Yaksha posted a video today showcasing a couple of Halo PC mods… and a pretty drawn-out punchline. 2:09 long, 10.2 mb, WMP9 format. Hosted by redvsblue.net. Check it out!

Boxer points out that the next episode of Adventures in Disaster is posted at akba.info. Man… I would HOPE they have this cleared up by then…

The Junkyard’s analysis of Halo levels by an experienced Marine pilot continues, his time with a look at Truth and Reconciliation. I was amused at the discussion about entering the grav lift area (“Going through the maze inside the plateau is a bad idea, especially if it’s guarded. Going on top of the plateau would have been a better idea”) – Halo tricksters had the right idea all along! Thanks to Mhaddy for letting us know about it (even if I forgot to post it this morning).

Miguel Chavez, the Number One Bungie Fan, sent along a picture (72k) of The Smallest Spartan, otherwise known as Rafi Chavez. I’m not really sure whose desk that is behind him, but I’m pretty sure you’ve seen it on the webcam at some point.

Dang, I said I was done talking about Zanzibar today… and then Stuntmutt had to go and cover it in One One Se7en. I wonder if there’s a coral reef? Update: Go load it again. Make sure your speakers are on. Yes, it’s true, I’m a moron.

This was released yesterday, but would have been completely buried… timboh56 created a trailer for a stop-motion picture he’s putting together, ‘Attack of the Giant Grunt’. It’s short – but it’s quite good, so we’ve mirrored both the original WMP9 version (721K) and a new QuickTime version (812K), so that you don’t have to hammer his personal website. C’mon… it’s tiny. Grab it.

synide, from haloTV, wrote to say that [cG]rapture finished the first of the cookedGamers at Summer CPL 2004 videos, cG vs Strive/Reality. You can watch it over at haloTV.net. It’s about 20 minutes long, 720×480 format, and streamed straight to your desktop. It was filmed behind the cG team; you get the players’ reactions as well as the gameplay itself. Nice vid! There are more on the way – check back at haloTV.net often.

Since the ilovebees phenomenon started back on July 23, I’ve been ambivalent about posting updates related to it; on the one hand, it’s clearly Halo2-related, so it falls within our purview… on the other hand, we’re just not equipped to handle a game of this magnitude. A few weeks ago, in response to forum flooding, I banned the word ‘bee’ (and some common variants) from our forum, to try and convince people to think twice about posting this information. I wrote a short piece, explaining where HBO officially stood on the matter, and requested that discussion be taken elsewhere. I stopped short of outright banning of the discussion, however.

Until today. Last night, I had to delete more than 350 posts on our forum that added nothing but noise; once again, folks were simply regurgitating what they found elsewhere on the net, without even TRYING to read what others had already written. The general excuse for this is ‘this forum is too hard to understand’ or ‘there’s too much here to look through’. And that’s the point. The puzzle is pretty interesting; cut through the silliness and there’s a lot to like about it. And it’s definitely related to Halo 2, so once all is said and done, we’ll do our best to wrap it up and include any relevant information in our various sections. For now, though, conversation MUST take place somewhere else – because what was happening here was not conversation, it was unintelligible noise. (And oh, yeah – for now, please stop sending us updates about what’s happening on the various ILB-related websites; we’re not going to post anything on the front page about it… that would simply encourage folks to discuss it again on the forum which would lead to… well, you know.) Update: Fluffy, site director at HaloPlanet, reminded me that they’ve just opened a new bee-related forum over there; yet ANOTHER good place to go and discuss this stuff.

Wow. I hate for the front page to be dominated by a single file – but I guess this one is pretty big. The MLG Zanzibar Halo 2 Mirror page now has quite a few direct download links, if you’ve had trouble with BitTorrent – and Two Degrees, another peer-to-peer sharing network which made its HBO debut last winter, is back as well. (As of this writing, BitTorrent has served over a terabyte worth of files in about 18 hours – not too bad.) I’ve also put up a 320×240 version, for folks on slower machines (some computers can’t handle 640×480 video), and for those on slower connections, there are representative rounds; you can download either a full 3 minute Offense or Defense round, in either 640×480 or 320×240 sizes. Filesizes on these get as small as about 10 mb, so almost everyone should be able to handle them. (If you’ve already got the large file, you gain NOTHING by downloading the segments; I just cut them out of there. Please save our bandwidth by NOT downloading, in that case.) If you feel you can mirror any of these versions, go ahead and send the links, we’ll add them. mrsmiley, the player in the vid, has also written up his experience over at Halo Babies – and included ANOTHER 8 minute video (WMP9 format, 32.1 mb) which gives some flavor for the day. This will be the last I mention this today – check the Mirror page for new links, if you’re missing anything.

As of now, a bit over 8 hours after posting the first link, the BitTorrent network has served up over 5300 copies of the MLG Halo 2 gameplay video (almost 650 Gigabytes). You guys rock. 🙂 However, there are lots of people who can’t use BitTorrent – they’re on firewalled corporate networks, or family members have a problem with p2p software on the computer… for whatever reason, these people will not be able to see this film until it is made available via normal web channels. And this process has begun. The first few direct links have been posted on our forum – and we’ll continue to add new ones to our Mirror Page as they come in (if you have the bandwidth to spare, throw a copy up, send us a link, we’ll add it; when your bandwidth runs out, let us know, we’ll yank the link). Please – if you CAN use the BitTorrent network, DO so. (Hopefully, later tonight we’ll also have a Two Degrees link up for you, as well.) But the direct downloads are there on the Mirror page if you need them. (Tonight, or tomorrow, smaller versions will begin to appear, as well. I hope.) Once again, thanks to Dolbex and the entire MLG crew (and Bungie!) for making this accessible; it’s clear from today’s downloads that this is a cool drink of water to a LOT of parched Halo 2 fans. Update: Oops, almost forgot… mrsmiley, the player in the vid itself, started a thread on our forum to answer questions people had about the gameplay (or his performance 🙂 ). Check it out!

Almost lost in the insane postage about Bees and discussions of BitTorrent, a post last night from Joshua Pettigrew pointed out a Konfabulator Widget he created to count down to the release of Halo 2. Konfabulator is a Javascript engine that runs on the MacOSX desktop – if you don’t have MacOSX, you don’t need this widget.

In the past few days, many sites have put up shakeycam video of public Halo 2 play – and many sites have been shut down by the demand. The sad thing is… quality has been HORRIBLE on almost every single released movie. Demand is still huge, because people want to see how this game plays… but it’s like trying to enjoy the dance by rubbing a clear spot in the glass on the outside of the barn. Dolbex managed to grab almost 20 minutes of direct-feed footage of an 4v4 at last weekend’s MLG-hosted Downpour event in Seattle, and he’s shunted it over to us for release to the masses. Before you get a link, there are a few things you should know:

• This is NOT the final version of Halo 2; this is the E3 build of the map Zanzibar, created 4 months ago, and VASTLY altered since that point. If you see something that you don’t like, chances are Bungie saw it also, and fixed it.
• There is no public demo of this level; this event wasn’t even on the list of public Halo 2 showings. It was not mentioned beforehand because Bungie wanted it to be a surprise for the MLG guests, and because they didn’t want people coming to the tournament SPECIFICALLY for Halo 2. In other words; this was a one-time deal, don’t expect to see another showing like this.
• The game depicted here is mostly MLG staff and volunteers; the screen you’re watching is mrsmiley, of Halo Babies.
• If you like this stuff, there is about an hour and half MORE footage at MLGpro.com and is primarily pro players playing Halo 2 in the world’s first Halo2 tourney. Players like Ogre 1, Strangepurple, Darkman, Ogre 2, and Zyos. You can view it by becoming a member of Video On Demand ($20 to help support?HaloTV/server costs).

All that said, I’ve taken Dolbex’s footage and encoded it to a not-server-crushing 123 mb, and we’re releasing it via BitTorrent. If you don’t have a BitTorrent client, you can grab one here. Once you’ve got that, point it to our Seattle Halo 2 Footage seed, and don’t forget to leave the window open when you’re finished, to share the bandwidth love! The demand for this file is going to be huge; you can make it less painful to everyone involved by chipping in. (Later today, I’ll release a smaller segment for bandwidth-challenged folks… please be patient.) Update: A lot of people seem unfamiliar with BitTorrent, and are complaining about slow download speeds. An explanation of exactly why this is happening and how BitTorrent works is beyond the scope of this post. However, the reason we are inflicting BitTorrent on you is that given the size of this movie and the tremendous demand for it, this is the only way we (or anyone short of, say, FilePlanet) could afford to host this movie. Bandwidth costs money- lots of bandwidth costs LOTS of money, way more than any fansite can afford. Just remember, when you finish downloading, please don’t close the BitTorrent window. Think of it as a favor to the community that has brought you this movie- you just downloaded it from all the people who didn’t close their windows either, and everyone who downloads it later will be able to do so thanks to you. Every little bit counts, so please help us justify posting more movies like this in the future. (Updated by CZ)

Alpha Base is launching (ugh) a new contest – it’s… omg, it’s a regular warthog jump contest. Launch a warthog as high and for as long as you can, win prizes. Man, i do NOT envy the judges of this thing… Go read the details over at their site. Heads-up goes to Verdafolio.

(GT)Juggler points out that he’s got tons of 2v2 footage on the HaloGT website (redesigned and overhauled, by the way); all the individual matches from the 2v2 mini-tournament that happened at the Dead Babies LANfest a few weeks ago are online on his media page. The 9 regular films have no sound (though they still average over 20 mb each), and the 3 finals have sound, and are a bit meatier. Go see what you can grab!

Nil, building on some community speculation, finished off this picture of a new Halo 2 vehicle… but then confirmed that the MC could do worse. Thanks to Anton P. Nym for starting this whole mess.

MrSmiley mentions that Halo Babies has a Fan Strip up today, and wanted to point out that their Avatar contest (ending soon) is now open for voting to members of the site. Check it out!

Finn awakens from his motorcycle-induced slumber (wha?) to speculate about that which must not be named on our forum. Check the Story Page. And hold on to your hats. (Thanks to Milamber for noticing.)

Nafe Rubeus continues his quest for Zanzibar multiplayer footage, with another german website, die-klobrille.de. There are two links; the first is a 103 mb, 19-minute file that will make you nauseous if you watch the whole thing at a shot. (It starts with some footage of the Nightmare-Armor-clad MS rep on the show floor, and then moves on to game footage… the blue flashing really got to me after a bit.) The second is a mirror of the very first clip we mentioned – but you’ll have to copy and paste the link, rather than click it – there’s a typo in the code. If all goes well, we might have something better for you soon…

Boxer continues his Adventures in Disaster series with Episode 3, over at akba.info.

Grenadiac points out FANTASTIC news for the Mac community – bobindashadows has found a way to port Halo CE maps to the Mac. The system isn’t complete yet – it requires modifying the way bitmaps are stored, so they can be tacked on safely to the existing bitmaps.map file (so that multiple mods can coexist) – but he’s got a working prototype, with some great screenshots. Head on over to MacDev and read all about it!