Remember when the things under the bed talked to you? Calvin does. Check out today’s Calvin and Halo.

Gutupio has taken the honor of producing the very first HUDless Halo movie; it’s called ‘Chronicles’, and a 20.5 mb version is being hosted by Coerce.net right now. There’s no dialogue, but it’s not needed; the action tells the story. (Greens kill one innocent Red and kidnap another, a third Red vows revenge and wipes out most of the greens before rescuing his buddy… with some added twists, of course.) Overall, pretty well done. The current version is a 640×480 DivX-encoded AVI – when there’s time (and bandwidth), I’ll add a QuickTime version to the mix. Update: Gutupio clarified that ‘Chronicles’ simply describes the work, and the closest thing it has to a title is ‘Entry 1’… and Narcogen has mirrored a copy over at Rampancy.net. Update2: a number of people have pointed out that the FTC vids are, for all intents and purposes, HUDless, and have been for months. While it’s true that there is no HUD onscreen (and they’ve done an amazing job overall), the fact remains that the FTC vids are cropped, ever so slightly (64 pixels off the large versions); Gutupio’s vid is the first to be released at full 4:3 resolution with no HUD.

Yesterday was a day for screenshots, I guess. There were dozens (over a hundred, I think) posted to our forum. I hate to say it… but the whole HUDless thing is starting to feel commonplace – and that makes me sad. In the midst of the mess, though, XLNC posted his own batch (Number 9) – and he showed me that there’s still room for beautiful composition. That’s a good thing.

Ash and his son spent two hours taunting a poor Gold Elite through the entire AotCR level – Ducain took the videotape and created a 2:42, 8.6 mb WMP9 of the entire affair. Very fun to watch. Currently hosted by Ducain himself (right/option click to save), and Tiger Direct – hopefully, we’ll have more mirrors for you soon. (After a rather long dry spell, there are quite a number of decent movies in the queue; feast or famine, I tell ya!) You can discuss it in this forum thread. Update: Raider has added another mirror here (remember to right/option click and save as).

Ross Mills posted an interesting tidbit to our forum recently; ‘The Art of Halo’, a book we mentioned a few months ago, is ‘basically done and is undergoing review’. Looking forward to it!

Halo Babies has posted some new avatars (100×100) – they’re almost entire HB strips on their own. Take a look..

Viper, over at Battleground: Halo, has put up a new mailbag article – lots and lots of dumb people.

da_masta_chief writes to point out his Halo blog. Take a look!

Even after pruning the duplicates and removing the inappropriate, there are still 21 new stories for you in the Fan Fiction section:

• The Iron Hands of the Prophets (Part 4): Dark Horizons, by MadJackal
• No Hope, by someone that you dont know
• The Forerunner: Chapter One, by Steele
• From the Other Side: Homeworlds Tie-In, by Mainevent
• Halo 2: Chapter 1 , by Mark Lieberg
• Abandoned:Part 1, by TaySK337
• Heroes Among The Dead, by MT
• O creator, by Jetboogieman
• The End Is Near:Part 2/2, by SpartanFortyFour
• Underestimated: Chapter 1 (revised) and Chapter 2, by Ikabuianman
• Halo: Infinity Part II: Control, by Frightener
• All Roads Lead To Sol…But Unfortunately Not Away: Chapter , by S7N
• The Ghosts of Tau Seti Prime {Part One}, by Black Void
• The Harvest Campaign Chapter 5, by Fleet Admiral
• Desolation, by John Morris
• Assault Part 2: Into the fire, by Joe Ehret
• Subit Sepulcrum Titan Ipsi- Ch.2, by Sage Scorpion
• alone, by new1nab113
• 343 guilty spark, by new1nab113
• The Last Days of Master Chief Part 1/10, by Kung Fu Stick Figure
• A John Before Halo: Part 16 Chapter 2, by J-117

Go get ’em!

We got mail from Blake about a movie he’d made, and posted. It didn’t meet our posting guidelines, but our general policy is that if someone’s willing to host the movie themselves, we’re willing to put up a news post about it – so here you go. It’s called ‘Halo Stunts‘, it’s 3:29 long, in WMP9 format, and weighs in at 5.4 mb. It’s a bunch of multiplayer footage (splitscreen and coop) filmed via digital camera off a TV screen (that is, the TV is visible in the picture). Some of it is totally incomprehensible. If you pride yourself on having that completely comprehensive Halo movie collection, grab this film.

Alpaca writes to point out that [HOH] has added a new Articles section, and the first article (“Noobery vs Stupidity“) is up. It looks at the difference between people who haven’t learned and those who CAN’T learn, and shows you how to keep yourself out of the latter group. Check it out!

Yet another analysis of the multiplayer screens – this time over at Echo-413. Click on the ‘Media Mintz Article 2’ link in the Community News section of the navbar to read it.

Gamers Gallery has posted a VERY high resolution version of the new multiplayer shot – 2468×1851 (weighs in at 452k). Go visit if you want this!

So, the Fan Fiction section is open again… and Stuntmutt has wasted no time taking a shot or two, via One One Se7en. Of course, he’s missed the target – the innocent victim in this case is poor, maligned Halo PC. Trust Stuntmutt to gang up on the downtrodden.

Today’s Halo: Resolution tries what we’ve ALL wanted to do, at one point or another…

Okay, the flood of screenshots on our forum is simply too much for me to keep up with. I guess I was planning to post a daily ’roundup’ – but there are well over 20 posts with screenshots in them since the last time I posted; some people post a few, then follow up their own post with more, or start a new thread and post the same ones again, or even follow up a post with a second post that contains a subset of the first post. If I had an extra couple of hours a day to sort it all out, I suppose I could keep track… but I don’t, so if you’re interested, just scan our forum for ‘screenshots’ in the subject line. (I’ll continue to point out the posts containing what I consider to be outstanding pics; even in this flood, there are some that are head and shoulders above the rest, and I’ll make a point of bringing them to your attention.)

WOW. Gil27 and Devin Olsen have created a multiplayer version of the Maw’s Reactor Room – there is a short (25 second, 2 mb) film as well as a few screenshots in this forum post; no map yet for downloading, but we can hope!

Back in early February, Burnie Burns and Geoff Fink of Red vs Blue were interviewed for TechTV’s Unscrewed. We actually had the footage uploaded to us by Sniperman27, and we contacted Unscrewed to find out if we could display it; the answer came back that they would do it for us… but they never did. Not to worry, though, because that same clip is now up as a Sponsors Extra over at the Red vs Blue site! There’s also a very cool 3:29 long video from the Alamo Drafthouse last week, giving some flavor of that event (we mentioned it on the 14th), and showing off (in really bad lighting) the Blue Nightmare Armor. Thanks to c0ld vengeance for the heads-up on our forum. Dang, sorry – that would be Ross Mills. My bad.

Benny, from Xbox Ottawa (part of the team behind the FTC videos) has submitted a new Flash game – Madda Cheeb: Golfer. We’re hosting a copy here, but there’s also a copy up at Newgrounds, which probably has way more bandwidth than we could hope to have. (It’s big – over 4 and a half megs.) Wherever you play it – you’ll find it’s pretty tough stuff, but quite rewarding when you actually do well. Andrew started a thread in our forum, if you want to comment.