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!

Fluffy, over at HaloPlanet, points out (once again) that they’ve got an awesome, though underused, resource available to all Halo CE modders. They will host your map/mod/website, with unlimited bandwidth (and they mean it – they’ve got the MASSIVE pipes of Fileplanet to back them up), pre-built forums (and other systems), tech support, haloplanet emails, and even pre-built website templates to use. Why would you turn this down? Read their Hosting FAQ, check out the Application, and watch your bandwidth problems disappear!

Wronchi put up a Flash animation at Newgrounds, dedicated to all those who found certain aspects of the Library… repetitive. It’s a bit over a meg, and nicely done. Thanks to Gil27 for pointing it out. (Obligatory Spoiler Warning, for those keeping track.)

nico, the guy behind Red vs Blue’s music, sent along a picture (74k) of his Powerbook, running Halo on the back deck of his family’s house in St. Barths, in the French West Indies, as the sun begins to set. I can’t think of a nicer place to kill Covenant…

The latest Gamespotting column at Gamespot is about upcoming games… and it contains a poll – ‘Which upcoming game will be the greatest?’ At the moment, Halo 2 is in second place… behind Half-Life 2. Hmm… (Thanks to GruntKilla for the heads-up.)

We’ve added last Friday’s Weekly Bungie Update to our Update archive, and maybe made the archive a bit easier to use. I noticed that the full update list was getting a bit unwieldy (260k of text, plus pictures), so I uncovered a part of the search page that’s always been there, but not documented; you can now view updates individually, by date, from the main Archive page. Should make life easier if you want to point out a specific date…

For far too long, the Movie Database has languished, victim of limited time and shifting priorities. Uriel offered to compile much of the data required to build this database, greatly reducing the amount of work needed to create updates; even WITH his help, it took much longer than it should have. However, we’ve passed the biggest hurdle – the horrendously messy collection of videos that were released during E3 this year. The database now runs through the end of June (yes, still a couple of months behind, but it should be MUCH simpler to catch up at this stage), and contains links to all the E3 data we could find (as well as all the movies we mentioned in the month following E3). Stop by and see what you missed!

Today’s One One Se7en shows what a good headset can do to a polite individual… I suppose the real funny would be if that cord behind Cortana weren’t plugged into anything. Oh, wait…

The footage from the Leipzig Games Convention continues to appear… and disappear. The Game7 footage we mentioned on Saturday is offline already (they ran out of bandwidth, it appears), but there are new clips to fill the void. Nafe Rubeus found a thread on a clan forum with a link to a large (but EXTREMELY slow-downloading) video – I have no clue what this one looks like. And Demden, of Halo Orbit, pointed out 5 QuickTime clips recorded with a digital camera on a different clansite – video quality is the best we’ve seen from the convention, but there’s no sound, and the filesize is 5 times what it should be. (This might change.) For folks looking for footage that was online but is no longer… we’re not going to be hosting this sort of footage; there is going to be a surfeit of it in the next few weeks, I’d guess. If you get it, great, if you don’t, grab the next one. Update: Luis Carrillo found a new link for the Game7 video, in a GameFAQs forum thread.

B Ball Master is embarrassingly insistent that we mention that Halo 2 will be playable next month at the Armageddon Pulp Culture Expo in Wellington, New Zealand. Under $15 NZ (per day) gets you into the event, taking place on September 25 and 26. Yet another venue for some Halo 2 lovin’ before November 9…