Sunday Fan Fiction for you:

• The Admiral Chapter 1 Part 1 and Part 2, by Dyn
• Justification, Part 3, by Rixor
• I want to be a Spartan…, by assman
• Titan, Part 7, by Jaywhit10
• Halo 2: A New Hope, Part 2, by Sephiroth

Get to reading! [Side note for Fan Fiction authors: we received two unpleasant notes in the last couple of days – one was rude, the other downright offensive. Both came from authors who were angry that they had received spam because their email address was posted with a story. (One received a virus, apparently.) Nothing says you have to have your email address posted with your story. If you do not tell us not to post it, though, we will, since it seems that most authors WANT feedback. Know this, though: if you choose to send us nasty mail blaming us for messages you receive because your address is posted, we’ll pull all your stories, and refuse to accept new ones. I don’t need that sort of abuse; you don’t pay me enough for it. Thanks.]

It’s not perfect, but it’s certainly watchable. Thanks to the work of Cybrfrk and customsex, and a little help from Apple and Sorenson, we’ve got a decent version of the recent Haliens movie for you in QuickTime format. Anyone who had trouble with the .wmv version… this puppy’s for you. Currently, it’s only at Mythica.org and the Psyjnir.com hotline server, but we’d LOVE to compile a bigger mirror list; feel free to host it and tell us about it. This bad boy is 36.7 mb, 8 minutes, 320×240 (pretty close to the original). Have I said thanks to Cybrfrk and customsex yet? Go get it!

Whew – a productive Saturday morning! In between recycling, and kid-shuttling, I’ve managed to bring the Movies, Interviews, and (most importantly) Miscellaneous databases up to date! Boy, does that feel good. More than 2 dozen miscellaneous items have been added, along with half-a-dozen interviews and about that many movies. Enjoy! (Time to clean the windows.)

Vector40 has let us know that Rampancy.net is providing a mirror for Crocodile Bungie’s Speed video – we’ve added it to the Mirrors list. We’re still working on the Haliens format issue…

Lorraine Reyes (via Matt Soell) points out on Bungie’s Tru7h and Reconciliation that G4Tv’s Filter program has given Halo a few nods; Number 1 in their Top 10 Arsenals program, and Numbers 1 (Warthog) and 3 (Scorpion) in their Top 10 Coolest Vehicles program. Not too shabby!

5 months ago, ‘The Matrix (Halo Remix)’ hit the streets; it was a movie that recreated the entire first scene of The Matrix, within the Halo engine. (It did a bang-up job of it, too.) Now, c0ld vengeance and demonelite have taken on a similar task… check out Haliens, a kickass new movie that recreates a good deal of James Cameron’s ‘Aliens’ from within Halo. The only thing I’m really, really, REALLY unhappy with is that it’s only available in .WMV format – if you have trouble with that (if you’re on a not-brand-new Mac or a *nix box), you’re out of luck. For everyone else, download this puppy today. It’s 8 minutes long, just under 40 megs, and 320×240 big. I can’t say enough good stuff about it. (Almost every great Bill Paxton line from Aliens is in this vid.) At the moment, we’ve only got it up at mythica.org and the Psyjnir.com hotline server… so if you can help out with this monster, please let us know.

Ecko dropped off a new desktop for our Wallpaper collection.

Friday’s Fan Fiction:

• A Halo Novelization: Chapter 1, by MarioMTO
• Shadows of Archon II, part 26, by Wado
• JENKINS, by Dyn

Off to work on art stuff…

Thanks to Pez, who has resurrected his FTP server, and added new mirrors for the Speed movies (both sizes) and Heaven and Hell. Speed’s capped at a pretty low figure, but it should be fine for slower links. Thanks, Pez!

We haven’t mentioned the next Halo novel in a while – since September 9, to be precise. At that point, we knew that the title would be ‘Halo: The Flood’, the author would be William Dietz, and the release date was set for sometime in April 2003. Now, thanks to Dave Candland, we know what it’s about: Dave says “It will be the novelization of the game.” I’m not sure if I should be excited, or disappointed…

How much would you pay for a Master Chief patch? How about a Legendary one? Warbow’s just designing them, not actually producing them, but I bet if there were interest…

In 1998, when people were stil playing Quake, a group of insane people decided to not only see how fast they could get through the entire game, but to put together their results in attractive, viewable packages. The result was Quake Done Quick. Now, nobody’s EVER going to run through Halo in under 15 minutes (the unskippable cutscenes alone would take longer than that), but Inky and FeralBob of the Down Under group Crocodile Bungie, have done the next best thing; a movie called ‘Speed‘. Halo, start to finish, in a bit over 3 minutes. Yes, there are spoilers. (They’re easy to miss if you blink.) There are two versions; a 25 mb, 300×240 copy (with a few small exceptions, very clear) and a 10 mb, 200×166 copy (compression artifacts are a bit higher, of necessity). You can find all current links on the Speed Mirrors page, and we’re happy to add other mirror offers.

The boys over at Battleground: Halo have wrangled a bit of time with the Master Chief, and have posted an interview with the guy. Always nice to get a view behind the curtain!

GJ, of Fantazm, drops us a line about a mirror for Heaven and Hell… which is good, because there’s another movie coming today. Let’s hope Mythica can hold up to the demand!

Eclectic? Yes. For your viewing pleasure today, we’ve got a poster for a movie we’d rather not see, an early Christmas present, and an astounding (and huge) battlefield sketch in our Miscellaneous Art collection.

Bunch of desktops for you today… some cool backgrounds that poena.dare #CP# pulled from a GDC Talk that Marty O’Donnell gave last spring, and some weirdly-shaped collections from Gasmask. You’ll find ’em all in our Wallpaper section.

In February, poena.dare #CP# created a series of images for discussions on our forum that helped illustrate Halo’s place in the galaxy, and your place in Halo. For some reason, though we mentioned them in the news, we never added them to the site itself. This has now been rectified; you can find all three images in our Miscellaneous section. (No, this is not linked on the main page there yet. It will be soon, I hope.)

Matthew Smith has put together a film he calls ‘Heaven and Hell: The Top and Bottom of the Silent Cartographer’. It’s 8:51 long, and weighs in at 24.2 mb. (It uses the DivX 4.02 codec to achieve this impressive feat, and is quite watchable.) It shows a number of things that have been filmed before (invincibility jumping, glitching the Shaft cutscene, dropship riding), but it also shows things not seen before, such as the bottom of the Silent Cartographer main shaft. (Not the Security override.) Did you know it was 851 feet down? This one caps our Silent Cartographer collection, I think… time to move on to other levels. Before you go, though, download and watch this! We’ve tossed a copy up at Mythica.org (thanks, as usual, to Brian Towne, for his terabyte+/month donation to the cause). If you’ve got the space… feel free to mirror this (and tell us about it).

Before any of you break your keyboards in your frenzy to send us word that Penny Arcade is reporting that Halo will have Xbox Live support… they’re not. Tycho mentioned a rumor he heard, but he follows it with

but I haven’t heard this verified anywhere else, so keep your expectations low.

We couldn’t agree with that last more. Bungie has said, over and over, that it’s not happening. Matt said it again, just 4 days ago. Much as I enjoy Penny Arcade, if it comes down to a wild rumor mentioned by a comic writer vs. the unambiguous wording of a Bungie employee… I’m gonna have to go with the Bungie guy. (Thanks to mnemesis for the heads-up on this one.)

Ask, and ye shall receive (sometimes). BLOODLUST visited our forum this morning, asking if anyone had high-quality versions of the Difficulty badges visible at the start of Halo. Back in February, we’d posted a composite made by taking screenshots, then extracting the images… it worked, but the quality wasn’t very good. Dave Candland took time out today to send along much prettier versions. You can snag a high-quality jpeg (45K), or a zipped, layered Photoshop document (499k). Use them in good health!