My Halo News.com

The latest news about the Halo series of games from Microsoft

  • Battle of the Bay

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    Louis Wu
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    Heh – take your lanfest to the Next Level. The Bay Area Halo Players Group have put together a pretty slick website for the Battle of the Bay, an upcoming lanfest in San Francisco. They’re looking for 48 Halo players to participate – they’ve got Bungie-supplied swag to give away, and the Official Xbox Magazine is talking about filming some footage for inclusion on their monthly DVD. The only catch? It ain’t free. (Admission fee is $20, or $15 if you supply hardware). If you live in or near San Francisco, this sounds like a killer event! (Thanks to Rico for the heads-up.)

  • Try and do that with a REAL tank!

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    Louis Wu
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    We’ve put our first image up on the One-Shots page… not so much because we were ready for it to go live yet, but because we received a submission of similar pics for the Gameplay Tricks section, and wanted to make sure that credit went where credit was due. You’ll find Roman’s Ostrich pic on the One-Shots page (soon to be populated with other images, as well), and Spike Lee’s series of pics in our Gameplay Tricks section. Both deal with the subject of upending a tank…

  • Reach falls again

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    Louis Wu
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    Supreme War Master T’soll Vorskray grinned with delight as the last of the pathetic human battle ships was obliterated, the Gods surely smiled upon his forces on this glorious day.

    Corbantis revisits the Fall of Reach… from the point of view of those who DIDN’T make the jump to Halo. Check out ‘The Tides of War Part 1: “As the Dust Cleared”‘in ourFan Fiction section.

  • Halowars – Play Halo, win money (maybe)

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    Louis Wu
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    Yeroen put up a note about the World Championship Halo League (self-titled) – they’re trying to secure sponsorship so that they can offer cash prizes in their online Halo tournaments… but in the meantime, you can sign up for online play (via Gamespy Tunnel) at the W.C.H.L’s website. Good luck to these guys! (A small note about the bungie.net link – there seems to be a small glitch with b.net’s permalinks, with respect to outside referrers – if you get an empty page, or a note about a wiped database, simply reload once you’re there – the news story should show up.)

  • Halo Online puts up a forum

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    Louis Wu
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    PTM dropped us a note to let us know that Halo Online now has their forum online. You can find it here.

  • FAQ updated to deal with movies

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    Louis Wu
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    Due to the overwhelming number of people who are complaining that they can’t view the movies on this site, we’ve added a QuickTime movie question to our FAQ. If someone asks this question on our forum, or on a different forum, feel free to point them to this entry. (And speaking of QuickTime movies, the Warthog Jump Mirror list has been updated to include That Weasel Television – thanks, TW!) Update: That Weasel writes to let us know the lo-res version of the Warthog Jump movie is at TWT, as well. (Stock up on that Advil, my friend…) The mirror page has been updated to reflect the new link.

  • Fly me to the moon…

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    Louis Wu
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    The list of mirrors for the Warthog Jump video has been getting hard to follow, so we’ve made it a little easier to figure out what’s where. Here’s a full list, broken down by which version is mirrored and what protocol is needed to get it. For all those having trouble seeing it – this movie uses Sorenson 3 compression, and requires QuickTime 5 to view – QuickTime 4 won’t cut it, nor will WMP’s QT decoder. A link to Apple’s download page is provided (QT 5 is free). Thanks again to all those providing bandwidth for this puppy – and if you haven’t seen it yet, go download it now!

  • FoR sequel coming… soon

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    Louis Wu
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    TeamXbox has an article about the cooperative agreement between Microsoft and Del Rey books – based on the success of ‘Halo: The Fall of Reach’, Del Rey plans to put out 2-3 more books this fall, and 6 titles in 2003. Most interesting to readers of THIS site:

    Three new novels are tentatively planned for release beginning in Fall 2002. […] Finally, a new Halo novel will feature a storyline that follows-up and significantly expands upon events in HALO: THE FALL OF REACH.

    No word yet on who’s writing it. Nice pickup by Eric Salzman!

  • Tom’s Hardware Guide looks at Halo

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    Louis Wu
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    Tom’s Hardware Guide has put up an article on the Xbox, and includes a 2-page overview of Halo, among other games. It’s not really a review… but it’s a nice read, written from a hardware junkie’s perspective. They liked it. (Thanks to XNOR for pointing it out, and DeAdLy_cOoKiE (whoa, twice in a week) for pinpointing it.)

  • Got enough mirrors yet?

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    Louis Wu
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    Even more mirrors! First, for Cal’s Blood Gulch Tower movie:

    One more Warthog Jump mirror has surfaced, as well – Rampancy.net is serving up the hi-res version. (Thanks!) We’ll compile full mirror lists for both movies later today.

  • Warthog on the bridge!

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    Louis Wu
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    Heh – very cool. Deimosâ„¢, of Subnova, has managed to get the Warthog back to the very start of the level Halo – follow this link, then head to the bottom of his ‘Halo fun page’ for a pic. (We’ll be adding this to the One-Shots page in the near future.)

  • The Warthog finds another Garage

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    Louis Wu
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    Another mirror for the Warthog Jump movies just surfaced – thanks to Steve Campbell, who put them both (hi and low-res) up via Hotline at hl.forerunners.org. Mmm… resumable downloads…

  • New fan fiction, and a request

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    Louis Wu
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    MaxThndr drops off Chapter 1 of his new ‘Halo II: The Ardan Landings’ series. (Warning – there ARE story spoilers in this one.) We’d like to make a request of Fan Fiction writers – we’d like to ask that if you decide to write chaptered stories (as a huge percentage of you do), that you wait until you have a reasonably-sized chunk before you submit it to the archive. Lately, there have been a large number of very short submissions – we received a chunk of unpleasant mail the last time this happened (we were posting 2 or 3 250-word chapters per day at one point), and we’d like to avoid this. Writing very short chapters is fine – but hold on to them until you’ve got 2 or three to submit, if you choose to write this way. (MaxThndr’s submission is right on the edge of what we’d consider long enough, which is why we’ve taken this opportunity to make this request now.) The Fan Fiction collection lives and breathes because the fans show the authors that their work is worth reading – let’s keep it that way.

  • Beating the scripts

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    Louis Wu
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    Hmm… this is interesting. If you’ve ever headed back to the start of Silent Cartographer after activating the Cartographer (that is, rather than getting into the dropship that would end the level), you’ll find that all the Marines you’d left near the start were dead. (Presumably, they were slaughtered by random Covs you managed to miss along the way.) Apparently, though, this is a scripted outcome, one you have no control over; Chez Wiz reports that

    I’ve loaded six into the three warthogs and driven them out deep in the ocean, but I still find them dead after coming out of the map room and bypass getting in the dropship.

    That’s sort of disappointing… don’t you wish you could save the poor buggers? I wonder what would happen if you forced them down into the interior of SC, then got them out of the jeep and blocked their return with the jeep itself? Would they STILL die? Will anyone find out?

  • Still more movie mirrors

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    Louis Wu
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    More movie mirrors… Tim writes that he’s got the hi-res warthog jump movie up on maserati.ca, and Vector40 has put up a copy of Cal’s ‘Climbing Blood Gulch in a Ghost’ (in .rm format, same as Psyjnir’s mirror) at The Junkyard. (Cal has also – temporarily – put up a copy on his own server.) Have I mentioned how wonderful this community is for picking up the bandwidth slack?

  • Ghost to Tower movie, looking for home

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    Louis Wu
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    More video material – Cal, a frequent contributor to our Gameplay Tricks section, has made a low-resolution movie showing how he got a ghost up to the Tower in Blood Gulch. If you can help him with the hosting of this 3.5 mb movie, drop him a line!

  • More places for the Warthog Jump film

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    Louis Wu
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    Mirrors for the Warthog Jump movie:

    More as we hear of ’em! (This one’s really worth seeing, if that wasn’t clear already. Check the praise in this forum thread.) Quick Update: Drew “DKo5” McCoy writes to say that the hi-res version is now mirrored on his UT clan’s webspace. Thanks, Drew!

  • A movie you MUST watch

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    Louis Wu
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    Okay, put your coffee down (and anything else nearby that might spill), and run, don’t walk, over to this directory. Randy Glass has made one of the funniest fan vids I’ve ever seen – a brilliant combination of Halo footage and miscellaneous sounds and music… it simply MUST be seen to be believed. (Remember, he did this without any of the kewl dev tools Bungie has at their disposal for making movies… this is straight gameplay, with a fantastic eye for capturing the moment.) There are two flavors: a 23 mb, hi-res version and a 10 mb lower-res version. The hi-res version will only be available at oz.net for the next 12 hours or so… but Psyjnir.com will be mirroring it shortly on its Hotline server (other mirror volunteers – let us know). The low-res version is actually quite viewable, so if you don’t get the big one in time, or don’t have the bandwidth to grab it, grab the small one. For those interested in making Halo vids – take heed. This film (like Aaron Suhr’s ‘The People That We Love’, before it) sets a standard worth striving for. Update: In case you had any doubt, this film just received Marty’s Seal of Excellence.

  • More Wallpaper added

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    Louis Wu
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    A couple of Wallpapers came in recently – the SocketError Team dropped off another one (sort of hurts my eyes after a while), and the BlargMaster whipped up a nice image using Strykerwolf’s new Counter-Strike skin. You can find both of these in the Wallpaper section.

  • Casualties, continued

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    Louis Wu
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    Tom Murphy turns in Part 3… hmm, half of Part 1… well, the next bit of the ‘Casualties of War’ series. You can read the latest piece alone, or the series as a whole – whatever’s easiest for you. Don’t forget to tell him what you think!