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!
One of the Halo Bible contributors, Brannen Boren, has just accepted a full-time gig writing for Monolith Productions, developers of The Matrix Online, according to Boren's blog.
In response to Aginor's question in the HBO forum about a possible Bungie Fan Fest at E3 this year, Miguel "Freewill" Chavez replies that regardless of whether or not Bungie can swing an official event, it's likely that a large number of Bungiefen will be there and do... something.
Mat "shunji" Noguchi of Bungie has a nice, meaty update on his blog now, about what he likes about Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, what he doesn't like about Ninja Gaiden, and how BOLL's Warthog Launch trumps them both.
Sid of Nightmare Armor corpse-humps Cananimator BentLlama during a visit to Bungie HQ.
Frankie's Update this week is in the forum over at Halo Babies, and includes shots of one of the Nightmare Armor guys corpse-humping a cananimator. Seems like new movies and screenshots are just around the corner, though. Maybe.
We've archived this update in our update archive.
Short and sweet this week, just the way you like it.
Nightmare Armor Guys!
Two of the guys from Nightmare Armor, Justin and Sid popped in to show us their latest build of the Master Chief Halo armor. They nearly caused a mass conniption. First we gave them a hermetically sealed tour of the office – where they get to see our microwave oven, Laffy Taffy stash and no Halo 2 whatsoever - and then Sid (who's pretty intimidating in the flesh) suited up and went on patrol.
With his giant Frankenstein shoes and vast hulking mass, Sid really looked the part. The suit was almost perfect, and we couldn't have been more pleased with how it looked in real life. The overall effect was awesome. Bungie old-timers giggled like sissies as he stomped around the office, posing for photos like some lethal Mickey Mouse. Sid was a great sport too, stopping to corpse-hump a fallen BentLlama.
We then took him into the Microsoft Game Studios Cafeteria, where he nearly caused a riot. People actually cheered when a seven foot Master Chief ringer unexpectedly popped in for a Pesto Wrap and a smoothie. Sid, sweating it up a storm inside the (un-air conditioned) helmet, continued to be patient as Justin begrudgingly adjusted a dangling crotch strap. The gun he's carrying is a one-off 3D model of the battle rifle we conveniently had laying around.
Seeing the detail and lovingly crafted accuracy up close, was kind of mind-blowing, right down to the brilliant blue LEDs glowing in the leg parts. Makes us wonder how they got that through airport security.
Magazines!
We've been preparing for two separate visits from two big gaming magazines. Each will run a story some time in the near future on different aspects of the game. We've got a lot of work to do preparing assets and taking screenshots (yes, it's laborious and sloooow) and as the game progresses, the people who can help us are getting busier and busier. The upside of that is that Brian, Zoe and I are able to get our hands on versions of the game with everything turned on.
when is the next mac update going to come out that will fix the compatibility issues with os x and nvidia cards?
ANY1?
A great behind-the-scenes vid released during E3 in 2002.
It's got commentary from Marty O'Donnell, Shikai Wang, Rob McLees and Paul Russell. It shows the progression of Halo from an engine for an RTS game to the first-person shooter the game became.
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.
Is this a test? Well, almost.
Big-Ern over at Battleground: Halo got the man himself (no, not The Man, he left Bungie awhile ago) to interview him about his involvement in the Bungie community, what it takes to keep HBO purring along like the sleek white blue-eyed albino kitten it clearly is, and some other stuff about goats that we won't mention. Oops.
...and we're talking about the band, so get your head out of the gutter.
Frankie has posted at Bungie.net that the Bare Naked Ladies are showing never-before-seen Red vs Blue clips during their concerts. Check his post and the tour schedule for details.
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: