Rapture, at Halo50k3, has been taking boatloads of pictures, including lots and lots and lots of shots of Nightmare Armor guys with all their gear. Warning: it’s a pretty simple page, with 80-someodd thumbnails on it, so it might be rough on those with slower connections. Check out all the action! (Given the page name, I’m guessing there’ll be more to come.)

The whole ilovebees thing went a little nuts yesterday; folks reading all sorts of stuff into whatever they could find. (The main thread on OUR forum has over 350 responses at the moment, with dozens of smaller threads around it. Other forums are just as bad.) Stuntmutt broke from tradition to put out a special Saturday One One Se7en with some thoughts on the subject. (I’m certainly not ‘in the know’ about all this stuff… but I have to say, it doesn’t feel like a Bungie-driven puzzle. My best guess, at this point, is that this is a Microsoft marketing campaign, selling SOMETHING, but not necessarily Halo 2 specifically. One good suggestion has been something related to Xbox Live. We’ll find out soon enough, I suppose… but I really am a little nervous that if it turns out that Bungie is not involved (again – I’m not in the know; they MIGHT BE), folks who already felt burned by the Enkidu puzzle will lash out. Just something to keep in mind, as you feverishly look for sevens in the ilovebees.com source code…)

Standard web downloads are now available from a half-dozen mirrors for Cody Miller’s 153 mb, less-than-21 minute Library run for the Going Nowhere Fast contest. You can find them (along with BitTorrent links for the first 8 runs, and direct downloads for all OTHER levels prior to the Library) on the GNF Status page. If you haven’t seen it, this is a pretty impressive run; there are a LOT of ‘how did he not die?’ moments.

Halo50k3 kicks off today in Atlanta – more than 60 teams competing for their share of more than $10,000 in prize money. HaloTV will be filming the most exciting parts (though the streams will probably be coming from the mlgpro.com website). Good luck to everyone there! Update: Halo503 is live. New pics, live video, and updated news through the day. Check it out!

Eleven new stories posted in the Fan Fiction section, including new Enkidu Contest Collection entries. On the front of comments, and how to deal with them, Wado has suggested setting up a new forum for Fan Fiction writers here at HBO – plans are underway. In the meantime (or possibly just as a replacement), a couple of people have suggested The Halo Fiction Source Collection – if you want to write, swing by and see if this fits your needs!

This week the Bungie Weekly Update can be found on Bungie’s own Underground forum – improved graphics, squashed bugs, content completion, and icons… it’s all there. Go read.

This was finished a little while ago… but I’ve been dealing with the nightmare that is the HBO forum for a while, and couldn’t post. I’d love to be able to offer a massive QuickTime version of the trailer to match the obscene WMP9 copies Microsoft released today… but I can’t find any tools that will convert a movie that big. (Small consolation for mac users – the biggest version plays back at a data rate of 9000KB/sec, well above what a majority of PCs can handle; many folks who grabbed the enormous one are watching a pretty jerky video.) The best I could do was a 720×405 version that weighs in at 9.5 mb. You can grab it at the bottomless pit that is Mythica.org, or the twisted joint that is Boomerica. (Didja like how I subtly got a knee joke in there without actually saying knee? Cool, huh? DOH!)

Normally, I’d just tack this on to the other comic roundup… but there’s been a lot of news since then, and folks might not look down there. Sector 7 has posted another episode of Marines. You gotta hope they’re not really that dumb…

The really odd thing folks have noticed about the Halo 2 ad looks to be an easter egg or viral marketing ploy of some sort. At the very end of the video, the tiny URL underneath the Xbox logo changes, for a frame or two, from www.xbox.com to www.ilovebees.com. On the surface, this looks like a common website that’s been hacked in some way… but investigation shows that some very, very strange stuff is going on. View the source for some clues in the META tags at the top of the page… and view this forum thread for dozens of OTHER oddities.

As many people have figured out, super-high-resolution versions of the Halo 2 movie ad are now popping up all over the net. litereddonut points out a Fileplanet link, Adam Pavlacka (online content producer for GamePro.com) points out a pair of versions – a 1920×1080 (yes, again, the aspect ratio is off), 5.1 surround sound version (50 mb) and a smaller, 852×480, 5 mb version – at Gamepro, and there’ll be more links as the day goes on (I doubt i’ll keep up). All of these downloads are WMP9 files; that’s what Microsoft is distributing. I’m currently working on finding a way to convert these massive things to QuickTime.

Tocki writes to point out that Halo Orbit is hosting a hi-res version of the trailer (9.8 mb, 640×480 (yeah, that’s not the right aspect ratio), WMP9 format) that they found at MyXbox.at. QuickTime coming soon… Update: Here’s a 640×360 (aspect-corrected) QuickTime version (and a mirror), 5.8 mb. There MIGHT be higher-res versions coming later… if I can figure out how to work with the truly monstrous files Microsoft has sent me. Update 2: Halo Orbit has put up another mirror of the QuickTime version, for europeans who would rather have this.

In an interview at Inside Mac Games, Al Schilling, product manager at MacSoft, takes a break from talking about Close Combat to mention that they’ve done some testing on the latest build of Halo under MacOSX v10.3.4, and haven’t found it to be slower than performance under 10.3.3. (Some forums have seen reports from people who noticed massive framerate drops upon upgrading the operating system.) He did say, however, that he encourages anyone experiencing these problems to send their machine specs to support@macsoftgames.com, so that they can try and determine whether the problem lies in Halo’s code, or OSX’s. Thanks to JotaRota for pointing this out.

No, no, I was right… it’s Movie Day. Hehe – if you wondered why folks thinking about entering High Impact Halo’s The 3 Towers competition were happy to hear that Dark Helmet was a judge, and couldn’t compete… watch this video (15.3 mb, WMV format) showing how it’s done, with s7yle. (For you WMP-haters out there, I’ve ripped a QT version – 16.8 mb.) Thanks to Ash for pointing this puppy out. Update: Gah. Looks like Dark Helmet posted it himself on our forum, last night. Sorry, DH!

Maybe it’s not Movie Day at HBO, maybe it’s Comic Day. We’ve got a bunch to tell you about. Mr Smiley mentions a new webcomic, The Grunt Brigade, that he found a few days ago – but it’s now on a bigger pipe, so you might actually be able to see the strips this time. Then, this morning, he pointed out that Halo Babies Episode 49 is online – I’ve needed something like this several times during T&R. Right here at home, we’ve got Miniature Halo Episode 23 – in which Sarge goes a little wild with an FRG. The latest One One Se7en tells it like it is, with respect to the Bungie Weekly Updates (let’s see how Frankie does this evening!). And Halo: Resolution, which has been ramping up to this episode all week, bows out. It’s been a good run – 129 episodes, spaced over 10 months – but Fuzzy and DIMagic have decided to call it quits. Give this one a read, and say goodbye.

I think it’s gonna be Movie Day here at HBO. There are quite a number of new films, available at other websites, ready for your downloading pleasure. RaiL sends word of a video he’s made of his clan (Clan IP) showing off their Blood Gulch Multiplayer skillz – you can find a link to the 15.2 mb .mp4 on FileFront. beytah writes to point out Invisible People Suck, a 54.7 mb, 6:56-long QuickTime vid showing gameplay and situations, characterized by the quick-cut style made popular by music videos. And That Weasel lets us know that the next episode of Grunts are People Too!!! (Episode 7 – Mission Im-Chuck-Able) is now up, in both WMP9 and QuickTime6 formats, at the GaPT website, along with three MP3s of Mother’s Tooth’s original music (check the Episodes 6 and 7 pages for download links). There’s more coming in a bit – but this should hold you for now, no?

One of the most hotly-anticipated Halo Custom Edition maps to date, New Mombasa from Mrs Doublefire and crew, is now available for download. It’s 9.6 mb of HaloCE goodness, and there are currently 8 EP Gamers servers running this map. (In fact, there are over 30 different servers hosting this map already, with two of them, at this hour, being full – a heartening situation.) Links for downloads, and some direct server IPs, can be found in this Gearbox Forum post from Mrs Doublefire. If you’ve held off downloading Halo CE, or if you’ve stayed away from the scene for a bit… now might be a good time to check out what’s going on. (For those who’ve kept up on development of this map; this is New Mombasa Classic – it uses standard HaloPC weapons and vehicles. There is a version that will be integrated tightly with NiTrOuSoXiDe’s Halo 2 mod, to provide an experience something like what was seen in the E3 2003 trailer… but this isn’t that. It’s stuff you’re used to, in a gorgeous new setting. Go play.) Thanks to everyone who wrote – it looks like DHalo was first (though there were three within 30 seconds of him – yes, this one was HIGHLY anticipated 🙂 ).

The next level in the Going Nowhere Fast competition, Two Betrayals, is now available for download via BitTorrent. Taylor Jones spends a relatively quick 25 minutes whipping through this level – his handling of a rocket launcher is a joy to watch. He gets a vehicle through the broken door in an amazingly no-fuss manner… but my favorite moment comes at around 22:20 – you get a quick glimpse of how tough Legendary can really be. My vote for best death in a run, period. This puppy is is 182 mb – open that BitTorrent client and grab it!

][-][awaiian pig whipped up another 5 Red vs Blue ‘Set Pieces’, after the great response he got to his first set. These are bigger, by request. Update: The variants on Megabattles just keep coming. Valence tries out an animated one.

Slothboy posts his non-winning pics in the Mountain Dew contest (and a link to a thread on Bungie.net that has pics of the winning entries)… all I can say is, these guys drank a LOT of Dew.

Dan Chosich reminds everyone that today is the last day folks are able to submit content to the Fan Art section of the Making of Halo DVD. If you have content you want the team to consider, send it today or you’re out of the running!