Here 'tis:

- The team is finally getting enough Xboxes to go around. No more sharing.

- All the human combat dialog is recorded. Marty is going to Chicago next week to record some other parts with some of the voice actors we've used before.

- The Artist Formerly Known As The Mighty Chris Butcher And Now Known Simply As Chris Butcher delegated his title to Chucky. He also did a bunch of stuff for the Sin-O-MatiXXX team, making sure the communication system for AIs is in proper working order and working on the scripting tools.

- The Swarthy Chucky got hovering vehicles back in the game after a protracted absence. AIs can drive them now as well. Chucky also fixed some broken math functions and wrote a bunch of new ones.

- Eric Arroyo is working on a mission I'm not allowed to discuss. One of the visual highlights of this level is known around the office as The Money Shot. Heavy machinery, great heights, and you. I can say no more, but as Eric put it, the wet-your-pants factor will be high.

- Like Eric, many of our other artists are working on strange and beautiful things for Halo this week, but they all appear late enough in the game that I can't describe them without giving away some big secrets. You'll just have to wait and see for yourselves.

- Rob is working on the shotgun, which started as a 12-gauge and is now roughly a 7- or 6-gauge; it fits better in your enormous hands that way. The shells are one inch across their face. The gun is still untextured and Stephen is still working on animations for it, but it's in the latest builds and looks fantastic.

- Mat Noguchi did some more work on the HUD and put in a bunch of cheats for testing purposes. He claims the Bottomless Clip cheat is the most fun when using the rocket launcher, and if we have enough time we might be able to use it in the Bob Soccer multiplayer mode we've been thinking about.

Matthew Soell

The second installment of Jaime Griesemer's HALO Diary is now available at PlanetXBox. Mike Weber, site director of PlanetXBox, sent this note:

In our second installment of the Halo Developer Diary, Bungie level designer Jaime Griesemer delves into the important aspect of developing new skills to play a game, such as Halo well. He describes results from play testing aswell as where Bungie is headed with tutorials for the upcoming Xbox title. Jamie Griesemer tells all...

He certainly does. Read it here.

Kudos to Kalis for locating the weekly HALO update at HALO Players. Some bits:

- The turret is in the game now and works extremely well, unless you make the mistake of aiming it at the ground - at which point the turret becomes more of a vehicle than a weapon.

- Marty saw, and more importantly heard, a demo of the real-time Dolby Digital 5.1 sound capabilities in the Xbox, and was very impressed and eager to get it working in Halo. He and Jay are busy recording alien speech this week. According to Joe, the finished game will have seven or eight thousand distinct lines of combat dialog (that doesn't include speech outside of combat, such as the dialog in cutscenes), which works out to roughly 160 phrases per AI unit.

- The flamethrower is working in the game and looks good when it's spewing flaming death, though Marcus promises it will look even better when he's done with it.

You can find the rest at HALO Players.

GameSpot UK has posted a preview of HALO. Here's a snip:

Taking off the rose-tinted spectacles, it soon becomes clear that the game doesn't actually have anything new to offer. Team play has been covered in Counter-Strike, and established companies like id Software and Epic Games bring us awesome graphics with every new engine. Action fans can find lavish detail in Deus Ex, whereas Tribes 2 has already done the tanks and jeeps thing to death, boasting numerous weapon-packed vehicles. Faced with these sobering facts, we can only conclude that it's the combination of all these features that makes Halo special - quite simply, Halo has everything.

Sound fun? Oh yes, it is! Read the rest!

Kudos to VJ for finding that Peter Tamte's new company Destineer will be publishing the Mac version of HALO:

Also prowling the halls of E3 was well-known Mac game publisher Peter Tamte, whose new company Destineer will be releasing MicrosoftТs Age of Empires II and Links 2002 for the Mac later this year under the brand Bold by Destineer. Along with other games from Microsoft and original cross-platform titles, TamteТs company will be publishing the Mac version of BungieТs epic, Halo.

IMG has the whole story.

RougeImage spotted the latest Halo update over at BattleGround: Halo. And it looks like the weather in Seattle is getting to the development team:

- Matt Segur has the beginnings of precipitation effects in the game. Presently we have no snow art, so when we test it shell casings rain from the sky.- The Mighty Chris Butcher is giving Halo's AI the capacity know when it's in a battle it can't win (for example, when it's being fired upon by an enemy out of its range, or when you've mowed down thirty of its friends with a chain gun). As a result, encounters are more challenging, and much more fun.

Now all we need is a helicopter and a slo-motion camera...