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Friday, February 4, 2005 |  |
Perchance to Dream
Dennis Powers wrote to let us know that he's posted Episode 3 of his Halo CE Chronicles series - showing off the universe of Halo CE and exploring a more thoughtful side of the Halo experience. The Spartan manages to get lost... and scared. Luckily, the AI's along to help. Sort of. 3:31 long, Flash format. Go watch! (Louis Wu 23:43:28 UTC) (permalink)
Swahili Update
Okay, folks have been looking at the translated Swahili quotes we posted this morning, and overall, it looks like rehema did a great job... but he made one small mistake. Everyone has accepted the Swahili proverbs which make up the bulk of the quotes - nobody's really sure if they actually refer to anything in-game or not, but they're having fun debating it - but one quote stands out, because it's clearly NOT a proverb. It refers to Old Man Water (Mzee Maji)... or does it? What if the announcer had trouble with some common English consonant combinations, and that 'ji' was really an 'rty'? I'd love to be able to take credit for noticing this... but a little Bungie bird did some whispering. (Louis Wu 22:14:44 UTC) (permalink)
Stubbin' it
Looks like the coverage of Stubbs the Zombie, the first title from Wideload Games (expected next summer and based on the Halo engine, justifying its presence here) is heating up again. Alex Seropian talked to 1Up.com via AIM - nice tidbits about the enhancements they've added to the engine, things like stealth and multicharacter animation, plus general background on the company - thanks, wideloadgames.org. And our very own Miguel Chavez scored some choice content himself, and then shot it over to mnemesis for posting on Bungie Sightings. Lots and lots of good info, including 3 new screenshots. Go read! (Louis Wu 22:12:04 UTC) (permalink)
Saving Private Cyan
I'm always amazed by how many people are now working on machinima projects, and how many of them are actually pretty good. I found a series called 'Saving Private Cyan' over at turtleturtleclan.net; Episode One is out now, Episode Two is coming this month. The voice acting could use some work... but the cinematography is quite good. Don't kill their bandwidth downloading from them, though - get Episode One from us. It's available in its original DivX format (25.1 mb) from
bungie.org or mythica.org , or reencodings into QuickTime format (24.3 mb - bungie.org or mythica.org) and WMP9 format (25.4 mb - bungie.org or mythica.org). (Louis Wu 18:05:44 UTC) (permalink)
Spawn Campylobacteriosis.
Today's One One Se7en takes a look at what you might do when you have a teammate that's... not keeping up. (Louis Wu 16:50:43 UTC) (permalink)
Lots of backlogged reading
Oops - no Fan Fiction update since the weekend... there are 27 new pieces for you to read. (A few rejections, as well; if you submitted something and it's not up, you should probably read the rules again.) (Louis Wu 16:15:23 UTC) (permalink)
Obscuring your view
Halo Story Page got another update this morning; three theories see the light of day. What don't we know about Miranda Keyes? What's going on on High Charity? and who were the Forerunners, really? Go read. (Louis Wu 15:47:21 UTC) (permalink)
The Philosophy of Matchmaking
Hmm... is disappointment a natural consequence of rational competition? Are we only happy when we win? nof looks at how the impersonal and implacable matchmaking system drives us to be who we don't like. (Something to remember: matchmaking attempts to pit you against those of equal skill level. This means, if it's working properly, that you'll lose, on average, one out of every two games you play once you reach your true level. It also means that BEFORE you reach this true level, you'll win much more often. Could it be this shift - expressed in business as The Peter Principle ("Managers will rise to the level of their own incompetence") - that REALLY causes the unhappiness?) (Louis Wu 15:23:08 UTC) (permalink)
Swahili announcements - translated
Yesterday, we pointed out that Frankie had hinted that some of the Swahili announcements, audible on the Outskirts level, might contain material of interest to fans. Last night, rehema popped onto our forum, and with some file help from m32, was able to listen to the clips - and translate them. We've added all 7 unique clips that ZexGX found a few weeks ago, plus one new one posted by Armum Infirni last night, to our Dialogue Databank, along with the original Swahili transcriptions and rehema's translations. Go take a look! Update: It looks like replay went the next step, and googled the translations... many are Swahili proverbs. It's the Old Man Maji quote that intrigues me... it's not a proverb, and there's no clear tie to a Halo 2 plot point; what's this about? (Louis Wu 14:24:29 UTC) (permalink)
Fear of Matt Soell
Two bits over at Halo Babies this morning... there's your standard Friday strip, 'Fear of Change' - which takes a light-hearted shot at fans and their need for instant gratification - and a great interview with Matt Soell, former Community Guy at Bungie and now working at Wideload Games. Matt's always had a way with words; I'm glad to see it hasn't left him. ("In the meantime, our own web plan percolates slowly to the surface, like a dinosaur fart in a tar pit.") If you weren't part of the community when Matt was around, go read this; the community is as dedicated as it is because people like Matt were there to feed it. (Louis Wu 13:47:26 UTC) (permalink)
Mommy, it's starting again...
Front-page this morning on Variety.com (login required, check the last entry at bugmenot.com) is a story called 'Halo, Hollywood'... Looks like Microsoft has hired screenwriter Alex Garland to adapt the games into a movie - they've signed a 'million-dollar-deal' with him. Apparently, the buzz is that Microsoft (and Bungie) won't be involved beyond the script development stage... hmm. The article also complains about 'spare' characterization for the protagonist - 'Little is known about "Master Chief."' (This has ALWAYS been one of the major stumbling blocks in the road to convert a video game (where the main character has to be empty enough to fit anyone playing him) to a movie (where we NEED to know a little something about the character in order to enjoy the work).) If you don't feel like jumping through the hoops to read this on Variety, there are summaries on IGN's FilmForce (thanks, Brian Linder) and Sci Fi WIre (thanks, rolly poly). There were some who said this day would never come... (Louis Wu 13:26:45 UTC) (permalink)
Jump Tactics opens its doors
Jump Tactics, the clan behind a pretty cool movie we mentioned recently, has launched its website. You can read the PR stuff on our forum, or just go visit the site. Downloads require registration (free) - they've got a couple of new movies up. Go check out the jumping action! (Louis Wu 02:56:29 UTC) (permalink)
Nice Going, Bullitt.
Chester gets his butt kicked a lot. Enough that he decided to make a movie about it. The original version is a 23 mb .AVI that doesn't show up at all on a mac. (Work in Windows Media Player on a PC, though.) The Se7enth Prophet whipped him up a WMP9 version - half the size, but a significant quality drop. (Link is in this forum post.) There's no guarantee that the bandwidth for any of those will hold out - but I can't justify hosting a version that is simply unreadable on Macs, so I created a QuickTime version. It's about 16 mb, and roughly the quality of the original. Grab whichever one makes the most sense to you. (The machine that last is hosted on is having network problems; they'll be working on it overnight. If you can't get in, wait a bit and try again. You don't need to send me mail telling me it's down - if it's down, it's because they pulled the network card out of it, and it'll be back up again soon.) (Louis Wu 02:52:28 UTC) (permalink)
Heh.
Speaks for itself. Thanks, Mr.Cynical. (Louis Wu 01:26:23 UTC) (permalink)
Blame Ryan
Holy crud. Bungie got tired of getting whupped in their Halo Humpday Challenges... so they picked on a team of non-computer geeks. The Discovery Channel crew accepted the challenge... and whupped their butts. (Well, okay, the games were close. But Discovery Channel took all three.) OUCH! (They even had a pair of Clan PMS filling in - but it wasn't enough.) (Louis Wu 01:24:23 UTC) (permalink)
Thursday's news in brief:
Wednesday's news in brief:
