Author: Louis Wu

Poop scoop is working on transcribing Earth City, and has created a midi file of it. He’s looking for feedback – check his post and give him your ideas!

I didn’t write it. IcedPitchBlack did. You should read it, though. Update: Wow… this seems to have hit a nerve. 165 responses in 11 hours… there are some dissenters, but in general, it seems a LOT of people agree with the sentiment that Halo 2 multiplay should be about FUN, not ‘leveling up’.

mercury joins the Halo blog crew with The Oracle – his first piece looks at cheating in matchmaking. It can be nice to have a place to post a solid, well-thought-out piece, separate from a fast-moving forum…

sh33p posted a trailer for an upcoming machinima project he and some others are working on, called ‘Retaliation’. It’s available in both WMP9 format (37 mb) or QuickTime format (30 mb). Nice piece – makes you want the full version to be out. Give it a look!

Interesting. Sniper 058 posted a small movie showing the shotgun reticle changing color (and thickness) as it passed over a nearby enemy. A bunch of forumites suggested it was just the layering effect of the HUD on the screen… until Dave Candland (the designer of that HUD) stepped in and confirmed that yes, indeed, the…

Hehe – took almost a week – but Bungie finally posted the post-mortem of last week’s Halo Humpday Challenge, during which they were murdalized by the GunShin clan, a group of Japan’s finest Halo warriors. Man… the idea of a two man team, one with plasma pistol, the other with a battle rifle, working together…

zerofender pointed out a fun flash animation at Newgrounds – Funny situations. They’re not all funny – but they’re not very long, and there are 10 of ’em. Artwork is great.

Hmm. Stuntmutt decided to use ME as a target in today’s One One Se7en… I guess he feels that now that he’s got 300 strips under his belt, anything goes. I’m posting it because there’s no precedent NOT to… but I think it’s in somewhat poor taste.

Hehe – sort of fun… STB has tried his hand at replicating a few Halo 2 screenshots, using Halo CE. Might have gone better with Elites in the pictures… but they’re still nice!

Wow. Cody Miller posted a note on our forum about the project over at Highspeedhalo.org to put together a sub-2-hour Halo Speedrun; recently, he and goatrope shaved 6 minutes off 3 levels, bringing the 10 level total to 2:09. They’re getting close – go visit and see if you can help!

It looks like Saint[lpn] picked yesterday to write a piece on HUDless Halo art creation for his blog – it’s a nice summary of the various styles shown to date. Give it a read!

prometheus points out that the Halouvre has been updated – there are 225 new images in 7 new galleries in the Halo 1 HUDless section, and three new pics (posted on our forum by Mast3r recently) in the Halo 2 HUDless section. Go bask in the HUDless goodness!

TLove and DemonStrate are remaking the Fensler Films – a series of G.I. Joe public service announcements with new soundtracks – in the Halo engine. The first couple are available as their own movies, or in split-screen, with the original video running simultaneously (so you can see what they’re reproducing). I missed the Fensler Films…

trigger119 writes to point out The Avenger, a new machinima film from Vypers.net. Currently you can grab a trailer in either DivX (13.8 mb) or MPEG1 (10.4 mb) formats from their website.

GTJuggler filmed a modded LAN recently – the result is up on the Halo GT website. We’ve tossed up some mirrors for him, for both his QuickTime version (50.3 mb, mythica.org | bungie.org) and a WMP9 version (34.4 mb, bungie.org | mythica.org) (There’s a medium-res QT on his site we haven’t mirrored.) Pump up the…

Hehe – I’ve seen people playing with the gas tanks on Metropolis before… but I’ve never seen anyone try to RIDE them. Hats off to Motherstooth!

Mat Noguchi talked a little bit about the decision to write your own code, or incorporate an existing package… and he talked about how sound guys are friendlier than code guys. Go read his weblog. Thanks, Cybrfrk.

Chronic V1RU5 has released a trailer for Episode 3 of their Delta Squad series. They won’t be able to release the whole thing before the first of next month, for bandwidth reasons… but you can grab a 4.5 mb teaser right now (WMP9 format). Thanks, KingFarnox.

Recently, we mentioned the opening of a pair of online leagues over at MLGPro.com – looks like the Amateur league is already over half-filled. If you’re interested in playing in this, get over there and sign up!

Cheated online, but don’t know where to turn? Check out StopStandby.com, a website run by an extremely persistent webmaster who wants to help you get your story out. (Bungie has said that the Standby problem will pretty much disappear after the online patch they’re releasing in the next few weeks – but as TheSPFXmaN, Project…