A version of the Zanzibar multiplayer level from Halo 2 has been released for Halo Custom Edition by the H2 Modding Team; Verdafolio has reviewed it.

[image:8567 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] XLNC has put together another collection of excellent HUDless screenshots from PC Halo, proving that even with less than a week to go before the release of the sequel, fans are still getting enjoyment from the first installment. We've created a third gallery for XLNC's screenshots especially for this collection, and here it is: XLNC Series Three.

b>John "JCal" Callaham of HomeLAN Fed has done an interview with Wideload Games founder Alexander "The Man" Seropian about Stubbs the Zombie in "Rebel Without a Pulse". Someone finally asked one of the minds behind Bungie one of the age-old burning questions: Why zombies?

There's a primal terror of dead things, even when they're not doing anything. When dead things crawl out of their graves and start gobbling the flesh of the living, you have to consider the possibility that everything you thought you knew is worthless.

For us, part of the appeal was doing something new with a somewhat moribund genre. Part of the reason zombies are popular adversaries is that they're easy to do as long as you adhere to the mythology: they're slow, they're dumb, they only attack by biting, etc. We kept the basic idea of a brain-eating dead guy, but chose to not restrict ourselves based on what other games had done. That made it a lot more interesting.

While admitting that nice people don't go around eating brains, Seropian insists that Stubbs is a character that players will identify with as they understand the motives for his actions.

And, of course, in typical Bungie fashion, Seropian gave a detailed breakdown of how the game is moving toward completion:

Going by the industry-standard completeness scale, which ranges from sandwich to desk lamp, I give Stubbs the Zombie a rating of lizard. It will be released Summer 2005.

Hey Matt-- when do the Weekly Wideload Updates start?

Verdafolio reminds us that HBO-COERCE is going down. Really.

[image:8460 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]Matt Soell of Wideload Games took the time to add a few comments to the release of information last week about Wideload's first game, Stubbs the Zombie in 'Rebel Without a Pulse'. The first addition is that the game is planned for the Xbox, Macs and PCs. Wideload is doing the Xbox version internally, and is working with Aspyr's development teams for the Mac and PC versions. Even so, they are planning (Editor's Note: not promising, let's get that clear right now) to release the game for all three platforms at the same time.

The second tidbit was in answer to my question about why Wideload chose to place so much emphasis on humor, an element that while always part of Bungie games, rarely took center stage. According to Matt:

Most games take themselves too seriously; we decided to go in the opposite direction. It's an outgrowth of an old impulse: to make the games we'd like to play.

You can always find more information here at Rampancy either about Wideload Games or about Stubbs the Zombie.

To keep up with the information coming out about Wideload's just-announced title, Stubbs the Zombie in 'Rebel without a Pulse', we've created a few easy links.

• For all the items about Wideload Games: http://rampancy.net/wideload
• For all the items about Stubs the Zombie game: http://rampancy.net/stubbs
• Image gallery for Wideload Games: http://rampancy.net/image/tid/114
• Image gallery for Stubbs: http://rampancy.net/image/tid/146

Wideload and Aspyr today revealed their upcoming Mac, PC and Xbox title, due for release in the summer of 2005. It's a third-person action game titled Stubbs The Zombie in "Rebel Without A Pulse". The full press release is on Aspyr's site and will soon be archived here. As yet there is no additional material on the Wideload site.

So far, it seems as if the game will feature:

• brain-eating
• human possession
• explosive body parts

Here's what Alexander "The Man" Seropian had to say:

To us nothing has the sweet smell of success like rotting Zombie flesh," said Alexander Seropian, President of Wideload Games. "We fell in love with the Stubbs game concept because of the unique player experience and the potential of the main character. We are really enjoying bringing this concept to life... or un-death, as the case may be.

Wideload Games was founded in 2003 by ex-Bungie founder, and employs several other ex-Bungie employees.

UPDATE: We've archived the press release.

UPDATE: GameSpot has an exclusive video interview with Seropian, available streaming for all or as a download only for Complete members.

The latest Homefront update shows off the latest addition to this project to bring the Haloverse to the Battlefield Vietnam engine: The Brute. Thanks Shadow at Sector7.

A very long thread in the Gearbox forums has some of the usual complaints about Halo CE in it, mostly about lag and "warping", and a response from Randy "DuvalMagic" Pitchford, CEO of Gearbox, providing some of the background on the project to port Halo to the PC and how it affected the game's eventual network performance:

Halo's networking system was from scratch, first generation, developed in six months by three engineers and launched into a very competitive world of PC on-line gaming with a game design that is not condusive to the inherent problems of the internet. This networking system had to be meshed into an existing C code-base that had been evolved over 10 years of Bungie games until, in it's last usage, was completely overhauled, retuned and refitted with bubblegum, duct-tape and infinite sleepless work nights specifically for the Xbox platform (which was being invented while all of this refitting was going on).

This does confirm some suspicions held by longtime Bungiefen that Xbox Halo's netcode owed quite a bit to Marathon's deterministic, synchronous netplay, that also worked well only on LANs prior to the addition of native TCP/IP play in Aleph One. Pitchford also cites several requirements, including support for 56k players and fitting the game on a single CD, that he says Bungie and Microsoft slipped into the requirements after the deal was signed. All in all, however, Pitchford says that Gearbox and Bungie both worked hard to make Halo PC and Halo CE the best they could possibly be, but that practicalities and system requirements meant that less was delivered than expected, and there was little or nothing that could be done about it, given the game's design specifications.

Halo World has an item on a program called Halo Map Manager, which allows you to activate and deactivate maps in your Halo Custom Edition folders. This is a big advantage, since the number of maps in that folder affects CE's load times. Thanks demented puppy dot com.

On the heels of the announcement that Halo 2 has received a 9.7 from the Official Xbox Magazine, their highest ranking ever, comes word that PC Gamer has rated Half-Life 2 at 98%-- also that publication's respective highest ranking ever.

Of course, there's no real crossover here-- Halo 2 right now is only for the Xbox, and Half-Life 2 is only for the PC. But in the battle of blockbusters in digital entertainment this holiday season, these two giants are battling directly for attention, if not for customers.

HomeFront, a Halo-themed mod for Battlefield Vietnam, has put up in The Junkyard's forum a large collection of images showing the interior of a Covenant Cruiser, including docked Seraphs and Phantoms. Their own site at Planet Battlefield appears to be down, at the moment, but should be back soon, and features movies and links to their IRC channel. Thanks Mhaddy.

Aero at Halo Impulse interviewed Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford about the port of Halo to the PC. Some of the answers are interesting:

Aero: Is there an alternative way to get a patch for halo CE other than getting 1000 players? Perhaps you could give us a wider range of options that the community can work towards?

Randy Pitchford: I used the 1000 player line as a publicly available metric for tracking how many folks are playing the game. What it really is about is a business concept of return on investment. Gearbox will cease to exist if it spends more than it makes. I think the best way to get more support out of Halo is to appeal to the folks that hold the keys - Bungie. Bungie owns Halo. If Bungie wants more support to happen, it will happen. I imagine they are very busy right now, though...

Well, not so busy as they were before last week, I imagine. But somehow it's still hard to imagine anything but PC Halo being orphaned and overshadowed by the impending release of Halo 2.

But perhaps most telling of Pitchford's remarks is this, although it works against just about everything else he says about PC Halo, including claims that it has gotten more post-release support than any other PC port:

As far as 1000 players, goes - I think if folks who are playing the game went out and evangelized it, it could happen. Instead, we find that the folks that are playing the game the most are also whining about it the loudest.

Doesn't that fact say something in itself? That those who play the game are the ones complaining? In other words, those who play PC Halo complain about it, and those who don't play don't mention it? That doesn't make 1000 simultaneous players sound possible at all.