Speaking of Guest One One Se7en strips, today’s entry is from Stephan Hennion, and although it’s ostensibly about XboxConnect, the sentiments apply nicely to some HPC games as well. Take a look!

Back in April, we started hosting a comic strip called One One Se7en. Its simple artwork and clever writing caught on – it’s become one of our most popular features. So much so, in fact, that many people have submitted their OWN One One Se7en strips, which are now posted on days when Stuntmutt’s official strips are not. Still, though, there is some confusion about how to go about creating and submitting strips, and what’s really acceptable. To that end, Stuntmutt (in his own inimitable style) has written a FAQ, of sorts, to cover the basics. Check it out.

Sizeable Fan Fiction update (17 stories) today:

• The Man – A Halo Comedy, by Dispraiser
• A John Before Halo: Part 14, by J-117
• Countdown Earth: Hour Six, by Mainevent
• The Conqueror’s Fall, by Walker
• Shadow Ops II: Nowhere to Run, Chapter One, by Nemesis
• Halo: The MCconto Chronicles Part 14, by JCDenton
• AN ANCHOR IN THE STARS: Chapt: 2, by Sketcher
• Battle for the Norah: Part Eight, by Sterfrye36
• Children Stolen, by The Chalk
• Marooned Chapter 4, by Steve Ollett
• Halo Trilogy: Operation Info Retrieval (Chapter VII/part I), by Alpha Lance
• New Lunar HQ: Chapter 4, by Fleet Admiral
• Waiting, by Rory
• CR4WL1NG, by Mainevent
• Heaven isn’t all its cracked up to be, by AmokTheClown
• The Resurrection of the Chief Chapter 2 & 3, by CovieKilla
• The Disaster of New LA, by David C. Jacobson

Probably becauuse I didn’t get to one yesterday. Read, there’ll be more tomorrow.

Yesterday, we mentioned an interesting article from Mat Noguchi on the differences between console and PC programming. There’s been a second part posted – and it, too, is quite informative. Thanks to Narcogen, at Rampancy.net, for noticing. (A more recent note suggests that folks are using this info inappropriately… remember, Mat’s a programmer at Bungie, he doesn’t work for Gearbox, and Halo PC support questions should not be directed at him.)

Rapture reminds us that there’s another SeeMePlayMe tourney (2vs2) on tonight; the festivities kick off at 7 pm Central time. The more teams that enter, the more months of a gold account are on the table… so sign up!

Finn, unwilling to be shown up by mnemesis, has submitted his OWN mammoth Halo Story page update. Classical connections, books, chess… It’s a pretty erudite update. Read and be illuminated! Update: Oops – both Finn AND mnemesis get credit for today’s update; my bad. (They work well together, but I’ve found that fear and paranoia breed more productivity than kindness and contentment. Don’t tell them.)

GameDaemons came through! The problem (the loss of the GameDaemons-hosted HBO dedicated server) arose from a series of bizarre events all occurring simultaneously – but the support staff worked overtime, and the problem is fixed. There are now TWO listed servers; both use the same password (again, just visit our forum for info), both are listed in the status page (and have links on our main page). The Subnova server MIGHT disappear, if they decide they need the resources back… but we’re extremely grateful it was around during the downtime, and so, apparently, are our forumgoers. Go play!

Quiet weekend for Halo reviews. The only one listed at Blue’s News was the one at Worthplaying. It was written by someone who actually never played the Xbox version (or at least, never played it all the way through, campaign). Disappointment at system specs, disappointment about lack of Coop… but he was impressed by the solo AI, and enjoyed the immersion. There are 40 screenshots (though they’re at 1024×768, not the listed 1600×1200), as well.

Really, what else is there to say? It’s back up, so feel free to hop on and get some good carnage in!

Remember when Halo PC went gold, and Gearbox was posting tons of pics of that gold master in various places? One of them even found their way into One One Se7en. Gotta love the queue times…

Halo: Resolution provides reason number 2,342 why you should be happy Halo’s not MORE realistic.

Thanks to jayWHY, for noticing that Machinima.com has posted the results from Saturday’s Machinima Awards 2003 (they’ll be officially posted by Machinima.org later today). Red vs Blue’s Blood Gulch Chronicles took Best Independent Machinima Film, Best Writing, and Best Picture – not a bad collection of prizes! (You can download most of the entries, including a whopping 487 mb, 4-episode version of Blood Gulch Chronicles, from FilePlanet.)

You may have noticed that our Halo PC dedicated server has been offline for about 24 hours; we’re having trouble figuring out what the problem is. In the meantime, though, our friends at Subnova have come to our rescue – you’ll find a server called ‘HBO-Subnova’ in the ingame server listing now. The password is the same as the one we set up yesterday on the GameDaemons box (you can find it prominently displayed on our forum if you missed it), and the mapcycle is ROUGHLY the same (I’m ashamed to say I didn’t save local backups of some of the gametypes or the init file). When we get the GameDaemons problem sorted out, we’ll rename that server to HBO-GameDaemons, so that the two servers appear next to each other in the server listing. Additionally, the Server Status link on our main page has been updated with the new URL. Again, apologies for the downtime, and enjoy the hospitality of Subnova!

Tycho, from Unreal Ops, dropped us a note about a new site he’s started up called (not surprisingly) Halo Ops. It’s a slick-looking site, and it starts off with a bang – an interview with Randy Pitchford, put together during the Halo PC Fanstock event that took place a couple of months ago. Some very nice background info in there – go check it out! (And keep an eye on the site; if he’s anywhere near as devoted to it as he is to Unreal Ops, it’s gonna be a serious player in the Halo scene.)

mehve is back from Anime Reactor (we mentioned she was going last week), and has posted a quick summary of events at Bungie.net. Sounds like a more complete writeup is coming!

Nice. Mat Noguchi took a look at a thorny issue (why does the Xbox, with (by today’s standards) middle-of-the-road hardware, kick PC butt when it comes to rendering Halo?) in his weblog. Definitely for the geeks… but an interesting read. (Noticed by Cullen, in our forum.)

Whoa. Not one, but TWO new updates to the Halo Story page – mnemesis is making significant inroads on the bulging mailbag. Sevens, Forerunner, malicious AIs, and more! Go read all the juicy details.

Stuntmutt, inspired by the rockin’ online fun of Halo PC, hits it right on the money with a Sunday One One Se7en. (Timing is pretty slick, given the recent passwording of the HBO server, limiting access to HBO visitors alone…)

You may have noticed that the HBO Halo PC dedicated server is now password-protected. No, we’re not getting elitist, or anything… we’re simply opening up space for folks from our very own community looking to play with each other on a great server. If you visit our forum, there’s a big, hard-to-miss link near the top, which reads ‘FIND HBO SERVER PASSWORD INFO HERE’. Click it for the current server pass (if it changes, the current version will always be there) and information about connecting to a Ventrilo voicechat server to be used by HBO servergoers. The first few hours of operation have proven extremely satisfying; may it continue this way!