Lots of built-up Halo links out there – sorry for the delay. (No, these aren’t on the Links page yet – please don’t write, asking me to get to that. It’s a time thing. It’ll happen – someday.)

• Halo Central (general Halo site)
• Operation: Halo (general Halo site)
• Polish Halo Center (Polish Halo Site)
• HaloSverige.nu (Swedish Halo site)
• forum.HaloNorge.com (Norwegian Halo forum)
• HALO Legendary Assault Team (German Halo Xbox Clan)
• Halo G33Ks (UK-based Halo PC clan)

Halo is spreading all over the world…

The Homefront mod for Battleground 1942 updated its site recently – there are shots of their Achilles class battleship (quite similar to the Halcyon class that the PoA belongs to), as well as a new fast attack VTOL aircraft. Check ’em out!

Tyrian points out that a new screenshot from MechAssault 2, released recently at Gamespot, shows a helmet with a remarkable similarity to our favorite Master Chief…

Well, the forum argument isn’t very pleasant… but the models are quite nice. Wraith has updated his Covenant Assault Boat model we mentioned a couple of days ago (taking into account a number of the suggestions given originally in the thread), and LordHex has put up his own model – this time bringing life to an early Bungie concept sketch of a Shadow. Now if only they’d get along…

The One One Se7en Archive update will happen a bit later today – but we still have a regular Guest strip for you, this time from MrFluffyPants26. Love that Max Payne flavor…

The newest Subzero Chronicles comic is online today; some of it makes me uncomfortable, but apparently, the premise is based on a real event. Ouch…

MereCatFish has set up a ‘Favorite Halo Fan Site‘ poll – something he’s tried before, but this time, he’s put in a few safeguards against ballot-stuffing. Go vote for your favorite Halo fansite!

Clarksbrother has interviewed Gus Sorola, aka guS, a Red vs Blue team member (and the voice of Simmons), for his local TV show ‘The Not So Late Show‘. It’s a 14-minute audio interview, and weighs in at 6.6mb as an mp3. You can find it from 3 mirror sites linked off of The Not So Late Show mirror page – it’s worth a download if you’re interested in the process of how episodes are created, where the group came from, and other behind-the-scenes fun stuff.

Ask for info… and ye shall receive. Serpentius, of Homelan, popped into our new IRC channel to point out that Homelan is now renting Halo PC servers through Homelan Xtreme. Private servers start at $90/month (with discounts for longer contracts), and public servers start at $125 a month. You’re paying for premium servers… buy with confidence!

A little late for some forumgoers… but Frankie’s Weekly Update has been posted; you can find it over on the Battleground: Halo forum. This one’s got me pretty stoked – lots and lots of solid progress info. Good stuff on AI, animation, sound design… the works. Go read it!

There’s a new poll running over at Subnova – ‘Why haven’t you bought Halo for PC/Mac?‘ (Yes, there’s an option for those who HAVE.) Go vote!

A number of people have asked us, over the years, to set up an HBO IRC channel, for folks who feel that the forum moves too slowly. Thanks to the good folks at Homelan… we are happy to say we can now accomodate. The channel name is #HBO, the network is irc.homelan.com, the atmosphere is pure HBO. Come on by! (If IRC is registered for your browser, this link will get you there.)

Over the past few weeks, HBO visitors have been able to try out our pair of Homelan-hosted Halo PC servers. The feedback we’ve gotten has been almost universally positive; folks love the low-lag, high-performance servers, and like the fact that they’re geographically spread; it’s great to have more than one option when trying to connect and play. Homelan has just rolled out Homelan Xtreme On-Demand, a service aimed at developers and publishers… but if you’ve got the need for scalable gameservers, it’s worth a look! Thanks to Narc, at Rampancy.net, who found it at Forerunners.org.

Red vs Blue has posted Episode 23 for sponsors – you know where to go. Seems like filler, for the most part… setups for next week. (There ARE a few funny lines, of course…) Thanks to Ross Mills for the heads-up.

Rampancy.net continues with another segment of The High Ping Bastard’s Guide to Halo – this part (Part Four) focuses on etiquette. It’s quite bulky (the lack of whitespace might intimidate some readers), but in general, it has good advice about how to deal with a low-bandwidth connection, in relation to other players. Check it out! Update: Who says Narc doesn’t respond to requests? Whitespace has been added; the article is no longer intimidating.

One One Se7en finishes up the guest punster series… thank goodness. (This one was already done by rapture, anyway.) To make up for it, Stuntmutt is going to create another 4-page run-through… this time, though, it’s going to be a runthrough of Frogger.

That Orange MC is pretty swift… check out today’s Halo: Resolution.

Those crazy guys at Fire Team Charlie have put up another Flash shooter; take out the enemy MCs before they take YOU out. It’s pretty tough – I didn’t play very long, but my score was only 2375; there are folks in their forum with scores over 7000. it’s fun! (Comments can go in this thread.)

I keep forgetting to put this in the news… but WhoKnew announced a new Halo movie that his clan (Alpha Base) has put together. It’s called ‘Elevation’, and they’re hosting copies in both WMP9 and MOV formats. It weighs in at 16 or 17 mb, depending on the version you get. Modded action – pretty fun flamethrower!

Ryan ‘Mhaddy’ Matthews, of the Junkyard, pointed out an interview with CJ Scaminaci and Sam Bantner, the leaders of Project Halo: Webwar Evolved, a 3D FPS/strategy game based on Halo. This is a really ambitious project, as the interview will make clear… good luck to the whole Project Halo team!