Halo 3 might be a myth, but Myth III isn't.

Just last year Flip of Flying Flip Studios announced the release of a new pack of Myth III maps by clem-- and unfortunately we missed it. If you've got the game and want something new to try out, head on over and look. Their downloads page also has other things-- updaters for Myth III and so forth.

[image:10041 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] DocOctavius, whose done a number of nice renders in the past, as well as this watercolor, and even a sword mod for Halo Custom Edition, has released a new map for HCE.

[image:10042 right hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] It's called Division. You can download a flyby movie or just go straight out and get the map.

The Tulkas Challenge is a Myth II Soulblighter Co-operative tournament being run in conjunction with PlayMyth. Check out their website, llancarfan.net, for details on the required maps, rules, and information on how to register. Prizes are $50 for first place, $30 for second, and $10 for third.

Stubbs The Zombie, created by Wideload and published by Aspyr, is now being offered at special discount prices-- $29.99 for the PC and $39.99 for the Xbox. If you haven't seen or heard Stubbs yet, check out the demo for the Mac and PC versions at Nzone. And for all your Stubbs news flashes right from the source, sign up for the Stubbs the Zombie Army Dispatch email list.

Some Halo-related and not-so-Halo-related news for today:

• Hellboy director Guillermo del Toro has apparently confirmed that he has had discussions with Halo producer Peter Jackson about directing the upcoming movie based on Bungie's shooter, to be filmed next year. However, he's currently still on track to do Hellboy 2. It's unclear, then, if del Toro can manage to do both films, and if so, on what schedule.
• Frankie, apparently freelancing in the name of Bungie, took a plunge into the new playlists and declared himself the winner, ending Bungie's humpday drought.
• Version 5.1 of Rocket Dorf Fest for Myth II: Soulblighter has been released by PlayMyth. This mod for Myth II features... well, rocket dwarves, obviously.

Nick from HaloDev, with the help of Grenadiac and MonoxideC, has put up a massive update on the progress they've made on their Halo map editor, Prometheus. Prometheus is intended to be an easier-to-use alternative to the Halo Editing Kit, with additional features.

The big news in the update is that it can make brand-new maps that you can play on an Xbox:

Last week we finally created some fruit from our labors. The first Xbox map for Halo 1 that was created directly from tags, which was ported from the Halo CE map "Anxiety" (with permission from Mothergoat and Doublefire). I'm sure some of you are like me, you liked Halo for the PC but the gameplay just wasn't the same compared to the Xbox version. Well now we can create our own maps for Xbox and pretty soon you will be able to as well.

The update has plenty of images and descriptions of Prometheus' features; go check it out.

Wideloadgames.org's Randall "Bat" Schwebke has put up the first installment of a three-part interview with Aspyr's Glenda Adams about the upcoming Mac and PC ports of Wideload Games' Stubbs the Zombie, out this week for the Xbox.

This first part covers some technical details on the rendering done by Stubbs on the two platforms, as compared to Halo and compared to each other. Both ports are using OpenGL:

Glenda: We did release final system requirements. They are higher than Halo PC & Mac, most particularly in video card. The sheer number of pixel shader operations Stubbs does per frame is staggering, and the older video cards just can't handle them. So we're going with 64mb DX9 level cards as the minimum.

The game also uses the original Halo engine's physics. Zombie launching, anyone?

According to another story at Inside Mac Games late last week, the Macintosh and PC versions of Stubbs have now reached alpha status, while the Xbox version is in beta, according to the Project Status page at Aspyr, which is publishing the Macintosh and PC versions. The game is due out in November for those platforms and in October for the Xbox.

Blayne writes on the Marathon Scenario News page that a new (admittedly small) desktop picture from the Where Monsters Are In Dreams scenario is up. The project, a prequel to the popular Rubicon scenrio, is still looking for people to help clean it up for release.

Gamasutra today has an interview with Wideload Games' Alexander Seropian. He talks about how Wideload's outsourcing model has worked out, the modifications they made to the original Halo engine, and dealing with the challenges of a cross-platform release:

Having an engine that has already shipped on all three of those platforms certainly helped, as did having a partner in Aspyr Media, a company that has lots of experience with Mac and PC development. We also spent a lot of time early on getting our codebase operational on all three platforms.

GameSpy has put up a preview of Stubbs The Zombie. They liked how the ability to create more zombies that you can make follow you made otherwise straightforward killing far more interesting:

These simple dynamics turn the repetitive combat into a shambling, decomposing chess game, since your inability to singly defeat the large crowds couple with the NPC zombies' natural ineptitude necessitates strategic manipulation of each situation to come out of it in your mostly-intact state. Often I would find myself using zombies as walking shields, hanging back until I could slip in behind the enemies and chomp them, or sending a diversionary swarm towards a machine-gun nest while I hid and send my arm off to possess a shotgun-toting redneck who could take care of the situation.

Wideload's Stubbs the Zombie gets the limelight this week in GameCore, the gaming column by William Vitka at CBS News, pointing out the game's humorous angle and nostalgia-driven soundtrack:

The game's recipe for success is an undead homage. Take one part Romero (for the shambling dead and the spot-on social commentary that people don't want to listen to), two parts O'Bannon (creator of the funniest zombie movie known to man "Return Of The Living Dead," because the zombies in this game eat brains, not flesh, like Romero zombies), and just a smidgen of "Evil Dead" - and you've got a general idea of what cinematic treats influenced the game. One should probably throw Stuart Gordon's "Re-Animator" in there too, if only for good measure.

Stubbs is the embodiment of 50's kitsch and it plays out like one of the afternoon Creature Features baby boomers used to pay pocket change to see. It's even got an amazing soundtrack with the likes of Ben Kweller covering "Lollipop," The Raveonettes' take on "My Boyfriend's Back" and Rose Hill Drive's absolutely fantastic cover of "Shakin' All Over."

In addition, Daily Game makes mention of Stubbs' cooperative play mode (this is the Halo engine, after all) and promises screens and maybe a movie next week.

Rapture has relaunched a temporary version of the old COERCE.net website to announce that the redoubtable Halo PC server will be back for a few months' stint.