Dark Helmet posted a small video showing his own Marine Launching techniques yesterday, on the High Impact Halo forums – he shows that Marines take no fall damage, no matter HOW FAR they fall (or what hits them)… but more importantly, he’s invented a new sport – Halo Trap, using marines as the pidgeons. Hmm… there might be ethical problems with that. To save on DH’s bandwidth, we’ve made both his original WMP9 film (5.2 mb) and a QuickTime conversion (5.6 mb) available from here. Thanks, Ducain, for pointing this out. Update; Dark Helmet clarifies a few points about fall damage and marines. They CAN get killed from it, my mistake. They can take a heck of a lot more punishment than you can, however…

A full-blown website devoted to Mac Halo development has been opened – it existed, in a much simpler and less interactive form, on HaloMods, but it now has a site of its own, and a much more extensive layout. If you’re a Mac user interested in modding Halo, check it out! (Thanks, Nick.)

c0ld vengeance, with a little help from his friends, has put together a series of Mosaic pictures – 5 can be found in this forum post, and one more in this followup. The software used to make these is linked from here. Intriguing views…

It’s Monday, so there’s lots of action on the Going Nowhere Fast front. The sixth level run – 343 Guilty Spark – is now available for download via BitTorrent, to begin with. It’s a 58 mb file; 7:41 to dash from the Pelican dropoff to the final pickup spot, and the first use of the purple boxes as traditional videogame crates – making the Time to Crate value rather high for Halo overall. Watch this run; you’ll find some amazing ways to shave a few seconds off here, a few seconds there… Also, since it’s been three days since Sean Oehrle’s Assault on the Control Room run was made available via BT (an even 1000 downloads, as of right now), we’ve provided direct download links for this 52 mb film. You’ll find them on the Status page. (Thanks, once again, to all the mirror sites for these files; BitTorrent alone has served over 900 GB worth of movies in the past 10 days, but the direct download links have accounded for hundreds of gigabytes more; we couldn’t do it without you guys.

c0ld vengeance has apparently made his opinion about the 2-day European delay for Halo 2 known… and today’s One One Se7en addresses his concerns. Sort of.

Ten new stories for you in the Fan Fiction section… and a special-case instruction. Wado SG asked me how folks could submit their entries to the now-defunct Enkidu Fan Fiction contest and have them all be grouped together; I suggested using the Series Title field. Wado reminded me that this is normally tied to the author’s name… so it’s not settable on the submission form, as it currently exists. Rather than recode the form to allow for this special case, it would be easier for me if people submitting their Enkidu stories would simply drop me an email with the name of their story – I’ll link them all from this end. Again – this is ONLY for this one special case. If you would like to submit your Enkidu entry to the HBO Fan Fiction section, and have it readable with all OTHER submitted entries – send me the name of the story after you submit it. Thanks!

Sector Seven Halo has put up another installment of its Marines comic. I’m not sure I get it…

The whole MegaBattle concept is being expanded over at the Gearbox Forums – check the top several threads for fantastic examples. A new technique, documented in this thread by king_nothing, allows for some incredible vehicle-in-air shots with multiple players inside. Again – this technique REQUIRES Halo Custom Edition; the detachable camera is not available in the stock Halo PC. C’mon… download it. You know you want to. (And once you do, jump online and look for some of the servers hosting great new maps.)

I’ve run across a really nice Halo Custom Edition map in the last couple of days – this is absolutely worth your time if you’ve got HCE. (If you DON’T have HCE, and you’re using a PC, you really need to ask yourself why not… it’s free, the massive download is a one-time deal (an overnighter on dialup, but you only have to do it once), and it opens huge new vistas for online gameplay. (You can grab a copy from one of these links.) It was created by Tarehart, and is called called ‘HighLow’ – pics and a download link can be found on Gearbox’s forum (thanks, rapture). Quite a lot of thought has been put into map flow, entrances and exits, routes to objectives, balance. Check it out! (It should be online on Assault-Server-TWD at some point.)

Ducain continues the abuse of Sarge – his latest foray includes a beautiful hog jump with the MC, Sarge, and no damage. Find it in this forum post – with a QuickTime link in this one. 5 mb or so.

The fourth Going Nowhere Fast run, goatrope’s zippy Silent Cartographer dash, is now available via direct download from a half-dozen mirrors. If you haven’t watched this 33 mb piece… you should grab it now.

Finn blames it on the weather. I say he’s just coming to his senses. Whatever the reason, the Halo Story Page has been updated for the first time in almost three weeks. Go read.

Ever wondered what it would be like to do beta-testing full-time for a company like Bungie? It might not be what you think it is. Swing on by Bungie.net for a new Top Story on this very subject… thanks to clarksbrother for the heads-up.

Curt is Not, from the Xboxottawa forums, has put together a musical tribute to Halo, overdubbing his own voice into a recording of Skid Row’s I Remember You (6 mb download). It’s a bit scary, actually… but quite funny.

This week’s Bungie Update is over at the Penny Arcade forums – it’s a bit lighter than last week, but still full of tasty morsels. And… um, somewhat odd Misterchief art. Hmm. Thanks to many, though the first at HBO seems to be Leprechaun.

Looks like I missed a bunch of things while I was out of town this week. Thanks To HaloPlanet‘s newsies for being on the job. Major League Gaming released a vid of the final match between StK and FFA at Midwest Mayhem. 71.2 mb, 640×480, 7:16 of a rough Team Slayer match on Hang ’em High… the game came down to who could hold the high ground; FFA said ‘we can’. Registration on the MLG site (free) required. [DD]ZION released the tags for a railgun that can be included in HaloCE maps (pics can be found in this thread). And Icetiger has put up a beta of his newest map – Icetigarus. Pics and download links in this thread. Whew!

Ross Mills points out a winnable Limited Edition Halo Xbox, covered by Gabe’s doodling, that will be given away at Penny Arcade’s Expo in late August. As though you didn’t already have enough reasons to try and get there… Update: DOH! I’m as bad at reading as Ross is. Op-ivy points out that this will be given away at the San Diego Comic-Con, July 22-25, NOT PAX. Sorry.

Coolness. If you’re planning on seeing ‘I, Robot’, and your choices of venue include a Loews Cinema… pick that one. You’ll get to see a snazzy new Halo 2 trailer. (Thanks to cman for the heads-up on the trailer, and Frankie for clarifying where you can see it.) Update: It’s not just I, Robot – it’s a number of hot films, including Spider-Man 2, The Village, King Arthur, Catwoman, and Alien vs Predator. You do have to see them in a Loews theatre, though. Thanks, Dark Helmet. Update 2: Whoa. Comments from Mat Noguchi, tools programmer at Bungie:

One thing they didn’t mention was the 5 days and 40 GB of raw data I had to render out at least three separate times. Plus the tools I had to write to handle movies bigger than 2 GB.

Random trivia for the hardcore: I rendered the movies at 1280×960, 30 fps. This is the best you will ever see Halo in motion.

Well… if it never makes it to a PC, yeah. 🙂 (You can currently get better framerates than that on Halo PC at 1600×1200 on an X800 or a 6800.) Thanks, Adam Daniel.