Wow. Eclipse points out that Monoxide has posted to the Gearbox forums that ViperNeo has worked out some of the problems in porting AotCR to multiplayer – and it might even be out, as a mod, in the next week or so. Won’t THAT be a blast!

Wow. In the last month or so, a lot of links have been forwarded to us about Halo-related websites out there. I THINK I’ve culled all of them from our mail – but I might have missed one or two; apologies if that’s true.

• Forums:
  • Covenant Grounds (Halo forum)
  • [MSM]Gearbox (HPC Clan forum)
• Clan sites:
  • Covenant Genocide (Xbox clan)
  • High Clans (home of the Jackals, HPC clan)
  • [PU55] (European Xbox clan)
  • [HOH] (HPC clan)
  • SIN team (HPC site – downloadable trailer at Halomods)
  • Halo Hellraisers (Xbox clan)
  • identification: Doom (HPC clan)
• Tournaments:
  • The V Games (30-city, 5-game tourney. $10k for Halo)
  • National Electronic Gaming League (Northern California-based league – Xbox Halo to start)
• General/News sites:
  • Halo Universe (not new, but newly redesigned German Halo news)
  • FreeLancers (Halo fansite)
  • Echo-413 (general Halo site)
  • Halo 2 Grunts (grunts fansite)
    Content is mirrored at Tripod, with a different design

Whew! We’re really sorry for the huge delay here. (Please don’t write, asking us when we’ll actually get these added to the Links page – I don’t have an answer for that question.)

ORACLE writes to point out a continuous Halo tourney in Pace, Florida (near Pensacola). Every Friday night at 6 pm, Homefield Sports and Games hosts a tourney; entry is $10, first place gets 40% of the take, second place gets 10%. (I suppose that means the house gets the other 50%.) He provided an address for the store… but I could find no listing for it in any phone directory. If you’re in the area, check it out!

vector40 has posted the third segment of his ongoing series of articles on Banshee stategies – this one’s entitled ‘Applying Reality’. It focuses on the nitty gritty stuff – less abstract, more ‘I don’t care if it’s pretty, I just want to kill him’ stuff. It’s available at Subnova and Rampancy.net as well as the link vec asked us to use this time – the one at The Junkyard.

Back in November, we reported about a bundle being marketed by Best Buy – a controller and a DVD with Halo material on it. At the time, it was $19.99. (The DVD contained no ‘new’ material – but it did contain a hi-res version of the ‘Inside the Xbox’ documentary that showed at X03 last year, and that we put online in December.) By Christmas, we had reports that this bundle had jumped up to $39.99; it wasn’t such a great deal at $20, it seemed like a silly purchase at $40. Well, Bentllama, your friendly neighborhood Halo 2 animator, happened to notice that TechBargains is reporting that Best Buy has dropped the price to $8.99, shipped free. Now it’s not such a bad deal!

A couple of days ago, we got an email from Tim Leyk, who wanted to point out a Halo fan comic created by his sister, Tina Leyk. I visited the site, and was blown away by what I found – she’s a fantasy/furry artist, and Fur-lo (her Halo comic) incorporates furry art with Halo themes and not a little bit of humor. The work, quite simply, rocks. Browsing the site, I discovered an entire treasure-trove of Halo-related art, ON TOP of the comic strip – and Tina was kind enough to let us archive her work here so that Halo fans could enjoy it. So here you go: for your viewing pleasure, there’s a subsection devoted to Fur-lo, Tina’s Halo Furry Fan Comic… and another section devoted to her Halo Fan Art. Enjoy!

Eclarap points out that not only can you get the updates in German, as we mentioned earlier today, but in French, too – just stop by Halo-Game and see what they’ve got!

DocOctavius continues his rendering experimentation with an appropriately named image – ‘Action’. I’m lovin’ this stuff!

Stefan, from Halo Orbit, has pointed out that you can now read Frankie’s Weekly Bungie Updates in German, if you so desire – and they’re fully searchable, as well. Visit the archive for more details!

343GS.com updated their EchoFourNineteen comic series (check the downloads section) with a new strip on Friday – but we didn’t notice. (Thanks, snowy_duck, for pointing it out.) Interesting perspective on the Jackal language…

Ouch. Subnova has run out of money… it doesn’t look like it can afford to offer the services to the community that it’s been offering. (If you weren’t aware, roughly half of HBO’s pages have been running on Subnova servers for the past month or so.) We’re going to do our best to keep this from affecting the HBO day-to-day running… but the bottom line is, it’s expensive to run a not-for-profit website… and not everyone has bottomless pockets. (Not everyone has my aversion to donations, either – if you’re feeling generous, there’s a donate link in Subnova‘s sidebar.) We’re gonna miss you guys!

Stuntmutt, never one to be right there on top of the day’s events, has written a Sunday Strip for One One Se7en that looks at… well, last week’s Weekly Bungie Update. You can never sink too low, it seems. There’s always another rung down.

HomelanFed recently interviewed the First Strike mod team about their work – the result is an interesting read. How they got started, what their mod will cover, what we might be seeing in the future… check it out!

Wow – now THAT’S a slick-looking Warthog. quaglinoman, over at the Halomods forums, has posted a TRON-inspired warthog (the original movie, not the recent game) – and it looks great. Check it out! (Thanks to TURBO for the heads-up.)

John Kedrowski pointed out the sad news that CobaltNova is hanging it up. No more Halo for Emil… he’s closing the doors.

Stuntmutt has provided the world with a bonus movie today – it weighs in at 552k, and it shows off what might just be the most powerful weapon we’ll see against certain enemies. Check out Pump Action!

Our Homelan-sponsored IRC channel has become its own little community – something that many realized would happen. It’s a place for forum regulars and irregulars alike, along with visitors from other sites and the odd (and I do mean odd) Bungie employee to come and hang out; in general, it’s a friendly place. We had a problem a little while ago with a rather persistent troll, and the result was that we muted the channel; in order to speak, you have to be ‘voiced’. Setting people up for automatic voice (given by the channel server as you enter the channel) is easy to do – but requires that your nickname is registered. (There’s information on how to do this on our IRC Info page.) This is all well and good… but it turns out that many IRC clients neglect to ‘Identify’ the user automatically – so the server isn’t sure it’s really you, and the autovoice doesn’t work. One of the worst offenders is mIRC, a popular Windows-based client. Setting up Auto-Identify is a bit obscure – so Nick has gone ahead and made a short video (1.8 mb) showing how to do it. If you use mIRC, and you’re tired of pestering channel operators for voice so that you can speak… check this out!

And because too what fun is text without pictures, we have today’s Guest One One Se7en – Jillybean threatens to take over the place. After that last post, i’ve half a mind to let her.

Geez – you don’t update Fan Fiction for a few days, and suddenly you’ve got 29 entries to post.

• The Raptros Saga: Ch.1: Awakening, by Raptros-v75
• Chapet one: Unforgiving Wounds, by ToFu
• Sep’Reo [The Reclamation]: Chapter 1, by JJiggssaw
• The Covenant Weapon–chapter 2 Capture, by Halo_2204
• The Fall of Rye: Chapter 1: The Seige, by teemus
• The Croton Chronicles: Prologue, by Earl Hershberger (Funkster) & Trevor White (Boxer[subnova])
• The Croton Chronicles: Chapter 1, by Earl Hershberger (Funkster) & Trevor White (Boxer[subnova])
• The Croton Chronicles: Chapter 1.5, It’s half as good but twice as fun, by Earl Hershberger (Funkster) & Trevor White (Boxer[subnova])
• The Croton Chronicles: Chapter 2, At least we’re not dead…yet, by Earl Hershberger (Funkster) & Trevor White (Boxer[subnova])
• The Croton Chronicles: Chapter 3, This is where the fun starts, by Earl Hershberger (Funkster) & Trevor White (Boxer[subnova])
• The Croton Chronicles: Chapter 3.76, The sea may be a cruel mistress&#4294967173but trees hurt more, by Earl Hershberger (Funkster) & Trevor White (Boxer[subnova])
• The Croton Chronicles: Chapter 5, If a big purple dinosaur can be your friend why not a big blue Ali, by Earl Hershberger (Funkster) & Trevor White (Boxer[subnova])
• The Croton Chronicles: Chapter 6, Take your orders and shove em’!!!, by Earl Hershberger (Funkster) & Trevor White (Boxer[subnova])
• The Croton Chronicles: Chapter 7.1, With enemies like these, who needs enemies?, by Earl Hershberger (Funkster) & Trevor White (Boxer[subnova])
• The Croton Chronicles: Chapter 9, Into the belly of the beast&#4294967173and it&#4294967186s not feeling too well, by Earl Hershberger (Funkster) & Trevor White (Boxer[subnova])
• Hit Hard Ch. 4 pt. 2 –Reclaimer–, by Nick Kang
• Spartan -116 and -118 (Chapter 1), by John Wilson
• Mysteries Part 4, by Horror
• The Enemy Within-Chapter Five: Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire, by Mind_Affecting_Parasite
• Halo 2: Chapter One and Chapter Two, by John E
• Probably No Choice, Part II, by Jon M… a.k.a The Flu
• Halo: The Battle Within. Chapter 2, by Bryan D. (A.K.A. B-Man)
• New Mombasa, by Steve
• Battle for Nagidrac System: Part One – Section 1, by BullsEye & Fig
• Battle for Nagidrac System: Part 1 – Section 2, by BullsEye & Fig
• ODST Lead the Way Chapter 1, by Helljumper
• Alive, by Solidus Snake
• The End of the Covenant and The Fall of A Hero., by Jagged
• A Marine Named Peters: The Finale, Part Two: Peters’ View, by GLADIATRRR3000

Gah – I hope that’s the last of it for the weekend… luckily, you’ve got two days to read all this. In the future, I’d appreciate it if folks would keep their handles to a minimum – post by your real name, or post by a nickname… but don’t post by both, it makes a total mess of my front page. Thanks!

I missed the “Bushwacker” yesterday – I hope this doesn’t kill Revenant_SP001’s Tripod account. (If it does, I grabbed a copy – let us know.)