Wow, nice. Over on the Gearbox forums, bitterbanana has released a mod that works with both HaloCE and HaloPC – it expands your field of view (works nicely on widescreen monitors) and lets you view yourself from behind (third-person camera). Nice! Thanks, VerdaFolio.

Gamespy has opened its Gamers’ Choice voting for Game of the Year 2004 – make yourself heard. (Halo 2, obviously, is up for the Xbox award.) Thanks, Gothmog117.

It’s time again for another HBO Poll. Thanks to Max Hoberman, Hawaiian Pig, and XLNC for making it happen. If you’re interested in letting Bungie know which Halo map you’d like to see again in Halo 2, follow the link to the right and vote! The poll will remain up for a week or so. (Full explanation on how this came about is on that page.) Update: Apologies – In my haste to get this poll loaded, I left a couple of things off – like IP logging, and a vote button. I put the vote button in a bit too quickly… and a couple of overzealous fans ran up the vote on a couple of maps. I’ve since reset the counter; if you voted in the first few minutes of this poll’s existence, you should vote again. Sorry about that.

Secrets from the inside! Check out today’s Calvin and Halo for the lowdown on bentllama’s inspiration.

Tired of your standard Windows cursors? Looks like BOLL and Stuntmutt teamed up to give you another choice. (No comment on whether it’s a step up or a step down…)

This was posted yesterday – but Dolbex didn’t make a lot of noise about it. Max Hoberman, Multiplayer and User-Interface Lead for Halo 2, answered a bunch of questions asked by MLG forumgoers over on the MLGPro.com website. Info about weapon balance, downloadable content, and Bungie involvement in the community are all addressed – plus lots more. One of the most interesting (and perplexing) answers:

WLT asks: “Why did you guys [take] out the fall damage?”

Unfortunately falling damage didn’t play nice with the energy sword, which made it into the game pretty late. If you lunged at someone below you you’d get accelerated so fast that when you hit the ground you’d die. We had to make a last minute decision whether to keep it like this or to turn off falling damage in multiplayer. We’d been playing without falling damage for quite some time anyway, and it didn’t bother us too much, so we chose the latter.

Go read the interview for much more info.

News from Eric Trautmann, former keeper of the Halo Bible Flame, and author of ‘The Art of Halo’ – there’s a new article at Xbox.com on the book, including several sample pages (though they’re not even close to what I would have picked to showcase the book’s strengths), and there’s an interview with Eric, conducted by Halo novelist Eric Nylund, over at Del Rey Online. Thanks once again, Narc.

There’s a story in yesterday’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer that looks at the creator of the Excel Worksheet mentioned last week for dealing with Halo 2 RSS stats. When was the last time a spreadsheet created for looking at videogame stats rated a full column in a major metropolitan newspaper? Thanks again, Narcogen.

Wow – there’s a mountain of new artwork over at Halo Babies – including the beginnings of a Halo graphic novel, and a new work in progress by Tina Leyk! (There’s plenty of other stuff in there to see, as well – check every link!) Thanks to Narcogen, at Rampancy.net, for the heads-up; I guess I fell off mrsmiley’s mailing list.

deftangel points out an article at vnunet.com – it looks like Britain’s conversion to broadband might be boosted a bit by Halo 2. Broadband traffic in general quadrupled after November 9 – a statistic that is rather astounding, when you consider how many uses there are for broadband. Looks like ISPs are upgrading in order to keep up with the XBL demand. Update: Bah, I have to learn to read more carefully. Broadband usage hasn’t increased fourfold… just Xbox Live traffic has. Sort of kills my spin, doesn’t it? Thanks, Robin Osborne, for setting me straight.

There’s a note over at Bungie.net about an upcoming outage – starting around 1:30 pm Pacific time today, their forums will be down for roughly 12 hours for maintenance. Remember – they have a LOT of new visitors these days… they see a LOT of new posts, and all of them need to be adjusted right now. Thanks to lots of people – Michael S was first.

haloTV has 12 new movies for you right now – some have been available as regular downloads, others are completely new. If you’re not familiar with haloTV, this is a great way to get to know ’em!

21 new pieces added to the Fan Fiction section this morning. I don’t make a habit of singling out individual stories – but vector40 doesn’t come around much any more, and his stuff is worth seeing when he does. Take a look at his 4-part (unfinished) final HBO fan fiction tale, and be sure and stop by the link listed at the top of the first part!

Web comic The Day it Snowed figures out that William Dietz had a pretty tough job… thanks, Druff.

SketchFactor has posted a note on the Bungie.net forums to address the recent allegations of cheating, with some guidelines about how to deal with it. Bungie is looking into the situation, and confirmed cheaters will be penalized, possibly with deletion of their Xbox Live account. Ouch! Read the thread for more details. Thanks, Brad Stephens.

Top story on GTAGaming.com (a Grand Theft Auto website) is ‘Vice City Gone Halo!‘ – six mods to help turn GTA Vice City into Halo. Weapons, vehicles, health, HUD, and a skin… check ’em out!

prometheus opened a new website yesterday – it’s unique, in that all it offers is content that glorifies the environmental grandeur of Halo and Halo 2. Inspired by David Galindo’s hudless tribute films, he made his own – ‘Orbital Shock Trooper Tribute’. You can find a WMP9 version (7.4 mb) on his site (hosted by Mythica) or on files2.bungie.org – and I’ve put up a QuickTime version (9.2 mb), as well. Grab a copy – and look around the rest of the site! Nice stuff.

One of the tradeoffs Bungie made in Halo 2 was an elimination of load times in-game… at the expense of some visual glitches during major scene changes. Stuntmutt looks at some side effects in today’s One One Se7en.

Goodness. There’s already a Blood Gulch mod for Half-Life 2. That’s amazing! (Driveable warthog, and everything.) Thanks, WonderWeasel.

Mhaddy writes that a new Spotlight article is up at the Junkyard – this time it’s focused on BOLL. Wanna know what makes this guy tick? Go read!