Halo gets a mention in yesterday’s Ctrl+Alt+Del comic. Thanks to Spenser for the heads-up. Update: S7N points out that there are many Halo-related Ctrl+Alt+Del strips – like, for example, this one from January. Browse the archives for more!

eXentric has created a Map Editor for editing hacked Halo maps (to create the sorts of fun toys folks have been posting for the past few days). Some rather draconian rules had to be laid down on our forum recently, covering what is, and is not, acceptable to discuss in reference to this topic; luckily, eXentric has set up a forum for discussion of Cartographer (the editor) over at Xbox-Scene. Check it out!

Been a week since we put up any desktops – here are 16 that have been submitted for the Wallpaper section. There’s still a bunch of art in the queue, but it’s going to have to wait…

For those who didn’t remember, there are several dozen iGames centers around the US that will be hosting a 2v2 Tournament (it’s a Summer Games Divisional event) on August 16. Thanks to Nick the Roadie, who wanted more people to come to the one in Buffalo, NY.

You people all remember Bungie’s Caption Competition – come up with a cool line, and Bungie would include it, as an egg, somewhere in the game? Well One One Se7en took a look at it today…

Skavenger_s7 continues his tale of mayhem with She can have the TV… a funny read, especially if you know something about our forumgoers. (Part 1 was here, part 2 was here, if you missed them.)

Interesting in winning an Alienware Area-51 Ultimate Gaming Machine PC… or some cool Halo schwag? Stop by The Gamestop/Alienware Sweepstakes, and enter today! (Prizes to be awarded in 2004.) Thanks to Strato for the heads-up.

Bummer. MIssed this yesterday – thanks to Blade for the heads-up. Sidewinder Saga, an ongoing story from Halogamers.com in the genre started by Red vs Blue (but with a different focus), has closed its doors. Dave writes that he’s just bored with Halo. And so it goes…

You folks might remember Chris Bryan. He makes some kickass Halo-related stuff (both in traditional and digital format)… well, he’s turned in another impressive tidbit. He’s not very happy with this one:

I found this little test render here from the animation I did for class.
Its really short, and the timing is bad.. I animated this with a 300MHz PC and an old FireGL 1 card that ran Maya at 10-12 FPS on with an empty grid, NO GEOMETRY!

With all that negative press, you might think the actual render stinks… you’d be dead wrong. Check it out: 9 seconds long, QT format, 640×480, about 1.3 mb. Wouldn’t it be cool to use this system to make a Halo movie?

The hacking madness continues in our forum – welcome to all the new people; the forum has seen a quarter of a million pageviews in the past 24 hours, which is significantly above its normal traffic. If you’re interested in all the funkiness, stop on by and read a few threads. In the meantime, though, we’ve got normal content for you… to start with, Fan Fiction:

• SNIPER: Part-One, by Vege7a
• Halo: Mercy, by ssj9000chilango
• Rampancy Is Character Forming, by S7N
• The Ambush, by Cire117
• Execution of the Mind: The Flood Virus, by MadJackal
• Rampany Is Character Forming: Part 2, by S7N
• The Ballad of Reach, by Gasmask
• The Fallen: Chapter 4 Section 3: Through the Woods, by Hikaru-119
• War for Earth City [1]:Only the Beginnning, by Kancer
• In Light of Destiny Part I, Chapter III: Truth (continued), by Jinkaiden-XI
• Sergeant Johnson/ Master Cheif Story Part 1, by grunteater
• In A City of Chaos, by The Scribe
• Operations Crew Tango Red: Retreat and Reunion, by Shinai Purugganan
• Its Just One of Those Days: 04, by Elfster

Apologies to all the art submitters… I’ve been really, really far behind on all that stuff.

Okay, okay… due to some oddnesses, there are now THREE QuickTime versions of BOLL’s Happy Hacking video. There’s a 15.8 mb, 320×240 version – medium quality. There’s one that’s 18.3 mb, 320×240, high quality. And there’s one that’s 400×300, 26.9 mb, high quality. You can find The smallest one at C.O.E.R.C.E. and Team Ice, as well as BOLL’s server. You can find the smaller screensize, higher-quality version at BOLL’s server and files.bungie.org, a new bandwidth source we’ve brought online. And you can find the larger version also at BOLL’s server and files.bungie.org. Enjoy!

I’ve run out of expletives. Check this thread. (There IS an Engineer model in the game… I’ll be damned.)

Okay, I lied – it’s ALMOST time for bed. First, a new Halo PC screenshot, straight out of Gearbox – the flamethrower. Wonga. (Thanks to KookyBastard for noticing.)

lol – he just won’t stop. When Halo first came out, one of the earliest disappointments was that there didn’t seem to be any way to get a flyable Banshee on the level Halo. You could (if you were lucky) knock an Elite pilot out of his craft… but you wouldn’t be able to get in. Hopes rose again when Halo Hacking first hit the scene… until it was discovered that even after bumping an Elite, you couldn’t climb into a Banshee. BOLL wasn’t willing to give up, though – he’s used Pfhorslayer’s replacement hacks to swap Foehammer’s first Warthog on that level for a Banshee… and THAT, you can fly. Is it time for me to hack my Xbox? (I think it’s bedtime… too much excitement for one day.)

mrsmiley points out that the newest strip of Halo Babies is up over at Halobabies.net. #4 looks at what happens when marines get overexcited… this strip rocks.

Okay, so BOLL decided to run with the info he learned yesterday about hacking Halo… and created a 4:42 long look at some of the absurd (but oh-so-cool) things you can do now. Want a LAAG gun that shoots Master Chiefs? You got it. How about rapid-fire rockets? Heck… how about plasma grenades? This has to be seen to be believed. So here’s the deal. BOLL’s put up three different copies for you to grab; they’re all 320×240, and the same length, they just differ in compression:

• QuickTime (high framerate, 19.7 mb download)
• DivX (29.8 mb download)
• QuickTime (higher quality, lower framerate, 22.5 mb download)

In addition, I re-encoded the first version to be quite a bit smaller, without much loss of quality; you can grab the re-encoded version (15.7 mb) from two places:

• C.O.E.R.C.E
• Nick’s Server

To make matters even MORE confusing, BOLL is in the process of uploading the original (1.6 GB) version to our ftp folder; once we’ve got it, we’ll create one or two QuickTime versions. One will be the same filesize as the existing movie (~15-20 mb), but much higher visual quality, the other will be larger (both filesize and screensize). If you only want to download once, you might want to wait until tomorrow. This one is a must-see; even if you’re not excited by the hacking scene, it’s a hoot to see how much damage you can do when you’re standing in a tower of 3 dozen master chiefs and your assault rifle fires frag grenades… Update: Nick yanked his mirror last night. However, Team Ice has tossed it up; you can grab it from this page.

Update on yesterday’s new screenshots at 3DCenter – according to SketchFactor, they were using a pre-beta build of the game (something that really should not be done when writing a review of a game about to be released, especially without explicitly announcing that’s what you’re doing). The lack of detail is NOT attributable to the video cards – it’s attributable to a game that’s not ready for prime time yet. Disregard any speculation on my part about what Halo PC will look like on lower-end video cards. 🙂 (At least until next week…)

Mhaddy points out that the Junkyard’s Spotlight series continues with a focus on Bluestone, webmaster of the new 343 Guilty Spark website. Swing on by and check out what makes him tick!

For folks looking for FTC vids, now that XboxOttawa.ca is offline, Team Ice has uploaded QuickTime versions of all 6 existing movies at this point, and will be adding new movies as they’re released. (They of course have the DivX versions as well.) Go get ’em!

Ouch! We missed a Bungie.net update – and one that’s important to a number of fans! Yesterday, SketchFactor posted a note about the availability of the upcoming Halo action figures – it contains a list of some of the major stores that will carry these. Check it out – the release date is drawing near! (Brandon, on our forum, pointed it out. I missed the email from b.net yesterday.)