Mothergoat has posted another pair of maps, with descriptions, for Halo CE. For the curious, there are also a few screenshots. Nice!

TeamXbox posted an interview with Andre Vrignaud, Technical Evangelist from the Xbox Live Platform Strategy Team, in which he discussed where he thought Xbox Live was going in the near future. Predictably, Halo 2 plays an important role in their plans. He’s pretty optimistic about the Live support the game will have, and about how ready Microsoft will be to handle the traffic that will be generated by this game after November 9. Thanks to daedalus for pointing it out.

There’s plenty of stuff backed up, stuff that should get posted… but I’d ask everyone to be patient, and wait a bit. Today I’m spending the day with my family, hanging out and barbecuing in the back yard. (Well, my sister’s back yard.) No Halo news – OMG! Enjoy July 4th, we’ll be back tomorrow!

SketchFactor has announced the winners (and not-so-winners) of the Bungie.net Avatar contest that’s been going on this past month. There’s some great stuff (and not so great stuff) to be seen – check it out! Thanks to Sep7imus for the heads-up.

Whoa, missed it. Mrs Doublefire updated his long-dormant New Mombasa thread on the Gearbox forum with seven new screens – take a look! (Thanks to HaloPlanet for noticing this.)

Joyride has updated its site again, with more pictures – the yellow civilian hog mentioned in its printed material now has some information – it’ll be limited to 2000 pieces, and will be available in October. Check the Halo 2 page, and click ‘Hog’. There are also pictures of the newest Battle-Damaged exclusives in the Halo section (look at the bottom). I can see Cobalt and Maroon being used in upcoming Miniature Halo episodes… We get a lot of mail about Joyride changes (and don’t post notes about all of them) – but I think first mention of the yellow hog pic goes to A Halo 2 Logo, and lbm mentioned the new BD pics. Thanks!

Ow. A note on our forum points out that Randy Pitchford has made an announcement on the Gearbox forum that there will be no Halo CE updates in the near future – work on the project was contingent on market penetration, and to date, Halo CE adoption has been disappointing. This is definitely a blow to those looking to improve the Custom Edition product… (As far as I can tell, c0ld vengeance had nothing to do with this news post.) Update: STB pointed out a thread that brings ALL of his posts into one place – taken as a whole, it’s far more positive than the first post we mentioned. Read the thread.

Yesterday, nukedude posted notice that his AotCR to multiplayer map release was out of beta and ready for final release. I visited the download page, but there were no screenshots – so I asked. nuke delivered. Check it out – this is a gorgeous map!

Rockslider posted a new Frontline with Suzie yesterday – this one has Suzie talking to the Flood. Weird – I didn’t know they COULD talk!

Ever wonder about the process it takes to go from an idea to a modeled animation in a game like Halo? Gamepro has put up a short article explaining the steps, from storyboard to finished product. Take a look!

This week’s update is over at the newly remodeled HaloPlanet – and there’s more and more censored stuff. (Some weird formatting, too.) Lots of cool tidbits that we CAN read, though, like 15,107 FINISHED LINES of combat dialogue… and female marines! Go read. Update: Weird formatting is fixed – thanks, Frankie!

Red vs Blue has decided to put off the release of Episode 38 (the final episode of Season 2) so that they can make it as polished as they want it to be. In its place, they’ve released a new Public Service announcement to celebrate the Fourth of July – and I gotta say, it made me laugh… a LOT. It’s up for sponsors now, and should be up for the general public later this weekend. Grab it, watch it, and HEED ITS WARNINGS!

n00bles, a member of Fungi (the group that made Fissure Fall), has been making a series of battle pictures over at the Gearbox forums – there are shots of Blood Gulch, Sidewinder, and Timberland, as well as custom maps like Fissure Falls. This post explains how he made them. Extremely cool! (Thanks to TURBO for pointing this thread out.)

Excalibur, Team Lead for Grand Theft Auto :: Codename Halo, wanted to point out that work has begun on this project to bring GTA to the Halo engine. The site is hosted by Grenadiac, of Halomods, and is a bit light on content so far – though there are some answers and a bunch of pictures in the FAQ.

Dolbex points out a media blitz over at MLGPro.com. Photos from recent events (like a set from Midwest Mayhem last month) can be found in the MLG Gallery, and highlight games from MLG tourneys can be found in the Downloads section. Both of these sections require registration on the site before you have access to the content – and you should be warned, going in, that the videos (40-50 mb each, on average) are gameplay ONLY – no soundtracks, no editing. If this isn’t your cup of tea, don’t waste your time (or MLG’s bandwidth). If you wanna see how the big boys play, though… these are the videos to watch. (If you have trouble accessing them – your browser says it can’t find the host – just be patient, and try again tomorrow, dns hasn’t propagated yet.)

The New York Times has an article from yesterday about Internet TV – streaming video from established sources. The focus is on a guy who streams karaoke from a local bar… but a sidebar contains a ‘Streaming Sampler’ – video available online – and one of the three examples is Red vs Blue, which “places dialogue over scenes from a multiplayer shooting game.” Nice spotting by TURBO.

teamhalo has opened a Spotlight section – and the first interview is posted; kornman00 talks about reverse-engineering the HEK.

One One Se7en proves that Sarge will ALWAYS rock harder than MC.

A week ago, Ross Mills challenged our forum to come up with some Halo-related game crossovers – alter a picture of Halo by bringing in elements from another game. There were a number of entries – a couple quite funny – but BOLL, as usual, can’t be satisfied with a simple picture – he has to make a PLAYABLE GAME. Starts easy, but it gets hellish around 100.

Halo: Resolution shows that even if you have manpower, you still get nowhere without brains…