And again, 7 entries as today’s Fan Fiction haul…

• Stowaway Part 1, by Dispraiser
• Humanity’s Last Hope: Prolouge, by Ishkabibbl
• Battle of Croton: Chapter 2 – At least we’re not dead…yet, by Earl Hershberger (Jester) / Trevor White (Boxer)
• Halo: 11th Strategic Interceptor Wing: Scourge of the Gods, by LordofDestruction
• The Defense of Earth 5: The Flood, by Steele
• Halo: 11th Strategic Interceptor Wing: The Next Waterloo, by LordofDestruction
• Death From Above part II: Foreboding to Hell Fire, by AlphaBravo343

Whoa. AotCR as a Monty Python analogue? Check it out.

A short teaser from c0ld vengeance (creator of the Haliens movie) – check out Predator. 6.5 mb, DivX format. (Warning: foul language.) Let us know if a QuickTime version is needed… Update: Seems the demand for a QT version is bigger than I expected. Here’s a copy at Mythica (2.2 mb).

Eclarap writes to say that Episode 2 (along with the rest of the Red vs. Blue video) continues to be mirrored at Halo-Game, in France… a viable option for anyone in Europe. (It’s also available, obviously, at the Red vs Blue site for everyone, not just registered users.)

After a small dry spell with respect to movies, we’ve gotten a truckload submitted in the last couple of days – we’ll start you out with something small. This one’s from Maverick J, a trickster who’s been around for a bit (but only recently active in the HBO community). It’s called CTF Flag Getting 101 Part 1, and it’s available in both WMP9 format (7.2 mb) or QT format (11.8 mb) from Mythica.org. (Both versions are also available from the Psyjnir Complex Hotline server, as well.) It’ll show you a couple of down and dirty tricks for grabbing a flag on several levels (Battle Creek, Hang ’em High, Sidewinder) that you might not have known about. At least one of these is explicity forbidden in most of the lanfests I participate in (it requires climbing out of the map), but all of them involve nothing but some fancy footwork (and teamwork); there are no mods at play here. Worth a watch!

Emildux has written up a summary of a 16-player 5-kill-max match with $100 on the line… check it out.

Recently, BOLL added yet another cool Flash animation to his Halo-related stable. You can see it in our forum, or you can check it out on its own in our Miscellaneous section. (The animation itself is tiny – 12k.) They make me giggle…

Episode 2 of Red vs. Blue is out for registered viewers; if you’ve registered on their forum, go and grab it. (If you haven’t registered, it’ll be posted publicly in about 10 hours.) And remember, if you haven’t seen the first few pieces, go now and download them – they’re quite funny.

8 Fan Fiction pieces for you tonight:

• Rogue Beast (Prologue), by Frensa Geran
• Enigma: Part 2, Suspects, by Madcat_97
• The Truth and Reconciliation, by Alex geer
• Death from Above: Humanitys’ Resolve part I, by AlphaBravo343
• Searching for the Past-A Halo/G Gundam Crossover, by Ultra Sonic 007
• 1st Special Forces group part 2, by grylsy
• An Unlikely Alliance part one, by grylsy
• Halo: Captain Keyes Story Part 4, by monitor101

And you’re waiting for…?

A couple of months ago, we posted a note about a tournament sometime this summer in Arkansas. The Elite Spartan writes to say that due to lack of sponsors, the tourney is off.

SketchFactor has posted some information over at Bungie.net about the upcoming FanFest to take place at E3. The limit of 200 attendees has been reached, but a few of them haven’t provided valid contact information; these will be dropped from the list on Monday if this doesn’t change, making those spots available. Additionally, if plans change and people find they can’t attend, they should let SF know, so that he can remove their names from the list, and make the spots available. There are more details – go read it at Bungie.net.

Forerunners.org is holding another giveaway – this time it’s a halo T-shirt. Visit giveaways.forerunners.org and fill out the form – by early May, you could be wearing a free T. (Check out tBC’s always-entertaining writeup here.) Deadline is April 30th.

Whoa. Randy Glass, creator of the Warthog Jump, has posted a pretty detailed layout for a Halo level, complete with maps and (he says cheesy, I don’t agree) drawings. He built this as part of an application for a Bungie position as Mission Designer (sadly, he didn’t get the job). 3 MB PDF file. If bandwidth gets tight at Randy’s site, we’ll toss up a mirrored copy. Definitely worth a look!

That Weasel sends in not one, but two mirrors for Dead Rabbits – as well as mirrors for the cleaned-up versions of Blood Gulch Ballet, and MoreHackinFun (a modded-xbox movie). You’ll find them ALL on his HBO Mirror page. Very cool! (We’ll put together a mirror list for DR sometime today.)

After a three-week hiatus, Warbow has added another installment to his Calvin and Halo series. Timing is quite good; I’ve been missing the subject.

Over on the MacAddict Forums, a thread started over an April Fools prank we tried here. It didn’t take long for the prank itself to be exposed… but over the past week, the exposer, Brad Oliver, has made it definitely worthwhile reading. Brad Oliver works for Westlake, and is the programmer currently assigned to the Mac port of Halo. He’s being careful not to step on anyone’s toes (especially marketing departments), but from the various posts in this thread, you can learn things like Mac Halo will (probably) be the first Mac game to ship with vertex shader support, the game is currently not in a fully playable state (the way it’s set up, Gearbox is responsible for bringing the Xbox code over to the PC, and Westlake is syncing in their code as they go), system requirements are still up in the air (but it’s looking like a good graphics card will make your experience CONSIDERABLY better), and a second programmer is slated to start working on the project very soon (implying a rampup of work). The info on cross-platform netplay isn’t quite as positive as I’d like… but it’s not set in stone; remember that you’re hearing from someone who’s making it work, not someone who decides what HAS to work. If you’re interested in technical information about the Mac port of Halo, this thread is the best source to date! Thanks to Earendil the Mariner for the heads-up.

Dontcha love it when there are 7 entries for the Fan Fiction section?

• Brutus, the Spartans, two AIs and the Pirate Fleet (Part 1), by Traumatised Marine
• The Defense of Earth 4: Ghost Ship, by Steele
• Fire Team Zulu: Futile Resistance, by Spartan-13
• Life of a UNSC Marine Part IV, by Tygpj
• A Single Motion: part 5, by Arthur Wellesly
• Project Shadow Spartan: Chapter Two, by Shadow Spartan and Arinoth Koby
• Battle for Croton, by Earl Hershberger / Trevor White

Go get ’em!

In November, 2002, we posted an announcement of a movie called ‘Heaven and Hell’. In it, we stated that it showed, for the first time, the bottom of the Silent Cartographer main shaft. What we forgot was that in December, 2001, barely a month after the Xbox was released, we had put up an announcement for a DIFFERENT movie… which showed the same thing. That film (Team 7hr33’s livefromtheshaftfloor.mov) never actually showed anything of the floor itself; the player on the bottom spent all of his time looking up. (I think I must have thought that they were almost, but not all the way, down because of this when I wrote up the Heaven and Hell post.) However, upon exploring Team 7hr33’s website, there is a DIFFERENT film (dated June 6, 2002) which shows plenty of bottom-of-the-shaft footage (last movie on the page)… my bad entirely for overlooking this. Rightful credit for the first film of the bottom of the main Silent Cartographer shaft (not the Security Shaft) should go to Team 7hr33, all the way back before Christmas, 2001.

Whoa. Massive film by Blackstar – it’s a loving reconstruction of ‘Dead Rabbits’, a LANfest held here at HBO HQ a week and a half ago. It’s nearly 7 minutes long, and 63 megs big. We’ll work on mirrors (I’ll put a copy up at Mythica this morning) – if you have bandwdidth to spare, feel free to let us know! Update: There’s now a copy at Mythica.

Matt Soell put up a note on bungie.net mentioning the voice actors that were traipsing through Bungie’s studios today… and pointing out that one of them, David Scully (Sergeant Johnson, to all you greenhorns), has a comedy album out. It’s only $10, and there are 3 2-minute samples on the CD’s website – go listen, then grab a copy. Scully is a funny man.