Destiny news found in court documentation !!

According to the LA Times newspaper, Bungie (the makers of Halo, if you've been living under a rock) is currently developing four “sci-fantasy, action shooter games” code-named “Destiny.”

This information was found in court documents relating to a case between involving Bungie's publisher, Activision. 

First thing I'll say is I'm glad (very glad) that MMO was not mentioned in the description of what Destiny is about.

The Destiny games are apparently set to be released beginning in the fall of 2013, followed by subsequent releases in fall of 2015, 2017 and 2019. So that's a well planned quadrilogy!

In addition, Bungie has agreed to create four downloadable expansions known as “Comet,” which will release in fall of 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2020.

Which sounds like Bungie is betting the farm that their content will sell and sell well.

Almost very interestingly, the contractual arrangements between the parties allow Bungie to invest "no more than 5% of its staff to develop an action-shooter prototype dubbed Marathon while Bungie remains under contract with Activision."

This strongly suggests that the original Marathon is getting a remake. This should make some fan boys very happy! I also wonder if this is the project that Marcus Lehto has been working on lately?

You can read the whole contract here!

A Wee Bungie Wrap Up

An original version of the Master Chief

Soooooo Bungie's Steaktacular / Last Hurrah Hump / Day came and went with several teams getting some meat out of the Bungie lads. Overall the win ratio went Bungie 48 The World 83.

The original Marathon game was released to Itunes. I had a short play, it's like Doom / Wolfenstein (though I'm not really sure what came first). I'll get into it proper on the bus ride to work... HBO reports how yet another influence this game had on the Halo series regards the first mention of a kind of Flood like being...

What next do Bungie have up their sleeve that they haven't yet mentioned to celebrate their anniversary?

Marathon Infinity Source Code Released

Marathon Infinity Source Code Released - download it here

Marathon Infinity source code to be made free by Bungie

Bungie are soooo bad ass now they are back to being an independent game developer - which works for us as they've announced today that Marathon Infinity is a) probably be going to released on the Ipad and b) the source code is going to be made free. When? Soon. 

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Oh and in a timely throwback, a fan developer is creating a Marathon iPad port, which is totally sweet! In honor of his hard work and serious fan dedication, we're going to do something we should have done a long time ago (but didn't because our legal counsel "forgot"). We're going to make the final title in our Marathon franchise, Marathon Infinity, open source. Just like that. Bam!

Look for a link to grab the source code soon.

The developer has also graced us with a quick interview detailing the trials, tribulations, and tasty primates he went through in order to get Marathon up and running on the iPad. 

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Here's some Q&A with with the developer:

Daniel Blezek is a pretty amazing character. You should get to know him. Not only has he devoted some of his precious personal cycles to bringing the Marathon experience to the iPad, it turns out - like most players of Bungie games - he's quite an interesting dude.

To learn more about the newly appointed Marathon Man, and to set the stage for the recently released Marathon for iPad, scan the terminal text below and conceive of the rebirth of a world.

Q. Who are you and what do you do?
A. Multiple answers to that question, so in no particular order... I am what was once called a "good family man." My beautiful wife and I are coming up on 16 years, and we have five beautiful children (from 12 to 3 months), and an affectionate dog named Quin. The gaggle of us love the outdoors, especially hiking and canoeing. We're going to Yellowstone for a family vacation this summer, and the older two boys and I are canoeing in Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area in the fall. During the day, my wife homeschools the kids and takes them on various adventures, while I put my time into developing GPU-based image analysis/processing algorithms for a large medical center. That keeps us all very busy. Nights and weekends turn me into an indie iOS game developer.

Q. Why did you decide to port Marathon to iOS?
A. I ask myself that all the time! I got started doing iOS development in my day job. I've always been intrigued with game development, and have written several different games for a variety of platforms, so naturally, I tried my hand on the iOS, porting a game with a friend. That lead to poking around with other projects. When the iPad was announced, I was between night-time projects, and had been playing through the Marathon trilogy. Playing with the iPad got me thinking about playing Marathon on the platform, and so the project was born.