The old, ugly, and buggy website that was home to all things HaloDev has been set ablaze, never to be viewed again. From the ashes rises the Phoenix (no, not that Phoenix), born anew.

Content is still being moved over from the old site (by hand, I might add) and some of what has already been moved over has been updated or improved. Updates are still in the process of being moved, but will have no changes. All of the original screenshots will be present, but now they're actually going to be organized. Both FAQ sections have been updated and expanded, so be sure to take a look at them once again. You can now actually contact us with the Feedback link in the HaloDev menu; the old Contact form was busted, so anything you've sent in the past ... six months or so never got to us - sorry.

But enough about the boring, old past; this site has some new features, too!

Developer Blogs (devblogs)

Each developer on the team is now proud owner of their own "devblog" where they can talk about what they're currently working on, how bad they are at Halo 2, carry on about them good 'ol days, and even tell you what color they painted their toe nails this weekend.

With the devblogs, we're aiming to keep it pretty on-topic, but off-topic posts are not out of the question and you should expect to see them. You'll be able to comment on each devblog post to get some interaction with all of us, which brings me to the next new feature.

Anonymous Commenting (is back)

We originally had this enabled on the old crappy site, but since the old site was "the old crappy site," it was hard to prevent spam, messages had to be deleted one by one, and there were no available comment spam-checking services available.

Now that we have the proper tools to prevent bot spam, quickly delete dozens of comments with a single click, and have every comment analyzed to see if it matches spam out there on the internets, anybody can comment on our content. Since we're nice enough to not force you to use the forums, we know that all of you remain mature when posting.

Around the Web

This is a pretty simple, but potentially useful feature. It's basically a place you can go to check out feeds from official developer sites for games Prometheus supports (currently only Bungie's site), the Halo community (select community sites), and our own community (the forums).

There's also a "Top Picks" section where we've handpicked content from the various feeds because it is noteworthy, interesting, or just plain cool.

Developer Quotes

There's now a block dedicated to displaying random, crazy comments made by the team. These comments are pulled from IRC, emails, and IMs; they are a catalog of the stupid, odd, witty, or downright strange things we've said at one point. Not a big "feature" of the site, but hey - it's new.

That about covers it for all of the new stuff that you, our anonymous audience, can currently see. Expect more features and more content in the future; we'll be experimenting with some stuff here in the near future.

Before I wrap this post up, I just want to drop a few names. Various cool images and renderings throughout the site have been brought to you by the skills of: Lightning, DocOctavius, and argrn. Thanks for helping and taking the place of my horrible art skills! No, seriously, you thought Mister Chief was scary ... count your blessings.

One last note: If you find any bugs with the site (and there will be some), please submit them through the feedback form in the HaloDev menu. Thanks.