Hehe… BOLL is building a new desktop, and needs help with a caption. Do your stuff. Update: Looks like BOLL changed his mind – he doesn’t want captions. (The pic is still worth looking at, though…)

Forum regular Shishka was at the Game Developer Conference yesterday; you can see his report (and a few pics) in this forum thread. I want one of those ‘Make Your Mother Proud’ signs! Update: Dan Chosich pointed out an article at HomeLAN Fed on the talk given by the Bungie folks on Halo. It’s not very extensive, but there are some interesting tidbits:

Bungie created most of their own development tools for Halo and demoed them to the audience but unforunately their level design tool called Sapien didn’t work completely during the panel so people were not able to see how Halo levels actually look inside the editor.

Go read the rest! Update 2: poena.dare found some more GDC coverage at GameSpy – I’d point to it directly, but his article at Bungie Sightings is a must-not-miss.

Interested in making a decent chapter site at Bungie’s Seventh Column? Well, sit right down and read what SketchFactor has to say on the subject – after you read his ‘Building a Better Chapter‘ article, you’ll be on your way to a fantastic home for your group!

Forerunners.org is giving away a copy of Halo – all you have to do is sign up by March 31. Visit their Giveaways page for more details. (Thanks to B.net for the heads-up.)

Seven desktops for you – you’ll find ’em in our Wallpaper section. Back to Fanfic…

I’ve been lax about image submissions recently – busy with the Fan Fiction backend, I guess. Here’s the first batch – 6 images for the Miscellaneous Art section. (Once again, there are a number of uploaded images I could not include, because they came with no attribution… and several people, not seeing their artwork displayed within a day or two of uploading it, decided they needed to upload it again. Servers don’t usually lose files, folks – if you’re unsure about whether we got something, send us email. You don’t need to email us the item – simply a note asking whether it’s still queued will do. Or… even better, just be patient. Thanks!)

Matt Soell has posted a news item on Bungie.net about Halo 2’s release date – it will not be shipping in 2003. They’re not willing to rush the project in order to make the Holiday deadline. on the plus side, Matt states that Halo 2 will be shown at E3 in May. Straight from the horse’s mouth…

One of the earliest Halo Trickster teams, and one of the most impressive, Team 7hr33 has overhauled its website. Most of the changes are under the hood, so it’ll LOOK the same… but there’ve been a few very nice additions. Most importantly, though, is new content… and there’s quite a bit of that. Hit the most recent Movies page, and you’ll find some pretty cool clips. Likewise, there’s new content in the Stills section, the Spooky section, and the Outtakes section. And that’s just the Halo media stuff! Poke around… there’s lots of fun stuff there.

Bungie’s Pants Contest is over… Alex Edwards was 7 cents shy of the correct total of $50.57. (That’s almost twice what I’d have guessed was in there… I think I got the size wrong.) There are more details (and a better writeup) in the B.net article, so go read it.

The HBO XBL Gamertags list has become slightly more functional – you can now (finally) limit your search to a specific starting letter (either HBO Forum Name, or XBL Gamertag, or, if you’re clever, both). For Fan Fiction authors who are getting frantic to submit their work, take heart; this change was made because I needed some code off this page for the new Fiction Submission system, and figured while I was there, I’d add the two lines necessary. If all goes well, there’ll be a way to submit Fan Fiction by the weekend.

Pallor reminds us that some of the Bungie guys will be attending the Game Developers Conference this week:

• Lead designer Jaime “Flawless Cowboy” Griesemer will be on the On All Levels panel, discussing level design.
• Jaime, tools/AI programmer Mat “MSN” Noguchi, and audio director Marty O’Donnell will present Halo: Development Evolved, discussing Halo’s design and creation process.
• Marty will also be participating in Does Melody Matter?, discussing composing music for games.

Designer Tyson “Ferrex” Green and AI programmer Chris Butcher will also be in attendance.

Yesterday, there were several posts on our forum revolving around the Pants on the Bungie webcam (which were opened yesterday, and their contents counted). Bungie.net will be posting the winner of the contest soon (probably today), but in the meantime, if you missed the Opening of the Pants, Cybrfrk has graciously provided a recap. (You know it’s a slow day when we’re putting up news of the opening of Bungie’s pants…)

Gonna be anywhere near south central Connecticut at the end of this month? Come visit.

Folks have GOT to learn to read: There are four (count ’em, 4) new movies in our uploads folder in WMP9 format. There are no alternatives for any of these – which means we (on Macs) can’t watch them, which means we (as maintainers of this site) can’t post ’em. There’s a note, in big bold letters (some of them even red) at the top of the Movies section stating clearly that movies submitted ONLY in WMP9 format CANNOT be posted; does that need to be replaced with blinking text? (WMP9 movies are happily accepted, when there is an alternative version in a more mac-friendly version (MPEG, MOV, most AVI), as well. WMP8 or 7 versions are fine, too.) If you submitted a movie recently, in WMP9 format exclusively, and you wonder why we’re ignoring it… this is why.

poena.dare, man-about-town, has discovered a very interesting tidbit of chatlog from Larry Niven’s website, in which he discusses the fact that he was approached about writing a Halo novel (and that he turned down the invite). Now that would have been an interesting news post by Louis Wu, wouldn’t it have? pd also had this to say:

I will not be at the WCG 2003 Tournament.

I will not be at the Michigan LANFest.

I had nothing to do with Haloplayers being down.

I am NOT Bungie Studios! Bungie Studios are bungie.com.

It is unclear how much of this is true. (Well, the Niven bit is, at least.)

Interesting. The World Cyber Games Organizing Committee has announced two titles to represent console games in the WCG 2003 Tourney: Halo and SSX Tricky. This rounds out the total list of 8 games to be played at this year’s contest.To be chosen to represent consoles in a traditionally PC-oriented competition is a notable honor; moreso because the category (first-person shooters) is one that many PC gamers feel consoles will NEVER perform well in. Thanks to kappa for the heads-up. poena.dare couldn’t be reached for comment – his handler mentioned something about handcuffs… and a tennis ball.

The Grand Rapids Frag Pile had another LAN party recently, called SWAMPCANDLE. (There was a small contest on the Frag Pile’s Seventh Column chapter site concerning this image of the prize trophy… but it’s over now. A larger version of the image is available on the contest page, should you want to play along.) What you should take away from this is that some gaming groups put together some pretty dang cool trophies for their players! (poena.dare, living in a dumpster in Arequipa, Peru, was too far away to attend this fragfest.)

Bad news for Haloplayers – their host managed to delete the website, with no backups. 🙁 They’re rebuilding from scratch, and will be back up asap. (poena.dare had nothing to do with this mixup, as far as we can tell. You never know, though…)

Whoa. Major Story page update – Finn goes crazy. No details, because who knows, some non-spoiler types might be reading this… but a serious dent has been put into the backlog. (And to ensure that poena.dare makes it into every news post today, Finn included a wonderful Jefferson Airplane sendup by… well, you know.)

poena.”I wanna be in all of the news articles today”dare points out that he’s posted an interview with Brannon Boren over at Bungie Sightings. Brannon is a Microsoft contractor who (among other tasks) helps integrate the Halo storyline across various products (Halo videogames, books, etc). He’s also the man behind Dr. Catherine Halsey. For more details, read the interview; it’ll give you a nice background on how the development process works! (We’ve added it to our Interviews section.)