Year: 2001

Razorback sends in a sketch of a Covenant Elite for our Miscellaneous Art section. Sorry to hear about Photoshop, RB…

Recently, I heard from a viewer that the Wallpaper section was difficult to navigate, owing in part to the large numbers of images and in part to the fact that only three thumbs are shown on a page. I agreed to look into the situation, and suggested that a cookie-based solution might be good -…

Thanks to Allan_X, over at the TeamXBox forums, who picked up a copy of the Official Xbox Magazine at his local 7-11 – among the many bits he scanned was this Halo ad. We’ll do our best to get a better one for you soon. (Thanks, op_ivy, for the heads-up.)

Thanks to everyone who pointed out that Microsoft’s official Halo site is back up, in all it’s Flashed glory. Check it out!

Okay, I don’t understand this at all… but it works. So here goes. I mentioned yesterday that a program called DivX Player will let you watch the movie, but not listen to the sound. Bluskale writes to say that you can get sound by selecting ‘DivX Doctor’ from the ‘Movie’ menu, and saving the resultant…

Dink!… the Halo SETI Marines fall to 53rd in the Battle of the Teams, edged out by Picard – who are pulling away rapidly. Total crunchage is up, despite the loss of two team members this week, thanks in large part to NEO, who took la Crunch Honneur with 154 units. See how YOU did…

Last week’s Halo update has been added to the Halo Update Database – now 414 tidbits of Halo goodness, spread out over 44 updates. (The total timespan is 49 weeks – there were a few missed ones in there.) The word of the week is ‘Banshee’ – check out how the first 7 months of…

Joker writes to pass along a Halo animation – sort of an animated logo thing. It’s 3.1 MB, and lasts about 20 seconds. It’s in MPG format, and you can snag it here.

Okay, the saga of the Interview movie goes on. Bravehamster has re-encoded it from his original source, using DivX. On a PC, with WMP, the sound is there, the video is there… and the filesize has been reduced to 21.6 megs. (Woohoo!) On the mac side, I was able to watch it perfectly with the…

Thanks to Psyrixx, who generously offered to mirror Bravehamster’s .avi movie – you can snag it here. No clue how the site will hold up… so if you’re getting horribly slow downloading times, maybe try and hold off for a bit. Again: this movie is 81 megs, in .avi format. On a PC, WMP plays…

Thanks wholly to Bravehamster =PN=’s conversion of the .wmv to .avi, I was able to use QuickTime (with its much more flexible manipulation tools) to grab a few more screen captures from the interview/discussion movie. There are 18 new shots on this page. Enjoy!

Man, you gotta love fans. Johann, unhappy that the boat we saw only once, as concept art, might not be in the game any more, modeled his own. You’ll find the wireframe in our Miscellaneous Art section.

Bravehamster =PN= writes to say that he’s re-encoded the interview (sorry, Harry – the discussion video) in .avi format – it’s a whopping 81 MB now, but WMP plays it without stuttering. (QuickTime, for some reason, still can’t play it.) He’s kindly made it available via HTTP and FTP… but bandwidth is limited; mirrors are…

It’s the night for Bungie explanations! Chris Butcher steps into a conversation about the quality of the latest movie… and explains thatif you look at all of the scenes outside in the snow, in the angular interiors and out on the bridge, you’ll see that the environment polygons are flat-shaded and all the characters have…

Joe Staten jumped into a discussion of ‘the Schwartzenegger shot’ to expound on Matt’s ‘cinematics are done’ comment in this week’s update, and to suggest thatHopefully we’ll be able to give you an abbreviated taste of what’s in store (i.e. a new trailer) sometime soon. Certainly before Halo is on the shelves, a date that…

Mr. Bill. Jr. V© sends along a homemade (with Bryce and Photoshop) desktop – inexplicably, it’s 500×375 pixels. I’ve taken the liberty of scaling it up to a more standard desktop size, but the original is still available in our Wallpaper section, if you’d rather start from scratch.

Thanks to both Darwin Campa and Tim Wilson, who both filled me in on the meaning of ‘attract mode’… apparently, it’s a term from arcade games – it’s the footage that plays when there are no quarters in. Canned gameplay, in other words… can you say ‘films’? (hopehopehope) Tim adds:A standout “Attract Mode” from the…

Coolness. Bounty, of Battleground: Halo, has compressed down the 44-meg .wmv to a 10 meg .wmv – quality is quite good for the size. For folks who can’t handle a 44 meg download… check out the low-res version. (It’s the same screensize as the original, just higher compression.) Note: in BGH’s description of the downloads,…

Worried you might forget the Xbox release date? Sikora submits a reminder for our Wallpaper section.

Thanks to Bounty, and the whole Battleground: Halo crew, for getting a downloadable version of the new Interview.wmv up for the masses. Stop by and check it out!