SketchFactor has posted part 1 of his FanFest Flashback; a look at the history of the Bungie FanFests, as well as the events leading up to this particular iteration. Good times, good times… go read!

Hehe – BOLL has put out yet another enjoyable Halo-inspired creation. It was for an intro course in animation… the main character may not LOOK familiar, but he sure SOUNDS familiar. (2 mb, QuickTime format) I love this guy!

SketchFactor has stepped into a thread about the imminent release of the E3 Demo video with a bit of information.

…it is definitely not coming out today or tomorrow. However, I can say with certainty that it’s very close to being released. We know everyone is eager to see it and trust me, we’re eager to get it out there. While it’s not a huge ordeal to prepare it for release, it does take time and being the perfectionists that we are, there are a few little things that the team wanted to address.

Stay tuned… we’ll be sure to let you know exactly how to get your grubby mitts on this, as soon as we know ourselves.

[WSD] has put up their second monster movie (18 minutes long, 88 mb) for you to grab. It’s predominately 4-player gameplay – 2v2 or 4-player FFA – except for the last 5 minutes, which is an unedited 6 player game of Rockets on Prisoner. Editing overall is pretty well done. If you enjoy watching Halo gameplay, grab this file (it’s in the Media section of their website). WMV format (v7, so it’s watchable by Macs, too). Thanks to [WSD]-Deus for the heads-up.

It was posted during E3, but somehow we missed it; Gamespot put up a Hands-on impression article of Halo PC a couple of weeks ago. It’s got a bit of dodgy information, but mostly, it says the reviewer was happy with what he saw. Thanks to Clefton Twain on our forum for the heads-up.

Brannon Boren points out that Halo is featured in yesterday’s Dork Tower cartoon. Got a chuckle out of me…

Scott Velasquez of Gearbox points out that if you want to see a pic of the Gearbox team, you can find them on top of the building they work in in the latest issue of Computer Gaming World (which has a 4-page Halo PC spread). We can’t add the article to our Press Scans section until it’s off the shelf… but you can find it in your local newsstand right now.

Shacknews has interviewed Randy Pitchford, of Gearbox – there’s a boatload of tasty information there. Of great interest to many HBO regulars is the support Gearbox plans to provide to the mod community…

The degree to which Halo is huge on the PC is the degree to which we?ll support the modification community. We believe it?s going to be huge. We?ll be talking about our initial steps to help a modification community grow around the title soon and will be talking about what kind of tools and other SDK material we?ll release and how it can be used sometime around the launch. Dave (Mertz) and Matt (Armstrong) have been really looking forward to doing it…

Sounds like the tools won’t be released with the game itself, but soon afterwards, instead. He also touched on where the differences between the Xbox version and the PC version lie:

Randy Pitchford: From a content point of view, single player is pure. The new content and features we?ve added have all been in the area of multiplayer.

We have, however, corrected a few much less than significant issues that have been discovered by some of the millions of Xbox customers and we?ve been able to pick and choose between feature differences in the PAL and NTSC versions of the Xbox game (as we have both code bases). This manifests itself in a few different ways that are mostly really subtle – I?m interested to see what kind of changes/differences the most hard-core fans actually discover. I hope you understand that we wouldn?t be doing our jobs if we actually advertised such subtle adjustments…

Read the rest of the interview; there’s info on input devices, film capabilities (or lack thereof), coop possibilities, new multiplayer game play features, new vehicles (note the emphasis on the plural), new weapons (yes, the flamethrower is in), and more. Three pages of juicy Halo PC Goodness!

Cyber Gaming Network has posted their E3 2003 Awards… and Halo 2 cleaned up. Best Visuals of Show, Xbox Game of Show, Demo of Show, and Outstanding Game of Show. Dunno… I think they liked it. Go read the details!

A month ago, we mentioned a card game being created by Phoenix Sanction. Looks like they’re done with the first set. Rules, card technicalities, and an Excel sheet deck creator… take a look.

Ross Mills writes to remind us that his ‘Halo Reloaded’ trailer can be found at That Weasel Television. There are two versions – a large 3.7 mb version and a small (sub-1mb) version, both in WMP9 format. Take a look!

HUNTR-KILLR turned in a funny little short film; no sound, but the action is what counts. Anybody who’s tried to put a jeep up on top of the level Halo knows how hard it is to drive up slopes… and walking is simply out of the question. Did you know, though, that Covenant characters have FAR less trouble? An elite can walk up a slope two or three times faster (maybe even more than that) than even a Warthog can! The clip just under 3 minutes long, and around 8 mb. It shows three separate climbs, with awesome views each time, and some cool falls at the end. (Each one has the player bump an Elite; yes, this is a modded xbox. This works with Jackals and Grunts, as well.) Check out RockClimber, on mythica.org now! (Clip 2 has the pistol-carrying elite stop halfway up the hill and admire the view… but he’s doing more than that; even with a modded xbox, the blue beam freeze effect is still an issue. He waits for the beam to fire, and THEN finished the climb; that gives him 16 seconds to get to the top.)

Evil Otto has posted a note over at Bungie.net announcing that the Halo 2 UI caption contest is now closed. Over a thousand entries, three will be selected. Good luck, EO, and good luck to all who entered! Read the news item for what is, and is not, permissible at this stage.

One of the more impressive gameplay vids in recent memory is Dan Chosich’s Halo50K Framework. It sets all sorts of bars that other Halo filmmakers strive to reach… and now it’s even better. Audio’s been re-encoded, aspect ratio and bitrate’s are both higher, for clarity… this movie captures the chaos, the adrenaline-induced exhilaration, the beauty of Halo multiplay, and now it does so in a 720×405 format, in just under 80 mb. It’s being hosted by Khen Rigzin’s site, Mindwarp. (The link points to a directory listing, so you can choose how you want to download it.) Enjoy!

Not to be outdone by the Gearbox crew, Bungie’s SketchFactor metes out a few morsels of info about the PC Rocket Hog. It’s a three-shot, boys and girls…

Geeoff has put together a multiplayer stunts movie called ‘the orange is coming’, and That Weasel has agreed to host it for him at That Weasel Television. It’s 26.3 mb, just under 2 minutes long, in WMP7 format. Some nice examples of using grenades to collect weapons on the run, as well as some hijinks on the top of Blood Gulch. Check it out! Update: There’s also a smaller, WMP9 version of the file (4.1 mb) that’s not listed on the main mirror page – you can grab it here.

Thanks to dolbex for sharing… he asked some interesting questions about vehicle respawning in PC Halo over at the Gearbox Forums, and got some solid answers from a couple of members of the Gearbox crew. Summary: vehicles will NOT be destroyable in multiplayer; it would be too frustrating to kill someone in a banshee and not be able to use it. The respawn that’s been mentioned refers to inaccessible vehicles:

The vehicle respawn option is part of the solution to having vehicles “parked” in areas that are problematic or that are just naturally away from the action. This also prevents “vehicle hoarding” by one team or a group of players.

There’s a lot more over there… read the rest! Update: I should have read the entire thread. There’s a multiplayer map based on Silent Cartographer, called ‘Death Island’… and it has Banshees. Finally, the Banshee returns to SC!

Another 12 entries in the Fan Fiction section today…

• When Games Collide: The Tournament of the Century Chapter 2, by Brent Carmichael
• True Purpose(7), by Frensa Geran
• A Halo Comedy (Very Original Title…), by Dispraiser
• Forsaken Forefathers part V: Boarding Action, by AlphaBravo343 and Havok
• Crash of the Accolade [Part 02], by Argonox
• Rally Point Alpha, by Sterfrye36
• Stowaway Part 3, by Dispraiser
• Uncertain Danger – Unwanted Visitors [Part 02][Series 01], by Argonox
• Beta Halo: Call in the Scouts, by SPARTAN 053
• Rebirth – Shadow’s Chapter 4 – Bar Fight, by Archangel’s Blade, Spartan 451, Knightmare, and Shadow
• The Virus Part 4, by monitor101
• The Darkness Worries – Unwanted Visitors [Part 03] , by Argonox

See how many you can read before the NEXT batch comes out.

Three art pieces built up over the past few days have been added to the Miscellaneous Art section. There were one or two others, but I’ve got no idea who sent them.

Lorraine McLees has written the latest Bungie Soapbox article… I think she needs to take a break. A long break. Maybe even… seven weeks long.