A few weeks ago, Ducain posted a vid showing him getting up to the balcony in the Maw hangar, in coop, using a warthog for lift. Yesterday, Dark Helmet showed how to get up there in single player – using a shade turret. It’s 7.5 mb, in WMP9 format, and it’s been mirrored by Ducain (using Mythica’s bandwidth) – but I’ve also tossed a 5.8 mb QuickTime version up on files.bungie.org, for those who don’t deal well with WMP9. This is a pretty impressive stunt!

Yesterday, Red Loser did a great job of summarizing the Enkidu saga to that point. Today, he updated to account for the newest terminal (first noticed, it seems, by anoncreativeguy). There’s plenty of Enkidu speculation spread throughout our forum, and other forums… but if you’re confused, this is a pretty good place to start.

Gearbox will be releasing Halo Custom Edition and the Halo Editing Kit very soon. In preparation for that event, Gearbox and Bungie released the HEK tutorial to a couple of websites so that fans could get a look at what they were up against, and maybe get started on external stuff. Unfortunately, the HTML of the original release was… well, shakey. Depending on which browser you decided to use to view it, you got somewhat random views of some sections. I’ve put in a solid chunk of work to make this package clean – I haven’t removed the frameset (which is, I suppose, the next step), but these docs will look pretty similar on any browser now, and (maybe more importantly) will look mostly like what their authors intended them to look like. It’s coded to be a standalone document; that is, I could zip up the directory and make it available for download, and folks would be able to use it nicely offline. I’m not sure we have the bandwidth for this right now (It’s a 40 mb package), but we’ll think about it. In the meantime, peruse what’s there, and get ready for the release of HCE!

The ‘Loot points out a new Exclusive action figure at EBGames – the Cobalt Master Chief. No pics yet, but it’s shipping on July 13. They’re also taking pre-orders for the Halo 2 Brute and the Halo 2 Green Master Chief, both shipping on October 11, according to EB. Is your collection complete?

Alerus of the One South Clan, has submitted info about an app called ‘Halo Timer‘ – it keeps track of spawn timings for the various items on multiplayer maps. (It’s currently missing Boarding Action and Chiron.) It requires MacOSX 10.3 to run. If you’re always missing that Rocket Launcher by THAT MUCH, grab this!

Calvin and Halo hits a half-century today – and in fitting tribute to 6-year-old humor, we have a… oh, go read it.

Apologies for the lack of news; I’ve been hard at work. First up: the Junkyard has interviewed the Halo Babies team; swing on by to read some interesting facts about how they came to team up and teasers of what’s to come!

In preparation for the upcoming release of the Halo Editing Kit, Cortana.org has opened their HEK Tutorial section. Get a taste of what modders will be able to do once they have the official tools.

Whoa. Just before leaving on a 2-week vacation, mnemesis updated the Halo Story page. Just a single item – but it DOES give some nice stuff to chew on. And no, he didn’t remember to tell anyone he’d done this. And no, nobody noticed (no email, no forum posts) in the 4 days since it went up… Shame on ALL of you. Especially mnemesis, who’s enjoying a drink with an umbrella in it at this very moment. Bah. (Thanks, Warbow, for bringing us out of the darkness.)

We’ve added last Friday’s Bungie Weekly Update to our Archive; you can use it to learn that Frankie’s only mentioned Dave Candland twice since these started. Is this because Dave’s work is secret, or because Frankie doesn’t find User Interface progress very interesting, or because Dave spends most of his time surfing the net for Soffish porn? You decide!

Crispy Spartan points out another Weekly Update for First Strike. The majority of it discusses the new uncertainties introduced by the existence of Halo Custom Edition – more from the team when they know what they’re up against. There’s also a bit of infrmation about progress itself. Give it a read!

Today’s One One Se7en introduces that genuinely rare creature – the funny joke. Laugh at it – because you never know when you’re gonna see one of these again.

Halo: Resolution shows why practice is the thing.

Dolbex has updated the Halo50k3 site with two new photo albums; the first reproduces content that used to be on the Halo50k site (before it was unpleasantly squatted on by a porn site), the second contains almost 100 pics from the recent MLG Dallas Regional event. Pictures from Halo50k2 will be coming soon!

Paul Wisniewski posted a piece of music, ‘Run From Me’, created by his band, Four Years Gone, inspired by Halo. It’s amazing to see the breadth of styles that folks use to express their love of this game! Update: clarksbrother has provided a pair of mirrors for this, if you’re having trouble getting it from Paul’s site.

Dark Helmet got bored, and put together a short film showing two useful places to try some Shade jumping. (The 3.3 mb film is mirrored at Faulksoft.com, thanks you Yayap the grunt.) As DH says, it’s amazing to see how much air you can get with a single grenade…

Been a little while since we updated the Fan Fiction section – mostly, we were trying to make sure that Stuntmutt’s birthday present didn’t get buried. Check the section now – there are 23 stories added since Wednesday.

vector40 has written up a supplement to his ongoing Banshee discussion – this piece is called ‘Winning’. It’s quite long, and has very little to do with Banshees – it really is about winning – and losing. Worth a read, because it gets into some really pertinent discussions about what people do when you win, and when you lose. You can find it at the Junkyard.

Hawk Entertainment has released new versions of Ice Fields: Episode One Part 1. (This was originally released a week ago – but some folks had trouble with the DivX version, Hawk had trouble with bandwidth, and the movie itself was smaller than they wanted. You now have three new options: A 640×480, 40 mb DivX version (hosted by evilburger.net), a 480×360, 35.8 mb QuickTime version (hosted by us), or a 320×240, 21.4 mb Quicktime version (also hosted by us). The old options are still there. Hopefully, there is now something for everyone!

Gamespy has posted an interview with Marc Tardif, Director of Marketing and 3rd Party Relations at Gearbox. There’s some good info on what Halo CE (Custom Edition, not Combat Evolved) really is, and how it will be supported.

GameSpy: What’s the reason behind having a separate .exe for this update?

Marc Tardif: The new software was the method chosen by Bungie / MGS (Microsoft Game Studios) to deploy the things that Gearbox has done to Halo since the game launched. Given the amount of time we’ve been working on this stuff and given the value of the material that’s being released, we are really happy to finally get the software into the hands of Halo PC customers.

This, finally, explains the delay in the release of the HEK; it wasn’t as simple as ‘make sure the HEK works, and put it out there’, it was ‘make sure all the new features being added (fast shaders, better networking, other multiplayer tweaks) will continue to work properly with HEK-created material’. Halo Custom Edition is, in effect, a whole new ballgame. (Halo CE and HaloPC are NOT compatible; you will not see listings for HaloPC games in a Halo CE browser, and vice versa.) It’ll be interesting to watch how this all shakes out!