Steve

Dean Takahashi's article goes into the creation of the "Sadie's Story" radio play embedded into Halo 3: ODST. Well worth the read; I think Dean is One Of Us, given the depth of the article.

-- Steve loves this sort of stuff.

Bungie Publications is an online archive of papers written by Bungie staff and delivered in games industry conferences. With sections on Art, Audio, Design, Engineering, and Production, there are *counts rapidly* 19 articles up for public view on the "Bungie Way" of making games.

Though most are written for audiences within the industry, if you're interested in "inside baseball" perspectives on the game industry they make for fascinating reading.

-- Steve's downloaded a few of these over the years, and is glad to see they're collected all in one place for easy reference.

Another lousy night's sleep, dammit. However, this morning the coughing's subsided to the occasional dull rumble and the sinus congestion's nowhere near as bad as it was yesterday so I think I'm over the hump. I plan on going out today for groceries, and also to make a trip to the mall to a) make sacrifice to the VISA gods and take away their anger (especially given that "DK" is on this bill) and b) make a run to El-Booze-o's, as I haven't had a glass of wine in over a month and given that I want to do a roast tomorrow a dollop of the red would be nice. It'll also serve to head off an incipient case of cabin fever.

I forgot to mention, but last week my freezer tried to kill me. I came home sick on Wednesday night and opened the freezer door to put my gel pack in (handy for keeping frozen food frozen in the lunch bucket) and one of my pork dinners fell out on me, narrowly missing my toes before literally smashing onto the kitchen floor. The plastic container shattered, leaving the frozen food (and not-quite frozen BBQ sauce) on the floor. *sigh* Just another thing to make last Humpday even more awesome.

On the ODST front, this morning Hedgemony on HBO pointed out an Official Xbox Magazine (Aus) interview with Joe Staten, writing lead. In it he gave a very light taste of what the glyphs mean; the inverted "Y"s are silhouettes of Forerunner ships. *D'oh!* It's so obvious now that it's pointed out... but the full meaning is still elusive.

-- Steve'll break for now and go off sniffling for breakfast and More Coffee.

Firstly, since my headset doesn't have a mute button I'd have hacked and coughed and maybe evne wheezed horrifically into everybody's ears. Yeah, I think I progressed a stage in this illness or something.

Secondly, I sucked. Absolutely abysmal scores in campaign mode... dunno if it was the coughing distracting me, or if I was just slow reflexes and a general case of poor concentration skills or whatever, but man would I have been a drag on a team.

-- Steve made it worse, possibly, by trying too hard for some Achievements on this run. Oh well, there's always next time.

Hee.

I'd been just about to give up on the audio log hunt and use a map to find it, starting at the Uplift Preserve square and moving north, and I stumbled upon the last audio log on the way. I don't think I'd ever taken that road before, and that log was off the road, through a concealed door, and had a Jackal sniper camped over the payphone and two Engineers hovering about as distractions to boot.

But I got it. All by myself.

-- Steve's just about to finish off that campaign and then break for supper. After that, dunno.

Back when ODST was still in development Bungie posted, in one of their Weekly Updates, about the "Brute Pimp" glitch that would sometimes have a Brute Chieftain stay in "patrol" mode in an encounter, calmly walk up to the player with a princely swagger in his step, and show you he knows how to work his "pimp hand". They also said that it'd been fixed...

...but apparently it's not completely fixed.

-- Steve unknowingly saw this glitch last night after sniping a Brute Chieftain at long range, then watching it slowly walk down the street right at him growling out combat dialog. Steve, however, is a cruel gangsta and gunned the pimp down long before it got to fisticuffs.

Well, technically right now it's 28 out of 30 audio logs recovered in Halo 3: ODST, but I know where the 30th is... I just can't access it until I find #29. Grrrr... So somewhere, out there in the rubble of New Mombasa, there's one payphone or ATM or newspaper stand that I've managed to miss.

I got the one that can only be found by jumping up onto the roof. I got the one that's behind a door and down an alleyway. I got the one in the hotel's circular parkade. All of those I found tonight in a systematic sweep of the ruins... well, mostly systematic, as Covenant patrols kinda interrupted my box search every now and then.

One. Friggin'. Phone.

Gah.

-- Steve's giving up for the night, and debating whether or not to finish this game and start afresh later... perhaps with campaign scoring on, a Skull or two, and try for the "Good Samaritan" Achievement.

PS: Got my "Naughty, Naughty" Achievement tonight. I feel dirty.

The following post contains atomic-level plot spoilers for Halo 3: ODST and the "Sadie's Story" parallel.

( SpoilerGuarded for Your Protection )

-- Steve really loves how Bungie and crew can sew hidden messages into the liner of a shoot-em-up.

It was a mighty labour, but at last I have downloaded the Halo 3: ODST soundtrack to my Zune.

Alas I didn't pick up a CD of it, as I hadn't been to the right areas, so I downloaded it directly from Sumthing Digital. ($10 for the double album set. Not bad; beats iTunes actually, which surprises me.) Sadly, the Zune software can't find the album information for ODST automagically yet... though I hear this is only an issue outside the US. Also sadly, the metatags associated with the files are terrible, and so badly mangled that Zune or WMP (or iTunes, for that matter) can't disentangle it properly to find album information and attribution. I had to edit the tags by hand... not a pleasant little chore, and it took a good long while.

But it was worth the effort. This is an excellent album, showing off Marty O'Donnell's and Total Audio's talents to their best. The music is different from the other Halo tracks, as the story in the game is more "noir" than "action-adventure epic", but there are enough hints of Halo in the themes to remind you that this is in the series continutity. There is plenty of "noir" in there too, with moody piano and sax, and more than a touch of "James Bond" when the action heats up.

-- Steve is glad to add this one to the collection, and will have it plugged into his head for tomorrow's errands. (Including a badly-needed haircut.)

Gold-level (ie: paid) members of Xbox Live can, for a limited time, (how limited is unknown) download a "Prepare to Drop!" premium theme pack for their NXE Xbox 360 dashboards. For free. Grab 'em while their hot!

-- Steve'll be grabbing this when he gets home tonight.

Spotted via the Halo.Bungie.Org news page... your premier source of Halo news.

Sitting at my desk in Koobikal Hel, with the humungous Halo 3: ODST transparent display box grabbing at my pants-leg every now and then, time grinds forward at a tectonic rate. It doesn't help that it's perilously close to 100% humid today, and that as a result I didn't sleep too well last night. Argh. Eight more hours to go...

It was a remarkably quiet pick-up; I was the only customer at EB, one of eight folks who hadn't picked up their Collector's Edition pre-order yet, and checkout took something like three minutes. The bus was early, the store was open early, and service was fast; so I had time to raid the Timmy's in-mall kiosk for breakfast before poking back over to HMV only to find that they're opening at 10am today. *shrug* Oh well, that just means I'll get the soundtrack album from Sumthing Digital tonight online.

The CE looks very nice. I did poke through the instruction manual to see the flash fiction enclosed and read up on any changes to the control scheme. (Not much; other than the "x" button being remapped to control the VISR instead of equipment it seems to be identical to Halo 3. Well, VISR and the lack of dual-wielding.) I picked up my Sgt. Johnson card but other than the plain-text description there didn't seem to be any special bennies. I haven't had a good look at the controller yet but it does look purty.

-- Steve also printed out a fan-made "ODST" recruitment poster Boxer put up over on HBO: here's the full-size graphic under a cut.

( Caution: LOLHeug graphic )

http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/east_king/kir/news/59493472.html

Bungie Studios made the police blotter.

Back on Sept. 2, one of the Bungie staff was carrying a Halo prop made by WETA back to the studio after showing it at a local event. Well, a citizen looked out his/her window and saw the prop, and since it was a replica of the game's sniper rifle took a certain amount of alarm and called the police that someone was roaming the streets Kirkland WA with an "assault rifle".

Hilarity ensues.

It all ends well, though; Kirkland Police rather quickly figured out what was going on and simply cautioned the studio to transport props in containers instead of in the open in the future.

-- Steve can't really blame the anonymous citizen for calling the cops; that's a mighty big prop gun, and WETA went to town on it to make certain it looked real.

PS: It amuses me to see Harold Ryan referred to as the "President of Halo" in the blotter report.

http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&link=ODSTViDoc3

Bungie has released a new "ViDoc" featurette on the design of Halo 3: ODST and in it I just noticed an interesting... reference? nod? schtik? game mechanic? Apparently as you're walking through the abandoned city some of the payphones will start ringing, and if you pick up you get placed in contact with a damaged AI. Sounds... familiar. *grin*

-- Steve's looking forward to lots of nostalgia coming a week from today. (?!?!)

Cribbed from Major Nelson's Flickr stream (and rehosted on my Photobucket account to spare bandwidth) which I found courtesy of the Halo.Bungie.Org news page.

-- Steve's getting excited over this again, which is a pleasant change.

PS: Alas, I probably won't be able to pick up my preorder until the morning of the 23rd as I'm scheduled to work right up to 7pm that day, and the store (which closes at 8pm) is 45 minutes away at best...

The following post contains what some may consider spoilers for Halo 3: ODST, though since they're being announced by Bungie Studios themselves and don't disclose actual plot points I don't. Still, for those who would:

( Spoiler-Guarded for Your Protection )

-- Steve can't wait to go looking for this himself.

edited to add: In plainly non-spoiler territory, xbox.com's ODST promo looks to be interesting, putting you in the role of an ODST recruiter/personnel officer going through candidate dossiers with a few puzzle-unlockable bennies... others have enjoyed it so far, but I haven't had a chance to explore it yet.

http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=news&link=ReconHunt

For those unable to participate in the Bungie vs. the World playlist but still wanting a crack at earning Halo 3's Recon armour permutation, try the link above.

-- Steve thinks it should be like old times for ARGers... though he isn't certain that the puzzle is intended to be a collaborative one.

Back in the office after a brief visit with family, now. I did do some catching-up yesterday (and was alarmed to see 24 top-priority messages in my inbox, though all were about an issue already resolved so no panic required) so today's fairly routine.

Apparently Dad got me a set-top digital-to-analog signal converter on my folks' last trip to the States, and gifted it to me as an early Birthday present. It looks nifty, but there seems to be an issue with my indoor antenna now that it's hooked to the DTV box and can only pick up one station at the moment. (And my analog reception's gone south, too, even when I take the box off.) I may have to get a replacement for the old antenna; it's over a decade old now, come to think of it, and the adjustment dials don't mesh too well anymore. Still, DTV is very pretty, near-DVD quality is nice to see from an over-the-air signal.

Tomorrow is Bungie Day, 7/7. This year won't be as elaborate but there are still fun things to do to mark the occasion. Alas, I seem to have mangled my left thumb's ball joint again while schlepping luggage so teh Haloz are contra-indicated until the inflammation goes down. Yay.

More later, but break's over.

-- Steve's delving into the telephone mines again.

According to Bungie.net's statistics tracking, apparently last Sunday a group of four players started the one billionth game of Halo 3. Not bad, for a 15-month-old.

The linked article does some data-dumpster diving to get the detailed figures, but the most shocking one for me is that if you sum up all the time spent by people playing Halo 3 (in multiplayer only, mind you, and only the ones played while hooked up to Xbox Live so anyone without the service isn't included!) it totals to over 64,000 man-years. I mean, pyramids were built with less.

-- Steve still finds himself agog at what can happen in today's teleconnected world.

PS: as an added bonus, which I am alas too late to share with you, Bungie concealed two Xbox Live code keys in that article that could be redeemed for free, pre-release downloadable copies of the next three maps for Halo 3 that are out now with the Halo Wars LE bundle. Alas, enterprising fans, they're already used by now but it's a fun little search game to find the 25-character alphanumeric sequences.

Bungie's urk posted a brief interview with moi up on Bungie.net as part of their "Average Joe" series. I don't think there's anything in there most of you don't already know, but y'never know 'till you look...

-- Steve didn't do the interview in third-person; hey, everyone has limits.

Just a reminder that today (7/7) is Bungie Day; if you have Halo 3 (and if not, why not? *grin*) and an Xbox Live account you can pop onto the XBL Marketplace and download the map "Cold Storage" for the amazing price of nada. To download it, go to the Marketplace blade on your Dashboard, go to "New Arrivals", scroll right until you get to "Games", then scroll down to "Halo 3". Et voila! It looks to be a good map, too, virtually identical in gameplay to its Halo 1 predecessor "Chill Out" but so much prettier. (And uglier, but in a good way.) There are folks saying that Silver (free) accounts may not have access to it yet, so if you can't find it you may want to try on the weekend.

Also available for free are special user pictures and a special Dashboard Theme to mark the day... and they're pretty swank, in my opinion. They should be available for download in "New Arrivals", either on the same page as "Cold Storage" or on the "Themes and Gamer Pictures" page. Remember, these are available for today only... get them while you can, because tomorrow they'll be gone.

-- Steve'll have to give it a try soon, but he's still trying (probably vainly) to help hit the 7 billion target.