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!

And AGAIN, he forgets. 🙁 Today’s Guest One One Se7en is from Chris Fraser, and warns of asking for things you might get…

Fourteen bits of Fan Fiction for you today:

• A Resurrection of Death, by Steve Ollett
• The Enemy Within-Chapter One: In the Shadows, by Mind_Affecting_Parasite
• Athenians-II Chapter 7: Mark Two, by ZackDark
• marines nightmare part 1, by crayola
• The Siege of Zion Base; Part One: Mission – Chapters 1 & 2, by Scimitarex
• The Siege of Zion Base; Part One: Mission – Chapter 3, by Scimitarex
• The Siege of Zion Base; Part One: Mission – Chapter 4, by Scimitarex
• The Siege of Zion Base; Part One: Mission – Chapter 5, by Scimitarex
• Halo: Dark Aftermath Ch. 3: –Covenant Pursuit–, by Nick Kang
• The Soldiers of Angelon: At Angelon They Wait, by Jinkaiden-XI
• Chapter One of Halo:Armageddon, by Chris Luchterhand
• Air Force Wing: Part 4, One Way Ticket to Hell, by teemus
• Souls of War.: Part 1: Tides of Battle, by Dark-NiTe
• war on planet Hedge IV- Part 1- nigotiating, by Preston

Not bad, for a site that was down most of yesterday…

Marc Friedrichs, of Halo Universe, pointed out an item on the World of Games website (a Swiss site). He followed it up with an email, and learned that it is a special release, a cooperative effort of WoG and Microsoft Switzerland. The release date has obviously been bumped back… but the package itself might be of interest to Halo collectors; it will be Halo 2, as well as ‘some other goodies’ (unspecified), packaged in a metal tin. It’s possible that other shops will be able to sell this as well. Sounds intriguing – if we hear more, we’ll pass it along!

An interesting article over on the BBC News website; entitled ‘Probing Halo’s enduring appeal‘, it looks at why Halo is still getting as much attention as it is, 2 years down the road. This is the sort of article I’d expect from a fansite… it blows me away that it shows up in the mainstream press. (It’s not as though I can’t relate, though…) Thanks to SIDEARM for sending in the link.

Update on the CPL Extreme World Championships 2004: a couple of weeks ago, we noted that the president of the CPL had warned that the Halo Tournament might be cut from the event if more teams didn’t sign up for it. Last night, Tonya Welch, CPL Community Liason, posted on the CPL forums that Halo would NOT be cut from the event. That’s good news! Thansk to [FOoM]T3muJin for pointing out the thread.

Valentine’s Day best wishes from gutupio and Devin Olsen.

The 13th episode of EchoFourNineteen was released yesterday (Friday the 13th) at 343GS.com. (Check the downloads section.) Seems corn is infectious… (Thanks to Spartan-39 for the heads-up.)

I feel really bad, because some of this info has been waiting on ME for over a week now… but sometimes, things just get away from you. We’ve got a double-armor update for you; Chris Bryan has sent along a bunch of progress pictures of his solo effort (pretty amazing work – works so well with his gun!), and the Nightmare Armor team has put up a new website, with all-new full-body shots of their armor, being worn. Also pretty amazing work! (gotta love those green eyes…) Comments for the Nightmare guys can go in this forum thread, started by Webshift.

Eep – almost forgot; earlier today, SketchFactor posted a note over on Bungie.net discussing Toy Fair 2004, the big annual toy convention; JoyRide Studios was there with some pretty cool stuff! They’ve put up 10 shots in the Tru7h and Reconciliation Gallery of waves 4 and 5 prototypes… go check ’em out!

Jake ‘Evergreen98’ Billo writes to say that he’s mirrored the Geocities site mentioned in Frankie’s Weekly update this week; the original link is already down, victim of a small Geocities bandwidth allotment. If you were curious what Frankie had to say, go look at the Junkyard’s mirror!

I posted this to our forum earlier, because HBO wasn’t reachable. (It’s STILL not reachable, for the most part, but that’s not going to stop me from updating.) MacSoft has stepped up to the plate and released a 1.04 updater less than 2 days after the PC updater came out. The Press Release is brief and to the point:

MEDIA ALERT
MacSoft Releases Halo 1.04 Update

MINNEAPOLS, MN -February 13, 2004 – Destineers’s MacSoft unit announces that they have released a patch for their hit game, Halo. The patch brings Halo for Macintosh to parity with the PC version, which was released just 1 day ago. User’s wishing to apply the patch (v1.04) must already have Halo v1.03 installed.

The patch is available now at
http://nikon.bungie.org/misc/halo_103-1041_updater.sit

Mirror:
http://files.bungie.org/halo_103-1041_updater.sit

You should be aware that there might be keyboard issues with this release – there have been a few reports of oddness. (At least one was phrased in a pretty obnoxious way.) These have been reported to MacSoft; hopefully the issue will be resolved quickly. Update: Links have been replaced with the 1.041 updater links, to avoid confusion.