Dr@Home’s Death Island Evacuation vid, posted recently, has overwhelmed his server – but Uriel’s mirror is still up, and KP has added one of his own. The film is only 7 mb, in WMP9 format; grab it if you haven’t.

Dr@Home was messing around with the -console and -devmode commands in Halo Custom Edition, and managed to create a rather… disturbing effect. It’s a 7 mb WMP9 movie; you’ll want to right-click and save as (or option-click on a mac), because it’s not so good for streaming. Update: Mirrored at WWWP, thanks to Uriel.

Realizing that it was finally closer to NEXT Halloween than LAST Halloween, Sledgefare has posted his pumpkin from last year on the web; you can see it on this page. Not a bad job!

Saint has put forth a plea for proof-reading and general checking on the soon-to-open Library, an encyclopedia of Halo knowledge housed at psyjnir.org. Give it a read, send him feedback!

Saw this last night, accidentally closed the window, forgot to go back. rapture points out a thread on the Gearbox forums about a new fan-written application that parses Halo CE dedicated server logs. It’s not all that useful as is – but the potential is enormous. Check it out! (Unfortunately, Gearbox’s forums are down at the moment, for upgrades… so you’ll need to check back a bit later.)

We’ve added last Friday’s Weekly Update to our archive – don’t forget that search option! Say you noticed that one of the tidbits this week mentioned ‘Greg’s cool animation system‘, and you wondered, ‘who’s Greg, anyway?’ Well, a quick search for ‘Greg‘ makes it clear that we’re talking about Greg Snook, and your Bungie Stalking just got one step easier. Anything to help the fans!

The BBC News site has put up a story about E3, and what to expect this year; Halo 2 features prominently in the section titled ‘Game delays’. (Yeah, we know – it hasn’t been delayed.) Margaret Robertson, Games Editor at Edge magazine, is quoted as saying that Halo 2 can still match the splash it made last year, though she doesn’t expect to see a playable demo. This is intriguing, given the GamesRadar prediction late last week – since GamesRadar is owned by Future Publishing, Edge’s parent, and is often used for the release of web versions of Edge articles. Well, the truth will be known soon enough! Thanks to David Hinchliffe for the heads-up.

One One Se7en checks out Halo Babies‘ downloadable backgrounds – and finds that it can’t compete. (On a slightly different note, I realized that I totally missed May 7th, and the latest Archive posting – and nobody told me. I’m pretty sure there are a couple of queued strips; I’ll see if I can find time today or tomorrow.)

… Master Chief’s Suit Isn’t Flammable. Halo: Resolution shows that big guns beat Flaming Ninjas every time.

rockslider points out a new humorous fanfic series he’s hosting on his own site; episode 1 of Frontline with Suzie is called ‘Just call me Angry‘ and features an interview with an Elite. Check it out!

One of the utilities distributed with Halo CE is Tool.exe, a small app that converts data exported from outside apps (3ds max, for example) to a format that the Halo CE tools can work with. It’s command-line driven, though, and some modders are already getting into making it more friendly/useful to the novice. BOLL has created a short document with some of the most common commands, in reference form, so you don’t have to dig through the HEK Tutorial for what you need. (This is the sort of document we’d LOVE to add to a full Info section on Halo CE – with permission from the author.) And Stuart has begun work on a GUI for the app, for folks who like buttons more than -options (thanks, Wraith). This is only the beginning!

Homelan Fed talked to Gearbox’s Marc Tardif yesterday about Halo Custom Edition and the Halo Editing Kit. There’s some really odd info in there – this answer, for example, caught my eye:

HomeLAN – Why was the decision made to not include the single player maps in HaloCE?

Marc Tardif – The primary reason was the massive size of the single player maps. We wanted to make Halo CE accessible to everyone. The larger the file size, the less likely someone will be willing and able to download the file.

Given the community’s willingness to distribute huge amounts of data (on the backs of fan-provided bandwidth) in the past, this seems somewhat disingenuous. (There’s not even an option for playing them with Halo CE – if a modder creates a campaign level, they’re going to have to hack the access for it into the interface; why make this necessary if it’s just a size issue?) Nevertheless, there’s quite a bit of interesting information in this interview; if you want to see where Gearbox stands at the moment, go give it a read! Thanks to vshields ash for the heads-up.

A new map has been floating around the various Halo boards; it’s called Casualty Gorge, and it was designed by Baka, of The Imperium. It’s available from the Imperium, or from Halomods, in this thread – it’s a bit over 7 mb. It’s quite small, and the inside areas are REALLY dark… but it’s nicely designed! (It requires Halo CE to run.) Thanks to this guy for the heads-up on our forum.

15 pieces in the Fan Fiction section today – this will be the last post on this holiday Sunday. (Yeah, Mother’s Day is a Hallmark Holiday… but it’s also a chance to show mothers – mine as well as my kids’ – how much they mean to the people around them.) To the guy submitting Haikus – thanks, but I really, really, REALLY don’t want to set a precedent whereby we state it’s okay to submit Haikus. We’ve had 100-plus post threads on our forum of Haiku writing; the fan fiction section would become seriously clogged. Go submit them to Battleground: Halo’s contest, instead!

In honor of Mother’s Day, Red vs Blue has put together a new Public Service Announcement, available to all, with hints and advice about this heartwarming holiday. Check it out! (First heads-up goes to Pballwizard.)

Gamespot has a poll on its front page: Which game are you most looking forward to seeing at E3? Halo 2 is currently leading with 29% of almost 8500 votes (nearest competitor at this point is Half-Life 2, with 16%). Go vote! Thanks to Carlo Zottmann for the heads-up.

At the end of August, Penny Arcade is hosting the Omegathon – a two-day, 6-round gaming competition to win an enormous, $15,000 gaming collection. Round 2 is Halo. If you think you can go head-to-head against the best, sign up for the Penny Arcade Expo. Thanks to 3Suns for noticing.

New contest over at Battleground: Halo; write a haiku poem about Halo 2, win MLG goodies. Not bad! Full details are available on their contest page.

New stop-action movie from Team Scoog – 117 Rumble. Pretty nicely done! 53 seconds, 3.7 mb, WMP9 format. Check it out!

Dolbex, the new web guy for Major League Gaming, writes to point out Midwest Madness, a tournament in Chicago on June 19th and 20th. Check out the website for details about registration, hotels, and the like. Lookin’ good!