Myth@Bungie.Org

News Archive for June 2001

Friday June 29th

Myth World Cup '98 pages re-posted { Lophan }

Some Loser from the mythwolfage.com site has posted a true "blast from the past" (if you will).

Freeze-dried from what some refer to as 'The Golden Age of Myth' is the Myth World Cup '98 page. Previously housed at PcParadox.com, Some Loser graciously uploaded it to the MWA site for posterity. Observe one of the (previously) "Mighty" Chris Butcher's most-ambitious contributions to the Bungie Community and what became the site that set the standard for all future Myth Tournaments.

The features of the site remain intact, including the films and commentary, as well as the pre-tournament features articles (authored by yours truly). If you weren't around during the Myth:TFL days, this is a good way to get in touch with what it was like "when we were young" :)

Thursday June 28th

"Alien - Dark Tide" TC Released { Forrest }

From Joyeuse of TMBM:

ALIEN - DARK TIDE, a superbly crafted Total Conversion from TMBM set in the ALIENS universe from the cult Sci-fi films, is now available to download at the mill. Featuring 12 new units, 5 new netmaps and a completely scratchbuilt environment, ADT is a fast paced action strategy game that straps rocketz to the original Myth and lights the fuse. Check out the website at http://clix.to/darktide.

Tuesday June 26th

An updated clan site, new TFL maps { claude }

And still MORE PR, this time from Deadman:

Although the MIA powers that be would have waited until the TFL servers are back up, the TFL community is as strong as ever right now and we decided to go ahead and release the news anyhow:

MIA has a brand new site, located at www.m-i-a.net. There you will find a community forum, news, and plenty of info about the order, not to mention downloads, films, utilities and such. We also have a Map Standard that is current and updated.

In addition, DeadMan of the MIA Cartography Brigade has released two all new TFL creations-- Valley of Ruin and DeadMan's Mire.

Valley is an incredibly large map, that features several variants to accomodate both team and ffa players. The map also sports varied terrain, beutiful scenery and converted Myth 2 units courtesy of Project MAGMA.

Mire is a small map intended mainly for slugfest, however it sports other versions as well. Coming in at just over a meg, it makes for a fast download and some great fun. Plenty of varied terrain, walls, lakes, forrest and open ground to fight on too. Mire sports an auto-kick on STB and is perfect for any slugfest tournament.

Here are some links:

Mything In Action- www.m-i-a.net
MIA Map Standard- www.m-i-a.net/maps
Valley of Ruin- www.m-i-a.net/valley
DeadMan's Mire- www.m-i-a.net/mire

Inside MWA { claude }

PR from Tuncer Deniz, Grand Poo-bah at Inside Mac Games:

Today Inside Mac Games has posted a lengthy and in-depth preview of Myth III: The Wolf Age, based on a recent visit to the MumboJumbo offices. Included are all new screenshots plus the first ever screenshots of the Trow Iron Warrior. Here's a little snippet from the preview:

To make Myth III on the insane schedule that MumboJumbo has bravely undertaken, Andrew gave me the secret formula: start with Myth II. Beginning with a fully functioning game, MJ's programmers have been replacing individual elements one at a time, improving and adding as they go, so that there is always a playable game at every stage of development.

One side effect of this development path has been to illustrate the remarkable difference between MII's sprite based units and MIII's fully 3D characters. For example, 3D trows have not been implemented into the game yet. So when I was shown portions of the game, I saw sprite Trow standing shoulder to shoulder with 3D thrall. The difference is astonishing.

Zooming into the sprite images resulted in ungainly jaggies and blurring, an inherent limitation in the technology. The 3D images, even at close range, were stunning by contrast. The expressions on the units' faces, the minutia of the details – one thrall missing a shoulder pad, another one with chunks taken out of his side – are a joy to behold.

http://www.insidemacgames.com/previews/view.php?ID=31

Monday June 25th

Legends updated again { Forrest }

Thanks to Asylum veteran David Bricker and his army of fantasy-novel experts, the Black Company link in Relics is back online, reformatted for easier readability and illustration of the connections. David is hard at work doing the same for all the other allusions and references pages in Relics, so we should see more of those links coming online Soon™. Lets all give him a big hand. Thanks David!

On a side note, I didn't much like the cheesy little scroll I did last night for the Legends sidebar, so I did a new one today, and it's much nicer IMO.

Yet Another Late Night Update { Forrest }

I'm delusional from sleep deprivation so please pardon this news post, but one of the artists I've been nagging to do that promised sidebar art, the venerable Hippieman working on the Pfhorathon Marathon scenario and also doing some textures and various other things for me... finally pulled through and got me a kick-ass paintbrush image for the sidebar in, um... some place else. Yeah. Not a new section of Myth@B.org, coming Soon™. (Remember, I'm delusional, I'll say anything right now!).

Mneh. Anyway, in touching up his image, I discovered the artist hidden within me. I decided to try my hand at the other ones. I've never tried combined sketch/photoshop work before, and my photoshop work has always been crap alone, and I never had a scanner to get my decent sketches into the computer... but now I DO have a scanner, and toying with dodges, burns, color shifts, and various transforms in Photoshop, I discovered the Ian McConville hidden inside me.

And after getting a few pointers from the REAL Ian, who hangs on Bungie.Org's Hotline server, I churned out two new images which now grance the sides of every Legends and Forums page. It's a shame there's only one Forums page, cuz I'm really proud of that feather. (Hrm, maybe...). I also touched up Gargamel's old sword image in Mythmaster Central, to fit with the overall theme better and generally show more of its true colors thanks to the Color Dodge tool in Photoshop.

Wyrd bless Adobe.

Thursday June 21st

Petition to Bungie Studios { Forrest }

Petition for the Transport of the Nation of Italy

Do you love Bungie?

Do you love Italy?

Are you just gonna stand by while Bungie refuses to move Italy?

So what are you gonna do about it!?

Sign THIS!


As a man of bona-fide Roman descent and a proud Bungie fan for the past seven years, I am apalled at their lack of inaction in the remedying of this serious inconveniance! How am I supposed to visit my family, some of whom must theoretically live in Italy? FLY over there and look them up in the phone book!?

Sign this petition, or I'll have Uncle Louie bust your kneecaps in.

Tuesday June 19th

'Son of Nightmare' OWNZ JOO! { Lophan }

Mythvillage.com reports of a new plug-in for you TFL Mythmasters who think "Legendary" difficulty is for whimps. Connor #CP# has released his latest plugin Son of Nightmare which kicks up the difficulty another notch from his previously released plugin Nightmare.

Conner is so confident of the 'kik u in da nutz' factor of his plugin that he has issued a challenge to all of you:

It's hard to gauge just how tough these are since I dug around in the scripting enough to really know the ins and outs of the levels. So, if you beat any of the following levels on legendary (and were NOT involved in testing), drop me a line at ttoddsnyder@yahoo.com - attach the zipped film if you'd like.

That's tough talk :) Are you up to the challenge?

Happy Aquisition Day { Forrest }

Yeah, uh... it turns out my "belated" Happy Aquisition Day was actually nine days early. TODAY is the one-year anniversary of Microsoft's purchase of Bungie and the sale of Myth to Take Two. So, go out and kill somebody in celebration mb.

(Note: Neither Forrest Cameranesi nor Bungie.org really encourage you to kill anybody, unless you really feel like it, in which case we recommend you try a nice bloody game of Myth instead of the real thing).

Friday June 15th

New Marathon Portal Site { Forrest }

Note Myth related, but B.org related: the new Marathon portal site has gone live. It's got all the same basic navigation as the old site, plus a few links that were hidden before (like the Marathon to UT and Marathon to Quake conversions), top-level links to the various Marathon forums and other Marathon sites, and most importantly, a centralized Marathon news page!

So head on over and get assimilated.
We are B.org. Resitance is futile. :-)

Thursday June 14th

New M3 Interview From MWA { Forrest }

C&P from Anony:

http://www.mythwolfage.com has posted a new interview with Scott Campbell (Lead Designer and Project Lead):

http://www.mythwolfage.com/features/interviews/docs/interview2.shtml.

Along with 3 BRAND NEW screenshots:

http://www.mythwolfage.com/features/interviews/docs/interview2/screenshots.shtml.

Tuesday June 12th

More Universal Updates... { Forrest }

As you will note, the section titles are now images of professionally kerned and spaced text featuring a nice soft dropshadow for your viewing pleasure. The footers for each section have also been updated to give credit to all the people who have worked on them over the years, and not just myself and Lophan getting all the credit on every page.

I'm still working on getting those sidebar images, and I might do something with the Legends headers later today...

(Update: It's later today, and I did some brand-spanking-new subsectional headers for Legends, and Mythmaster Central while I was at it. Go check 'em out and tell me I rox0r.
I [heart] Photoshop.)

(Second Update: You may notice that the space what used to issue the Myth Master's Challenge is something different now. If it's not, reload and it will be. If it is, reload anyway. We now have a cycling tagline. Thank Claude for MGI).

Monday June 11th

MacGamer interview and New Screens! { Lophan }

Thanks to warder who alerted us in the FutureMyth forum that MacGamer has posted an interview with Andrew Meggs (and I'm not telling you who he is). Lots of new info and some non-Myth related items (unless they're importing 3D cats as 'ambient life'). Here's a piece:

The new graphics engine is done except for some loose ends here and there, and we're moving on into gameplay and scripting and networking. This is where it gets tricky, because all these people are watching us so closely waiting to rip us apart if we screw up "their beloved Myth".

Sunday June 10th

Insanely Huge Internal Updates { Forrest }

Hello out there in lemur land!

Do you like the new header? Joshstar's famous tagline, "beware the lemurs", now bolder, redder, and in Arial (or Helvetica) for your viewing pleasure!

This is just one of the pleasant side-effects of the work I've spent seven hours last night and another three tonight doing, behind the scenes here at Myth@Bungie.Org. Click around on the navbar and you will quickly notice that every section of this site now features the name of that section where you see the Lemish One's Final Words on the index here. If you look really closely, you will notice that, in fact, all of the headers and footers have subtley - and sometimes not so subtley - been changed!

I've gone through and rooted out all of the old SSI gunk here, so you won't find any more non-functional site-search boxes and stuff like that. This also means that your .shtml link should be updated to .html versions, but thankfully Claude's happy happy fun time error script will automatically try the .html version of that URL if it can't find a .shtml, so no worries for you happy webmunkies linking to us.

I've also gone and made sure that all of the headers and footers share a common format, and linked their common elements to single Universal Header and Footer files, to ensure consistancy across the site and make updating them much easier... which will come in handy very Soon™.

The Misc section has been altered in not-very-noticable ways. The tables are now the nicer, more aesthetically pleasing ones used in Relics and Delusions. The "library" image formerly at the top of almost every page in there now only appears at the top of the page, as well. And the index/generic ribbons on right hand side have been replaced with Legends' war banner image (Legends now uses the generic ribbons, for the moment).

On that note, the biggest noticable change is Mythmaster Central, which has also had the huge recurring image isolated only to the front index. You will note that the footer has been altered to the more compact and aesthetic style of Legends and Lore, and includes a submit-films link to my email addy on every page of the section, akin to Legends' post-at-the-Asylum message. Along with this redesign comes the removal of the News pages (or at least links to them; all the old ones are still there). I've decided to confine all the site's news to this news index here.

Lots of little bugs I found all around in there have been squashed, too.

But wait, that's not all! There are more updates to come soon. First I'll be making sure the entire site has font faces defined so it doesn't look all wocky for those people who use BankGothic Lt BT Light as their default font (you know who you are, Astro).

The right-hand images for each section will be getting updates, a unique image to each section. The ribbons for the index and generic pages; the banner for Misc; a quill pen for Forums; an old scroll for Legends; Gargamel's kick-ass sword currently in Mythmaster; and a old wood-and-hair paintbrush for . . . something else.

Something bigger. Much bigger.

Coming Soon™.

(I'd also like to wish everyone a belated Happy Aquisition Day; yesterday was the one-year anniversary of Microsoft's purchase of Bungie).

Saturday June 9th

Jinn released to the world! { Freewill }

I must take a break from Chelsea kicking my a$$ to post some very welcome Myth news!

They say you can't rush perfection, and after what's seemed like years of development, the perfect has been released! Or so we hope :)

I don't have the actual PR announcement in my mailbox, but no matter.

The lovely and hard working folks at Vistacartel have released Jinn, a complete Total Conversion for Myth II: Soulblighter. The Vista team has members now working on Myth III: The Wolfage, so you can figure that Jinn ain't gonna suck! :)

It's one hefty mutha, at about 153MB compressed. It will COMPLETELY redesign the Myth II interface. That's quite a feat unto itself!

So stop hanging around here and visit the main Jinn page for a list of mirrors: Jinn: Better than Swiss Cheese

I had the pleasure of playing one of the early betas and it was a hoot. Go give it a try and chime in one of our forums if you give it a thumbs up or down!

Now what if *YOU* want to make a game like Jinn? Well, the folks at Vista have heard you and have also released one of their top-secret tools: Apathy. It's available from several different places. One of them being the Bungie.org Hotline server. Log onto hl.bungie.org and dig down these folders until you find "apathy 1.0b.sit": uploads -> uploads bungie -> uploads myth -> uploads myth II -> apathy 1.0b.sit

Have fun!

Wednesday June 6th

PR - Myth: The Great War { Lophan }

Good news for you solo-scenario fanatics! One of the premiere map making groups, the Cartographers of Myth, releases some info on their newest creation:

After almost a full year of work, the Cartographers of Myth are proud to announce Myth: The Great War. TGW is a seven (!) level solo campaign set 5 years before Bungie's Myth: The Fallen Lords, and features new units, new maps, new story, and a return to Myth: TFL style gameplay without sacrificing Myth II's improved physics engine.

The Great War is set for release in early-to-mid Summer of 2001. Check out the extensive preview page (periodically updated, of course) for more information, screenshots, and other stuff.

Monday June 4th

PR: new map 'Vivid' close to beta { Lophan }

Ahhh... nothing like a little PR to liven up your Monday. This from DeadMan of MIA:

Check it out... its called "Vivid". I put up a pic on my clan website, www.m-i-a.net, in the Community section.

Some info about the map: It's Carnage sized, with similar proportions of map elements (like the hill, etc.). A beta might be done in about two weeks.

That's one news item...

The other one is that www.m-i-a.net has undergone major reconstruction. I was waiting to post after b.net for TFL was back up, but Myth3 could be out by then. There's also a community forum there too.

Friday June 1th

Updated Myth: TFL FAQ posted { Lophan }

After much long toil and poring over details, Myth@Bungie.org has finally posted the newly updated Myth: The Fallen Lords FAQ.

Everything you could ever want to know about Myth's first incarnation is right at your fingertips, not only in the FAQ, but also within the volumes of pages of our Legends & Lore section, which has also been lovingly updated by our very own Forrest.

For the sake of accuracy and completeness, stop by and look it over. If you see anything that is wrong or could be clarified, please let me know and I'll make amendments as necessary, giving the contributors full-credit, of course! So stop by and check it out (after all, it's for posterity).

Antennahead updated with... Battlebots { Lophan }

Andrew Meggs' site Antennahead.com was updated a couple of days ago and he expounds on his trip to San Francisco for the Battlebots tournament. After seeing the action, he had this to say:

Overall, I'm feeling very inspired to go out and build my own robot now. Trouble is all the geeks I hang out with in California are heavy on the software talent and not so much on the welding and hammering. Not to mention the lack of garage space (all good things are created in garages) and a proper set of tools. Ah, to be back in Virginia and still working with Bill Conner.