According to Frankie in Bungie's latest Weekly Update, the artificial intelligence in current builds of Halo 3 seems to be quite a step up from the previous games.

The progression of talent in Bungie's AI drivers is well-documented; marines, for instance, could only handle Ghosts in Halo 1, often with disastrous results. Vehicles were thrown open to all kinds of units in Halo 2, as marines would drive Warthogs and Scorpions if given the chance, Grunts would take turns in Ghosts if opportunity arose. Having a passenger (preferably with a sniper weapon or a rocket launcher) as well as someone manning the chaingun in the Hog really gave the vehicle quite a presence.

Gunners in Halo 2 were often not quite as effective as they might have been. There was no real way to control what they were firing at, except to get closer to the intended target. Often they'd ignore clearly visible enemies because they were "out of range"-- even though the weapon itself would have been quite effective.

And Frankie says that's getting better in Halo 3:

In previous Halo games, the gunners were smart and would pick off targets in a logical fashion, but this time around, and it could be my imagination, the gunners are more precise and easier to influence. You can target individual bad guys by steering the Hog and even “convince” your gunner to pick a more relevant target and have him stop trying to blast a lone grunt hiding behind a rock when a bigger menace approaches.

[snip]

The AI still has ages of tuning left to go, and the bad news is that if your AI gunner is too good, he’ll be dumbed-down to make the game more balanced. That said, the scale and ferocity of the current encounters (read: more bad guys than ever before) mean that you were going to need more capable AI anyway.

Project Magma has announced the availability of a public beta of version 1.6 of Myth II. The update makes Myth II on the Mac a Universal application, running natively on PPC or Intel hardware, allows it to run in a window on Windows 2000 or XP, and many other new features and bug fixes. This is a final quality-testing release before the final release. The team is offering the beta for download at The Tain and requesting feedback in the Project Magma forums.

MBO pointed out an unusual Gamasutra postmortem article from last summer which I don't remember seeing before. It's not on a game itself, but of an update to a game. In this case, the 1.5 and 1.5.1 updates to Myth II produced by Project Magma. It's a two-parter; one details what went right and the other what went wrong. Don't know what Myth is? Head to Get Myth and get the updated demo for Windows or Mac OS X.

One of the best total conversions for Marathon, Tempus Irae, has gotten an Aleph One facelift: new high resolution textures, alternate soundtracks, netmaps, even a sequel-- the works. Check it out at source.bungie.org.

• Aleph One, the open-sourced version of Marathon for Windows, Linux and Mac OS, has a new release out.
• The HD QuickTime version of the Halo 3 trailer documentary is back up at Microsoft.
• KP profiles known Cortana-hater Jillybean at Bungie.net.
• Peter Moore told Major Nelson the Xbox 360 will get an update to add another 20 titles to the list of backwards compatible games.

A power loss at Bungie didn't stop Frankie from doing a Weekly Update-- although it did end up necessitating an ASCII Mister Chief.

This week's update is more about Halo 2 playlists and music than about Halo 3 though, as it has some notes about the next PLAY! concert in Philadelphia as well as the major matchmaking playlist changes that are coming up.

As usual, we've archived this week's update on our Halo 3 Weekly Updates page in our Halo 3 Articles collection.

This week's Halo 3 Weekly Update by Frankie has more about Halo 2 than Halo 3, but that's no reason not to read it. At least, not a good reason. There's good news and bad news. The good news is, Halo 2 for Vista won't require DirectX 10. The bad news is, the Clan playlist is going away due to underutilization.

We've archived the update for May 26 in our Halo 3 Updates section.

[image:10203 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] It's only the second-ever Halo 3 Weekly Update, and already the bar is being set pretty high. This week we get a new screenshot, suitable for desktop wallpapery, and an introduction to Bungie's brand-new, bright-and-shiny KP. KP likes Lockout, Fight Night Round 3, slow, leisurely walks on the beach, and grinding other Bungie contractors into a fine white dust using only a copy of Halo 2 and an Xbox controller.

As KP joins, AdgTinMan is departing, and left Bungie with a fantastic parting gift: an orgiami Mister Chief.

We've added the screenshot (which, unlike the earlier ones, appears not to be actually a frame from the Halo 3 trailer, but rather a shot from that build of the game) as the first into our main Halo 3 image gallery.

UPDATE: Sources indicate that the image is from the same sequence of real-time events that make up the trailer, but from a different angle.

We've archived the latest Weekly Update on our Halo 3 Weekly Updates page, as well.

[image:10173 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] This week's Bungie Weekly Update becomes the first Halo 3 Weekly Update as Frankie answers fan questions about the Halo 3 Announcement Trailer unveiled earlier this week at E3 2006.

As the updates have now returned to their original purpose as a development diary, we've opened up a Halo 3 Weekly Updates subpage on our Halo 3 Articles page, and archived the first Halo 3 Weekly Update there.

Not all the Bungie game news is from E3 this week. Over at source.bungie.org, new releases of the Aleph One engine, CTF(Lua), and the netmap Conflict came out. Thanks Treellama and The Battle Cat.