Septagon Weekly Update - 2015/11/27: Sir, Finishing This Turkey

To those of you who are reading this State-side, I hope that you all enjoy your festivities and feasting. Recount what you've been thankful for throughout the year and be sure to save me some food. With that, welcome to another Septagon Weekly Update. This week we took the time to have a small chat with a member of the Installation 01 team, started the wind up to the holiday season with Refer-a-Friend, and gathered up some community events for you to check out. Sit back with your turkey and enjoy. [u][b]What's Going On in the Community?[/b][/u] In truth, very little. Most of the Bungie community is located in the USA and is the preoccupied with turkey and pie. Sorry about not having any gamenights or contests to share with you this week! Hopefully next week will be more lively. As many of you probably know, Refer-a-Friend has gone live! Have a friend interested in Destiny? Have you found a newly born Guardian out in the Wild or in the Tower needing help? Think about lending a hand. The [url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Clan/Forum/1358991]Refer A Friend Quest[/url] group has your back if you're in need of a Veteran or Referee. [u][b]Septagon Spotlight[/b][/u] This week, I had the pleasure of chatting with [url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Profile/254/2062634]Progo[/url] from the team building [url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Clan/Post/39813/175494443/0/0]the Halo fan-game [b]Installation 01[/b][/url]. If you haven't heard, Installation 01 is a PC Halo game made by fans of the series as a tribute to the franchise. Check out what he had to say on it. [quote][b]Q: Hello, Progo. Thank you for joining me for this. I'm definitely looking forward into picking your brain on your team's project. Would you mind telling the readers a bit about yourself and what you're here to talk about?[/b] Hello all. I'm a gamer, artist, and an aspiring biologist! I would like to tell everyone about a project I have been working on alongside playing Destiny and studying. The project is Installation 01, a Halo fan game for Windows, Linux, and Mac. [b]Q: That sounds like a very interesting project. Can you tell us a bit more about the game itself?[/b] Installation 01 is a fan game created by Halo fans from all over the world. The aim of this project is to be both an artistic tribute to Halo and a fun way to experience Halo on PC, free and legally. Our primary goal is to recreate the multiplayer experience of the Halo trilogy, bringing in features from all Halo games to make the ultimate multiplayer sandbox! Overall, it feels like Halo 3 so far. It's been challenging to follow the Game Content Usage Rules laid out by Microsoft (we have to make everything from scratch), but on the bright side it means we can share this game and play it in a completely legal manner! [b]Q: That's great to hear. Will this game have a price?[/b] Yeah, 3 easy payments of FREE :) [b]Q: Wow, that's a little steep. All joking aside, though, that's really great to hear. Obviously, this team isn't just you. Can you tell me a bit about the people you work with, what you do, and what they do?[/b] It's a lot of people, and the fluid nature of the group makes it hard to give out titles, but TheChunkierBean is our founder and creative director. I'm an assistant artist and I do PR things on the side. There are about 35 of us, most of whom are artists (2D and 3D) and programmers. Bean's studio, B-LiTE is supporting the project, but only a few of us are actually a part of B-LiTE. [b]Q: That's quite the team you've got there! It's great to see so many fans come together to create something like this. I know I'm not the only one who wants to see more. Any ETA on when the next information drop will be? Anything we should look forward to?[/b] We hope to get some more info out in the early months of 2016, and showcase some stuff in more detail than we got to in the trailer. I'm staying vague because we don't want to let anyone down. It's a big project, and we are gaining lots of new members rapidly from this big news wave. I think we will have great things to show off before too long! Look forward to seeing parts of the game not shown in the trailer we just released, and more refined art. [b]Q: All in all, it sounds fantastic. Is your team planning on releasing a Beta to the public?[/b] Yes! Our first public build will be out in 8-12 months. Whether it will be a beta or not is unknown, but we hope to deliver several maps and a solid arsenal of weapons. [b]Q: That's wonderful to hear! When all is done, or even with the Beta, where could we go to get it?[/b] Keep an eye out on our [url=https://www.facebook.com/Installation-01-154481851565448/]Facebook page[/url]. We are renovating our social media presence right now; more pages will be live soon™. [b]Thank you for that. I'll be sure to stay tuned. And thank you for joining me for this. I know many of us are looking forward to what your team has to offer.[/b][/quote] Are any of you looking forward to Installation 01's release? If you're curious about seeing some pre-Alpha footage, check out the video at the bottom of the post. [u][b]History of the Architects[/b][/u] There comes a time in everyone's life where they have to assess who they are and who they want to be. The person who is the topic of this week's history lesson did not do that. In truth, it's because he jumped straight in for the sole purpose of creating games that he wanted to play that Bungie is where it is today. Yes, I'm talking about the longest standing member of Bungie. The man who has been there from the beginning. Jason Jones. I've let our historian, Rollin, take the week off since it's Thanksgiving, so I'll be fielding your weekly lesson this time around. [quote]Let me paint the scene for you. The year was kind of a long time ago. The university was probably in Chicago? The subject was an artificial intelligence class. That was where our story begins. It was there that two star-crossed lovers met. Jason Jones, a budding game designer, and Alexander Seropian, an ambitious business mind, paired up and started the crafting of our beloved Bungie. With the classic titles of [i]Gnop![/i] and [i]Operation: Desert Storm[/i] paving the way for their future, nothing could go wrong. Except for the things that did. Despite his name being well known to those in the Bungie community, Jason Jones has never been the most outward of characters. Just ask your mother, he's been satisfying her since 1991. It hasn't been until more recently that he's done interviews with the likes of IGN and PlayStation since he's always been a figure in the shadows. Nonetheless, he is one of the foremost minds behind the creations a Bungie, a burden that few can bear. His brilliance has spawned such things as "-blam!-", both a code name for [i]Halo[/i] as well as a stylish swear censor, as well as having a wardrobe which entirely consists of shirts which features his games. And, you know, he led the development of a couple games or something. The question many of you might have on your minds is what does he do? Well, it depends, really. His position has evolved over the years. In the beginning, he was seemingly the person who ordered pizza. From there, he worked on coding for many of Bungie's main titles. Even when things got hard, he didn't take a passive position, instead getting down and crunching with the rest of the team. If I could sum up Jason Jones as a developer in a sentence, it's actually with something he had said to me. "I just want to make -blam!-ing fun games." Making games which are fun and that the developers would want to play is a core philosophy that Jason Jones has brought and imbued into Bungie. Mr Jones, here's to the future and what you bring to it.[/quote] [u][b]Do Guardians Hunt Turkeys for the City?[/b][/u] And this brings us to the end of another SWU. Thank you for joining me. Have any feedback for these? Suggestions? Recommendations? Sound off in the comment section. I'd definitely appreciate it. To all of you who are celebrating Thanksgiving, have a safe and pleasant time with those family members whose names you always forget (her name is Susan, by the way). To the rest of you, stop slacking off. You know there's something you need to get done. And sit up straight. You're going to have a bad back one day if you don't. Stay classy, community. [u][b]Question of the Week:[/b][/u] [b]'Muricans:[/b] What are you thankful for? [b]The better people:[/b] Not a question, per say, but I challenge you to make up an event for Destiny. [url=https://youtu.be/oehVmUDrmf4][b]Video of the Week[/b][/url]