Lanwerx, a gaming center in Washington state, is hosting a Halo event in their Bellevue store on August 23rd. (It’s being put together by the boys from Penny Arcade, so we’ve received mail from a dozen people giving us the heads-up about it…) Hijack mentioned it on our forum, and SketchFactor clarified what the ‘bit of Halo 2’ mentioned by Gabe will be:

We’ll be playing through a live version of the E3 demo and possibly bringing another surprise.

Sounds like if you’re gonna be near Bellevue next Saturday, Lanwerx is gonna be the place to be!

Last month, we mentioned that Bungie had set up a database whereby you could submit questions to the Cananimators, the two Canadian animators on the Halo 2 dev team. Well, the first installment of their answers has been put up, according to SketchFactor… it’s a very funny read. There’s even some useful animation information in there.

In an attempt to keep those 20+ item lists off the front page, here’s today’s Fan Fiction:

• A John Before Halo: Part 7, by J-117
• The Seeping: Tales of 2 Pilots Part 1, by Gruntar(aka LALA)
• A Marine Named Peters: From One Crash To Another, by GLADIATRRR3000
• A Grunt’s Hope, by stan
• Battle for Sigma Octanus, by Cire117
• Episode One – The Spartan, by Spartan117
• Mutant Chronicles : A New worrior, by CrazyIvan2X
• First Contact; Chapter 4: Planning, by retsamolah
• Episode 2: The Spartans, by Spartan 117

It’s been 24 hours…

And 12 new desktops for you, too, in our Wallpaper section. The artists never stop! (Whoever created the Halo Band image in our uploads folder – we need identification before we can post it.)

A week’s worth of Miscellaneous Art, ranging from comics to parodies to a printable gameboard. Sorry for the delay on some of these…

A couple of weeks ago, Stuntmutt forwarded the beginning of a collection of Guest One One Se7en strips, submitted to him unsolicited by fans of the comic. There hasn’t been a lot of time between that day and this… but finally, the first Guest Strip has been posted, courtesy of Loose Cannon. With any luck, they’ll continue to be added. (There’s no schedule for the Guest strips, just as there’s no schedule for the Sunday strips. The weekday strips will continue to be posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.)

For the first time in months, the Bungie Research Center Archives has been updated with a new image. Hmm…

C’mon, tell me you’ve never thought about it… One One Se7en goes where most of us don’t really WANT to go.

The last Fan Fiction update was on Sunday – and now there are 24 new stories for you to read.

• Halo- The Fallen Place pt1, by Darth Lord
• All Roads Lead To Sol…Despite What The Map Says: Chapter 10, by S7N
• A Marine Named Peters: Sledding is Fun, Unless the Covenant Are Behind You, by GLADIATRRR3000
• True Purpose: The Sequel, by Frensa Geran
• The Last War, Chapter One: Self-Aware, by Agent Shade
• SNIPER: Part-Two, by Vege7a
• The Sarge, by pooman
• Rampancy Is Character Forming: Part 3, by S7N
• Draco Part 1, by Dispraiser
• War for Earth City [2]: More of an Enemy Then You Thought, by Kancer
• An Officer Named Starblade: Onward to Earth!, by Hunter_Killer
• Search for Chief part one edited, by Legend Player
• The Last War, Chapter Two: Futile Pleas of Help, by Agent Shade
• Halo: The MCconto Chronicles 6: The Phrophecy, by JCDenton
• Halo: The MCconto Chronicles Part 7: The Meeting, by JCDenton
• Rampany Is Character Forming: Part 4, by S7N
• Earth, A Place for Death. Part 6: Helping out the Chief, by FuManChu
• Rebirth – The Ragnarok, by Shadow/Archangel’s Blade/KnightmareWolf/Spartan415
• Chapter 1 – Boot, by Bloodcider
• Marines are fighting this war, not Spartans-Prologue, by Michael Gillespie
• War for Earth City [3]: Not Much of a Friend, by Kancer
• The First Battle of Sol Part One, by Joseph Themann
• Legiment To My Marines, by Spartan117
• The Fallen Chapter 4 Section 4: Power Regulation, by Hikaru-119

I hate writing personal notes in news posts, but the email included with Hikaru-119’s posts bounces. PLEASE: If you’re writing a series, INCLUDE THE SERIES TITLE in your posts. I’m really, really tired of resetting this. (Hikaru-119 seems to be the only author who still doesn’t get it…) If you have a problem, or something doesn’t work for you, write to me. I can’t fix what I don’t know about.

A little late… but nonetheless appreciated! The Weekly Review has been posted on our forum. Fewer nuggets than usual, due to the overwhelming flood of Hacking posts this week… but there was still some good stuff! Check it out.

25 dialogue snippets have been submitted in the past week – apologies for taking so long to process them. New Grunts, Sarges, and Marines… check ’em out in our Dialogue Databank!

Well, dang. Vehicles on almost all Multiplayer levels. (Blood Gulch and Sidewinder left out because they already have vehicles, and Longest left out because “trying to get the vehicles to MOVE was impossible, especially the tank.” (I think I still would have liked to see ghosts in there…)

Hehe… folks have always wondered what’s under the MC’s helmet; the final cutscene shows him removing it just before the camera moves out of range of the window, tantalizing you but not actually showing you anything. c0ld vengeance and BOLL teamed up to build you some X-Ray Glasses… and it’s pretty surprising what you find.

Well, he can’t drive to save his life, but he’s a pretty dang good hacker… Pfhorslayer has made a small (2.2 mb, QT) movie showing warthogs on Hang ’em High. We’ve put up a local copy of it, because his bandwidth won’t hold out. A novelty item for sure! Update: Macegac has provided a mirror, as well.

Gearbox has posted another screenshot – this one of a Load Game screen. Very, very nice – games are now saved by how far into them you are, and you don’t overwrite the last one by starting another. Tasty! Thanks to Uukla the Mok for the heads-up. Update: Very cool – a Gearbox employee explains (on their forum) what the screen is showing you. It should definitely excite some of you… thanks to Uukla the Mok for finding it.

Two more Halo sites for you: Halo Production and Team Kill. And the parade goes on… Update: The folks at Halo Production have run over their bandwidth, but have provided a second link.

Dinky stopped by our forum with some links to Halo PC gameplay at GenCon last month. Movie hosting is provided by the Junkyard – thanks, guys! Update: Dinky has put up new mirrors for part 1, part 2, the single player footage. Also, Jake at the Junkyard points out that they’re only hosting the single-player footage; Dinky’s handling the original multiplayer links. Update 2: No sooner had I written this than Jake wrote AGAIN, saying that there ARE now versions hosted at the Junkyard. So: Follow the original link for the HJP copies, or visit the Junkyard’s Halo movies page for MORE mirrors.

Halo gets a mention in yesterday’s Ctrl+Alt+Del comic. Thanks to Spenser for the heads-up. Update: S7N points out that there are many Halo-related Ctrl+Alt+Del strips – like, for example, this one from January. Browse the archives for more!

eXentric has created a Map Editor for editing hacked Halo maps (to create the sorts of fun toys folks have been posting for the past few days). Some rather draconian rules had to be laid down on our forum recently, covering what is, and is not, acceptable to discuss in reference to this topic; luckily, eXentric has set up a forum for discussion of Cartographer (the editor) over at Xbox-Scene. Check it out!

Been a week since we put up any desktops – here are 16 that have been submitted for the Wallpaper section. There’s still a bunch of art in the queue, but it’s going to have to wait…