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August 2003

August 2003 Archived News

News August 31 2003

Sunday Reading
Nine Fan Fiction pieces for you this Sunday:

• Chapter One: TF Resolution, by Blue Jaguar
• In Light of Destiny Part VI: Within Range, by Jinkaiden-XI
• The Probe, by Master_Chief189
• The Wasted, by Alpha Lance
• Halo Trilogy: Destroy the 'Judgment Day' (Chapter II, Part 1), by Alpha Lance
• Grunts & Spartans, by Alpha Lance
• Homeworlds II, by Mainevent
• The Ghosts: Silver Eagle Down(Chapter 1), by Sergeant B
• Derailed Part 3, by Dispraiser

Go outside after you read - beautiful day. (Well, it is HERE, anyway...) (Louis Wu 17:54:58 UTC) (permalink)

Long-overdue egg update
Wow. It's taken a LOONNG time, but the Easter Eggs page is finally up-to-date; two eggs (the Megg, and the Chinese seven on the pistol) have been added, and one egg (the Gametypes screen, as corrected by ZechsGX recently) has been updated. Dunno why I hadn't done this before... (Louis Wu 16:15:44 UTC) (permalink)

Serious Tactics.
Every once in a while, Serious Sam comes up in a discussion of what Halo is missing (due to its more-than-two-player full-screen coop play). Stuntmutt looks at what it DOESN'T have, in comparison to Halo, in today's One One Se7en. Ouch. (Louis Wu 02:00:07 UTC) (permalink)

News August 30 2003

That's just too long, man.
I'd have to say that this is getting out of hand. Luckily, it seems to be the last piece... Go read the rantings of Skavenger's feverish mind. You might scratch your head once or twice... but if you've spent ANY time at all on our forum, I guarantee you'll laugh at least a little. (Louis Wu 14:25:25 UTC) (permalink)

Dolbex dishes the dirt on Halo PC
The last Halo PC Fanstock participant has written up his experiences... and the wait was worth it. He wanted to include information that required the 2.0 beta of Halo PC - and he did just that. Go check out Dolbex's Fanstock and Beta Review! (Louis Wu 10:51:29 UTC) (permalink)

Newbie Goodie Hoardie
Today's Guest One One Se7en strip was originally posted in our forum... I'd have to say it would be funnier if it didn't happen so often to me, dangit. Thanks to Geeoff for pointing out my weaknesses. (Louis Wu 09:08:49 UTC) (permalink)

Saturday Stories
Fourteen Fan Fiction pieces remain after deleting the stuff that doesn't meet the basic guidelines:

• Homeworlds, by Mainevent
• Chapter Three: Stranded Eagle, by Blue Jaguar
• Elite Black Spartans [episode 1 the cruisers menace], by Marshall purewal
• A Marine's Tale: Vengeance is Mine , by pj-NYkr90
• Charge of the Grunt Brigade - Part One: Colonel, by Walker
• The Skull, by Walker
• The Flood: A Force to be reckoned with (Part 4), by crashedwarthog
• Nothing to Lose Part 1, by hornet34
• Derailed Part 2, by Dispraiser
• That�s my lucky number, by Wado
• Another ONI Black File: Halo � We Got There First: Part 8 , by Arthur Wellesly
• Defection: Part 1, by Zach Laskaris
• Halo Trilogy: Take Back What Belongs to Us (Chapter 1), by Alpha Lance
• And now all hell will break loose Part 1, by metallicafan

For those who didn't notice it - Wado's back. (Louis Wu 09:02:54 UTC) (permalink)

News August 29 2003

The toughest job you'll ever love
...wait, that's the Peace Corps. Never mind. It's Friday... so it's time for a Halo PC Weekly Update. This week, it looks like Sketch is doing the writing, instead of Michel Bastien - Michel is too busy helping get the game finished, and Sketch needed a break from playing Halo PC online, anyway. In fact, the update is mostly a recap of what worked (and didn't work) for him in gameplay. Get jealous, or file away the knowledge for future use... but whatever you do, go read it. (Louis Wu 22:35:52 UTC) (permalink)

He's gonna get SOOO wet...
New comic over at Halobabies.net... the Warthog Jump theme continues. Man, I feel sorry for 'Yomama... or whatever his name is. (mrsmiley pointed this out in our forum.) (Louis Wu 22:23:49 UTC) (permalink)

PC beta movie update
Eep - forgot to put this up earlier. Dan Chosich's Halo PC Beta footage (discussed here) has been moved around a bit. Currently, there are two mirrors each for the QuickTime and Windows Media Player versions:

• QuickTime (33 mb) at files.bungie.org and rampancy.net
• WMP7 (15 mb) at the Junkyard and files.bungie.org

If you haven't gotten a copy yet, grab it now... it's nicely filmed. (Louis Wu 21:21:39 UTC) (permalink)

Danger Canyon Shots at MS site
Continuing on their one-new-map-a-week schedule, Microsoft's Official Halo PC site has put up 5 new screenshots in the Multiplayer section, this time of Danger Canyon. You can get a good sense for the scale of the map, if you didn't have it already... take a look! Thanks to quickfire for pointing it out. We've gone ahead and added these to our Screenshots database, simply because we just brought it up to date yesterday, and I'd hate to begin getting behind so soon... (Louis Wu 19:56:20 UTC) (permalink)

The Countdown is on!
Gearbox's Project page, which was offline for a while this morning, is back up with a new screenshot (feel sorry for the Blue Base)... and a countdown of remaining work items left on Halo PC (before it can go gold). Total at the moment: 146. (That's not very much; I remember Oni's bug tracker had over 3000 items in it a week before it went gold. They weren't all bugs... but they were things that needed to be addressed.) Woohoo! Thanks to Sedgr for the heads-up. (Louis Wu 18:58:13 UTC) (permalink)

Me llamaron Lopez - La Pasado
Red vs Blue Episode 17 has been posted for Sponsors; it's pretty bitter, but in a funny way. Effects rock. Pay 'em the lousy 5 bucks and get it now, instead of waiting until Sunday (and then sending us email that we've forgotten to put up a Red vs Blue post for the week). C'mon... you know you want to. (Louis Wu 15:11:40 UTC) (permalink)

But when are they releasing the Overshield model?
Whoa. Buy a Halo action figure, get a free Active Camouflage Master Chief from Joyride. (Supplies are limited - and free means $5 for processing... but still!) Thanks to sirBoB for the heads-up. (Louis Wu 10:58:53 UTC) (permalink)

GTA: Vice Earthcity.
The GTA series of One One Se7en wraps up today... isn't that ghost a little big for him? (Louis Wu 04:53:06 UTC) (permalink)

And the clips keep coming
More movies - both free (streaming) and pay (downloadable) from IGN PC; 8 clips of Halo PC multiplay. A couple are pretty big suckers... check 'em out! Again, thanks to KookyBastard for noticing. (Louis Wu 04:47:38 UTC) (permalink)

News August 28 2003

Do I want to know what poutine is?
The second go-round of 'Ask the Cananimators', a Bungie.net feature in which anim8rjb and bentllama (the two Canadian animators on the Halo 2 dev team) answer your questions about animation, Canada, hockey, and life in general, has been posted. None of the sentences in the article are as long as the one I just wrote. Go read it. (And yes, I DO know what poutine is.) (Louis Wu 21:49:56 UTC) (permalink)

Making of the E3 Demo, pt 5: Engineering
Gah! How did we miss this? SketchFactor has put up part 5 of the Making of the E3 Demo series at Bungie.net - this one focuses on Engineering, and contains input from Chris Butcher, Michael Evans, and Damian (brought on board to work on the Halo 2 AI). It's a fascinating read. I'm drooling for Halo 2 again... even WITH the Halo PC info overload. (Louis Wu 21:43:35 UTC) (permalink)

Screenshots DB made current; 133 pics added
Whoa. Our Screenshots database has been updated with the screens released thus far in August - and the total number of Halo PC screens shot up from 70 on August 1... to 203 today. That's a lotta shots. (Louis Wu 21:34:04 UTC) (permalink)

Action Trip looks at Halo PC
Action Trip has posted a preview of Halo PC; not a huge amount of new info (and actually the hardcore among you will probably give them a hard time for some of their facts), but the screens are quite nice. 1600x1200, no watermark; there are 10 with the preview, and an additional 17 if you're an Action Trip Plus subscriber. Check it out! (Louis Wu 18:07:45 UTC) (permalink)

More Halo PC multiplay footage for grabs
Halo PC footage - downloadable for Insiders, streaming for everyone - is now available at IGN PC. Seven clips from Beta 1.5 - Timberland, Gephyrophobia, and Danger Canyon. Thanks to FoOKz for pointing them out. (Louis Wu 11:38:44 UTC) (permalink)

Hey, That's Not Funny.
Today's One One Se7en Guest Strip has -=d_dawg=- looking at Halo PC... I THINK I get it, but... (Louis Wu 08:55:40 UTC) (permalink)

We Grew Up Fast
The Juggler has sent in a new hacking movie - in the vein of BOLL's movies, but full of footage not seen before. Some pretty cool stuff. I think it's unlikely we'll be posting any MORE of this type of movie - but this one is definitely worth watching. Timing is great, and the music choice fits very well. It's available as a 480x360 QuickTime .mov, weighing in at just around 40 mb. We'd love mirrors; files.bungie.org won't be able to serve it alone. Update: The Juggler has got a copy of the movie on his own site, as well. Further Update: It's now mirrored at Rampancy.net, as well. (Louis Wu 08:46:44 UTC) (permalink)

You gotta wonder...
Xbox.com has put up a disturbing article about what friends might expect from you, Halo-wise. (Well, it disturbed ME.) Thanks to Tomass for the heads-up. (Louis Wu 01:18:58 UTC) (permalink)

He's like Columbus... only with less scurvy
Dark Helmet would like to stake a claim as the first visitor to the upper stories of the level Halo in Halo PC. (He actually sent in this pic (68K) last week, but it took a little time before we could get word from Gearbox about releasing it.) Yes, you can STILL get up there - though DH says the timing's a little different... (Louis Wu 00:14:33 UTC) (permalink)

Halo PC gameplay footage - on a free server
Yesterday, Dan Chosich released a rather large movie showing some great Halo PC multiplay, filmed in classic Chosich style. Well, even though the press coverage was a bit limited, the bandwidth spike hurt the Junkyard, who was hosting the film. Dan, ever the courteous client, went back and re-encoded the movie to be a bit smaller, and the Junkyard server is breathing a sigh of relief. You can grab a 480x270 QuickTime version (33 mb) or a 320x240 WMP7 version (15 mb) from the Junkyard - and we've tossed up mirrors of both versions (QT and WMP7) on files.bungie.org, to further lighten the load. Grab it while it's hot! (Louis Wu 00:11:24 UTC) (permalink)

Gamers Depot talks to Gearbox Honcho
Another Pitchford interview - and more screenshots - can be found over at Gamers Depot. Randy's pretty upbeat about wowing PC gamers, even though the Xbox version's been out for a while. He's also confident that the work Westlake is doing will allow Macs and PCs to play together... thanks to ash, who found it at Blue's News. (Louis Wu 00:00:20 UTC) (permalink)

News August 27 2003

Pitchford talks to WorthPlaying
Randy Pitchford continues his evangelizing of Halo PC - there's a nice interview up over at WorthPlaying.com. There's a tantalizing teaser that suggests that there may be more than tools released post-launch... go check it out. (Thanks to Madscientist for letting us know.) (Louis Wu 21:09:11 UTC) (permalink)

One One Se7en - now with more flavor
Many folks have complained about the navigation of the One One Se7en comic series. Hopefully, those folks will be satisfied with the newly added calendar; it doesn't supplant the original links, it simply gives you another way to get around. It should be relatively self-explanatory... but be sure to send us mail if you don't get it. (Louis Wu 20:37:35 UTC) (permalink)

Wanna be there when Halo 2 launches?
If you use Microsoft's Xbox Live service, you might want to swing by Xbox.com. Their newly revamped website now has a web side to Xbox Live... and if you link your Xbox Live gamertag to it, you automatically enter yourself in the 'Join. Play. Win.' sweepstakes - first prize is a pair of invitations to the Halo 2 Launch Party. Woohoo! Thanks to Major Tom and KP for noticing in our forum. (Louis Wu 13:20:35 UTC) (permalink)

Paint Job.
Today's One One Se7en is dedicated to Skavenger... for supplying the grape koolaid we all drink. Or something. (Louis Wu 02:22:16 UTC) (permalink)

Buried in words
Fourteen stories for you in the Fan Fiction section tonight:

• Chapter Two: Stranded Eagle, by Blue Jaguar
• Last of the Walking Dead - Part Three: Fire, by Walker
• A John Before Halo: The End Of VManJr. (Part 8), by J-117
• Last of the Walking Dead - Part Three: Fire (Continued), by Walker
• Private Johnson part 2, by Roo
• Last of the Walking Dead - Epilogue: Marine, by Walker
• Halo Trilogy: The Fight for Earth (Prologue), by Alpha Lance
• The Rise and Fall of the Flood Chapter 8, by BlackValkyire
• Spartan III's, Part II, by FOrunnER
• Derailed Part 1, by Dispraiser
• The Martinez Tales, Chapter II, Fun at the Beach, by stan
• Soldiers of Heaven: Chapter 2, by Sergeant B
• The Virus Part 7, by monitor101
• The Virus Part 8, by monitor101

Can you read 'em all before the next batch? (Louis Wu 02:17:53 UTC) (permalink)

New movie series starts at UNSC.net
Rgamer, a site we mentioned recently, has changed its name (and URL) to UNSC.net. They currently have an introduction to a new series from Ctrl Alt Delete Productions - it's called The Beginning of the End - Intro, and it's about 9 mb, in WMP9 format. If you want it, UNSC.net is the only place to get it. (Louis Wu 01:47:57 UTC) (permalink)

New (pay-only) Halo PC content at GameSpot
Gamespot has gotten into the subscriber-only-Halo-PC-movies game, along with Gamespy... There are 5 new films, totalling about 65 mb of QuickTime footage of Halo PC campaign play. Locked, unless you're a Gamespot Complete subscriber. Thanks to Strato for the heads-up. (Louis Wu 01:38:34 UTC) (permalink)

News August 26 2003

Massive new Halo PC vid at FilePlanet
Looks like Gamespy has put up an exclusive Halo PC Multiplayer vid - 141 mb, zipped, on FilePlanet. You can't download it if you're not a subscriber, though - I can't tell you what's in it. Thanks to ko0_ko0 for the heads-up on our forum. (Louis Wu 23:12:40 UTC) (permalink)

Now THAT'S pixel art.
PegNose, a regular on the Gamespot forums, created a slick animated gif (864K) showing the Master Chief in a pixel war with the Covenant. We've added it to our Miscellaneous Art section. It's really quite good. Thanks to Konrad9 for pointing it out. (Louis Wu 21:22:16 UTC) (permalink)

Don't Try This At Home
Master Chief looks like he made a little mess in Blood Gulch... new screenie over at Gearbox's site. No modding needed - that's stuff you can get right from the configure multiplayer dialogues. Whoa. Thanks to spesalfred for the heads-up. (Louis Wu 21:08:38 UTC) (permalink)

Woohoo! He says signal is going up!
A rockin' good time... The HBO Weekly Review has been posted. Save yourself from having to read 4600 forum posts... read this one instead. (Louis Wu 18:58:23 UTC) (permalink)

You and me, baby...
11 new dialogue snippets added to the Dialogue Databank, courtesy of Captain Spark. Some stuff I've never heard before... he's doing a wonderful job of finding the obscure bits. Check out the collection! (Louis Wu 12:29:01 UTC) (permalink)

MCCC Mirrors
Tec[H]noGeeK has mirrored Lion's Master Chief Casting Call (both the WMP and MPEG versions) - if yo'ure having trouble getting it from TruthandReconciliation.com, give this a shot. (Louis Wu 12:10:30 UTC) (permalink)

Elitist Views.
Today's Guest One One Se7en comes from Mikey Cd - it seems he has a bone to pick with BOLL. Poor MC... (Louis Wu 09:19:16 UTC) (permalink)

Halo PC's pistol, the definitive word
Many Halo Xbox players who've had a chance to try out Halo PC (including me) have commented that the pistol seems to be toned down; it's not the dominating weapon it is for Xbox players. Dave Mertz chimed in to a thread on the topic over at the Gearbox Forums with a definitive statement: "The pistol was not touched." It's the lack of auto-aim that gives the impression that it's not as powerful a weapon... and jayWHY, on our own forum, points out that you can test this yourself by attempting to shoot your own teammates on the Xbox version. (There is no auto-aim when your weapon is not trained on an enemy.) Good to know. (Louis Wu 08:42:31 UTC) (permalink)

Pics, pics, and more pics
Hot on the heels of the Wallpaper update, we've cleared out the Miscellaneous Art queue as well. There's a pretty wide range of stuff; comics, some very cool stylized logos, a beautiful pic of a machete-wielding MC, and a bunch of other stuff. Visit the Miscellaneous Art section for all the goodies! (Louis Wu 00:23:53 UTC) (permalink)

Master Chief Casting Call
TruthandReconciliation.com has posted a new movie - it's called 'Master Chief Casting Call', and it's about a couple of guys trying to cast a new Master Chief. They don't have a lot of luck... It's available from the site in two formats: WMP9 (18 mb) and MPEG (35 mb). It's 7:30 long. Go take a look! (Louis Wu 00:14:02 UTC) (permalink)

News August 25 2003

Very Late 'Paper
Wow. It's been 11 days since we've updated our art sections. We've received 11 desktop images in that time for the Wallpaper section. Sorry for the delay! Update: Make that 10. We've yanked one because it's a tweaked version of an existing wallpaper - the author went to the trouble of asking the original creator for permission, was turned down, and SUBMITTED IT ANYWAY. People - don't do stupid stuff like this. (Louis Wu 22:16:01 UTC) (permalink)

Fire Team Charlie is back online
Benny, from XboxOttawa.ca, lets us know that not only is the site back up and running (it has been for a few days now), but all the FTC vids are available there again (in both DivX and QT formats). They're working on the next episode... but if you missed any of the first six, stop by! (Louis Wu 21:30:58 UTC) (permalink)

More offsite Halo art
Mrguy writes to point out that there's some Halo artwork at this website - and if you visit the site's console gaming section, you'll find some lan party pics. Check 'em out! (Louis Wu 21:29:14 UTC) (permalink)

Halo takes best Xbox title in 2003 GAIA (German)
According to Marc, of Halo Universe, Halo has pulled down yet another award: this time, the VUD (German Entertainment Softwaer Association) has given Halo Best Xbox Game for the Games Awards for Interactive Achievement 2003. Not bad, given that it was released over a year ago in Germany! (Louis Wu 21:20:50 UTC) (permalink)

The weekend's stories
No Fan Fiction posted this weekend, due to too much Halo playing - here are the 19 stories that WEREN'T deleted:

• The Longsword[H & R 3], by Jillybean
• Soldiers of Heaven: Chapter 1, by Sergeant B
• Private Johnson, by Roo
• The Lost Colony Part Two: Orders, by xitWOUND117
• White Tiger is under attack!:A Marine's tale part 1, by Zak
• Shay's Rebellion: Down but not out., by Mainevent
• The Last Stand Of Humanity part 1 (new blood), by bloodsoldier3
• Another ONI Black File: Halo � We Got There First: Part 6, by Arthur Wellesly
• Another ONI Black File: Halo � We Got There First: Part 7 , by Arthur Wellesly
• Stranded at Home Part 6, by Dispraiser
• The Lost Colony Part Three: Welcomer of Destruction, by xitWOUND117
• Blue Squadron Chronicles , by Hunter_Killer
• A series of Wierd Events, Part Two, by Hunter_Killer
• The Rise and Fall of the Flood-Chapter 7, by BlackValkyire
• Alpha trilogy [part one], by Grey Wolf
• The Battle of Evermore Part 1: Ambush, by Gruntkiller
• Soldiers of Infamy: Part 1, by mr ninja
• Chapter One: Stranded Eagle, by Blue Jaguar
• Spectral Warriors: Prolouge, by Nightblade

Enjoy. (Louis Wu 15:48:27 UTC) (permalink)

Short vid from Saturday's carnage
Missed it last night - but it looks like Blackstar has put up a short video clip giving a taste of some of the gameplay at the Summer Slaying event on Saturday. (Handheld video, really dark space - and at the time it was filmed, only one of the two projectors in the garage (there were three, total, at the event) was running.) Heads-up goes to Rampancy.net, which has been doing a massive amount of updating recently - look around while you're there! (Louis Wu 13:58:50 UTC) (permalink)

Offsite Halo art
A bunch of Halo-related artwork over at Elfwood, including this comic, an interesting concept piece, a grunt, and a spoiler for those still waiting for Halo PC. (hehe) Thanks to Hamid Djangi for the heads-up. (Louis Wu 13:38:05 UTC) (permalink)

MXB gets a mirror
Tec[H]noGeeK has mirrored last week's MXB movie - there are boatloads of OTHER files at his site, too, you just need to register to see them. (It's free - he asks this so he can keep track of downloads.) (Louis Wu 13:32:05 UTC) (permalink)

R Gamer opens its doors
A new Halo site - R Gamer - has come online. The content is filling out... go take a look! (Louis Wu 13:21:37 UTC) (permalink)

PSA 3 up at RvB
I missed it yesterday, because we were pretty busy cleaning up... but Red vs Blue managed to resurrect the lost Public Service Announcement #3 from the failed hard drive, and it's now available to everyone (sponsors and regular visitors alike). It's pretty damn funny, on several levels. I nearly spit out coffee at the thought of a Milli Vanilli tattoo... (Louis Wu 12:52:28 UTC) (permalink)

UO looks at the Fanstock event
Tycho, from Unreal Ops (an Unreal fansite), came along on the Halo PC Fanstock event last week. He's posted his own impressions of the game (as well as three new screenshots, snapped from a beta build we were given) over at the Unreal Ops site. A nicely non-Halo perspective... go read it! (Louis Wu 12:10:18 UTC) (permalink)

Grand Theft Halo.
Ever since E3, I've been wondering how easy that Ghost hijacking trick's gonna be. Seems Stuntmutt's been wondering, too... check out today's One One Se7en. (Louis Wu 05:05:52 UTC) (permalink)

Don't you shoot that Ghost at me...
What happens when you drive your warthog too fast? Why, the wheels catch on fire, of course. (DivX and QuickTime formats, 15-18 mb.) Blood Gulch looks amazingly bleak... and the weapons mods are pretty hilarious. BOLL continues to turn out seriously entertaining hacking vids. (Louis Wu 04:17:45 UTC) (permalink)

My eyes are still burning.
Blackstar has put up a nice little photo gallery of yesterday's Summer Slaying lanfest here at HBO HQ. This screen says an awful lot about the skill of Geeoff; give him a pistol, you die. That simple. (I'm having trouble figuring out why SAAACK is 12th, though... I'm not 100% sure what they were playing there.) Comments can be found in this forum thread. (Louis Wu 03:26:59 UTC) (permalink)

The SkavMeister strikes again
A word puzzle was posted on our forum a few hours ago. It's not clear that the solution has been found yet, though folks have made quite a bit of progress... there some interesting stuff waiting for the first 3 correct answers, so give it a shot! (Louis Wu 03:10:57 UTC) (permalink)

News August 24 2003

Playin' Halo with Bungie and PA
Exogenesis dropped off a report from the Penny Arcade Game Day at Lanwerx yesterday. Sounds like it was a fun time! Update: there's a report from Randy Glass, too, on his Warthog Jump site. (News for August 24, in case it's scrolled down...) Turns out MANY of the replies in thread are from folks who were there; read the whole thing. (Louis Wu 16:56:26 UTC) (permalink)

BWF gets to Gearbox's roots
Very nice Randy Pitchford interview at Belgian Webgaming Forever (there's a Dutch version too). Great overview of where he came from, and what drives him to make outstanding games. Thanks to ash for pointing it out. (Louis Wu 15:30:45 UTC) (permalink)

Revoke that man's license!
Did you ever wish you could make the Warthog go faster? Check out BOLL's MonsterHog, and see why that might not be the best thing... faster speed, yeah, but much harder to control. (Louis Wu 15:14:27 UTC) (permalink)

CPL breaks down $30K
Beginning to scrape the sleep out of my eyes - last night ended at 3:30, and started at... hmm, about 9 pm the night before. Decent lanfest, except for melting the wiring in my garage... There's quite a bit of stuff to get to, but it's going to take most of the day to get to it. First up: CPL has announced its prize distribution for the Halo PC tournament at the CPL Winter Event; first prize is $9,000. More numbers and lots of links can be found in CobaltNova's forum post. Good money, if you're skilled enough... (Louis Wu 15:09:12 UTC) (permalink)

News August 23 2003

Slugs. They're all slugs.
So here I sit, surrounded by snoring lumps, trying to wake up the overnight guests for the Summer Slaying lanfest starting in about an hour... updates will be pretty sparse today. On the bright side, though, there'll be a LOT of Halo playing. (Louis Wu 12:17:38 UTC) (permalink)

MC's Back.
Today's Guest One One Se7en was drawn by Andrew Katz, and attempts to match Stuntmutt's style pretty closely. (It also tips a hat to RvB.) Check it out! (Louis Wu 05:42:20 UTC) (permalink)

That looks like fun, actually...
Woohoo! A new Halo Babies has been posted (#6) over at Halobabies.net. Check out what happens when you try warthog jumping with water balloons... thanks to the heads-up from mrsmiley in our forum. (Louis Wu 00:36:00 UTC) (permalink)

A Dogfight by any other map would fly as sweet
Gearbox has swapped out its dogfight-on-Death-Island screen that was posted this morning with a much wilder (and never seen before) shot of Banshees dogfighting on Gephyrophobia. WAY cool. (Hmm... wonder if the comment I made earlier had anything to do with this...?) Kudos to Fein for noticing. Update: Hehe - rule number one: never let your ego get too big. cartesian over at the Gearbox forums noted that the two Banshees in the first shot were on the same team... a far better reason to swap the pic out. (Louis Wu 00:06:41 UTC) (permalink)

Microsoft focuses on Gephyrophobia
As mentioned by Sketch in the Halo PC Weekly Update, the Multiplayer section of Microsoft's Halo PC site has been updated with 5 new screens of Gephyrophobia. One thing I noted to a few people was my impression that the bases in Gephyrophobia have an Unreal Tournament feel to them... lots of pillars and ramps. Well, one of the new shots gives you a chance to see whether I'm out of my mind or not. (Louis Wu 00:05:30 UTC) (permalink)

Another Halo PC update at B.net
The second Halo PC Weekly update was posted a couple of hours ago on B.net... Michel Bastien, having taken up residence in a refrigerator in the back rooms of Gearbox's Plano offices, sent in an exciting report describing... well, mostly playing a lot of Halo. Tough life the guy's got! (Louis Wu 00:03:15 UTC) (permalink)

News August 22 2003

RvB - potential snag
Just a heads-up... The Red vs Blue team had a hard drive failure last night, and the current work is (at the moment) unreachable. They've got hopes for it, and in any case it's only the most recent work; all past episodes are doubly backed up on DVD. To tide over Sponsors, there's a trailer for a movie Buzby and Matt did a few years ago posted in the Sponsors forum. (Makes me want to find the whole thing...) Everyone else... just sit tight. (Louis Wu 16:03:07 UTC) (permalink)

MXB hacks Halo
We just got word of a new Halo movie, made by Stephen of MXB, showing off some hacking stuff. (Mostly projectile switching, but also some vehicle spawning, and the like.) It's all based in Blood Gulch. It's 6:26 long, in WMP7 format, and weighs in at a tad over 10 mb. It's hosted by MXB. (Louis Wu 14:00:30 UTC) (permalink)

New Themes, New People
4 new themes have been added to the 7th Column roster - you can make your Chapter over in one of three Halo-related themes (Shotguns is pretty cool), or (my favorite) a 7th Column theme known as Euphoria Station. SketchFactor also managed to slip in the information that there are two new members of the Bungie Online Team - Claire and Zoe (last names and handles were not included). Welcome aboard, from your dedicated fanbase! (Louis Wu 11:10:32 UTC) (permalink)

Friday FF
9 stories in the Fan Fiction section today:

• Swamps, Marshes & Keyes [H&R 2], by Jillybean
• Anathema - Chapter 3, by Bloodcider
• Halo: White Battleground (Trailer/UPDATED), by ShadowWolf Forsythe
• The Rise and Fall of the Flood chapter 6, by BlackValkyire
• The Lost Colony Part One: Severed Contact, by xitWOUND117
• Operation Rubicon, Part 1, by Jim Jo
• Stranded at Home Part 5, by Dispraiser
• Halo 2: Revenge of a Spartan, Chapter 9, by LostRock
• The Last Stand Of Humanity part 1 (Greetings Humans), by bloodsoldier4

A couple of these came really close to being rejected for lack of proofreading... folks, put a LITTLE time into presentation, okay? (Louis Wu 10:51:50 UTC) (permalink)

More screen mirrors
A couple more mirrors for the Fanstock screenies - Sector 7 has put them up, and so has Tec[H]noGeeK. They're spreading... this is a good thing, for bandwidth reasons. (Louis Wu 10:41:45 UTC) (permalink)

I need a Red Baron Skin - stat.
Gearbox has put up a new screenshot on their Halo Project Page for your viewing pleasure... some banshee dogfighting goodness. (It's a bit like this shot, posted by Gamespot about a month ago... except bigger. And better framed.) Thanks to illuminati`FoOKz for the heads-up on our forum. (Louis Wu 09:48:26 UTC) (permalink)

But does it run away?
Hehe... Hamid Djangi points out a Suzuki concept car that sort of resembles... a Grunt? Bizarre. (Louis Wu 09:05:12 UTC) (permalink)

One One Fif7y.
Whoa. Has it really been that long? Stuntmutt's One One Se7en celebrates a milestone, of sorts - episode 50 is posted today. Say hello to his little friends... (Louis Wu 09:00:54 UTC) (permalink)

That would totally look hot in my garage, dude.
Check this out - Wraith has added another (the last?) vehicle to the list of pilotable craft. (The Longsword is still a holdout, but I'm doubting there's a real model of it in the game... well, maybe in the final cutscene.) Original movie is his - I just made it small. Too bad its gun doesn't seem to be controllable! (Louis Wu 02:27:27 UTC) (permalink)

Leave No One Dry
lol - I BET they didn't get Bungie's permission for this one. (If you can't see it, it's because they yanked it - drop us an email.) Thanks to WortroW for the heads-up. (Louis Wu 02:20:26 UTC) (permalink)

News August 21 2003

Action Figures begin to show up
Pyxl writes that the Master Chief action figure is beginning to show up in some locations. "Some stores in West Virginia had them as of yesterday and those of us with 'Suncoast Video' stores will probably see them at the end of this week or early next." No word on other action figures, or the Warthog, though. (Louis Wu 17:13:15 UTC) (permalink)

Have a Nice Day.
The Junkyard's Spotlight series continues with a view of Matt 'mrsmiley' Dunn, the man behind the halobabies.net website and the (as yet unposted) Halo Fanfest Documentary. Check it out! (Louis Wu 10:37:25 UTC) (permalink)

That Grunt head rocks.
Wow... these costumes are great. Cosplay.com has put up a bunch of pictures from Comic Con International, held last month in San Diego... and one group came as Halo characters. Nekomusume has kindly linked to all four relevant pictures in this forum post. (Louis Wu 10:27:02 UTC) (permalink)

The power of words
13 stories for you today in Fan Fiction:

• Halos and Rings - 1, by Jillybean
• RedWireDew - A Halo Comedy, by Dispraiser
• Longsword Landing, by xitWOUND117
• CORRUPT [3], by GLADIATRRR3000
• At ONI..., by xitWOUND117
• Spartan III's, Part I, by FOrunnER
• An Officer Named Starblade: SPARTANs Awake, by Hunter_Killer
• Long time gone part 3, by grylsy
• Survival or Death: Episode I, by Sergeant B
• Bunker on the Beach, by Steve
• The 7th Column Part 1, by The 2
• SNIPER, Part Three, by Vege7a
• The Seeping: Tales of 2 Pilots Pt. 2, by Gruntar

It don't stop... (Louis Wu 10:12:31 UTC) (permalink)

Just takin' her out for a spin...
Hehe - what happens when you swap the wartog model for a pelican one, instead? You give Foehammer a smoke break. (The 4.1 mb QT movie is mirrored by Break Point, as well, if c0ld's bandwidth is running low...) It's pretty funny how the marines don't like it much... (Louis Wu 10:04:09 UTC) (permalink)

forum.pl
One One Se7en's guest strip for the day is by nof... and holy moley, I think that's ME he's making fun of! Nah... This might be a good time to mention that while guest strips for One One Se7en are welcomed (Stuntmutt's tickled by the interest), you should send them HERE, not directly to Stuntmutt. His poor Yahoo account can't handle the overload. We show him everything before it goes live; he's gotta approve the guest strips. (This isn't directed at nof, who posted this particular strip in our forum... it's a general comment.) (Louis Wu 09:59:52 UTC) (permalink)

More homes for luscious screenies
Three new mirrors of the new screenshots we posted yesterday have popped up - Rampancy.net, BPHalo and TruthandReconciliation.com. Always nice to have the bandwidth hit spread around! Update: And another one... Cortana.org puts up their copies. (Louis Wu 02:07:26 UTC) (permalink)

Forum Fanstock writeup moves to PC IGN
Hehe - almost didn't notice... firestorm225's Fanstock writeup has gotten a new, more prominent home; it's now an official IGN PC article. (As of this writing, it's not Insider-only.) Take a look! (Louis Wu 02:04:53 UTC) (permalink)

News August 20 2003

Screenshot Mania!
The participants of the Halo PC Fanstock event held last week at Gearbox have posted their thoughts, and possibly pictures taken during the day... but we all promised you new screenshots, and now, thanks to Gearbox, we can deliver. Check our Fanstock Screens page - there are 12 gameplay shots, 14 hi-res GORGEOUS shots of the new levels Gearbox has created, and 12 shots of the new Rocket Hog in action (including one side-by-side shot with the LAAG Hog). Whew! Update: They're up at Subnova now, as well. Other sites coming soon! Update 2: Blackstar, of Blackstar Productions, has also put these up. (No, he wasn't there. Yes, we're thrilled that they're being mirrored.) If you have trouble viewing them here, try there. (Louis Wu 21:45:19 UTC) (permalink)

Halo PC ad surfaces
Jamirus99 sent in a scan of a full-page Halo print ad that appeared in the September issue of Maximum PC. We've added it to our Halo Ads collection. You can also see it by itself; Jamirus99, unwilling to wait for a front-page mention, also posted it in our forum. (Louis Wu 19:38:18 UTC) (permalink)

How fast can YOU run?
BIGwooly writes to point out that the project he started several months ago, Halo@LightningSpeed (first mentioned by us back in November), is fleshing out nicely. The 7th Column chapter devoted to the project (getting through Halo, level by level, in as little time as possible at Legendary difficulty) now has database entries for every map in solo - and many in Co-op, as well. If you're interested in contributing to this collection, stop by to read the guidelines, and get to playing! (Louis Wu 16:04:15 UTC) (permalink)

XBC Southwest Tournament Saturday
Pulser writes about an online tournament being held over XBC on August 23rd. The catch - you have to be a resident of California, Arizona, Texas, or Nevada. Check the web page for more details. (Louis Wu 13:36:41 UTC) (permalink)

PC footage
FilePlanet has posted a large (158 mb, zipped) 'Exclusive Halo [PC] Single-Player Gameplay Video' movie. (Quicktime format.) It may or may not be worth your time, downloading... it's basically just single-player gameplay on the level Halo. Because it's 640x480, it doesn't really show off much of the new graphical goodness of the PC version (you could get a movie like this off a hi-def connector on the Xbox). If you'd like to see some more multiplayer footage, Dinky has posted a third part of the footage he collected at GenCon last month - you can find it in the movies section of HaloJuggaloProductions. Quality's not as good... but content is more interesting. (Louis Wu 13:25:59 UTC) (permalink)

C&C Halo mod in progress
Dispraiser points out his Command and Conquer mod - you can see the latest models on his webpage. (Louis Wu 12:03:48 UTC) (permalink)

Eurogamer looks at Halo PC
Eurogamer had representatives at the Fanstock event, as well... and have posted a preview of Halo PC. In general, they were very, very happy with what they saw. I wish I could say I was good enough to spot this on Gearbox's Project page... but it took the sharper eyes of Tankramp, over at BGH, to do that. (Louis Wu 11:52:56 UTC) (permalink)

If you read only one post...
I take the day off... and Weekly Review decides to post on time. Nice. Go read it... does a nice job of summarizing last week. And then some. (Louis Wu 11:13:12 UTC) (permalink)

Plenty of Opportunities
End of a long, long day... no Halo PC shots yet, but hey - we've got the next episode of One One Se7en for you! Interesting take on a tactical choice... (Louis Wu 02:58:14 UTC) (permalink)

News August 19 2003

When you're out, you're out...
Okay, so today it's a good bet that we're going to receive screenshots from Gearbox to go along with our Fanstock writeups. Unfortunately for me, I'm out all day today. I'm writing this note so that my mailbox doesn't fill up with dozens of 'D00d - wHERe @re THe 5Cr3En$hoT5?' messages. You can find them, likely, at any of the other sites that have writeups. And they'll be here, tonight. Just not right now. Thanks for understanding. (Louis Wu 11:41:46 UTC) (permalink)

Text Offerings
9 stories for you today in the Fan Fiction section:

• The WildKats chapter 1: Casualties and Prep, by Vindicare_Assassin
• New Recruit - Part I, by Chumley
• The Plaza, by The Scribe
• A Sieries of Wierd Events, Chapter One, by Hunter_Killer
• Draco Part 2, by Dispraiser
• Buried Treasure(7), by Frensa Geran
• In Light of Destiny Part V: Reine, by Jinkaiden-XI
• Last Fortress - Deep Strike (Chapter One), by Mike
• The Last War, Chapter Four: The Survivors, by Agent Shade

Read, till you can read no more! (Louis Wu 10:31:21 UTC) (permalink)

Ooh... pretty base
bikeman704 has begun work on another Counter-Strike map; it's not a replica of a Halo level, but it IS inspired by Halo. Check it out! (Louis Wu 09:24:45 UTC) (permalink)

Gamespy's Fanstock coverage goes live
Another Halo PC article - this time from Gamespy (hey, these guys I remembered to mention!). Nice writeup - absolutely worth a read. Plus, there are 25 1024x768 screenshots - some the same as the CVG shots released yesterday - from the first 4 single-player levels (but all of Gamespy's come without a watermark). Go read! (Louis Wu 08:58:12 UTC) (permalink)

Hacking can be really pretty.
Once again, BOLL delivers the video madness. His latest vid is called 'Bah'. It was created as an accompaniment for dmauro's 'How to make a Warthog Fly' tutorial (down, now, but the basic content is here), but it took longer than he'd expected. Worth the wait, though... 3:15 long, 320x240, available in DivX or QuickTime. You can grab his original QuickTime (20.8 mb) or the DivX version (21.6) from his forum post... or you can conserve a bit of his bandwidth, and grab a re-encoded QuickTime from us (same quality, 6 mb smaller). The Ghost battles have to be seen to be believed. (Louis Wu 08:57:24 UTC) (permalink)

Welcome Aboard.
Wanna see the new Rocket Hog in Halo PC? Go visit Gearbox's site. (Okay, it's not a great pic for seeing the new details... but forget that, because it's a pretty awesome pic all by itself.) Thanks to CobaltNova for the heads-up. (Louis Wu 08:47:28 UTC) (permalink)

Multiplayer map tips solicited for strategy guide
Doug Radcliffe, the guy working on the Halo PC Strategy Guide, stopped by our forum for a 'home stretch' request... he's now looking for multiplayer map tips. (He's especially interested in tips for the smaller maps; Blood Gulch and Sidewinder are already nicely represented.) Tips should be mailed to him, because time is of the essence. (Louis Wu 08:39:14 UTC) (permalink)

Echo 413 comes online
The Invisable O points out Echo 413 (huh?), a new Halo site. (Louis Wu 08:26:38 UTC) (permalink)

MC Revealed.
The 'write a guest strip for One One Se7en' craze continues - Aginor tosses his hat into the ring. Literally. (There are now enough guest strips that we can run One One Se7en daily for the next couple of weeks.) (Louis Wu 08:15:37 UTC) (permalink)

HomeLan Fed looks at Halo PC
HomeLan Fed's John Callaham stopped by Gearbox's offices during last Saturday's Fanstock event - you can read his impressions in this article. My bad for forgetting he was there! (Louis Wu 08:07:51 UTC) (permalink)

iGames Summer Season Regionals
If you've been playing along in the iGames Summer Season, it's time for the Regional event. Competition takes place on August 30; check the list for the location nearest you. Thanks to Ernest Miller for the heads-up. (Early registration gets you goodies - worth a look!) (Louis Wu 08:04:53 UTC) (permalink)

Roleplaying Halo
Simpsons Rule reminds us of a website called Halo Attack - it's a forum-based Halo RPG. Not for everyone... but if this sort of thing interests you, stop by and join in! (Louis Wu 07:58:21 UTC) (permalink)

News August 18 2003

Pitchford talks to CVG
Computer and Video Games has interviewed Randy Pitchford; the man's amazingly consistent. (I mean that in a good way - I HATE it when what I hear, off the record, from someone and what I read in a public interview don't match up.) There's some interesting stuff in there - Randy's left the door open for a bot patch, and he's pretty much closed the door on a PC port of Halo 2 (at least as far as he knows)... but mostly it's worth reading because he loves his work, and it shows when he talks about it. There are also 20 new screenshots - mostly Pillar of Autumn and Halo, solo play, but they're awful sharp... Thanks to Dan Chosich for posting a notice in our forum. (Louis Wu 21:35:08 UTC) (permalink)

HBO's Fanstock Report goes up
Better late than never, right? HBO's official coverage of the Halo PC Fanstock event is now online. It'll be updated over the next several days with screenshots... and it's possible that the text will be tweaked, but it's up now. Hopefully, it'll provide you with a little info that didn't make it into other writeups. (Louis Wu 20:48:12 UTC) (permalink)

E3 Demo Trailer on OXM disc
It's been mentioned several times now, but 2 cents just reminded us that we'd never put it on the front page. The September issue of the Official Xbox Magazine contains the E3 Demo Trailer on its companion DVD; if you haven't seen it in 5.1 Surround Sound goodness, here's your chance! (Louis Wu 17:23:00 UTC) (permalink)

Happy Landings.
In a record fourth straight day of One One Se7ens (the guest strips are coming fast and furious, so this record might get broken tomorrow), Stuntmutt finishes off the 3-parter started Wednesday. (I'd like to apologize; Stuntmutt submits several strips in series of three, which makes sense, since the strip is posted three times a week. Somewhere back in the early days, I screwed up... and instead of starting on Monday, they start on Wednesday, which wreaks havoc on the continuity. Apologies to everyone.) For those who don't get this one, hit the 'prev' link to see the setup. (Louis Wu 11:28:43 UTC) (permalink)

Monday Morning Words
Fan Fiction has been building a bit, since nobody was around to post it while I was in Texas. Here, then, are the 13 stories from the weekend.

• The Last War, Chapter Three: Reinforcements, by Agent Shade
• For the Ancients, by xitWOUND117
• In Light of Destiny Part IV: The Art of War, by Jinkaiden-XI
• Shay's Rebellion: Boarding Action, by Mainevent
• Back to Jevan: Part 2, Streets of Jevan, by SpartanMX
• On A Pale Horse: Last Resort, by Silent Hunter
• The Rise and Fall of the Flood Chapter 5, by BlackValkyire
• Last Fortress - Introduction, by Mike
• First Contact; Chapter 5: War in Space, by retsamolah
• Stranded at Home Part 4, by Dispraiser
• The Martinez Tales, Part I: Martinez, by stan
• The Rise of Humanity: Chapter One, by The Master of Disaster (Kaboose)
• Episode Four- Things Get Harder, by Spartan117

Get to reading! (Louis Wu 11:23:25 UTC) (permalink)

Yet MORE Fanstock pics...
Dark Helmet has added 13 photos to his Fanstock writeup. I'm starting to feel like a slug... (Louis Wu 01:29:17 UTC) (permalink)

More Fanstock coverage
Forerunners.org sister site Cortana.org, which is positioning itself as a Halo PC Map and Mod Database, will have continuing coverage of the Fanstock event from Steve Campbell. Steve's photos can be found in a Fanstock Photo Gallery over at Rampancy.net - including some photos of the newly remodeled Rocket Hog. (Official pics of this vehicle will be released by Gearbox, in glorious hi-res, in the not-too-distant future... but Steve felt you couldn't wait.) (Louis Wu 00:16:21 UTC) (permalink)

Halo PC Shishkafied
Another Fanstocker heard from: Shishka posts his (rather voluminous) thoughts over at Subnova. Lots o' pictures, lots o' facts... if I don't get something written soon, nobody's gonna read it, because it's all been said before! (Once again - screenshots of the game in action are coming later; we'll all have access to them. Everybody's gonna have updates.) (Louis Wu 00:04:29 UTC) (permalink)

CGI Halo movie of Longest in the works
Mic Fedusenko is working on a CGI Halo movie - a multiplayer match on Longest. It's just at the beginning stages... but if you check out his gallery, you'll see a couple of shots of the work in progress. Should be fun! (Louis Wu 00:01:37 UTC) (permalink)

News August 17 2003

BGH puts up another Fanstock article
Dark Helmet has added his two cents (well, more like 75, actually - he wrote a LOT) to the Fanstock Impressions collection. Stop on by Battleground Halo to read it! (Read it slowly... the man's tossed quite a bit of humor in there, but it's easy to pass over if you're looking for Halo PC nuggets...) This writeup has some nice descriptions of the 6 new maps. (Louis Wu 20:33:51 UTC) (permalink)

More Fanstock thoughts at Forerunners
I said earlier that the first report from the Halo PC Fanstock was posted on the IGN messageboards... that's not strictly true. Steve Campbell, of forerunners.org, has put a bunch of info (mostly in thoughtbites) up on Forerunners' main page. There'll be a more complete report coming later... but there's some good stuff there now. (Louis Wu 19:47:45 UTC) (permalink)

Random media, he says. Whoa.
More boatloads of screenshots and movies from BOLL, based on his hacking explorations... there are some amazing shots in here. Check 'em out! Narcogen has made thumbs of all of 'em, over at Rampancy.net, for your easier browsing pleasure. Update: Break Point mentions that he, too, has mirrored the shots (with thumbs). (Louis Wu 16:02:31 UTC) (permalink)

Halo PC Fanstock - the reporting begins
The first fan report from Halo PC Fanstock has been posted - firestorm225, a forum regular at IGN has put up his impressions in the IGN PC boards. Unfortunately, it's an Insider-only board... if you're not an insider, we may have an alternative for you soon. And expect reports from the other participants (including me) soon! Update: firestorm225 has posted a similar report on the AllOutGames forum - no Insider status needed. Check it out! (Thanks to scottws for the heads-up on this.) (Louis Wu 15:59:22 UTC) (permalink)

Keyes Loop, indeed
Halo Babies #5 was posted on Friday... I missed it for being out of town. Check it out, though... it's pretty funny. (You won't get it if you didn't read Fall of Reach.) (Louis Wu 14:32:45 UTC) (permalink)

Who's Quaking Now?
No guest strip for One One Se7en... because we've got another Sunday Strip for you from Stuntmutt himself. Yet another way Sarge is NOT like Kenny... (Louis Wu 13:49:52 UTC) (permalink)

News August 16 2003

Last Halo PC note of the night...
Dan Chosich noticed that Microsoft's official Halo PC site has 5 screenshots of Death Island, the Silent Cartographer-inspired level in Halo PC. I don't think I knew there'd be Scorpions on the level... (Louis Wu 08:21:15 UTC) (permalink)

Touche.
Another guest strip for One One Se7en... this one from Traumatised Marine. It's a growing phenomenon... (Louis Wu 07:57:32 UTC) (permalink)

Halo PC details from Bungie, too
More Halo PC goodness... Michel Bastien wrote up a 'state of the game' bit for bungie.net, and SketchFactor added some interesting tidbits about the beginning of the PR juggernaut; read the whole shebang for yourself! Now I REALLY need to go to bed. (Louis Wu 07:51:06 UTC) (permalink)

New Halo PC screen from Gearbox
Whoa. It's almost 2:30 am, local time, and I'm pretty beat... Halo Fanstock started with a fantastic dinner at Randy Pitchford's house this evening. (His wife has a killer wine collection...) Before I go to bed, though, there's a new screenshot posted at Gearbox's site; it's called The Sniper, and it shows... well, a sniper on Death Island, the inspired-by-Silent-Cartographer net level in the upcoming Halo PC. Thanks to Uukla the Mok for pointing it out on our forum. (Louis Wu 07:26:18 UTC) (permalink)

News August 15 2003

Signing off...
News will be slow for the next... well, bunch of hours. I'm headed for the airport, to hop on a plane to Texas and attend Halo Fanstock, a Gearbox/MS event taking place tomorrow. Report, of course, to follow... (Louis Wu 15:17:22 UTC) (permalink)

Poor Sir Dan
We haven't posted a new movie for you to watch in some time; partly, that's because bandwidth has been really tight since Mythica went offline in late July (though it should be back soon...), and partly it's because there haven't been a lot of submitted movies. However, there was one in the queue from mid-July that never got posted - we figured we'd put it out there now. This was an early effort by Athol Productions (makers of Enter the Matrix, Blair Witch Halo, and other enjoyable Halo vids). It's called 'Sir Dan is a Newbie' and it has Mike making fun of his brother (who, he says, is actually quite good in reality). It's 2:04 long, 7.7 mb big, and in WMP7 format. It was a 'personal video', but several friends convinced Mike to release it publicly - I'm glad they did. It's pretty funny, and production quality is quite high. Enjoy it! (Louis Wu 14:31:03 UTC) (permalink)

2003 Rockets on Prisoners Awards
CobaltNova has posted the results of the 2003 Rockets on Prisoner Awards for best Halo movies... winners get cash, courtesy of That Weasel, and a Bungie Prize Pack, courtesy of Bungie. As an amusing side note, I voted with the majority in exactly... zero of the categories. :) Looks like I'm outta sync with the Halo movie-watching audience! (Louis Wu 14:19:06 UTC) (permalink)

Unbelievable!
Twelve new dialogue snippets added to our Dialogue Databank for you today, courtesy of Captain Spark. Comin' up on 600 entries... (Louis Wu 14:05:24 UTC) (permalink)

Small People Have Less to Lose
stan writes to point out a new clan site, The Rabid Lilliputians. (It was up yesterday, but loading times were horribly slow, so I passed on mentioning it. He's fixed some html, and things work better now.) They're having an art contest... take a look! (Louis Wu 12:47:40 UTC) (permalink)

Killtacular!
Killtacular.com, a website devoted to the upcoming Killtacular Classic iGames Championship, is back open for business. The event is on for September 27, with $5000 in prizes on the line. Registration info coming soon... check this out! (Louis Wu 12:18:44 UTC) (permalink)

Maybe you should try listening slower.
Red vs Blue has posted Episode 16 for sponsors; Buzby and gfunk will be at QuakeCon this weekend, so the general release will likely not be early. (That means, if you want to see this before Sunday afternoon at the earliest... go give 'em some cash.) Donut's back... and I'm pretty happy about that. (Louis Wu 12:09:34 UTC) (permalink)

Wow, it doesn't stop.
24 hours since the last Fan Fiction update... and there are another 11 stories. You guys write too much.

• Its Just One of Those Days (Prologue: 04), by Elfster
• Here Goes Nothing..., by PreacherCain
• The Alliance: Part One, by pooman
• Answers (Halo2: Chapter 10), by Shadowrunner
• Anathema - Chapter 2: Elysium City Stakeout, by Bloodcider
• New Lunar HQ: Chapter 2, by Fleet Admiral
• Last of the Walking Dead - Part Two: Arrival, by Walker
• Episode 2- The Spartan's, by Spartan117
• Episode 3- Who Said Being Human Was Easy?, by Spartan117
• Halo: The MCconto Chronicles 8, by JCDenton
• Thoughts of a Marine, by stan

See what you can read before the next outpouring... (Louis Wu 12:07:39 UTC) (permalink)

Bang Goes That Idea.
Hehe - he did it. He actually did it. (Check out One One Se7en.) Eeeuwww. (Louis Wu 02:42:32 UTC) (permalink)

News August 14 2003

Halo (and Halo 2) goodness at Lanwerx
Lanwerx, a gaming center in Washington state, is hosting a Halo event in their Bellevue store on August 23rd. (It's being put together by the boys from Penny Arcade, so we've received mail from a dozen people giving us the heads-up about it...) Hijack mentioned it on our forum, and SketchFactor clarified what the 'bit of Halo 2' mentioned by Gabe will be:

We'll be playing through a live version of the E3 demo and possibly bringing another surprise.

Sounds like if you're gonna be near Bellevue next Saturday, Lanwerx is gonna be the place to be! (Louis Wu 21:48:13 UTC) (permalink)

A beer in a tree
Last month, we mentioned that Bungie had set up a database whereby you could submit questions to the Cananimators, the two Canadian animators on the Halo 2 dev team. Well, the first installment of their answers has been put up, according to SketchFactor... it's a very funny read. There's even some useful animation information in there. (Louis Wu 19:37:42 UTC) (permalink)

The Word Flood Continues.
In an attempt to keep those 20+ item lists off the front page, here's today's Fan Fiction:

• A John Before Halo: Part 7, by J-117
• The Seeping: Tales of 2 Pilots Part 1, by Gruntar(aka LALA)
• A Marine Named Peters: From One Crash To Another, by GLADIATRRR3000
• A Grunt's Hope, by stan
• Battle for Sigma Octanus, by Cire117
• Episode One - The Spartan, by Spartan117
• Mutant Chronicles : A New worrior, by CrazyIvan2X
• First Contact; Chapter 4: Planning, by retsamolah
• Episode 2: The Spartans, by Spartan 117

It's been 24 hours... (Louis Wu 12:12:21 UTC) (permalink)

Still more pictures
And 12 new desktops for you, too, in our Wallpaper section. The artists never stop! (Whoever created the Halo Band image in our uploads folder - we need identification before we can post it.) (Louis Wu 09:56:26 UTC) (permalink)

Catching up on artwork
A week's worth of Miscellaneous Art, ranging from comics to parodies to a printable gameboard. Sorry for the delay on some of these... (Louis Wu 09:19:08 UTC) (permalink)

The One One Se7en effect grows
A couple of weeks ago, Stuntmutt forwarded the beginning of a collection of Guest One One Se7en strips, submitted to him unsolicited by fans of the comic. There hasn't been a lot of time between that day and this... but finally, the first Guest Strip has been posted, courtesy of Loose Cannon. With any luck, they'll continue to be added. (There's no schedule for the Guest strips, just as there's no schedule for the Sunday strips. The weekday strips will continue to be posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.) (Louis Wu 00:01:44 UTC) (permalink)

News August 13 2003

Comin' outta left field...
For the first time in months, the Bungie Research Center Archives has been updated with a new image. Hmm... (Louis Wu 18:58:23 UTC) (permalink)

That's CAPTAIN Big Green Yucky Balloon To You.
C'mon, tell me you've never thought about it... One One Se7en goes where most of us don't really WANT to go. (Louis Wu 16:37:40 UTC) (permalink)

Too many words...
The last Fan Fiction update was on Sunday - and now there are 24 new stories for you to read.

• Halo- The Fallen Place pt1, by Darth Lord
• All Roads Lead To Sol...Despite What The Map Says: Chapter 10, by S7N
• A Marine Named Peters: Sledding is Fun, Unless the Covenant Are Behind You, by GLADIATRRR3000
• True Purpose: The Sequel, by Frensa Geran
• The Last War, Chapter One: Self-Aware, by Agent Shade
• SNIPER: Part-Two, by Vege7a
• The Sarge, by pooman
• Rampancy Is Character Forming: Part 3, by S7N
• Draco Part 1, by Dispraiser
• War for Earth City [2]: More of an Enemy Then You Thought, by Kancer
• An Officer Named Starblade: Onward to Earth!, by Hunter_Killer
• Search for Chief part one edited, by Legend Player
• The Last War, Chapter Two: Futile Pleas of Help, by Agent Shade
• Halo: The MCconto Chronicles 6: The Phrophecy, by JCDenton
• Halo: The MCconto Chronicles Part 7: The Meeting, by JCDenton
• Rampany Is Character Forming: Part 4, by S7N
• Earth, A Place for Death. Part 6: Helping out the Chief, by FuManChu
• Rebirth - The Ragnarok, by Shadow/Archangel's Blade/KnightmareWolf/Spartan415
• Chapter 1 - Boot, by Bloodcider
• Marines are fighting this war, not Spartans-Prologue, by Michael Gillespie
• War for Earth City [3]: Not Much of a Friend, by Kancer
• The First Battle of Sol Part One, by Joseph Themann
• Legiment To My Marines, by Spartan117
• The Fallen Chapter 4 Section 4: Power Regulation, by Hikaru-119

I hate writing personal notes in news posts, but the email included with Hikaru-119's posts bounces. PLEASE: If you're writing a series, INCLUDE THE SERIES TITLE in your posts. I'm really, really tired of resetting this. (Hikaru-119 seems to be the only author who still doesn't get it...) If you have a problem, or something doesn't work for you, write to me. I can't fix what I don't know about. (Louis Wu 16:26:42 UTC) (permalink)

Weekly Review Reviews... um, the Week.
A little late... but nonetheless appreciated! The Weekly Review has been posted on our forum. Fewer nuggets than usual, due to the overwhelming flood of Hacking posts this week... but there was still some good stuff! Check it out. (Louis Wu 15:57:20 UTC) (permalink)

Work of art, people.
25 dialogue snippets have been submitted in the past week - apologies for taking so long to process them. New Grunts, Sarges, and Marines... check 'em out in our Dialogue Databank! (Louis Wu 05:04:02 UTC) (permalink)

I call Knievel jumps on Boarding Action!
Well, dang. Vehicles on almost all Multiplayer levels. (Blood Gulch and Sidewinder left out because they already have vehicles, and Longest left out because "trying to get the vehicles to MOVE was impossible, especially the tank." (I think I still would have liked to see ghosts in there...) (Louis Wu 04:24:48 UTC) (permalink)

People who fly in glass Longswords...
Hehe... folks have always wondered what's under the MC's helmet; the final cutscene shows him removing it just before the camera moves out of range of the window, tantalizing you but not actually showing you anything. c0ld vengeance and BOLL teamed up to build you some X-Ray Glasses... and it's pretty surprising what you find. (Louis Wu 04:00:30 UTC) (permalink)

News August 12 2003

Hogs... WHERE?
Well, he can't drive to save his life, but he's a pretty dang good hacker... Pfhorslayer has made a small (2.2 mb, QT) movie showing warthogs on Hang 'em High. We've put up a local copy of it, because his bandwidth won't hold out. A novelty item for sure! Update: Macegac has provided a mirror, as well. (Louis Wu 22:04:23 UTC) (permalink)

Another screenie from Gearbox
Gearbox has posted another screenshot - this one of a Load Game screen. Very, very nice - games are now saved by how far into them you are, and you don't overwrite the last one by starting another. Tasty! Thanks to Uukla the Mok for the heads-up. Update: Very cool - a Gearbox employee explains (on their forum) what the screen is showing you. It should definitely excite some of you... thanks to Uukla the Mok for finding it. (Louis Wu 20:24:38 UTC) (permalink)

More Halo Sites
Two more Halo sites for you: Halo Production and Team Kill. And the parade goes on... Update: The folks at Halo Production have run over their bandwidth, but have provided a second link. (Louis Wu 17:20:03 UTC) (permalink)

Halo PC footage, captured at GenCon
Dinky stopped by our forum with some links to Halo PC gameplay at GenCon last month. Movie hosting is provided by the Junkyard - thanks, guys! Update: Dinky has put up new mirrors for part 1, part 2, the single player footage. Also, Jake at the Junkyard points out that they're only hosting the single-player footage; Dinky's handling the original multiplayer links. Update 2: No sooner had I written this than Jake wrote AGAIN, saying that there ARE now versions hosted at the Junkyard. So: Follow the original link for the HJP copies, or visit the Junkyard's Halo movies page for MORE mirrors. (Louis Wu 15:37:24 UTC) (permalink)

Chupa-thingys everywhere...
Halo gets a mention in yesterday's Ctrl+Alt+Del comic. Thanks to Spenser for the heads-up. Update: S7N points out that there are many Halo-related Ctrl+Alt+Del strips - like, for example, this one from January. Browse the archives for more! (Louis Wu 15:14:38 UTC) (permalink)

New Skins Made Easy
eXentric has created a Map Editor for editing hacked Halo maps (to create the sorts of fun toys folks have been posting for the past few days). Some rather draconian rules had to be laid down on our forum recently, covering what is, and is not, acceptable to discuss in reference to this topic; luckily, eXentric has set up a forum for discussion of Cartographer (the editor) over at Xbox-Scene. Check it out! (Louis Wu 12:35:49 UTC) (permalink)

News August 11 2003

I kinda like the Marty one...
Been a week since we put up any desktops - here are 16 that have been submitted for the Wallpaper section. There's still a bunch of art in the queue, but it's going to have to wait... (Louis Wu 17:55:02 UTC) (permalink)

iGames tourney this Saturday
For those who didn't remember, there are several dozen iGames centers around the US that will be hosting a 2v2 Tournament (it's a Summer Games Divisional event) on August 16. Thanks to Nick the Roadie, who wanted more people to come to the one in Buffalo, NY. (Louis Wu 16:40:29 UTC) (permalink)

Please Read The Egg FAQ.
You people all remember Bungie's Caption Competition - come up with a cool line, and Bungie would include it, as an egg, somewhere in the game? Well One One Se7en took a look at it today... (Louis Wu 14:25:11 UTC) (permalink)

We're pretty far from the TV, dude...
Skavenger_s7 continues his tale of mayhem with She can have the TV... a funny read, especially if you know something about our forumgoers. (Part 1 was here, part 2 was here, if you missed them.) (Louis Wu 13:54:26 UTC) (permalink)

News August 10 2003

Win a gaming computer, Halo
Interesting in winning an Alienware Area-51 Ultimate Gaming Machine PC... or some cool Halo schwag? Stop by The Gamestop/Alienware Sweepstakes, and enter today! (Prizes to be awarded in 2004.) Thanks to Strato for the heads-up. (Louis Wu 18:13:11 UTC) (permalink)

Sidewinder Saga comes to an end
Bummer. MIssed this yesterday - thanks to Blade for the heads-up. Sidewinder Saga, an ongoing story from Halogamers.com in the genre started by Red vs Blue (but with a different focus), has closed its doors. Dave writes that he's just bored with Halo. And so it goes... (Louis Wu 18:06:28 UTC) (permalink)

A homemade MC
You folks might remember Chris Bryan. He makes some kickass Halo-related stuff (both in traditional and digital format)... well, he's turned in another impressive tidbit. He's not very happy with this one:

I found this little test render here from the animation I did for class.
Its really short, and the timing is bad.. I animated this with a 300MHz PC and an old FireGL 1 card that ran Maya at 10-12 FPS on with an empty grid, NO GEOMETRY!

With all that negative press, you might think the actual render stinks... you'd be dead wrong. Check it out: 9 seconds long, QT format, 640x480, about 1.3 mb. Wouldn't it be cool to use this system to make a Halo movie? (Louis Wu 14:35:09 UTC) (permalink)

Stories for those who read
The hacking madness continues in our forum - welcome to all the new people; the forum has seen a quarter of a million pageviews in the past 24 hours, which is significantly above its normal traffic. If you're interested in all the funkiness, stop on by and read a few threads. In the meantime, though, we've got normal content for you... to start with, Fan Fiction:

• SNIPER: Part-One, by Vege7a
• Halo: Mercy, by ssj9000chilango
• Rampancy Is Character Forming, by S7N
• The Ambush, by Cire117
• Execution of the Mind: The Flood Virus, by MadJackal
• Rampany Is Character Forming: Part 2, by S7N
• The Ballad of Reach, by Gasmask
• The Fallen: Chapter 4 Section 3: Through the Woods, by Hikaru-119
• War for Earth City [1]:Only the Beginnning, by Kancer
• In Light of Destiny Part I, Chapter III: Truth (continued), by Jinkaiden-XI
• Sergeant Johnson/ Master Cheif Story Part 1, by grunteater
• In A City of Chaos, by The Scribe
• Operations Crew Tango Red: Retreat and Reunion, by Shinai Purugganan
• Its Just One of Those Days: 04, by Elfster

Apologies to all the art submitters... I've been really, really far behind on all that stuff. (Louis Wu 14:19:36 UTC) (permalink)

News August 9 2003

Happy Hacking Mirror Madness
Okay, okay... due to some oddnesses, there are now THREE QuickTime versions of BOLL's Happy Hacking video. There's a 15.8 mb, 320x240 version - medium quality. There's one that's 18.3 mb, 320x240, high quality. And there's one that's 400x300, 26.9 mb, high quality. You can find The smallest one at C.O.E.R.C.E. and Team Ice, as well as BOLL's server. You can find the smaller screensize, higher-quality version at BOLL's server and files.bungie.org, a new bandwidth source we've brought online. And you can find the larger version also at BOLL's server and files.bungie.org. Enjoy! (Louis Wu 22:18:25 UTC) (permalink)

That's it. My brain's all over the wall.
I've run out of expletives. Check this thread. (There IS an Engineer model in the game... I'll be damned.) (Louis Wu 11:27:43 UTC) (permalink)

My heart's gonna explode.
Okay, I lied - it's ALMOST time for bed. First, a new Halo PC screenshot, straight out of Gearbox - the flamethrower. Wonga. (Thanks to KookyBastard for noticing.) (Louis Wu 03:07:16 UTC) (permalink)

The Kobayashi Maru Approach
lol - he just won't stop. When Halo first came out, one of the earliest disappointments was that there didn't seem to be any way to get a flyable Banshee on the level Halo. You could (if you were lucky) knock an Elite pilot out of his craft... but you wouldn't be able to get in. Hopes rose again when Halo Hacking first hit the scene... until it was discovered that even after bumping an Elite, you couldn't climb into a Banshee. BOLL wasn't willing to give up, though - he's used Pfhorslayer's replacement hacks to swap Foehammer's first Warthog on that level for a Banshee... and THAT, you can fly. Is it time for me to hack my Xbox? (I think it's bedtime... too much excitement for one day.) (Louis Wu 02:59:18 UTC) (permalink)

Friendly Fire
mrsmiley points out that the newest strip of Halo Babies is up over at Halobabies.net. #4 looks at what happens when marines get overexcited... this strip rocks. (Louis Wu 02:50:56 UTC) (permalink)

When Rockets are Cheap...
Okay, so BOLL decided to run with the info he learned yesterday about hacking Halo... and created a 4:42 long look at some of the absurd (but oh-so-cool) things you can do now. Want a LAAG gun that shoots Master Chiefs? You got it. How about rapid-fire rockets? Heck... how about plasma grenades? This has to be seen to be believed. So here's the deal. BOLL's put up three different copies for you to grab; they're all 320x240, and the same length, they just differ in compression:

• QuickTime (high framerate, 19.7 mb download)
• DivX (29.8 mb download)
• QuickTime (higher quality, lower framerate, 22.5 mb download)

In addition, I re-encoded the first version to be quite a bit smaller, without much loss of quality; you can grab the re-encoded version (15.7 mb) from two places:

• C.O.E.R.C.E
• Nick's Server

To make matters even MORE confusing, BOLL is in the process of uploading the original (1.6 GB) version to our ftp folder; once we've got it, we'll create one or two QuickTime versions. One will be the same filesize as the existing movie (~15-20 mb), but much higher visual quality, the other will be larger (both filesize and screensize). If you only want to download once, you might want to wait until tomorrow. This one is a must-see; even if you're not excited by the hacking scene, it's a hoot to see how much damage you can do when you're standing in a tower of 3 dozen master chiefs and your assault rifle fires frag grenades... Update: Nick yanked his mirror last night. However, Team Ice has tossed it up; you can grab it from this page. (Louis Wu 02:33:25 UTC) (permalink)

Screens are just old
Update on yesterday's new screenshots at 3DCenter - according to SketchFactor, they were using a pre-beta build of the game (something that really should not be done when writing a review of a game about to be released, especially without explicitly announcing that's what you're doing). The lack of detail is NOT attributable to the video cards - it's attributable to a game that's not ready for prime time yet. Disregard any speculation on my part about what Halo PC will look like on lower-end video cards. :) (At least until next week...) (Louis Wu 02:19:06 UTC) (permalink)

News August 8 2003

Spotlight on a new webmaster
Mhaddy points out that the Junkyard's Spotlight series continues with a focus on Bluestone, webmaster of the new 343 Guilty Spark website. Swing on by and check out what makes him tick! (Louis Wu 19:53:56 UTC) (permalink)

FTC vids avialable again - both DivX and QT
For folks looking for FTC vids, now that XboxOttawa.ca is offline, Team Ice has uploaded QuickTime versions of all 6 existing movies at this point, and will be adding new movies as they're released. (They of course have the DivX versions as well.) Go get 'em! (Louis Wu 19:25:06 UTC) (permalink)

Halo action figure update
Ouch! We missed a Bungie.net update - and one that's important to a number of fans! Yesterday, SketchFactor posted a note about the availability of the upcoming Halo action figures - it contains a list of some of the major stores that will carry these. Check it out - the release date is drawing near! (Brandon, on our forum, pointed it out. I missed the email from b.net yesterday.) (Louis Wu 19:01:08 UTC) (permalink)

German Halo PC Preview (with new screens)
3DCenter, a German gaming site, put up a Halo PC preview last week; Kooky Bastard found it for us today. It contains 15 new screenshots (serious spoilers, for anyone keeping track), and shows what I think are the first shots we've seen that demonstrate how the graphics scale down on lower-end graphics cards. The shots are at 800x600, and are missing some bumpmapping/reflection mapping that we've come to expect - but they still look pretty good! (The cards used in the testing PCs are all decent... but not DirectX9 cards, and now you can see what that'll mean for you.) The preview, unfortunately, is in German, which means I have no idea what it says. If you read German, though - check it out! (Louis Wu 18:51:08 UTC) (permalink)

One For Randall.
Hehe - good thing that Warthog is indestructible... today's One One Se7en is posted (on time!). (Louis Wu 16:05:54 UTC) (permalink)

Let's try this again.
Once upon a time, there was a major Halo site known as Haloplayers. (They were big enough to be in the rotation for the original Halo Updates.) In early 2002, they went through some bizarre problems, and reemerged as Realhaloplayers.com. Again, they ran into trouble... but in late February, 2003, they came BACK online. And in early March, disappeared again. Well, Barak says they're back, for good. He's got a new site design, but needs some help fleshing out the site. (After all, they've got a few years of content to catch up on...) If you're interested in joining the team, Send Barak some email - or look for him on #haloplayers on irc.quakenet.org. (Louis Wu 16:01:06 UTC) (permalink)

I think I feel an aneurysm coming on
Red vs Blue has released Episode 15 for Sponsors - go grab your copy now. And don't adjust your monitor when it starts... it's supposed to be that way. If you're not a sponsor, you'll need to wait until Sunday... (Louis Wu 14:47:53 UTC) (permalink)

Massive Halo50K infusion
Dolbex, from Halo50K, writes that the competition stats and over a hundred photographs taken during Halo50K2 last week are now posted. Go check out the action! (Louis Wu 13:40:50 UTC) (permalink)

GameFAQs poll
Beginning in a few hours (August 8, CST), The Master Chief will go up against Aeris in the GameFAQs Character Battle. You'll have 24 hours to help MC defeat the Final Fantasy Flower Seller... go vote. (We'd credit this to someone, but we've been getting notes about this since MC defeated Golden Sun's Felix, over 3 weeks ago. Go visit GameFAQs... and vote! (And stop writing to us about this, okay?) (Louis Wu 02:29:42 UTC) (permalink)

Faces of Bungie Webcam - Fresh!
Cybrfrk, recently back (and vibrantly bouncy) from a 2-month vacation (yeah, some of us have pretty cushy jobs), has posted a major update to his Faces of Bungie Webcam page, with 36 new (and unidentified) images. How about you visit, and point out some names for him? (Louis Wu 02:15:56 UTC) (permalink)

News August 7 2003

More oddness - gravity gun this time
fireburner, bryn, and gravityman played with the flamethrower/gravity gun hack, and captured this footage of the gravity gun killing a player on Mount Wanker (their name). DivX-encoded AVI, 549K, and there seems to be a problem with the sound (though it's not really necessary to see the action). Interesting... Update: Tons of pics of the Gravity Rifle (not visible in the first vid), plus extra video footage, from BOLL and company on our forum. Check it out! (Read the whole thread. There's much more info about the killing possibilities...) (Louis Wu 22:10:33 UTC) (permalink)

Team Ice is Back in Business
Team Ice, Blade's programming/gaming site that was doing some movie mirroring for the Halo community before it went offline for bandwidth overage, is back up and running. Downloads are now handled by a separate server, so the chances are good that the overage will not occur again. Blade is still in the process of uploading popular movies, so check back in the next day or so if there's something you need that isn't available elsewhere. (For example, XboxOttawa.ca, home of Fire Team Charlie and some very popular vids, went offline recently, also for bandwidth overages; Team Ice has the .AVI versions of the FTC films up now, with the QuickTime versions coming soon.) When one falls, another rises! This community rocks. (Louis Wu 20:08:06 UTC) (permalink)

Words - put together in coherent ways
Seven pieces of Fan Fiction for you today. (There were 8, but one was unreadable.)

• Halo: Mercy Ch: 2, by ssj9000chilango
• Earth, A Place for Death. Part 5: Attack on the Gods Hands., by FuManChu
• Halo 2, an Elites version, Part III, by FOrunnER
• Four Plagues [2]: A New Enemy, by Kancer
• Marines: Rise from the Fall/ Section 1, by Delta117
• The Tragedy of Red vs Blue, by Puma109
• Halo: The MCconto Chronicles(©) Part 5, by JCDenton

Go to it! (Louis Wu 20:06:55 UTC) (permalink)

Fer the luv o' Pete...
A long time ago, some screenshots of the Halo Flamethrower (in the Xbox version) floated around the net - speculation from Bungie employees at the time revolved around someone with access to an XDK (Xbox Development Kit), and the willingness to break their Non-Disclosure Agreements. When pushed, the producer of the shots in question backed off - and the matter was dropped. Well, this morning, PfhorSlayer (programmer behind Aquaduct, the Macintosh tunneling app) popped into our forum with some surprising pictures. A couple of hours later, Nick posted more of his own. Nobody in the thread was willing to answer HOW this all happened... and speculation raged about whether this was a hoax or not. This afternoon, BOLL got some info from Phforslayer, and recorded a movie that would be very, very hard to fake. You can't hurt anyone with this (since the code was yanked, there's no damage information), and it looks... unfinished (as well it might be), but it's certainly real. And it was accomplished with just a modded off-the-shelf Xbox (NOT a Dev Kit), and a bit of ingenuity. Wow. (If you have a modded Xbox, Macegac has written up a short tutorial on how to get this for yourself. If you don't have a modded Xbox... please don't ask us how you get one.) Update: BOLL points out that you CAN kill people with the flamethrower... but only if they're in a ghost. (Well, other vehicles might be possible, as well; he and Macegac only tested a ghost.) Oddness continues... (Louis Wu 19:44:05 UTC) (permalink)

Halo Vehicles in a North African desert...
Ross Mills pointed out some new screenshots over at the Home Front website (a Halo total conversion for Battlefield 1942 - we mentioned this about a month and a half ago). Models look a bit flat in their desert environments... but that's probably gonna change. Check 'em out! (Louis Wu 18:48:11 UTC) (permalink)

Digital puppetry, you say?
And their fame grows... BBC News has done a full piece on Red vs Blue, and its use of the Halo engine to tell a story. It's well-written, but more than that... it's mainstream. Thanks to Ulf for the heads-up on our forum. (Louis Wu 12:55:53 UTC) (permalink)

A prize worthy of Bungie Fan Envy
Adam Vehige, the Grand Prize winner of our Pillar of Art contest, received the final piece of his winnings today - so we finally feel comfortable showing you what he got. (Be a bit unfair if you got to see it before he did, wouldn't it?) Lorraine McLees outdid herself on this one - it wasn't created for the Pillar of Art contest, but it suits the task of Grand Prize admirably, especially with more than 4 dozen Bungie signatures adorning the matte... (Louis Wu 02:17:12 UTC) (permalink)

In Demand.
Wow - is it tomorrow already? This one was gonna be on time! Wednesday's One One Se7en looks at the inevitable outcome of a successful run... (Louis Wu 01:57:48 UTC) (permalink)

The parade of new sites continues
Jason Mad writes to tell us that The Halo 2 Site is now up and running, with more updates coming soon. (Louis Wu 01:47:54 UTC) (permalink)

I bet the Pelican's gettin' a fan now...
Whoa. It's been a little while, but SketchFactor notes that a new Bungie Soapbox article has gone live! CJ Cowan, a member of the Halo 2 Cinematics team, discusses...air conditioning? Man, those Bungie guys are wimps. (It's a pretty funny read, all in all...) (Louis Wu 00:15:57 UTC) (permalink)

News August 6 2003

Halo Mac - almost Alpha
Halo Mac has changed from First Playable to Pre-Alpha on Westlake's Project Status page. Thanks to Harbinger, on our forum, for noticing. (Louis Wu 21:58:06 UTC) (permalink)

Cold fusion on me!
Bungie, not to be outdone by rabid fans, has released 30 new dialogue snippets in their OWN Dialogue archive (not to be confused with our Dialogue Databank) - some of these are not actually accessible in the shipping game, so you wanna get 'em from Bungie. I don't think we'll add these directly to our collection - but the nice thing is, they're classified by what action is needed to find them, so dialogue hunters might have a chance of collecting SOME of them the old-fashioned way... Bungie's page isn't searchable, but the latest additions are marked 'new'. (Louis Wu 21:51:00 UTC) (permalink)

System Overload Imminent - oh, wait, that was yesterday
For those who noticed some difficulties getting to a few Halo movie mirror sites last night (or the Rockets on Prisoner site) - that's what slashdotting'll do to you. We held off until now to say anything, because when this kind of thing is happening, telling people about it only makes things WORSE... but on the plus side, there'll probably be a much wider audience voting for 'best Halo movies' now. (Louis Wu 21:19:56 UTC) (permalink)

You guys write too much.
21 pieces (yes, that's 7x3) of Fan Fiction for you today - including one (M31, part 12) which somehow DIDN'T get approved last time around. Get to work:

• (Part 12) M31: First Blood, by Greg and Wes Foutch
• The Rise and Fall of the Flood Chapter 4, by BlackValkyire
• Earth, A Place for Death. Part 4: New Mombosa, by FuManChu
• CORRUPT [2], by GLADIATRRR3000
• The Last War, Prologue, by Agent Shade
• Halo: Mercy ch: 1, by ssj9000chilango
• Halo: Combat Re-evolved; Moonbase Alpha, by Steele
• Running Riot-Part 4, by Simon James
• Halo 2, an Elites version, Part II, by FOrunnER
• Last of the Walking Dead - Part One: Escape, by Walker
• Vengeance, by Steele
• The Advenantures of Lt. Jake, Part Two, by Hunter_Killer
• long Time Gone part 2, by grylsy
• An Officer named Starblade: Saving Sol, by Hunter_Killer
• Four Plagues [1]: The Beginning of the End, by Kancer
• Remnants of Reach: Chapter 3: Adversaries of Annihilation, by Shinai Purugganan
• A Marine's Tale: First Encounter, by pj-NYkr90
• In Light of Destiny Part I, Chapter II: Truth, by Jinkaiden-XI
• On A Pale Horse: The Beginning of the end, by Silent Hunter
• Project: Shadow Spartan, Chapter 12(Finale), by Agent Shade
• Halo: The MCconto Chronicles Part 4, by JCDenton

Wow. Good luck. (Louis Wu 19:20:42 UTC) (permalink)

Halo50K - as seen by a forumgoer
guy who doesn't post...too often has put up a forum post with a bunch of pics he took at Halo50K. You can get a good sense of the overall tourney by looking through these... check it out! (Louis Wu 15:25:08 UTC) (permalink)

Outer Limits
MaverickJ, a trickster who's released some pretty impressive movies (and who ran Project Spartan, a showcase for Halo skill), has created another movie - this one is called 'Outer Limits', and it probes some of the out-of-map areas that can be found on popular multiplayer maps. Some tricks have been shown before, some are new. Some are useful in multiplay (assuming your opponents haven't banned them), some are just plain cool to see. 4:09 long, 15.7 mb big, QuickTime format. (There's a WMP9 version, as well, but no bandwidth to host it.) We're still working on a more permanent solution, but in the meantime, Project C.O.E.R.C.E. continues to make new Halo flicks available to the public by pooling bandwidth resources of a number of hosts. (If you've got, say, 50 gb/month of bandwidth you can spare, by all means, contact gwdp....to (he's GOT to get an easier name to write) and toss your name into the ring! Go visit C.O.E.R.C.E. today and grab your copy of Outer Limits. (Louis Wu 13:37:42 UTC) (permalink)

Lame, lame, lame...
Well, it's time for the Seven Day Poll to come to a close - and if you hadn't noticed, 'Wait for me!' was the runaway winner of the 'lamest Crewman voice snippet award', garnering 62% of the 8200 votes (beating its nearest competitor by by almost 3300 votes). Interestingly enough, I just discovered today who did that snippet... and while I probably shouldn't say WHO it was, I can definitely tell you I was surprised. (None of the other snippets in the poll were voiced by the same actor.) We'll consider resurrecting the Seven Day Poll again if we run across something we think worthy of voting on... in the meantime, I'll leave this data up until tomorrow. (Louis Wu 02:34:34 UTC) (permalink)

New Halo Websites
Two new websites to mention to you tonight... A very classy Flash-based site called 343 Guilty Spark (Your 100% Unofficial Halo 2 Source) and a German clan site known as DGD-Clan. The Halo community is growing by leaps and bounds! (Louis Wu 02:16:10 UTC) (permalink)

News August 5 2003

Fans rock. For lots of reasons.
It took a LONG time, and a LOT of help from Warbow and Free at Last (who did all the real gruntwork)... but the Miscellaneous Section is finally up-to-date. (Well, almost. There were a couple of things yesterday that should probably go in it... but they're not local yet.) Some of the search functionality has been improved, as well - if you know you read about something cool and it's not in any other section... this is the place to look. (The Dialogue Databank? It's in the HBO Prime section. And so on.) Whew! 50 new items, in 8 months. That's a lotta stuff! (Louis Wu 21:04:05 UTC) (permalink)

Video games as a way of life
SketchFactor has posted some impressions from a fan who was at the CPL 2003 Summer Event - an inspiring read. Swing by b.net and take a look! (Louis Wu 20:16:10 UTC) (permalink)

Die Schlacht Um Reach
Tocki, of Halo Orbit, points out an exclusive at their site - information about the German version of the 'Fall of Reach' novel. There's a cover pic, a release date, more. Stop by if you've been waiting for this! (Louis Wu 17:19:17 UTC) (permalink)

Get On Top
C.C.R. and Spartaco have put together a movie showing how to get all the vehicles on top of a Blood Gulch base. It's 2:47 long, 10.4 mb large, in WMP7 format. They're hosting it themselves at Suite904. If you've had trouble getting vehicles on top of the bases, you might want to grab this. (Louis Wu 14:52:32 UTC) (permalink)

Halo cover art - revisited
Four new Halo Cover concepts came in in the past week - one front cover, and 3 front-and-back combos. You'll find them all in our Cover Art Contest section (they're the last entries on the page). One of them isn't even Halo 2 - it's Halo 1.5. Take a look! (Louis Wu 11:55:36 UTC) (permalink)

You run faster than your mascara!
11 new dialogue snippets from Captain Spark for the Dialogue Databank. The man is a treasure trove - 416 of the 554 snippets currently in the collection have come from him - and they're almost invariably clean (minimal background noise, good capture). Enjoy these! (Louis Wu 08:46:20 UTC) (permalink)

Never Going Back.
Once again, Stuntmutt is slighted by my busy schedule. Yesterday's One One Se7en didn't get posted properly. I blame Cortana. (You have to blame SOMEONE, right?) (Louis Wu 08:29:49 UTC) (permalink)

Movies, movies, and more movies
That Weasel Television has ramped up the number of movies it's currently hosting - new arrivals include, among others:

• FTC 5 (QuickTime, 10 mb)
• FTC 6 (QuickTime, 15 mb and DivX, 20 mb)
• Black and White 0 (QuickTime, 10 mb)
• Predator (QuickTime, 21 mb)
• Dr Swiss' How the Grunt Stole Halo 2 (TWTv Exclusive, WMP9, 2.8 mb)
• Halo 2 Unpromotion (TWTv Exclusive, WMP9, 2.8 mb TW: Seal of Approval)
• Hog Wars (TWTv Exclusive, DivX, 28 mb)

There are many, many more - check 'em out! Have we said recently how grateful we are for Halo movie hosting help? (Louis Wu 02:19:28 UTC) (permalink)

News August 4 2003

Enter The Matrix - bullet time in Halo
C.O.E.R.C.E., the bandwidth consortium, continues to make new movies available in our hour of bandwidth crisis. Newest addition to the archive: Enter The Matrix, from Athol Productions. 15.9 mb, 4:07 long, in QuickTime 5 format, this movie has some pretty awesome editing effects. It's not everything its creator wanted it to be, but it's still a killer piece of work! Grab it from the C.O.E.R.C.E. mirror page - and toss your comments into this thread! (Louis Wu 19:55:30 UTC) (permalink)

FTC6: The Story of Squatting Bear
Fire Team Charlie has finished FTC 6 - their most ambitious piece yet. Editing is fantastic, sound is good (though still rough in places) - this one has to be downloaded! One of these days, I gotta try that warthog trick... This one is 5:55 long, 20 mb, 352x128, in DivX5-encoded AVI format. (A 15.2 mb QuickTime version has been created, but I'm not sure where it's going to be hosted.) Stop by XboxOttawa.ca and grab this! Mirrors are, of course, highly appreciated - download the vid, send us a link, and we'll be sure to make it public. Thanks! (Louis Wu 17:59:22 UTC) (permalink)

You HAD to open your mouth...
Gettin' there... Desktops are now cleared out, as well - 16 new images for you (plus one size variation). Check out the Wallpaper section! Update: We removed one of the images, because it used an older wallpaper as a base, without permission. Removal was at the request of the original artist. People... please. If you're going to use someone else's work, ask first. (The only real exception to this is Halo artwork placed on Bungie's site - it's there for your use in this manner.) (Louis Wu 17:07:03 UTC) (permalink)

Wu is me!
Another Monday, another Weekly Review! If you think you might have missed anything in our forum this past week, read this post. (Even if you think you DIDN'T miss anything, read this post - it's got a nice spin on things you might have overlooked...) (Louis Wu 15:21:21 UTC) (permalink)

We've got pictures! Lots of pictures!
Since my return from vacation last week, the art sections of b.org have been woefully unattended. Here's step one in fixing that problem. 11 built-up pieces for the Miscellaneous Art section. A wide mix. Update: Oops, missed one. (Louis Wu 14:22:27 UTC) (permalink)

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...
mnemesis is on vacation... but Finn, less than two weeks from a pretty major paradigm shift, has managed to update the Halo Story page with a tasty morsel culled from today's forum droppings. That Wado guy... he's pretty sharp. (Louis Wu 02:12:35 UTC) (permalink)

Halo50K2 - preliminary details
Full details will be forthcoming at the Halo50K site in the next day or two, but we got email from Bigsauce (a finalist at the Halo National Championships last year) with details about the top spots:

Top 4 for the FFA:
1. Ogre2
2. Ogre1
3. StrangePurple
4. TDT Alex

2v2 Winner:
Ogres

4vs4 Winner:
StK

Darkman took 6th place and in the 4vs4 TDT took 2nd.

For those not up on the Halo Tourney scene, TDT is The Dream Team, a team of four guys that includes Dustin 'HP Darkman' Langton, recently mentioned in our news as being the first Halo gamer to go pro. They won the 4vs4 competition at Halo50K. (StK won the 2v2 competition, and Ogres were 3rd in the 4vs4 competition there, as well; guess the top bracket has just switched positions a bit, rather than given way to a new regime). StK, this tourney's winners of the 4vs4 competition, is currently spotlighted at Halo50k - nice timing, that. (Louis Wu 01:52:41 UTC) (permalink)

A lost resource, dredged from the depths
After several months of being offline, Shishka's Megg FAQ has been resurrected over at Subnova. There's a few more steps than what you'll find in our own Megg mini-FAQ (created at the height of the Megg furor) - if you're new to the community, and have always wondered what the Megg actually is/was... check it out. (It's been found, however, and full details are linked to from both FAQs, so please, don't mail us with breathless messages about how you found it, okay?) (Louis Wu 01:40:12 UTC) (permalink)

News August 3 2003

Playing Catchup - Fan Fiction
Three days' worth of Fan Fiction:

• Once, In A Field with Dying Hopes, by TheRambler
• Earth, A Place for Death. Part 3: NYC final action, by FuManChu
• The Virus Part 6, by monitor101
• A John Before Halo: Part 6, by J-117
• Halo from the Flood's Point of View: The Attack, by Simpsons Rule
• Halo 2: Revenge of a Spartan, Chapter 8, by LostRock
• Halo: The MCconto Chronicles Part 3, by JCDenton
• (Part 13) M31: First Blood, by Greg and Wes Foutch
• Search for Chief part two , by Legend Player
• All Roads Lead To Sol...Despite What The Map Says: Chapter 9, by S7N
• Project: Shadow Spartan, Chapter 11, by Agent Shade
• O.C. Tango Red: Welcome aboard the Autumn, Chaos., by Shinai Purugganan
• In Light of Destiny Part I, Chapter I: And so it begins..., by Jinkaiden-XI
• A Marine Named Peters: Snow Day, by GLADIATRRR3000
• CORRUPT [1], by GLADIATRRR3000
• Long time gone part 1, by grylsy
• The Defense of Earth 6; Spark's Demise, by Steele

Hopefully, I can get to artwork later today... off again now, though. (Louis Wu 20:19:49 UTC) (permalink)

RingWorld, anyone?
It's BOLL day, it appears. The guy just doesn't stop. Check out his Halo Discs - I could see printing these as CD labels, I really could. (Louis Wu 14:35:19 UTC) (permalink)

Auto-aim - not QUITE as helpful as all that
An update on yesterday's Auto-Aim demonstration: Followup posts have shown this effect to be due to a slightly defective controller; auto-aim requires that the player is MOVING before it kicks in. (It's still pretty strong, at times... but the auto-tracking you saw at the start of the movie was actually induced by a slight movement on the part of the controller, coupled with auto-aim.) BOLL doesn't want anyone to believe he tried to trick the Halo community on purpose. (Louis Wu 13:57:08 UTC) (permalink)

A cacophony in E minor
BOLL's at it again... he's not totally happy with the way this came out, but in general, BOLL + Halo + Flash = Fun, no matter how you slice it. This one's about 72 kb, so it shouldn't strain anybody too much. (Louis Wu 00:43:20 UTC) (permalink)

Blood Gulch Blues
grasshopper (yes, the same grasshopper as you'll find in the Marathon community) has created a new tune for the Red vs Blue guys... the Blood Gulch Blues. If you haven't gotten your hands on Episode 14 yet, this might help make the waiting easier... Thanks to DoubleMint for pointing it out! (Louis Wu 00:37:57 UTC) (permalink)

News August 2 2003

Halo's auto-aim... up close and personal
Wow. BOLL was trying to capture some footage, but the cameraman was low on health... and wouldn't stand still. Check out the film in this post - it shows how huge a difference there is in the auto-aim boost between a 1-bar player and a full-health player. Now THAT'S a helping hand! (Louis Wu 20:49:12 UTC) (permalink)

Ownt.com reviews the E3 demo trailer
Ownt.com took a pretty in-depth look at the E3 demo trailer recently - you can read their 2-page review on their website. On our forum, reaction seems to be mixed, with some readers enjoying the article and others finding it inaccurate... check it out and judge for yourself! (Louis Wu 09:33:32 UTC) (permalink)

Pictures from Halo50K2
Halo50K2 begins today... and dolbex sent word of a photo diary. Currently there are only a few early pictures... but they'll be updating as the day goes on, so stop back regularly! (Louis Wu 08:23:15 UTC) (permalink)

What's your favorite movie?
The Rockets on Prisoners Nominees have been pared down to 5 per category... and now it's time for the people to speak. Visit the site, pick your favorite film from those listed in each category, and vote! Deadline is August 9th just before midnight PST. Go for it! (Louis Wu 01:02:16 UTC) (permalink)

Flame On.
Busy Friday becomes Saturday (at least in UTCland) - and two items that SHOULD have been posted earlier today get belated screentime today. First up: Friday's One One Se7en. Cortana nails it again. (Louis Wu 00:58:23 UTC) (permalink)

News August 1 2003

Pretty soon, he's gonna model the ring. Life-size.
Ack! This came in Monday, but somehow it got lost in the 'cleaning up from vacation' rush. Chris Bryan, who you might remember from his pretty awesome Maya renders in our Miscellaneous Art section, or his Battle Rifle model which would have won him cash had it been submitted to the Pillar of Art contest, has sent in a shot of his latest work - a chameleon red/blue Hunter model (55K). I want one! (Louis Wu 20:25:24 UTC) (permalink)

A product for some of you
MSN Halo Emoticons? Xbox Web has a package of 5 small images that, when put together in MSN Instant Messenger, spell Halo. If this means something to you, grab them from the Xbox Web Downloads page. (18k zip file... even if you DON'T get it, it won't take very long.) (Louis Wu 19:56:48 UTC) (permalink)

The new site list continues
Still more new Halo sites - UNSC HQ and Dock Command. (Totally unrelated to each other - just starting out at the same general time.) I feel like I'm back in 1999, with Halo sites popping up at the rate of 5+/week... (Louis Wu 19:31:38 UTC) (permalink)

You can't see me...
Whoa, cool. If you have a modded Xbox, bump a hunter, pick up an invisibility powerup, then re-bump your MC character... now you can fight an INVISIBLE hunter. (Check out the CamoJackal, too... his shield vanishes completely until you hit it.) (Louis Wu 19:08:25 UTC) (permalink)

Screenshots Database updated
Took a little while... but we finally got around to adding the 6 new batches of screenshots found on the web over the past few weeks. You'll find them in our Screenshots database (new material begins on July 9). (Louis Wu 15:35:55 UTC) (permalink)

Another brilliant idea from the think tank.
Episode 14 of Red vs Blue has been posted for Sponsors. (Everyone else needs to wait a couple of days.) Apologies for the delay in posting this... it took MUCH longer than usual to watch, because I kept having to go back and replay the parts I'd missed because I was laughing too loudly to hear the dialogue. Funniest episode so far, I'd say. (For what it's worth - titling this news post was really, really hard. All the best choices would have spoiled jokes in the episode itself.) (Louis Wu 14:11:39 UTC) (permalink)

Redshirt
mrsmiley points out that a new comic is up at Halobabies.net. It's pretty funny, even. :) (Apparently, if you're young, you might not get it - read the forum thread for explanations.) (Louis Wu 13:23:46 UTC) (permalink)

Yep, Halo sites ramping up again
And ANOTHER new site - Halo Universe (nice design), in Germany. Check it out! (Louis Wu 02:43:36 UTC) (permalink)

FTC lives again
XboxOttawa.ca, the home of Fire Team Charlie, is back online, at a new host - details at their website. New vid coming soon, they hope. Thanks to Blade for the heads-up. (Don't forget to stop by Blade's Team Ice site if you wanna help with their bandwidth overload.) (Louis Wu 02:42:04 UTC) (permalink)

Halo Information comes online
Another Halo site - Halo Information, says Shadow. Check it out. Update: apparently, the site is already down for bandwidth overage. The forum is still open, however. (Louis Wu 02:38:35 UTC) (permalink)

Good for newcomers... old hat for the rest?
Gamespotting has an editorial from a PC gamer who has never really played Halo before (well, he dabbled a couple of times)... and his impression, after a 3-hour Halo PC fest, was that "everything just comes together so solidly that it's a flat-out amazing game." He makes the point, though, that his console-playing colleagues were actually LESS impressed... because "it's still Halo." So the good news is, Halo PC, whilst (hey, FaL) being built from an engine almost 2 years old, still has the power to impress jaded FPS fans, might have trouble generating a lot of new excitement in its existing (console-based) audience. It'll be interesting to see if he's right. Thanks to Team Overkill for the heads-up. (Louis Wu 02:14:34 UTC) (permalink)

August 2003

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