Three images languishing in our inbox for too long; a mockup of an Xbox cover, a tribute to Super-Issy, and an illustration of a scene from one of our Fan Fiction entries. All three can be found in our Miscellaneous Art section. (More artwork coming later.)

Not sure if this’ll kill the link… but Foginator has put together a nice little gameplay vid on The Silent Cartographer; you can find it linked from this forum post. (To be fair, if we overwhelm the mac.com site it’s hosted on, we’ll give it a new home…) It weighs in at over 17 mb, so we might be doing some re-encoding…

The Misc Art collection is still behind (hopefully soon, I’ll put up the stuff that’s here), but Fan Fiction continues apace:

• Halo:The Rise of the Star God Parts 1-9, by Cristian Arnautu
• Assault on Edina 4 (Conclusion), by Steele
• Ishkabibbl’s Story Part 3, by Ishkabibbl
• Chapter 2 & Chapter 3, by Jerry Hughart
• A Single Motion: part 1, by Arthur Wellesly

Get to it…

There’s a new egg hunt that is underway. When the community knocks its collective head together, it hurts… but we also get quite a bit done, dontcha’ think?

I just hope it doesn’t involve PVC vinyl.

B-Sharp found a couple of little-known books in the back of his local tech store… check ’em out (here and here) on our forum.

Three new themes are now available for your Bungie.net Seventh Column chapter, thanks to poena.dare – two are Pathways Into Darkness-related, but the third (First and Last) is a Halo theme (thus warranting a news post here). Check ’em out! Thanks to SketchFactor for the heads-up.

Hmm. Over at Subnova, HBO forum regular Shishka has put up a new feature – Subnova.comic. The first strip pits some Subnova personalities against… an HBO forum visitor. Ouch.

In case nobody noticed, Finn put up another bit of speculation at the Halo Story page yesterday. (You may or may not agree with the quoted item… but there’s a rebuttal linked at the end.)

Just a few Fan Fiction tidbits today…

• The Battle of Prometheus , by Brad Weiler
• Halo: FotF(Part 3), by Frensa Geran
• Ishkabibbl’s Story Part 2, by Ishkabibbl

Go read…

Buddha writes to point out a site he’s built for the Halo parties he and his buddies hold. It’s called, appropriately enough, Halo-party.com.

The server crash last week put a crimp in the image processing, but I’m getting back on track. Here are the 6 backlogged desktops – enjoy the Wallpaper section. (I particularly like the Warthog one…)

That Weasel Television has added a number of movies to its mirror list:

• Halo Done Quick Part 1 (qt and wmp versions)
• Blood Gulch Ballet
• Total Halo
• Hurt (qt and wmp versions)

We’ve added them to our mirror lists here – go get ’em if you haven’t already! Update: Lion points out that he’s mirrored the Total Halo movie, as well.

11 stories for you today in the Fan Fiction section:

• The Battle for Ardent, by Corey Lyon
• GTA: Carjacking Evolved, by Anonymous Guy
• Just Getting Started Chapter 2, by James Kinsella
• halo for starters, part 1: PoA, by Anthony French
• -Stage 1, by el_halo_diablo
• An Endless War, by Chris Mills
• Chapter 7-Assault, by Ultra Sonic 007
• Legend Hunting Part Seven, by Dispraiser
• The Battle For Sigma Octanus Chapter 8 The Spartans (Conclusion), by monitor101
• Halo 2: Revenge of a Spartan, Chapter 3, by LostRock
• DeathRain: The Final Fatality, by TheRedFaction

Another change has occurred… there are no more hard-coded copies of stories; the entire section is run from databases. (All old hard-coded links should continue to work – if they don’t, please let me know – but the whole system has become more portable.) This does NOT mean that authors don’t need to provide a ‘pagename’ for their story – the databases still require it, it’s just used differently. Again, any glitches you run across should be reported immediately.

Before I get yelled at by Opie301 again for forgetting, Finn put up a hefty Story Page update just before our box died a few days ago – it’s now visible to the masses. Go read!

During the past week, we’ve had word of several mods/skins for other games, using Halo designs. A couple are now housed here. First up is agentJ64’s Master Chiefette model for Jedi Knight II – pretty sweet! Then, we’ve got a Halo skin for Counter-Strike made by rdc^kosh (and found by Matt Smith) – with a bunch of screenshots for flavor. Lastly, Tankramp over at Battleground: Halo found a Blood Gulch conversion for Battlefield 1942 – you can see screenshots and download the maps at LanClan’s website. If you can’t wait for Halo 2 (or Halo for PC), go play with Halo characters and environments in other games!

Okay, the server is back where it started. Dunno how long it’s going to take for folks to find it again… but the backup will stay up (if not updated) for a little while, at least. In the meantime, here are the Fan Fiction stories that were in the queue when the box went down. (The entire comments section has been overhauled – some links have changed a bit. If you’ve bookmarked a page that no longer exists, try going through the front door to find it. One problem I can foresee – if you found this news post by searching, but it’s not on HBO’s front page, you’re still looking at the old site… and the fanfic links will not work. You’ll just have to wait, sorry.)

• ES02 – Eternal Sunder (part 02): First Encounter , by Wado
• RoF: Ring of Fire Parts 1,2, & 3, by TheRedFaction
• CR.02: Chaotic Reign .02, by TheRedFaction
• CR.01: Chaotic Reign .01, by TheRedFaction
• The Defense of Earth 2: The 889th Tactical Fighter Wing, by Steele

Go to it… and be sure to let us know of any problems!

Quick status update: the original server is back online, but it’s not completely ready for prime time yet. Unfortunately, I’ve got an engagement this morning that will keep me from making the switch before mid-afternoon, eastern time. (Once the switch is made, HBO might be unavailable to you for a short time; I’ve set timeouts on the DNS records to be really low, but I can’t control your ISPs.) When it comes back up for you, you’ll find a couple of changed systems; hopefully, all the bugs will have been worked out by that point. In the meantime, enjoy your Saturday!

Funky. A Microsoft-run Xbox promotion site, Playmore.com, has a pretty cool little toy for you; Halo Origami. It’s an 800k PDF that, once printed and cut up, lets you put together your own little Master Chief figure. It’s a totally Flash-driven site, so pointing you directly to the product is not possible; but after it loads, go to ‘Play’, then scroll through the options until you hit Halo Origami. (The download link is next to the mouse – as you get close, it’ll say ‘Activate’.) Thanks to Team Overkill for the heads-up.

Another Calvin and Halo, from Warbow, to lighten a relatively rough week. (Thank goodness it’s Friday!) Enjoy.

Do you play Halo on Xbox Connect? Would you like to join up with HBO Forum regulars in these games? goatrope has put together an HBO XBC Name list to help you do this. Check it out! (Send him your XBC and HBO forum handles if you want to be added to the list.)