ViolentlyHappy noticed that Westlake has updated its project status page; Halo Mac is now at Alpha. (This isn’t really as dire as it might be if the port were being done entirely by Westlake; it will move along much faster than a normal port because much of the work porting the Xbox code has already been done by Gearbox.) Not that much longer to wait…

Another nugget of info about the third Halo novel, ‘Halo: First Strike’, from Eric Trautmann, our favorite Halo Bible expert. Being added here so that when people jump onto our forum in two months and say “What do we know about the next Halo novel?”, folks can point to this news post.

One last offsite vid for you: Dinky, of HaloJuggaloProductions, has put up a large (31 mb, DivX-encoded AVI) movie showing how to get video footage from your PC onto a DV camera. If that sounds like a lot to download for something you could explain in, say, a text-based FAQ… check out botman’s suggestion for straight-to-disk recording. Supports up to 1024×768 resolution (better than the DV camera’s 720×480) – though you’ll need a LOT of disk space for the movies… roughly 1 gb/minute. Also, framerate drops more than 50% (on my system, with reasonable action on the screen, average framerate went from ~45 fps to ~20 fps when recording was turned on.) Still, it’s easy to implement, and makes pretty high-quality movies…

More vids – this time from halo_playa. You can find his list of offerings on his website, Nick’s Halo Site.

Ghôlsbane points out that the UK World Cyber Games ended this past weekend; there are some photos on the iGames UK site. Even Halo PC made an appearance… and the whole shebang was mentioned by BBC Online. Go take a look!

Zowsky & Kabuki have put together 4 movies showing some multiplayer stunts in Blood Gulch and Sidewinder; we’re not hosting these, so we aren’t bothered by the fact that all of this has been shown before. Grab what’s of interest to you:

• Clipping – Getting into BG walls
• SWOut – getting out of Sidewinder
• SideScrolling – Ghost jumping in BG
• Tower – climbing to the Tower (and beyond) in BG

All movies are in WMP7 format, and range from 1.8 – 3.5 mb in size.

Another Halo PC preview over at Gamers Depot – again, it’s single-player only (Beta 1.5 had only LAN networking), but they took a few nice screenshots. Thanks to Nick Danger for the heads-up.

A few weeks ago, we mentioned a CGI Halo movie being worked on by Mic Fedusenko. He’s popped back into our forum with word of another few screenshots of his progress. Check ’em out!

For what it’s worth: Yes, we know that an older beta of Halo PC has been leaked. (Yes, Gearbox knows it as well; each build was individually numbered, so tracking down the leak shouldn’t be too difficult.) We’re not going to point you to web links for the download, or tolerate posting of such on our forum; we’d ask that you show respect to Bungie and Gearbox, and wait the few weeks until the full retail version is on the shelves. It won’t be long now! Update: The official Gearbox response can be read on their forum. Update 2: The entire thread (all 600+ posts of it) have been yanked; there is no more official word from Gearbox. Update 3: Turns out I still had a window open with Marc Tardif’s response in it. I think it’s worth reading; I’m fine with the loss of the other 600 posts, but I think people should see his words (109k) on this one.

37 new dialogue snippets added to the Dialogue Databank today; 30 from Captain Spark, 7 from Electric Monk. Two new categories: Jackal and Hunter. There’s no really good way to identify the Jackal snippets… so they’re simply numbered. Again – all of these were collected in-game, no hacking. (We’re not accepting sounds collected via hacking, for two reasons; Marty O’Donnell (and Bungie as an entity, for that matter) has expressed unhappiness at the bulk collection of private assets… and in truth, it simply isn’t sporting.)

Do Halo fans get annoyed when other games begin to look like Halo? One One Se7en’s MC does…

Hehe – Gearbox’s Projects page lists a total of… one remaining work item for Halo PC. I wonder what it could be (and how long it’ll take them to clear it)? Look for the game to go Gold pretty soon now…

Halo PC Preview at FiringSquad. It’s a look at Single-player only, and brings up several points that have been addressed on various messageboards by Bungie and Gearbox employees (so don’t bother sending us outraged emails about how this or that problem is already fixed – we know)… but it’s a view from a PC FPS player, which is how Halo PC SHOULD be judged. 32 screenshots, as well. Thanks to AlStrong for the heads-up on our forum.

For the longest time, the Guardians have baffled players – where do these mysterious killers come from? Stuntmutt looks at the issue in today’s One One Se7en.

Earlier today, we listed links for DivX-encoded versions of FTC’s latest vid (number 7). We’ve gotten the okay from FTC to offer you a QuickTime version, as well. This one is 480×312, 12.5 mb, and is available from files.bungie.org. Mirrors are welcome (though they probably won’t be posted before tonight).

A couple of weeks ago, we mentioned a large video showing multiplayer action at Gamespy – but noted that it was subscriber-only at the time. It’s since been made public – you can grab it from a number of public servers. It’s a 144 mb QuickTime movie (141 mb zipped) showing 4 minutes of gameplay from Gephyrophobia, Timberland, and Blood Gulch. Should really give you a sense for what’s what – format is 640×480, so action is reasonably sized. Got the heads-up from kurieitaa over on the Gearbox forums.

Whoa – I’ve got no idea when this was (re)posted… but the Halo Storyline, originally posted on the now-defunct Xbox.com Flash Halo site, has RESURFACED at Xbox.com. (It was orginally posted in mid-September 2001 – in a hidden format. Once a Bungie fan found it, it was yanked. It reappeared – in an altered format – a couple of months later… and then was yanked again. It was offline for a very, very long time; I’m pretty sure it wasn’t up on the Xbox.com site, say, a month ago.) Nice to see – maybe this can kickstart the dormant Halo Story page, which has been waiting for its maintainers to return from their summer activities…

Saltine sent in a link to a nice flag capture on Battle Creek; you can download it from his site here. (4.7 mb, WMP7 format.) He asks that comments be posted on his Clan page, Halo ThugZ.

9 Fan Fiction pieces for you today:

• Earth, A Place for Death. Part 7: Lifting off, by FuManChu
• MJOLNIR MARK V, by Mainevent
• The Ghosts:Project Ghost(Chapter 1), by Sergeant B
• Assualt of Plaza 13, by The Scribe
• The Fight for Bravo Base; pt. 1, by ONI_operative_343
• Homeworlds V, by Mainevent
• Arcnine, by Master_Chief189
• Soldiers Diary: Homeworlds , by Mainevent
• Halo Trilogy: A Soul to Remember ( Chapter III ), by Alpha Lance

Not too bad, for a Saturday morning…

Tyler Jennings compares shooters in today’s Guest One One Se7en. The collection grows…