21 pieces (yes, that’s 7×3) of Fan Fiction for you today – including one (M31, part 12) which somehow DIDN’T get approved last time around. Get to work:

• (Part 12) M31: First Blood, by Greg and Wes Foutch
• The Rise and Fall of the Flood Chapter 4, by BlackValkyire
• Earth, A Place for Death. Part 4: New Mombosa, by FuManChu
• CORRUPT [2], by GLADIATRRR3000
• The Last War, Prologue, by Agent Shade
• Halo: Mercy ch: 1, by ssj9000chilango
• Halo: Combat Re-evolved; Moonbase Alpha, by Steele
• Running Riot-Part 4, by Simon James
• Halo 2, an Elites version, Part II, by FOrunnER
• Last of the Walking Dead – Part One: Escape, by Walker
• Vengeance, by Steele
• The Advenantures of Lt. Jake, Part Two, by Hunter_Killer
• long Time Gone part 2, by grylsy
• An Officer named Starblade: Saving Sol, by Hunter_Killer
• Four Plagues [1]: The Beginning of the End, by Kancer
• Remnants of Reach: Chapter 3: Adversaries of Annihilation, by Shinai Purugganan
• A Marine’s Tale: First Encounter, by pj-NYkr90
• In Light of Destiny Part I, Chapter II: Truth, by Jinkaiden-XI
• On A Pale Horse: The Beginning of the end, by Silent Hunter
• Project: Shadow Spartan, Chapter 12(Finale), by Agent Shade
• Halo: The MCconto Chronicles Part 4, by JCDenton

Wow. Good luck.

guy who doesn’t post…too often has put up a forum post with a bunch of pics he took at Halo50K. You can get a good sense of the overall tourney by looking through these… check it out!

MaverickJ, a trickster who’s released some pretty impressive movies (and who ran Project Spartan, a showcase for Halo skill), has created another movie – this one is called ‘Outer Limits’, and it probes some of the out-of-map areas that can be found on popular multiplayer maps. Some tricks have been shown before, some are new. Some are useful in multiplay (assuming your opponents haven’t banned them), some are just plain cool to see. 4:09 long, 15.7 mb big, QuickTime format. (There’s a WMP9 version, as well, but no bandwidth to host it.) We’re still working on a more permanent solution, but in the meantime, Project C.O.E.R.C.E. continues to make new Halo flicks available to the public by pooling bandwidth resources of a number of hosts. (If you’ve got, say, 50 gb/month of bandwidth you can spare, by all means, contact gwdp….to (he’s GOT to get an easier name to write) and toss your name into the ring! Go visit C.O.E.R.C.E. today and grab your copy of Outer Limits.

Well, it’s time for the Seven Day Poll to come to a close – and if you hadn’t noticed, ‘Wait for me!’ was the runaway winner of the ‘lamest Crewman voice snippet award’, garnering 62% of the 8200 votes (beating its nearest competitor by by almost 3300 votes). Interestingly enough, I just discovered today who did that snippet… and while I probably shouldn’t say WHO it was, I can definitely tell you I was surprised. (None of the other snippets in the poll were voiced by the same actor.) We’ll consider resurrecting the Seven Day Poll again if we run across something we think worthy of voting on… in the meantime, I’ll leave this data up until tomorrow.

Two new websites to mention to you tonight… A very classy Flash-based site called 343 Guilty Spark (Your 100% Unofficial Halo 2 Source) and a German clan site known as DGD-Clan. The Halo community is growing by leaps and bounds!

It took a LONG time, and a LOT of help from Warbow and Free at Last (who did all the real gruntwork)… but the Miscellaneous Section is finally up-to-date. (Well, almost. There were a couple of things yesterday that should probably go in it… but they’re not local yet.) Some of the search functionality has been improved, as well – if you know you read about something cool and it’s not in any other section… this is the place to look. (The Dialogue Databank? It’s in the HBO Prime section. And so on.) Whew! 50 new items, in 8 months. That’s a lotta stuff!

SketchFactor has posted some impressions from a fan who was at the CPL 2003 Summer Event – an inspiring read. Swing by b.net and take a look!

Tocki, of Halo Orbit, points out an exclusive at their site – information about the German version of the ‘Fall of Reach’ novel. There’s a cover pic, a release date, more. Stop by if you’ve been waiting for this!

C.C.R. and Spartaco have put together a movie showing how to get all the vehicles on top of a Blood Gulch base. It’s 2:47 long, 10.4 mb large, in WMP7 format. They’re hosting it themselves at Suite904. If you’ve had trouble getting vehicles on top of the bases, you might want to grab this.

Four new Halo Cover concepts came in in the past week – one front cover, and 3 front-and-back combos. You’ll find them all in our Cover Art Contest section (they’re the last entries on the page). One of them isn’t even Halo 2 – it’s Halo 1.5. Take a look!

11 new dialogue snippets from Captain Spark for the Dialogue Databank. The man is a treasure trove – 416 of the 554 snippets currently in the collection have come from him – and they’re almost invariably clean (minimal background noise, good capture). Enjoy these!

Once again, Stuntmutt is slighted by my busy schedule. Yesterday’s One One Se7en didn’t get posted properly. I blame Cortana. (You have to blame SOMEONE, right?)

That Weasel Television has ramped up the number of movies it’s currently hosting – new arrivals include, among others:

• FTC 5 (QuickTime, 10 mb)
• FTC 6 (QuickTime, 15 mb and DivX, 20 mb)
• Black and White 0 (QuickTime, 10 mb)
• Predator (QuickTime, 21 mb)
• Dr Swiss’ How the Grunt Stole Halo 2 (TWTv Exclusive, WMP9, 2.8 mb)
• Halo 2 Unpromotion (TWTv Exclusive, WMP9, 2.8 mb TW: Seal of Approval)
• Hog Wars (TWTv Exclusive, DivX, 28 mb)

There are many, many more – check ’em out! Have we said recently how grateful we are for Halo movie hosting help?

C.O.E.R.C.E., the bandwidth consortium, continues to make new movies available in our hour of bandwidth crisis. Newest addition to the archive: Enter The Matrix, from Athol Productions. 15.9 mb, 4:07 long, in QuickTime 5 format, this movie has some pretty awesome editing effects. It’s not everything its creator wanted it to be, but it’s still a killer piece of work! Grab it from the C.O.E.R.C.E. mirror page – and toss your comments into this thread!

Fire Team Charlie has finished FTC 6 – their most ambitious piece yet. Editing is fantastic, sound is good (though still rough in places) – this one has to be downloaded! One of these days, I gotta try that warthog trick… This one is 5:55 long, 20 mb, 352×128, in DivX5-encoded AVI format. (A 15.2 mb QuickTime version has been created, but I’m not sure where it’s going to be hosted.) Stop by XboxOttawa.ca and grab this! Mirrors are, of course, highly appreciated – download the vid, send us a link, and we’ll be sure to make it public. Thanks!

Gettin’ there… Desktops are now cleared out, as well – 16 new images for you (plus one size variation). Check out the Wallpaper section! Update: We removed one of the images, because it used an older wallpaper as a base, without permission. Removal was at the request of the original artist. People… please. If you’re going to use someone else’s work, ask first. (The only real exception to this is Halo artwork placed on Bungie’s site – it’s there for your use in this manner.)

Another Monday, another Weekly Review! If you think you might have missed anything in our forum this past week, read this post. (Even if you think you DIDN’T miss anything, read this post – it’s got a nice spin on things you might have overlooked…)

Since my return from vacation last week, the art sections of b.org have been woefully unattended. Here’s step one in fixing that problem. 11 built-up pieces for the Miscellaneous Art section. A wide mix. Update: Oops, missed one.

mnemesis is on vacation… but Finn, less than two weeks from a pretty major paradigm shift, has managed to update the Halo Story page with a tasty morsel culled from today’s forum droppings. That Wado guy… he’s pretty sharp.

Full details will be forthcoming at the Halo50K site in the next day or two, but we got email from Bigsauce (a finalist at the Halo National Championships last year) with details about the top spots:

Top 4 for the FFA:
1. Ogre2
2. Ogre1
3. StrangePurple
4. TDT Alex

2v2 Winner:
Ogres

4vs4 Winner:
StK

Darkman took 6th place and in the 4vs4 TDT took 2nd.

For those not up on the Halo Tourney scene, TDT is The Dream Team, a team of four guys that includes Dustin ‘HP Darkman’ Langton, recently mentioned in our news as being the first Halo gamer to go pro. They won the 4vs4 competition at Halo50K. (StK won the 2v2 competition, and Ogres were 3rd in the 4vs4 competition there, as well; guess the top bracket has just switched positions a bit, rather than given way to a new regime). StK, this tourney’s winners of the 4vs4 competition, is currently spotlighted at Halo50k – nice timing, that.