DocOctavius posted a new map he just finished for HaloCE; it’s called Red Feather Ranch, and it’s pretty gorgeous to look at. Really feels like the high hills of Colorado – as DocOc intended. The map’s quite large… but the two bases are actually pretty close together. I don’t know how it plays (haven’t had time to try it out), but the forum post lists a server it’s running on, so give it a shot!

BOLL found an interesting feature on a later level – does this tell us anything about the origins of the Forerunner, or is this just a coincidence? (Again, spoiler issues for folks who haven’t gotten here yet, but the Forerunner were a big part of the original Halo, as well.)

I’m STILL not finished with the new HBO/HIH Tricks site (this holiday week threw a glitch in a lot of projects), but there was a vid posted to our forum this morning which is pretty cool, and worth seeing. Gil27 managed to film the handheld Scarab gun – a plasma rifle, hidden away on Metropolis, that fires Scarab bolts. (Given that the Scarab was seen in Halo commercials, it doesn’t really seem to me that there is any spoiler material in this video… but you never know.) The video is 12.4 mb, DivX 5 format. What a deadly gun!

TeamXbox gave thanks for some Xbox-related stuff recently… Halo 2 Multiplayer made number one on the lsit of ten items. Nice! Thanks, Cybrfrk.

JesusLove submitted a fun little film showing a nice run of banshee boarding in single player. If you haven’t finished the Gas Giant section of the game, there are spoilers here. Otherwise, check this out; I tried it myself after watching this vid last night, and I must say, it’s pretty darned easy to fall to your death in the attempt – so I’m impressed! QuickTime format, 9.4 mb.

The last time I posted a spoiler-marked news item, I received a TON of email from people who have not figured out how to get their browser to properly set a cookie to view spoilers. There seem to be two groups with the problem: folks running MacOSX 10.2, and folks running Windows while using some sort of external firewall (Norton products are the most common culprits). Safari under OSX 10.2 is broken, with respect to certain types of cookies; we used to point people to a workaround, but stopped doing so after Panther was released (newer versions of Safari work fine with our spoiler system). You can still use this – clearly, you’ll need to change a few settings – see the bottom of that page for details. For Windows users, your alternatives are less palatable; you can either live without spoiler posts, or you can tone down your internet security settings. Because neither of these are ideal, we’ve added a third choice: On the page that explains the spoiler settings, we’ve added links to a couple of pages that can show you all spoiler-blocked posts. If you’re missing some news that you don’t want to miss, and you can’t make the spoiler system work on your computer, use these links to see the news normally blocked. Here’s hoping this alleviates some of the pain!

David “Chubigans” Galindo continues his cinematic style of video narrative with ‘The Arbiter’s Army’, a new piece putting the Spec-Ops Covenant forces fighting on Gas Giant and Delta Halo in a noble light. Really nice work! It’s available in WMP9 format (21.4 mb) at Mythica.org and bungie.org, or QuickTime format (17.5 mb) at Mythica.org and bungie.org.

Zero, from Dark-Oni.com, dropped a note about a pretty bizarre movie he made. He says “This a little joke/experiment I was working with, it’s using some of the dialogue in cut scenes to make this funny techno beat, with cinematics.” I’m not sure I get it. Epileptics beware. Vid is 16.1 mb, WMP9 format, hosted on Zero’s connection.

Halo Babies has put up a guest strip created by BOLL – that guy is everywhere. The link in the news description is a bit funky – use this one instead.

Yet another comic tips a hat to Halo 2 – Aikida points out that blowing off your significant other for Halo 2 might not even be noticed. Thanks, BoinKlasik.

Speaking of overeating… Red vs Blue has posted a new Public Service Announcement; Indigestion 2004 is part political commentary, part cultural commentary, and all funny. Go watch! (Careful of the airsick bags…) First heads-up goes to Graham Cree.

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving… or if you’re outside the US, you did something else involving far too much food. We’ve just said goodbye to our guests, and I’m sitting down to take a look through today’s mail. We’ve got a very nice new film from Jon Oakes – he melded video footage from Halo 2 with audio material from the Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow trailer, to make a pretty slick little piece. 5.6 mb, QuickTime format, kindly hosted by KP on boomerica. Go watch, as you digest!

Yay… finally. I’ve made a dent on the Miscellaneous Art queue! There’s still plenty more to post, but I’ve posted 30 pieces today; I’m giving thanks to the artists who’ve waited so long to see their work posted. And that will pretty much do it for the day… time to start cooking turkey, and waiting on guests. Happy Thanksgiving, all!

Calvin and Halo take off on a new series of comics today – thanks, Blackstar!

We’d received mail last week from some people that were having trouble hosting Major Clan matches on Xbox Live, even though they knew they had enough bandwidth to handle the job. Chris Butcher wrote out an explanation for the trouble recently, and posted it on Bungie.net – it seems that your ability to host clan matches requires that the network has a record of your bandwidth reliability. Read Chris’s post for more info – it’s pretty interesting! (It’s got actual bandwidth requirements listed – which, in and of themselves, are fascinating… because they’re roughly HALF of what a Halo PC game needs for hosting.) Thanks, deftangel.

In honor of Thanksgiving, Frankie has recycled the Halo 2 informational article originally posted on November 8, over at Bungie.net. I didn’t keep a local copy of the first version, so it’s hard to tell what, if anything, has changed… but at the very least, there are now nice graphics for the main sections. If you have questions about any aspects of Halo 2, this should be one of the very first places you look. Thanks, Wraith.

eek has offered mirrors for both of Dave Galindo’s (Chubigan’s) videos from yesterday – he’s got the QuickTime versions of the Halo Sights Tour and ‘In the Front Lines‘ up on The Nothing. Thanks!

We mentioned on November 4 that Halo had secured a spot on the Walk of Game, a new video game landmark in San Francisco. It took until yesterday for the inductees to be officially announced, however. Halo owns one of the four Favorite Game/Character spots. Thanks, pimpmeister.

Web comics for you today:

• MacHall takes a shot at the Halo 2 ending (Clearly, if you haven’t finished, this could be considered spoiler material) – Ian’s also put up a great new desktop image using Heltana, his anime version of your favorite onboard AI. Thanks to many – Jon was first.
• The most recent Carzorthade (November 23) shows one of the downsides of Bungie’s new attention to detail (thanks, Cameron Hassler).

Wow – I wish I had one of these in my town. Rampancy.net mentioned an article about a state-of-the-art gaming center in rural New Hampshire… it just opened, and Halo 2 is one of the games it offers. And wow, what a center. Here’s hoping for a successful expansion!