During Halo's development Matt Soell (Bungie Studios) began a 
tradition of sending a Halo Update to the main Halo fan sites 
every Friday evening (except on holidays). 

It was an early form of community outreach and a forerunner to 
the TWAB (This Week At Bungie).

A total of 47 updates were sent out by Matt Soell beginning on 
October 6, 2000 and ending on October 5, 2001. Halo was released 
on November 15, 2001.

A full year of Matt's witty insights into the making of Halo 
and life under Microsoft's rule!

The book form of these updates "Dispatches by Matt Soell" 
was pulled from stores at the last minute. 'The best book I 
have read on game development in our time' wrote John le Romero.

One of Matt's Halo Updates contained a question about Doug Zartman 
which has puzzled Marathon's Story page readers for decades.

You can read it below.





MIME-Version: 1.0
Subject: Matt's Halo Update - August 24, 2001
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2001 17:59:37 -0700
X-MS-Has-Attach: 
X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: 
Thread-Topic: Matt's Halo Update - August 24, 2001
Thread-Index: AcEtAKUwdrYFlCzrEcG1Bi6DrGXK6A==
From: "Matt Soell" <tmsoell@microsoft.com>
To: <halo@bungie.org>
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 25 Aug 2001 00:59:37.0468 (UTC) FILETIME=[36710BC0:01C12D01]

I'd always thought that things would be clearer towards the end of
Halo's development cycle, but these days I struggle with a number of
disturbing  questions.  What's the real reason Joseph keeps a fish named
Admiral Tirpitz at his desk?  Why do those voices at the beginning of
the first mission in Halo sound so eerily familiar?  Why is Doug Zartman
obsessively reading the Marathon's Story page and looking for a copy of
Musashi's Book of Five Rings?  Will Marty ever stop screaming?  

Here are the few things I know to be true this week:

- We're doing a second and in some cases third pass on multiplayer
levels and textures, trying to make things look and play better.
Multiplayer-specific sounds ("Red Team has your flag" and so forth) are
now hooked up.

- This update was delayed for the better part of an hour while Chris
Carney and Mat Noguchi handed my ass to me over and over again on the
Boarding Action map.  Deep space, two huge ships floating beside each
other, teleporters and sniper rifles.  The map should really come into
its own once the rocket launchers are enabled.

- Tons of little graphical fixes...explosions look better, the pistol
zoom now has the same nifty blurring effect as the sniper zoom, skies on
many missions were improved and there's a slew of geometry fixes just
about everywhere you look.  Other artists are adding detail to the
levels with decals and objects...look for the bulletin board.

- Chris Butcher continued to solidify the framerate and also taught the
Jackals to use the overcharger on their plasma pistols.  The Bear made
vehicle-on-vehicle collisions work nicely.  Jason insisted that I
refrain from naming the CD he was listening to.

- We're testing and tweaking the tank's behavior in multiplayer.  And
there's at least one mission in the single-player campaign where several
of your Marine cohorts will hop a ride on the tank when you climb in to
drive.

- Tyson claims to have "subjected a voice actor to a horrible fiery
death."  Unfortunately I can't talk about the details until the statute
of limitations runs out.