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.)

He’s been quiet on the posting front… but Crux Fidelis, our stalwart behind-the-scenes guy, has gotten himself interviewed by Ryan ‘Mhaddy’ Matthews… go check the Junkyard’s Spotlight for the lowdown on this Benedictine bloke!

A Halo tournament in Scotland? Aye. Check out ntlworld’s Home Gaming League page. Games are every Thursday, admission is £5.50/player. Thanks to Les Campbell for the heads-up.

Kudos to Mike Smith, who noticed that the front page of the E3 2003 website has a listing for an ‘Expo Spotlight’:

3-20-2003榦amp;#8226;æ “neak Peeks returns with a vengeance. Halo 2, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, and StarCraft: Ghost headline this year’s session. Other speakers include John Carmack, Brian Reynolds, Seamus Blackley, American McGee, and Raph Koster.

We were pretty sure that there was gonna be lots of Halo goodness at E3… but the fact that it’s making the spotlight is a pretty cool thing.

Stuntmutt found a page (182K) in Toyfare magazine (issue 69) showing Joy Ride’s Halo action figures. We’d put this in the Press Scans section… but I can’t find any useable online info on Toyfare. (One of these days, we’ll post the collection of pictures from last month’s Toy Fair in New York… but this is what we have for now.)

Many, many thanks to Deimosâ„¢, of Subnova, who stepped in yesterday during HBO’s time of need and made sure you folks could still get the Halo content you’ve expected from us. (They’re currently supplying some of our bandwidth.) An added bonus: news searches are now MUCH faster (close to 20 times faster). If you need older content, there’s no longer any excuse! (Try that little box up there. Go ahead – you know you want to.)

A new Halo site is up; nice design, focuses on gameplay. Check out Elite Guide.

Old-time Bungie fans are most likely not a huge portion of the current pool of Bungie fans; Bungie’s latest poll (‘Which multiplayer gametype do you enjoy the most?’) shows that the vast majority of respondents (90% of 1500 votes) enjoy playing either Slayer or Capture the Flag, gametypes made popular by FPSs like Quake and Unreal. Only 8% voted for gametypes brought forward from older Bungie games, like King of the Hill and Oddball… and only 2% chose ‘Race’ (a gametype relatively unique to Halo) as their favorite. Just goes to show you what happens when your audience base widens…

If you’re reading this, you’ve found the server’s new home. This is a backup of the existing site. Unfortunately, the death of the machine this morning wasn’t out of the blue; the box has been pretty unstable for a few weeks now. (It’s been unstable for longer than that, but the instability can only be attributed to hardware problems recently.) One of the side effects of the nearly continual crashing in the past few days is that the nightly backup hasn’t been completed since early Friday morning; all news and new features since then are in limbo until the original machine is brought back online. (Please be patient.) Fan Fiction, movies, artwork, and any other submissions in the past few days still exist; they are simply unavailable until repairs are completed. Please do not resubmit your work. (Additionally, in order to keep the bandwidth demands down while on this smaller pipe, we’re going to delay posting NEW fan creations; they’ll go up, eventually… just not right now. We’ve taken the Fan Fiction submission form offline, and we ask that you hold off on sending us artwork for a few days.) Again – we apologize for the downtime/lack of functionality… we’re doing the best we can to get back to where we were (and we WILL keep up on news posts), but hardware failures get messy sometimes.

poena.dare forgot to take his meds again…

Funky downtime… datacenter says it’s not them, but the server said it wasn’t down, either. Anyway, check out Bungie.net’s newest contest – if you can come up with the best three-player Halo gametype variant for Halo, you’ll win the accolades due a true master. Entries are only accepted from Seventh Column chapters, and there are other rules, so be sure to read Bungie’s news story carefully. You’ve got just a bit under 2 weeks; deadline is midnight (Pacific time) on Sunday, March 30. What are you waiting for – get creatin’!

Today’s Fan Fiction:

• Ishkabibbl’s Story Part 1, by Ishkabibbl
• And Raise Your Head With Pride! 5, by Arthur Wellesly
• A Forerunner Tale Part 1: And So The Flood, by nicholas
• The Battle For Sigma Octanus Chapter 7 No Way out, by monitor101
• The Flood: Part One, by Justin Everett Simon
• The Tour (part 3), by Traumatised Marine
• The Clouds Cry — part 1: Just a Nightmare , by Matt James
• An Undying Hope — part 1: Hell in the Valley, by Matt James
• Chapter 6-343 Guilty Spark, by Ultra Sonic 007
• Last Stand part 2, by grylsy
• Fallen Angel 9: Invasion, by Gruntkiller/Covert
• Life of a UNSC Marine Part II, by Tygpj

There were a few that needed to be deleted… there’s always someone who either can’t read directions, or feels like abusing the system. If you feel that your story was deleted in error, let us know.

Three art pieces for you today, including a pretty dang impressive MC model made for a 3d animation class. Check ’em out in our Miscellaneous Art section. (Wallpaper coming later today.)