to developers. And it's running on a Mac.
Several years after being purchased by Microsoft and becoming a studio that developed games for MS' largely PC and Windows-based technology underpinning the Xbox, could Bungie be coming full circle, soon to be working primarily on Macs while they develop games for the PowerPC-based Xbox 2?
Only the Shadow knows.
About the Fake Weekly Update
Some Halo fan put up a reasonably convincing fake update this morning on a forum and caused a minor tizzy– needless to say, it wasn't us. Basically, if you're suspicious, just check out www.bungie.net – if we don't link to it from there, it's probably fake. Here's this week's short and sweet update.
Working on the lightmap farm.
[image:6997 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]After a short detour caused by a fake update, the real one went up in the TeamXbox forum. Some of the more interesting bits:
When I first heard about Halo 2 (well over a year ago), they said to expect a late 2003 release. Then they thought it might be out in time for Christmas. Then I believe they said early 2004. Then they told me April. Now it's pushed back all the way to "Late 2004" and with the tease date of September 15th. Since E3 last May, the only thing released that shed any light on Halo 2 was Eric Nylund's book, First Strike, but we really haven't seen a whole lot of new info. I think we should kill ourselves one by one in Bungie's parking lot until they let us watch some new stuff or something.