Eleven Fan Fiction pieces for you today…

• The Ring, part 1, by retardedmonkey
• Civilian Assault, pt. One- The Beginning, by ONI_operative_343
• Hit Hard Ch. 3: –Siege–, by Nick Kang
• The Strive to Survive (Chapter 1: Lurking in the Shadows), by CoLd BlooDed
• Chapter Two of Halo:Armageddon, by Chris Luchterhand
• Halo: Liberation of Earth – Section 1, by HawkEye
• Island Force, by retardedmonkey
• Scope (Chapter 1, New Arrivals), by The Silver Spartan
• Homeworlds XXV, by Mainevent
• Halo: Dark Aftermath Ch. 4: –Payback–, by Nick Kang
• Marooned Chapter 13, by Steve Ollett

(Thank c0ld vengeance for the horrible pun at the top of this post…)

Stuntmutt begins another series of themed One One Se7en strips; the first pays homage to that master of imagination, Bill Watterson.

Halo: Resolution adds a new… character? Item. Whatever. It’s big.

We’ve added last Friday’s Weekly Bungie Update to the local archive – remember, if you ever need to find that tidbit you sort of remember, it’s searchable.

Every now and then, I’m reminded why it’s so cool that developers visit our boards sometimes. Yesterday, RunningRiot asked a question: how come the ping he measured from his desktop to a particular Halo PC server was lower than the ping reported in-game by that same server? botman, a member of the Halo PC dev team at Gearbox, stopped by this morning to explain the conundrum.

Fury Three has done a nice job summing up what’s available out there in the Lego world; some of these links have been posted before, but the collection, together, is worth keeping track of. The Pelican he points out is pretty impressive!

Very slick… Xhzjang has released Halo No Hud mod v1.5, with a flying camera; it comes in two pieces. Piece one removes the HUD entirely; piece two turns the Banshee invisible (along with its occupant), making for a flying camera on levels with a Banshee. I just tried it, and it works beautifully! If you’re looking for easy no-HUD scenery shots, give this a shot! Thanks to Reppyboyo, who mentioned it in our forum.

c0ld vengeance has updated his Movie Starter Guide to include some basic information about recording Halo on a PC or a Mac. (He didn’t just do this for a front-page mention… he actually felt that people might NEED this information. No, really.) If you’re looking for tools to record Halo on your computer – check the guide!

Whoa, cool. Vicious Circle decided he really liked the guitar solo from Silent Carttographer… so he tabbed it out for guitar. You can view it online, or download it as a Word document (link is on the page). Get to playin’!

Continuing to try and clear out the Wallpaper queue – there are another 20 desktops for you today (25 if you count variants). Check ’em out!

Interesting. The team from Homefront, the Battlefield 1942 mod, is working on a space map, called Alpha Centauri. Battle will take place on a pair of capital ships, and the asteroid field between them. Sounds like fun! There’s a Q&A session about the map over at the main Battlefield 1042 site. Thanks to Ecko, at Battleground: Halo, for the heads-up.

Yesterday, BOLL messed with some new Flash stuff. It was pretty easy to overlook; at first glance, it blended right in. His newest offering doesn’t quite do that…

I’ve already changed local links on the 1.04 Mac Halo updater, so that there’s no confusion about which files to update. (The first updater, from 1.03 to 1.04, had some serious issues. The new updater, from 1.03 or 1.04 to 1.041, solves these.) However, the press release sent out by MacSoft on Thursday pointed to two mirrors on our servers – and I have no easy way to redirect those deeplinks to the new files. I’ve done the next best thing, then – I’ve replaced the older updater with the new one, using the old NAME. Now, if you get the file off our servers, no matter what name the archive is under, you’re getting the 1.041 updater. If you continue to have update troubles with this one, just reinstall Halo from your CD, patch it with the 1.03 updater, and then with the new 1.041 updater. This has worked in 100% of the cases I’ve heard of so far. (You do NOT need to mess with the files in your home folder; your serial number will NOT need to be reinstalled.)

Whoa. ViolentlyHappy ran across a pretty bizarre glitch when updating his Mac Halo to 1.041 yesterday. (He fixed it by reinstalling from the CD, and patching the clean version… but it’s still pretty weird stuff.)

A year ago today, one of the best members of the Bungie Fan Community passed away. Please raise a mug of Dwarven Ale in honor of our dear departed friend, Brian Morden aka *Ar-Isildur.

Today’s One One Se7en was supposed to be yesterday’s One One Se7en – after all, it’s a Holiday strip. Stuntmutt didn’t count on my overwhelming incompetence, however; I think MC’s rubbing off on me. Anyway, go read it. It’s nice when people look on the bright side.

Matt Grap sent along a few screenshots of some work a friend is doing; he’s in the process of porting the Halo weapons to Marathon. (Well, okay, Aleph One.) Right now, he’s working on adding melee attacks as secondary fire for each weapon. The love just doesn’t stop! Check these out:

• Flamethrower (139k)
• Assault Rifle (137k)
• Rocket Launcher (111k)

I, for one, find this heartwarming.

Walshicus submitted a monster collection of work; a star chart of the Halo universe, along with an enormous amount of information about these and other stars. We’ve packaged the lot and (hopefully) made it easy to follow; you can find it in our Miscellaneous section. Fan Fiction writers… take note of his comments near the top.

BOLL has done it again – check out the secrets revealed in this post. (If you can’t figure out where they are, try the banners at the top.)

Yesterday, we posted a note from MacSoft, that an updater for Mac Halo that would bring the application up to parity with its PC counterpart had been released. As many noticed, there was a problem with the updater; it introduced more glitches than it solved. Westlake has fixed the problems, though, and a new updater is now available. It will work to patch v1.03 or 1.04 to 1.041. (You cannot apply this patch to 1.02.) Some warnings, from MacSoft:

The updater may get confused if you have more than one copy of Halo installed on your machine. OSX 10.2.8 user may have to restart after applying the 1.041 patch for the get info (command-I) to refresh and show the proper version number.

That said… this 1.5 mb patch (currently available from nikon.bungie.org and files.bungie.org) should solve your movement woes, and get you back in the game!