This morning, on CNN Headline News, there was a piece showing a CNN reporter taking over the Editor in Chief’s job for the day over at Electronic Gaming Monthly. According to Blackstar, They played a bit of Blood Gulch multiplayer; not a bad job to have! And now you can read the story on CNN.com (thanks, Lophan and Cybrfrk) – there’s a small fact box halfway down the page about the 16-player game of Halo they played. Halo in the news!

Whoa. It’s been announced. The Halo for Windows Worldwide Tournament will kick off on November 15 – you have to be registered by then to play. (Registration opens today.) Play will take place in iGames member centers around the world. Go read the B.net page for full details; prizes look pretty cool.

Leave it to Miguel to make things accessible to the world. Sometimes we forget that not EVERYONE reading this website has been here since Bungie opened its doors 12 years ago. (Okay, truth be told, NONE of us have been here THAT long… but you get the point.) Read this forum post for some pretty concrete suggestions about where the motivations for the Scavenger Hunt might have come from, and where you might go with what you have. For the record: Miguel is not privy in any way to the inner workings of the contest; beyond knowing that it’s going on, he’s not participating at all, either as a searcher or a creator. He’s just trying to give you some overlying perspective.

Hardcore’s Hardcorner, a column over at Xbox.com, covers Halo this time round. Check out ‘They Call Him MASTER Chief‘. Tactics discussion, then a look at Halo 2. Thanks to Rendar for the heads-up.

Chelsea Bridge, in a break from her standard obscure references, almost gets specific in a Great Halo Scavenger Hunt clue. Whoa.

An IRC chat with representatives from Microsoft, Bungie, and Gearbox will take place on October 29 on the channel #CPL on GamesNET. Details are here, on the CPL site. Topics will include HaloPC and the CPL Winter Championship coming up in December. Thanks to kappa for the heads-up on our forum.

Holy moley. Mat Noguchi, Tools and Sounds programmer for Halo, dropped a small note in our forum, pointing to a new blog he’s started up… the relevant entry (for now, and for this community) is here. He’s explained WHY Object Overload is allowed to happen in the game. For those who don’t pay attention to glitch discussions, object overload is term given to the phenomenon where the Halo engine stops being able to keep track of all the objects in the game… and stops rendering ALL of them. (The limit’s pretty high, and it’s hard to reach unless you’re trying.) It’s a glitch that was exploited for one of the coolest tricks in the game; snagging a Banshee on the Maw. And now we know WHY it happens. (And now there’s one MORE site to keep an eye on for interesting Halo news, from time to time…)

The Wallpaper contest at Halo Bunker that we mentioned a couple of weeks ago has ended – and the three winners are posted on the site. Check ’em out! (Thanks to The Elite Spartan for the heads-up.)

synide is organizing a team of HBO regulars for the next SeeMePlayMe tournament (to be held online this coming Monday). He and jayWHY (who killed me a LOT of times yesterday, btw) need two more people for the 4v4 team. You can contact him on SeeMePlayMe, or our forum, I’d guess.

Grenadiac writes to point out that SparkEdit 1.1 (an Xbox Halo map editor/viewer) has been released. You can edit cache files to move player spawns, scenery, weapons, flags, hill placement, and more. There’s a movie demonstrating some object placement here, and the app itself can be found here, on HaloMods.

Today’s Guest One One Se7en comes from Limax – who takes a closer look at those hunters.

A whole bunch of clan/news sites in our mailbox recently…

• Grunts with a Vengeance (Halo PC clan)
• Clan 93rd V.S.D. (Halo 2 clan)
• Alpha Base (7th Column chapter, Halo PC squad)
• Bravo vs Delta (Comedy series, trailer available)
• Got Halo (General site, not finished yet)

I’m sure there are more on the way – that’s what’s piled up in the last day or two. One of these days, when time permits, we really have to update our Links page.

Been a long time in the queue – but there are 30 new snippets in the Dialogue Databank, all from Captain Spark. Some real classics this time around! (There are still several dozen queued snippets – at this point, all Elites. Coming soon, I hope.)

Seven new screens over at Bungie.net – they were all taken by beta testers, and the filenames include the submitter. Most should be familiar to you, if you’ve been around here for any length of time. These are the top 7 screens of a much larger pool submitted to Bungie during the beta test, and are all worth checking out!

HardOCP’s alter-ego site Hypothermia is giving away 10 copies of Halo PC; three are autographed by the entire Gearbox team. All 10 will be given away, 1 per day. There’s a pretty funny story that goes with the acquisition of the ten copies on the site… check it out. Thanks to Carlo Zottman for the heads-up on this one.

The Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences announced the nominees for the 2003 Machinima Awards in New York today. Winners will be announced on October 25, at the American Museum of the Moving Image. Red vs Blue was nominated for an astounding number of categories, including

• Best Picture
• Best Direction
• Best Virtual Performance
• Best Writing
• Best Editing
• Best Independent Film

In addition, Halo 2 was nominated for the best Commercial/Game Machinima. (This last is odd, since it won’t be out in 2003…) Check both the Academy’s website, and the Museum’s, for more details. Nice going, RvB!

Wow. It looks like folks have pretty much given up on the Great Halo Scavenger Hunt… and that makes me sad. There’s a post on our forum that MIGHT summarize what the problem is – but I know that the puzzle is solveable, since several people have solved it already. So here’s the deal: we’re gonna give you one of the trinkets. This was the first one found, and it was posted on our forum at least twice, so I don’t feel too bad giving it away. If you visit Battleground: Halo, and stop by their FAQ, a text search on the page will turn up a question that isn’t linked at the top. It’s down in the last section, and it asks ‘What is the fifth trinket?’ and the answer is ‘East’. They’re not all in plain sight like that – but (with a couple of exceptions) they all mention ‘trinket’, which should make things a bit simpler. Remember – you’re looking for 10 of these, and you’re looking on Halo-related websites for them. In the process of finding them, you should ALSO find clues about what to do with them. (At the start, don’t worry about what to do with them – just keep track of them. It really will become clearer.) Only 3 of the 28 prizes have been claimed at this point… there is still a LOT of schwag to grab!

Stuntmutt looks at the human side of the Master Chief in today’s One One Se7en.

Today’s Halo: Resolution shows the agressive side of Cortana. Ouch.

20 stories for you in the Fan Fiction section today:

• The 7th Column: Revelations, by Mainevent
• Charge of the Grunt Brigade – Part Three: Second, by Walker
• Calling(1), by Frensa Geran
• Marooned – Chapter 2, by Steve Ollett
• The final war: Chapter one: The forming of an alliance, by Awacar
• Jaffa Part 2, by Neal Stack
• A John Before Halo: Defense (Part 12), by J-117
• Marine Rifles, CHAPTER 2, by Marine Black Ops
• Branded for Life Part 1, by PaYnE
• Countdown Earth: Hour Nine, by Mainevent
• Battle for the Norah: Part Seven, by Sterfrye36
• The Mutation (A sequel to the Virus) Prologue, by monitor101
• Attack on ERISTOCK Part 10: Hunters, by xitWOUND117
• Angels war, by Javier fernandez-vina
• 3rd Squadron, by Alpha Lance
• Plasma Burns and Bullet shells-chapter 1, by Myth
• Survival, Chapter Eleven(Finale), by Agent Shade
• A Spartan Named James- Part 2, by ZePHyR wRaiTH
• Destiny is Calling, by Alpha Lance
• The Rebel: Can We Get Some WD-40 Down Here?, by Elfster

A lot of writers are still having trouble with the whole ‘series’ concept… if anyone can suggest a way to make it clearer in the docs, I’m all ears.