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!

May’s Computer Gaming World has not only a unique RvB vid, as we mentioned yesterday, but an article on the Red vs Blue team itself. There’s also a sidebar about the Nightmare Armor team. Thanks to Deimosâ„¢ for the heads-up, over on Subnova.

This was released last week – but we didn’t have the bandwidth for it. Spotcheck did another speedrun on an as-yet-unshown level, Keyes. It’s still on Halo PC and the difficulty isn’t Legendary – but if you’re looking to run Keyes in our Going Nowhere Fast contest, this vid might show you some useful shortcuts. It’s 19.2 mb, in QuickTime format, and you can grab it here. (The run took him 6 minutes, 40 seconds.) It’s still available on That Weasel’s site in WMP9 format (19.6 mb). Update: Uriel has kindly mirrored both the QuickTime version and the 19.6 mb WMP9 version at WWWP.de.

The Bungie Weekly Update has been posted over at Battleground: Halo, amidst flames from site staff and requests for geriatric porn. There’s quite a bit more info than there’s been in the past few weeks; some of it is just E3 expectation comments from the team, but there’s lots of Halo 2 meat, as well. Go read!

Big update on music.psyjnir.org today; the new Halo material includes a pair of Red vs Blue pieces by Grasshopper – including one done specifically for an episode that only appeared on a CGW magazine CD. First we’ve heard of that! Check out these bits, and many more, on MPO!

Lophan points out an E3 teaser article on CNN.com – and dang if that pic doesn’t look familiar! Ooh…next week can’t come fast enough. Update: dang, this is the CNN article mentioned by GhaleonEB on our forum two days ago… I’m slipping. Thanks, Dean. (You still suck.)

Wow. Interesting if true – but as of now unconfirmed. GamesRadar is reporting that Halo 2 will be playable at E3 – a two-level demo. There’ll also be boatloads of new media. Droolin’ already… thanks, Milamber!

Rampancy.net found ANOTHER Alex Seropian interview – that guy must be hoarse by now. R.net snagged the two most quoteworthy lines in the interview, but there IS a tidbit unmentioned – we’ve known from previous interviews that Wideload’s first game will be based on the Halo engine, and we know it won’t be a first-person-shooter… now we know it’s an Action title. I’m sure we’ll learn more as the smooth and creamy (i.e. not piebald) Seropian talks to other interviewers. (Wow, that was worse than ANYTHING Stuntmutt’s ever pulled.)

Darksage has posted 17 pics of the tutorial level he made using the HEK. It contains what Gearbox suggested – and a little bit more. He points out that HUDless pics are easy now; just enable Devmode, execute ‘show_hud 0’, and then ‘cheat_all_weapons’ and pick up a gravity rifle. Voila – no more HUD. He’d like to bring attention to this shot as a nice example.

Eep – Battleground: Halo started its own comic a few days ago, and I missed it. Check out the lives of the BGH staffers… or something.