Halopedia:Bungie Weekly Update 04-01-05

This is the Bungie Weekly Update for April 1, 2005, written by Frank O'Connor. As the day was April Fools' Day, it includes the customary Bungie joke about their fictional Pimps at Sea game.

Bungie Update
A thousand playas ask,

Care to confirm the Pimps at Sea rumor from 1Up.com yesterday?

Yesterday, games site 1UP.com got hold of a story which was briefly posted, then hurriedly taken down from the website of a famous Hollywood trade paper. However, the story didn"t die away as quickly as we"d have liked, since someone apparently scanned a page from the print version, due to appear on newsstands this coming Monday. It detailed the acquisition of the movie rights to a less-well-known Bungie property, the still under development Pimps at Sea.

Pimps at Sea, for those unfamiliar with the project, is a light-hearted adventure/RPG, imaginatively combining the twin pursuits, pimping and piracy. A tale of Bling and Barnacles, it puts the player in the role of Sir Courvoisier, as he encounters rival pimps, playaz and piracy on the high seas.

Although the game itself remains under tight wraps, the movie rights are simply not ours to control. They, along with other intellectual property rights (action figures, clothing etc.), have been licensed to a privately held investment group headed up by two former Hollywood agents, B. Ackerman and Leopold Bloom.

Although stories that leaked yesterday hinted at the inclusion of Dave Chappelle, Paul Mooney and Michael Madsen, we can tell you that none of those three are currently involved with the project. Casting will be announced at the same time as the director, but initial shooting is currently slated for August.

We're going to be asked a lot of questions about this project, but the fact is that we simply don't know the answers. We had a series of characters, events and locations and a name for our game, and we"ve handed them over to a group we feel has the talent and vision to bring Pimps at Sea to the silver screen.

Since the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, the producers have given us permission to reveal some of the initial costume and design concepts from the movie. Note that some of the characters and action will take different paths from that seen in the game thus far. We should also note that the movie is intended for an adult audience, and as such will feature colorful language and situations Bungie does not necessarily condone.



Several readers ask:

Are you guys going to reset the stats when you fix cheating?

Not exactly. Thanks to the problems of archiving a massive database like that, we can't simply erase that data and start from scratch, so to even the playing field, we are simply going to rank players based on alphabetical order rather than game achievements. When the cheat fixes are implemented, players with gamertags beginning with Z will leapfrog to the top of the rankings, until subsequent gameplay sessions start to even things out. However, duplicate use of the character "x" is problematic - so if your gamertag is for example "xXMANGOSANSBOULESXx" then you will likely only be matched against levels 35 and higher for quite some time.

Tons of folks ask,

What are you guys doing to combat cheap combos?

Basically, the Battle Rifle will now only be available in Lockout. Larger levels such as Coagulation and Headlong will be switched to Swords only until we can find a better balance.

A Skilled Clan asks,

'We're an elite team, we play mostly custom games with MLG rules, but sometimes we go into matchmaking and totally own. Sadly, after we win, people are total crybabies, complaining that we're cheats because our levels are low (we're usually around 4 because we play so little on matchmaking) yet our skills are like, level 30. What can you do about crybabies?'

We're actually looking into that. In a week or two, a new option will be added to feedback called, "Weaksauce" which will allow superior players to complain about lamers. If a player is crappy enough, or our stats show enough missed sniper or rocket shots, we will ban the crappier players and make Live a better place for the kind of elite players who make it so challenging for everyone else. If this proves successful, there simply won't be any bad players.

Stewart asks,

Why was the Fuel Rod gun not included in Multiplayer?

Before the launch of Halo 2, we ran a poll asking if we should make the incredibly powerful fuel rod gun available in multiplayer. The poll thread quickly degenerated into a flame war between Pikmin and Devil May Cry fans, but the results were plain - folks simply didn't want it in there. By a margin of five votes for, four against.

Loads of folks ask,

What's your Gamertag?

It's "Mango" but none of you chimps can match my skills, so don't even think about challenging me unless you're wearing a diaper. My list is currently empty, because I've schooled so many monkey-clowns. So BRING IT.

Again, that"s "Mango" like the brightly colored, sweetly perfumed fruit.

Tons of folks ask,

How does your cheat fix address suspend modem cheaters?

Simple. If they do it more than once (obviously a person could press that button once by accident so we give them a single pass) we will send an update to their Xbox BIOS rendering their system unusable for a period of up to one year.

Sepulchre 12 asks,

Have you ever standby Modem cheated?

No need. Like all Bungie full time employees, if I'm losing, I can use a simple keypress to activate a "winbot" which is an AI controlled version of my player, which will usually, but not always win. It can track players with any weapon, not just rocket launcher, so my battle rifle bullets can actually follow players around corners. I can also throw flags about seven times further than normal. Don't bother looking for the keypress, it's simply not in your code. Bungie employees were each presented with a special "Poltroon Edition" of the game, signed by Bill Gates and The Rock.

And finally, Buddy asks, "What would Mister Chief look like when he's 64?"