Halo and Oni Updates

Bungie Software's Matt Soell has posted information about the progress of the developer's two big upcoming games, Halo and Oni, on oni.bungie.org and halo.bungie.org. According to Soell, Oni is currently at "beta 18," and the team is working on adding in the sound and voices to the cutscenes. He also said that Bungie plans to support the game with a special marketing project, although he would not elaborate. In terms of Halo's progress, the game's engine was recently reworked in order to give the indoor areas the same visual impact as the outdoor areas. The team has started working on the AI, and has also written a new rasterizer (the part of the graphics pipeline that adds textures and texture effects) to take advantage of the Xbox's DirectX 8 per-pixel shading capabilities.

For more information on Halo, take a look at our news archive. We also have extensive information on Oni in our preview of the game. Both games are scheduled for release in the first half of next year.