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Bungie existed before Halo.

Rob

The CRIST Sol orbiters, or Cargo and Resources In-System Transports were huge ships shaped like a hollow potato and designed to be able to move huge amounts of material between Earth and Mars with low cost and, theoretically, low maintenance. The system was simple. The CRIST was put into orbit around SOL on the plane of the ecliptic. Built with a powerful solar sail, the CRIST could change its orbit easily to pass by the Earth or Mars. On a flyby, materials could be loaded or offloaded...

The design of the CRIST was innovative and useful, but it was not low-maintenance... Each time that a CRIST broke down, the result was famine on Mars... ...the coming of a Martian conflict was inevitable.

(Ironically, the Pfhor invasion pre-empted that massacre with another.)

Good God!! Pimps at Sea lives!

Marathon has been open source for some time now.

It was [not] the first FPS with a cool story (Half Life).

It was [not] the first FPS with a cool story (Half Life).

This has a lot to do with the previous article about videogame aesthetics, in that a lot of independent developers have their own visual style. Once everything is made by the same guys, everything starts to look bad, and play worse. With indie developers, you don't have as much pressure, and a lot of games like Marathon and Katamari have a sort of quirkiness that I find appealing.

Personally I don't think I have enough indie games. Stubbs the Zombie is looking good, though. I might get it when it comes out.

I would strongly disagree with you both on the point that the movie industry making a movie about a video game is a bad thing and more specifically about your feelings on Halo. Teams of writers have been making increasingly complex and intriguing story lines for video games, giving the newer games enough character to have interesting standalone storylines. One of the best examples of that is Halo from Bungie Studios, which has long been heralded for it's excellent storylines (giving much more attention to that than simply putting out another shoot-em-up. Just go to http://halo.bungie.org/ or http://www.bungie.net/ and check out the fan fiction and legions of conspiracy theororists involved with the plots of the Halo series.

If you want to see an example of an FPS with a plot and story that is really integrated and captivating, check out Marathon 2, I think it is available as an open source project now.

Aleph One is probably what you are referring to. If you want to know more about the amazingly complex and wonderful story there is only one place you need to go: The Marathon Story Page.

If you want to see an example of an FPS with a plot and story that is really integrated and captivating, check out Marathon 2, I think it is available as an open source project now.

Aleph One is probably what you are referring to. If you want to know more about the amazingly complex and wonderful story there is only one place you need to go: The Marathon Story Page.

According to Bungie, the rumors stating that Boll will direct are "absolutely not true."

http://halo.bungie.org/news.html?item=14056/

If you're interested, you can find more info at http://source.bungie.org/, and at http://trilogyrelease.bungie.org/, or you can visit the AIM chat room (alephone) and/or the IRC channel (#alephone at freenode).

If you're interested, you can find more info at http://source.bungie.org/, and at http://trilogyrelease.bungie.org/, or you can visit the AIM chat room (alephone) and/or the IRC channel (#alephone at freenode).

so while we're at it, lets link to another shockwave flash movie from several years ago that's also funny.

http://marathon.bungie.org/
http://halo.bungie.org/

Yeah, theres no detailed backstory at all in Bungie games...

http://marathon.bungie.org/
http://halo.bungie.org/

Yeah, theres no detailed backstory at all in Bungie games...

By the way, with a name like "MasterVidBoi", I'm sure you've gotta understand what I'm talking about.

Many games today have too much flash or pow, though the art or message or depth of the games have improved in some places.

For example: The Marathon trilogy, made by a few guys whose company went on to make another pretty popular game. This game was the "thinking man's" Doom, complete with aliens, serious weapons (many of which have returned in one form or another in Halo), and a deep storyline that enriched play. Marathon was also one of the first (if not THE first) multiplayer FPS game, introducing the concept of the mouse-as-head game control to make for rapid movement.

The coolness of this game is that it's now freeware (not open-source, however). The game originally appeared as an original Mac OS game. That game is available and (currently) playable only a Mac that can run Mac OS 9 or Classic (in Mac OS X). However, Bungie also released the second game, Marathon 2, as a Windows game. So Mac and Windows users can download a special Mac OS X-native or Windows-native application (thanks to enterprising programmers who loved the game and wanted to play on) to play the original code, complete with a few modern graphic pick-me-ups.

Bungie still puts in a few Marathon in-jokes in their games. The first one you'll see is the insignia on Captain Keyes' uniform in Halo, and later, look closely at the Monitor's eyeball. Familar?

I'm still fond of old-school Zelda games on NES, SNES, and Game Boy, too.

Frog blast the vent core!

Many games today have too much flash or pow, though the art or message or depth of the games have improved in some places.

For example: The Marathon trilogy, made by a few guys whose company went on to make another pretty popular game. This game was the "thinking man's" Doom, complete with aliens, serious weapons (many of which have returned in one form or another in Halo), and a deep storyline that enriched play. Marathon was also one of the first (if not THE first) multiplayer FPS game, introducing the concept of the mouse-as-head game control to make for rapid movement.

The coolness of this game is that it's now freeware (not open-source, however). The game originally appeared as an original Mac OS game. That game is available and (currently) playable only a Mac that can run Mac OS 9 or Classic (in Mac OS X). However, Bungie also released the second game, Marathon 2, as a Windows game. So Mac and Windows users can download a special Mac OS X-native or Windows-native application (thanks to enterprising programmers who loved the game and wanted to play on) to play the original code, complete with a few modern graphic pick-me-ups.

Bungie still puts in a few Marathon in-jokes in their games. The first one you'll see is the insignia on Captain Keyes' uniform in Halo, and later, look closely at the Monitor's eyeball. Familar?

I'm still fond of old-school Zelda games on NES, SNES, and Game Boy, too.

Frog blast the vent core!

Not state of the art, but pretty darn fun. If you don't know about it (which you should), it's the Marathon series of FPS games that made Bungie really famous before the big buyout (or sellout, depending on how bitter I'm feeling on any given day). They open-sourced it, and a community built it up to what is now Aleph One.

Should run on some pretty old hardware, and netgames are as long or short as you want them to be.

Dan Aris

Don't you mean this use of Phobos?

To make a movie of 'Halo' will not be enough. If Bungie would make a movie out of all those mysterious puzzles scattered around their games (Pathways, Marathons, Halos) it sure will be a blast. The Spht'kr clans...
If you wish to know more about these sooo great games (especially Marathon - now Free) that looks like to be a mere FPS but is, indeed, some serious food for thougts with all these bits we can find on the terminals, please have a good time there:http://marathon.bungie.org/story/mainpage.ht ml, Thanks you. I played all them games since the original Marathon I can tell... All the pieces put together and that is a great success but Halo alone wont cut it!!

Will we ever know all the answers!?!?
***TRANSPORT WHEN READY*** ;)

If they used the Marathon storyline as opposed to the Halo storyline. For those who don't know, Marathon, Marathon: Durandal, and the final Marathon were all for mac before MS bought Bungie. The first two had the best storylines ever, and were written by a different company than the 3rd and the Halo series. I really hope the first two are used for the storyline, as they are far superior in enough ambiguity to make it interesting (think: Bladerunner) and the best AI character development I've ever seen.

http://marathon.bungie.org/story/

There are perfectly valid and useful apps for OS9 that simply are no longer updated or maintained (and often can't be because they are closed-source the the company who made them no longer cares), yet these programs are still needed by people working with more modern, up-to-date software just because no replacement has yet been coded.

My case in point: Aleph One is an open-source FPS engine based on Bungie's classic Marathon series. While the original Marathon series was pretty much Mac (Classic) only, the latest version of the engine runs on OSX, Windows, Linux... there's even some outdated versions for Be. The whole thing now runs in OpenGL, all platforms are being standardized on the SDL media layer, and so on. The engine itself, while still by no means a "modern" 3D engine (that's not the point), is very up-to-date and in keeping with current technologies and formats. There are still mod projects being made for this engine.

HOWEVER, all the TOOLS used to make CONTENT for the engine are not open-source (and can't be, the source code has been lost by the original developers). So for all of us working on such mod projects, we NEED to be able to run older Classic applications.

I guess my point is, modern mainstream apps from MS and Adobe, and minor system utilities or helper apps that get obsoleted with every OS or big-app update, are not the only things people use computers for. There are all sorts of niche applications that don't get updated because *they don't need to be*, so forcing them to update or not run when their users upgrade is not right. Hell, games themselves are often in this category. Every now and then I go back into my older games, like Caesar III for a current example, and start playing again because, despite being old, they're still fun.

You're right that writing NEW code for OS9 is stupid. But there's a lot of OLD code that doesn't otherwise NEED to be updated, which plenty of users probably still want to run. Forcing them to stop if they want to upgrade their system (or to keep an old machine around to run it), just isn't right.

Unfortunately the article in which they admitted links got chopped when they revamped the site, and i have been unable to find a copy:/

You do know that you could/can CHANGE the run modefyer to something more useful, like Caps Lock (thus enabling you to run ALWAYS), only problem there is that you needed to remember to shut it off every time you jumped in water... If you still have your old data files (or even if you don't) you can play them again using AlephNull.

You do know that you could/can CHANGE the run modefyer to something more useful, like Caps Lock (thus enabling you to run ALWAYS), only problem there is that you needed to remember to shut it off every time you jumped in water... If you still have your old data files (or even if you don't) you can play them again using AlephNull.

Perhaps the easiest way to envisage an Orbital is to compare it to the idea that inspired it (this sounds better than saying; Here's where I stole it from). If you know what a Ringworld is - invented by Larry Niven; a segment of a Dyson Sphere - then just discard the shadow-squares, shrink the whole thing till it's about three million kilometres across, and place in orbit around a suitable star, tilted just off the ecliptic; spin it to produce one gravity and that gives you an automatic 24-hour day-night cycle (roughly; the Culture's day is actually a bit longer). An elliptical orbit provides seasons.

"Halo" isn't a Ringworld, but an Orbital. The following magazine excerpt bears this out:

"Wait a minute," you might be thinking. Doesn't the premise of this game bear a striking resemblance to a certain series of books by sci-fi author Larry Niven? Designer and Bungie co-founder Jason Jones is uncomfortable with the notion that Halo might be some sort of Niven knockoff. "Ringworld's a great book, but the point is that we don't want people to think this is the game of Niven's Ringworld, simply because it takes place on a ring-shaped artificial world... you'd be surprised how often people assume this." Jones explains. "In Niven's books, the Ringworld completely encircles a star, and is thus hundreds of millions of miles in diameter, whereas Halo is just a satellite orbiting a gas giant and is considerably smaller. In fact, structurally it's more similar to the "orbitals" in Iain M. Banks' Culture novels."

You can find more information here.

I don't play games because of the graphics.

I don't play games because of the graphics.

We all know, however, that "vid boi" is a real term.

I'm going to rephrase the parent a little less insultingly.

Yours is definitely not a bad comic...like those stupid sprite comics with no plotline. But yours isn't a great comic. And at this early stage, of course you shouldn't expect it to be a great comic, but you haven't set a path yet for making it great. Let me give a few examples.

Penny Arcade has a very creative sense of humor and excellent skill in satire of the computer industry.

User Friendly has a very in-depth plot line and pokes fun at the computer industry and other topics in science very often. (Back when the EA galley-slave scandal broke, it was UF that drew the comic strips of the EA employees on the slave ship.)

WoT Now? is a sprite comic, but the creativity and dialogue more than makes up for the lack of hand-drawn graphics. Moreover, the sprites are custom-made for the comic. WoT Now? is mainly for readers of the Wheel of Time series, which limits its potential readership but also gives a very clear focus.

One One Se7en is a similar example of parody within a series. Note that the drawing quality is very low, yet the comics themselves are amusing.

megatokyo has an unusual setup (American gamer somewhat lost in Japan) that provides enough opportunities for a long plot.

Basically, I think what I'm saying is that unless you want to go for one-shot gags like 117 does -- and you can do it well -- you need some sort of plotline. At the least you need short story arcs. And you'll need a consistent set of characters and a focus of some sort, e.g., the computer industry? A fiction series? A particular setup that would make for a nice short story?

And unless you're going for a special effect near the end of an arc, try to put a good joke in each strip. Your jellyfish joke was either too silly or too complex to work well, for example. It's hard to come up with original and genuinely humorous jokes, but such is the challenge of a cartoonist.

http://trilogyrelease.bungie.org

As for which game had the "better" story, I'd rather not get involved in some kind of offtopic debate/flamewar about it.

If you want to compare the story content without playing the games, you can view the Marathon terminal texts on Bungie.org's Marathon fansite, and Halo cinematics and (currently incomplete) transcripts on their Halo site.

AFAIK, Greg hasn't been seen on the Internet since Double Aught Software went under.

Alex Seropian is working on Stubbs The Zombie, and has time for interviews, but apparently didn't have much to do with actually writing the story for Marathon, Halo or Stubbs.

IIRC, Matt Soell is the main mind behind Stubbs' story. Two select examples of his writing style can be found here (first thing to come off the top of my head). He's also widely (heretically) believed to be the Bungie Webmaster of January 2003 and earlier.

http://trilogyrelease.bungie.org

As for which game had the "better" story, I'd rather not get involved in some kind of offtopic debate/flamewar about it.

If you want to compare the story content without playing the games, you can view the Marathon terminal texts on Bungie.org's Marathon fansite, and Halo cinematics and (currently incomplete) transcripts on their Halo site.

AFAIK, Greg hasn't been seen on the Internet since Double Aught Software went under.

Alex Seropian is working on Stubbs The Zombie, and has time for interviews, but apparently didn't have much to do with actually writing the story for Marathon, Halo or Stubbs.

IIRC, Matt Soell is the main mind behind Stubbs' story. Two select examples of his writing style can be found here (first thing to come off the top of my head). He's also widely (heretically) believed to be the Bungie Webmaster of January 2003 and earlier.

http://trilogyrelease.bungie.org

As for which game had the "better" story, I'd rather not get involved in some kind of offtopic debate/flamewar about it.

If you want to compare the story content without playing the games, you can view the Marathon terminal texts on Bungie.org's Marathon fansite, and Halo cinematics and (currently incomplete) transcripts on their Halo site.

AFAIK, Greg hasn't been seen on the Internet since Double Aught Software went under.

Alex Seropian is working on Stubbs The Zombie, and has time for interviews, but apparently didn't have much to do with actually writing the story for Marathon, Halo or Stubbs.

IIRC, Matt Soell is the main mind behind Stubbs' story. Two select examples of his writing style can be found here (first thing to come off the top of my head). He's also widely (heretically) believed to be the Bungie Webmaster of January 2003 and earlier.

Here's a great example of what the article is talking about...

I recently used Bit Torrent to "legitimately" release two super high-res versions of a Halo 2 montage that I created (M$ let's us create these as long as we're not making money off of them, so, yes, this is still legit). The QT was 200Mb and the WMV was 300Mb, which were way too BIG to distribute via traditional hosting for someone on a budget (or even for someone with money to burn) because once they got posted on the homepages of the largest Halo fansites (which they did), the hosts and mirrors would simply get crushed in minutes (kind of like the /. effect). But with Bit Torrent, the more downloaders, the more seeds/peers, the better off everyone is (OK, this is entirely true because the tracker can start having scale problems, but you get the point). Without Torrent, I probably would have only been able to release the low res versions, but now everyone can see my WIDESCREEN vid in all of its glory. THANK YOU BIT TORRENT!

So that said, please help out my seeds by downloading my "Tainted Love: A Halo 2 Custom Gaming Montage" at these TORRENT LINKS:

High Res / Windows Media / 290Mb
High Res / QuickTime / 217Mb
Low Res / Windows Media / 62Mb
Low Res / QuickTime / 65Mb

Thanks!

.

Here's a great example of what the article is talking about...

I recently used Bit Torrent to "legitimately" release two super high-res versions of a Halo 2 montage that I created (M$ let's us create these as long as we're not making money off of them, so, yes, this is still legit). The QT was 200Mb and the WMV was 300Mb, which were way too BIG to distribute via traditional hosting for someone on a budget (or even for someone with money to burn) because once they got posted on the homepages of the largest Halo fansites (which they did), the hosts and mirrors would simply get crushed in minutes (kind of like the /. effect). But with Bit Torrent, the more downloaders, the more seeds/peers, the better off everyone is (OK, this is entirely true because the tracker can start having scale problems, but you get the point). Without Torrent, I probably would have only been able to release the low res versions, but now everyone can see my WIDESCREEN vid in all of its glory. THANK YOU BIT TORRENT!

So that said, please help out my seeds by downloading my "Tainted Love: A Halo 2 Custom Gaming Montage" at these TORRENT LINKS:

High Res / Windows Media / 290Mb
High Res / QuickTime / 217Mb
Low Res / Windows Media / 62Mb
Low Res / QuickTime / 65Mb

Thanks!

.

Here's a great example of what the article is talking about...

I recently used Bit Torrent to "legitimately" release two super high-res versions of a Halo 2 montage that I created (M$ let's us create these as long as we're not making money off of them, so, yes, this is still legit). The QT was 200Mb and the WMV was 300Mb, which were way too BIG to distribute via traditional hosting for someone on a budget (or even for someone with money to burn) because once they got posted on the homepages of the largest Halo fansites (which they did), the hosts and mirrors would simply get crushed in minutes (kind of like the /. effect). But with Bit Torrent, the more downloaders, the more seeds/peers, the better off everyone is (OK, this is entirely true because the tracker can start having scale problems, but you get the point). Without Torrent, I probably would have only been able to release the low res versions, but now everyone can see my WIDESCREEN vid in all of its glory. THANK YOU BIT TORRENT!

So that said, please help out my seeds by downloading my "Tainted Love: A Halo 2 Custom Gaming Montage" at these TORRENT LINKS:

High Res / Windows Media / 290Mb
High Res / QuickTime / 217Mb
Low Res / Windows Media / 62Mb
Low Res / QuickTime / 65Mb

Thanks!

.

Here's a great example of what the article is talking about...

I recently used Bit Torrent to "legitimately" release two super high-res versions of a Halo 2 montage that I created (M$ let's us create these as long as we're not making money off of them, so, yes, this is still legit). The QT was 200Mb and the WMV was 300Mb, which were way too BIG to distribute via traditional hosting for someone on a budget (or even for someone with money to burn) because once they got posted on the homepages of the largest Halo fansites (which they did), the hosts and mirrors would simply get crushed in minutes (kind of like the /. effect). But with Bit Torrent, the more downloaders, the more seeds/peers, the better off everyone is (OK, this is entirely true because the tracker can start having scale problems, but you get the point). Without Torrent, I probably would have only been able to release the low res versions, but now everyone can see my WIDESCREEN vid in all of its glory. THANK YOU BIT TORRENT!

So that said, please help out my seeds by downloading my "Tainted Love: A Halo 2 Custom Gaming Montage" at these TORRENT LINKS:

High Res / Windows Media / 290Mb
High Res / QuickTime / 217Mb
Low Res / Windows Media / 62Mb
Low Res / QuickTime / 65Mb

Thanks!

.

OK, hyperbole comparing with middle earth, but have you checked out HBO? Those guys are either over-reading and over-immersed, or there really is a rich story. don't get me wrong, I'm not that deeply involved... besides, the Halo thing goes back to the days of Marathon - there's more than most people think...

I agree with the extensibility thing, if extensibility can be, to an extent, controlled.

OK, hyperbole comparing with middle earth, but have you checked out HBO? Those guys are either over-reading and over-immersed, or there really is a rich story. don't get me wrong, I'm not that deeply involved... besides, the Halo thing goes back to the days of Marathon - there's more than most people think...

I agree with the extensibility thing, if extensibility can be, to an extent, controlled.

Yeah. We've got plenty of time.

T-Minus 15.193792102158E+9 years. Give or take. Remember, "You are Destiny."

Yeah. We've got plenty of time.

T-Minus 15.193792102158E+9 years. Give or take. Remember, "You are Destiny."

On a slightly more serious note, the entire Marathon Trilogy has been released by Bungie. Download Aleph One and you're good to go. There are also a ton of extras available as well included higher resolution textures to flex your modern machine and even re-tooled musical tracks.

Brought back a lot of memories for me, and I'm actually enjoying re-playing it with the great new look.

On a slightly more serious note, the entire Marathon Trilogy has been released by Bungie. Download Aleph One and you're good to go. There are also a ton of extras available as well included higher resolution textures to flex your modern machine and even re-tooled musical tracks.

Brought back a lot of memories for me, and I'm actually enjoying re-playing it with the great new look.

The Evolution of Halo

I didn't wrote jet a games list, you can refer to the old list, because there are few differences. From the old list there are only few removal (Cube is the only important removal) and there are some new entries (like Wesnoth and TORCS!). I will rewrite the list soon, stay tuned!

Look again, there are .zip files on the page too.
http://trilogyrelease.bungie.org/

>FYI: Aleph One doesn't work with Marathon 1

That's right. However, get M1A1, which is Marathon 1 converted to Aleph One here:

ftp://ftp3.bungie.org/archives/mos.scenarios/m1a1. sit

works fine for me.

These really should be in the story posted on Slashdot itself. No good reason to link to another site first...

Marathon Trilogy Website with the downloads of the games and the tools. Also the FAQ.

Aleph One website with the Free software client which will hopefully be compatible with all three of the released games.