Speaking of Stuntmutt – it seems the man has figured out a way to keep his betrayals down to a reasonable number. Check today’s One One Se7en for details.

Okay, this one takes some explanation. A couple of weeks ago, vshields ash started exploring what happens when you overload the Halo engine during the fight with the Prophet of Regret. The first thing he discovered was he’d spawn new prophet chairs after the overload kicked in – he got up over 100 chairs before things broke down. (This thread documents his progress.) Then he went outside – and things were a little… empty. He described it – and then Duelies made a vid of the final cutscene. However, Duelies hadn’t gone quite as far in the object overload field as Vern did – the Covenant cruiser, for example, was still around. Vern wanted everyone to see a TOTALLY empty scene – so he sent me a tape to digitize. You can grab it in QuickTime or WMP9 formats – roughly 10 mb each. Stuntmutt must get the credit (or the blame) for the music.

Captain Spark posted another 25 dialogue snippets on our forum today – all are from Marines, and some are PG-rated. Some hilarious stuff in there! You can grab the batch in one chunk on his website (if it’s up), or you can browse the entries in our Dialogue Databank.

Mintz posted another few articles for your PSP over on his website – swing by and see what’s new!

SiegWarheit pointed out a rather odd-shaped HaloCE map created by NiTrOuSoXiDe of the H2CE team. Um… yeah.

Bungie has posted a new T-Shirt on the Bungie Store; it costs $20, and $15 of that will go directly to the Red Cross for distaster relief. (There’ll be more on this subject from them later this afternoon, but tag-goody71 noticed the shirt in the store this morning, so we figured we’d let you get a head start on it.)

Another vid passed the MPRRS yesterday – it’s called ‘Taking one for the team’, and it’s Obie Brown’s take on a sad, underappreciated job in Halo 2 multiplayer. It’s pretty funny, with great musical integration. Obie is part of ‘Lost Youth’, a clan of 22 and up “geezers” that have seen one too many montages and wanted to do something different. You can grab a copy in WMP9 format (31 mb) or QuickTime format (31.9 mb).

Over at Halo Babies, the humor gets sort of dark… I want my teddy bear! (They’ve also finished up their RvB cartoon contest, but the winning strips aren’t online yet. I was going to hold off announcing this until they were – but it’s unclear when that will happen.)

You gotta love the horn-self-tooting… a new Halo blog focused on machinima, The Halo Theatre, asked me a few questions about the subject… it may or may not be worth a read. (There is not a single shot taken at KP, so some of you might decide to skip it.) Lucky for me, comments don’t seem to be enabled – you’ll have to find other ways to take snide potshots at me.

Last year, we hosted the Going Nowhere Fast competition – taking speedrunning to a new level. It inspired the creation of highspeedhalo.org, a website devoted to Halo speedruns. A couple of days ago, over on the MLG forums (you’ll have to be registered to see that thread), insidi0us posted a new run for Silent Cartographer – and though he does it on Normal (rather than the GNF-required Legendary), he beat goatrope’s GNF-winning time by 25 seconds – an astounding feat when the total time was just over 4 minutes to begin with. I was impressed enough with the run that I wrote up a short analysis of the places where he gains time over goatrope’s run – and now that it’s not the end of the month any more, we’ve got the bandwidth to host this puppy, so you can watch it, too. WMP9 version is 44.2 mb, QuickTime version is 46.6 mb. Thanks to l3Dl SHREK 2 for bringing this to my attention in the first place.

A followup on yesterday’s ‘Help Katrina Victims’ post – Dennis Powers, of the GearboxGameZone, has compiled a list of charities accepting donations for Hurricane relief from the FEMA website (I’m impressed; I went there and looked around, and the only obvious link was to the Red Cross). Check it out, do what you can. (Yeah, I know. This is a Halo website, not a Katrina one. Sometimes, though, we need to remember that part of being a community is helping out those in distress.)

Another vid for you that passed the MPRRS recently – it’s called ‘Boot Camp Short: Episode I.V – Attack of the Critics’, and it’s a nice shot at the MPRRS itself. (Well, sort of.) These guys submitted their first vid to the system – and it failed. Rather than rework it, however, or give up altogether, they decided to make a film showing what happens when a vid fails… it’s a nice satire. The reviewers thought so, too – they passed it with flying colors. WMP9 version is 43.3 mb, QuickTime version is 39.8 mb. Enjoy!

Thirteen new pieces for you in the Fan Fiction section – Day 8 in the life of a noob made me laugh. Go read!

Bonekin started a thread on our forum last night – you have to read the whole thing to get all the details right, but here they are, as far as I understand them: he’s planning on playing online tomorrow night (Friday), 9 pm Central time, on Xbox Live – he will play a series of 7 games, and will donate $1 for each kill he gets in those games (with a minimum of $117 in case he falters) to the Red Cross for Hurricane Katrina relief. Anyone who wants to participate can send him a friend request.

A couple of days ago, BoneKin’s ‘Noobs Gone Wild 3’, a testament to the dumb stuff you can do in Halo 2 multiplay, passed our Movie Peer Review Rating System – but we were out of bandwidth, and couldn’t really afford to put up mirrors yet. It’s September, now, though, and we’ve gotten a fresh shipment of nice ripe bandwidth – so go grab a copy. It’s available in both WMP9 format (47.8 mb) or QuickTime format (40.2 mb). The funniest parts are all the things that can go wrong with a plasma grenade…

Goodness. That poor Stuntmutt – he slaves over Google, hunting for hours to dig up only the best puns, only to have the jokes forgotten about by the lazy web guy… yesterday’s One One Se7en is FINALLY posted. Sorry about that. (Although, after reading it again, I’m wondering… nah, never mind.)

Wow – now THAT is cool. There’s a news post on Bungie.net’s front page, exhorting fans to do what they can to help in the disaster relief effort to clean up after Hurricane Katrina. When was the last time you saw a videogame developer suggest to its fans that helping others in a time of need is a worthwhile endeavor? (It is, by the way – and we’d like to second Bungie’s suggestions. I just put my money where my mouth is on the Red Cross donation page… you should think about it, too.) Thanks to Anton P. Nym for noticing. Update: SketchFactor has added a link to a Bungie.net forum thread – he’s looking for stories from community members about what they’re doing to help. Check it out! Update 2: Knaabi, from 2old2play, pointed out a thread on their forum, where they’ve got a Paypal link for donating to hurricane relief charities. This might be easier for some of you without credit cards, but with Paypal accounts…

How seriously do you take YOUR Halo 2 clan? el Lobo furtivo, a member of the PraetoriaGuard, went a bit farther than I would, I think. THAT is hardcore. (Let’s hope he doesn’t find a new clan anytime soon.) Thanks, HymnToNinkasi.

Penny Arcade’s comic for today (which doesn’t have a news post yet, frighteningly enough), involves Gus and Burnie from Red vs Blue (who spent the weekend at the Penny Arcade Expo)… and some stuff that probably shouldn’t be seen. Only peripherally Halo-related… but, well… I couldn’t pass it up. Thanks, Max.

You might remember Archie Gates – he’s a Gamespot user who has created a number of songs dedicated to the beauty and grace of the Needler. He’s done it again – a couple of days ago, he posted Needler Song 4, ‘Don’t Know Why (It’s My Favorite Gun)’. Norah Jones might take issue with it… but everyone else should find it hilarious. And the bit at the end… is brilliant. You can grab a copy off our server (3.5 mb)… listen and enjoy. Thanks to Atsumi for noticing this!