Anoter weekly Halo update, this time on Battleground: Halo. There's plans for melee attacks for all weapons, there's been work on the AI, and there are some programming and art updates.

Sol from MSXbox sent word of the weekly Halo update on Halo.bungie.org. Not a whole lot of exciting development this time.

Another, brief, Halo update is now up at Rampancy.net (thanks Blues News). Most of the update is about the AI they've been working on.

There's a new Halo update on Halo.bungie.org. Bungie's Matt Soell gives info on the revised engine, reflection tech, animations and some of the cooler effects you might see in the game.

Yeah two Bungie game updates. Rampancy has the latest Halo update from Bungie's Matt Soell. Right now they are working on interior and lighting stuff.

Macledge has gotten a brief update on Halo from Matt Soell of Bungie Software, sounds like they are merging back up some code after that recent engine overhaul.

Matt Soell of Micro... er.. Bungie made a couple of messageboard postings on Bungie.org giving some status updates on both Halo as well as Oni. Halo sounds like it is going through some pretty drastic changes since the public last saw it: (Thanks InsideMacGames)

The guys at STOMPED have gotten a hold of the original MPEG for that Halo movie that showed up on NVNews a little while ago. Much better quality if you want to get a closer look.

The NVNews guys have scored another new Halo movie. This one was made for NVidia to promote the spankin new GeForce2 card when it was unveiled at WinHEC (where I first saw it). Pretty cool stuff.

Since everyone loves the pretty Halo pictures but no one is too sure if we'll actually be seeing the game on the PC (since Microsoft bought Bungie to do X-Box development), here's another story courtesy of Telefragged. From the latest issue of Edge, a well respected UK gaming print magazine comes this quote from Bungie's Joseph Staten talking about Halo development. This was part of an article about developing games from consoles where various developers had their say

"Throughout Halo's design process, we've had to face tough choices about limiting the game's scope to accommodate lower-end PC systems. Now that we're making the game for the X-Box first and foremost, we haven't thrown away our old performance guidelines, but we certainly feel a lot more comfortable committing to high-poly models, more detailed textures, a litany of shader effects, inane physics - all the really sexy things that X-Box is capable of. Tackling a game as ambitious as Halo, it feels really good to have a clear hardware target. Even better, one that allows the whole team to create stuff that's a lot more complex than we originally planned."

So it really seems that X-Box development is absolutely first and that Mac and PC will trail behind it. Although X-Box specs might not seem much to PC owners next year, the performance that you get from single configuration optimization will probably mean only high end PCs will get to enjoy the game, if at all. Or maybe we get a cut down version. Wouldn't that suck total ass?

There's a story about the release of Bungie's Halo on Inside Mac Games. According to info from Apple, Halo will be released for Microsoft's X-box and the Mac OS simultaneously, and not with the X-box first as may have been thought. No word on the PC release, but you'd think it would be the same time as well.
update Matt sends word of this update on Halo Vault

I think this "announcement" is the product of some overzealous copywriting over at Apple, or at least someone with only vague memories of what was said on stage at the Expo.

As far as I know, we can't guarantee a simultaneous release on all platforms right now. I wish it were otherwise. If it happens, you'll hear it from us, not from Apple eNews.

Inside Mac Games has an interview with Bungie CEO Alexander Seropian, talking to him about Halo. The interview is in the form of a 3.8mb Quicktime movie.

The folks at PlanetXbox have gotten confirmation from Microsoft that Halo will in fact be making its way to the PC platform after all. (To go along with its appearance on the Mac platform) The only problem being there is no specified time frame for that port to happen but at least its kinda good news.

A number of of posts on the Mac Gaming Forum say that it has been announced at Macworld that Bungie's Halo WILL be coming to the Mac, as Apple and Microsoft are joining together to get all the MS games to the Mac platform. This probably is a good sign for the PC version as well, if Microsoft is saying that Bungie will still do the Mac version. After Microsoft purchased Bungie it was believed Halo would become a Xbox exclusive title. Thanks stiki figgaz.

Part 3 of CGO's Halo preview is up, with more info about the Bungie game. This part covers seamless environment transition, and the multiplayer part of the game.

The second part of CGO's Halo article is online. Feel free to weep the once promising PC platform game. Btw, I got word that the official Bungie page changed from 'coming soon to a PC and Mac near you' to 'coming soon to a platform near you'. Bah.

According to loonyboi over at Blues News, this month's Next Generation Magazine has an article on Microsoft's Xbox, which includes a sidebar piece on the Bungie merger. Microsoft's Ed Fries mentions another Halo-engine powered game, Fantasy Siege, apparently the third game in development at Bungie.

For two years running Bungie has wowed the crowds with the astonishing Halo, and according to Fries, "What is even more impressive is Fantasy Siege - a totally different type of game running on the same engine. The engine is a very important thing to us, and is a huge part of the deal."

Just to remind you again how purty the Halo engine is, here are some Halo screenshots.

The first part of CGO's Halo preview is online. The article specifically talks about why the game has been hyped so much already, and also gives a bit of the story in the game. They've also included some new screenshots.

Well, its here. the full E3 trailer that was being shown at uh... E3. (Allow myself to introduce myself). You can grab it from this FilePlanet page. It's a pretty damn nasty 166meg download but if you have the means, I highly recommend it. Thanks to the guys at BattleGround: Halo. It's a bit anti-climactic now that the possibility of seeing Halo on the PC format is in doubt, but the footage will still induce a few 'holy shits'. Grab it! For the less bandwidth fortunate, you can grab the hacked up version right here. Another option is grabbing the PC Gamer August edition, as the movie is included on the cover disk.

PC Format is reporting that Microsoft is saying Halo will be released on PC as was the original plan.

Microsoft actually rang us yesterday to give us the bottom line on what's going on. Bungie will *definitely* remain an independent group within Microsoft - getting access to the big M's marketing clout and cash pile - whilst Gates' company gets some top game talent. Halo will still arrive as planned on the PC - but will also be released on X-Box.

No word on a Mac release though.