Whatever problems mythica had recently seem to be cleared up. Therefore, we’re going to post the latest movie in the queue for you – it’s called ‘Self-Righteous‘, and it was made by Mobius. (We’d planned to release it more than a week ago – and then the hacking craze hit, and suddenly we didn’t have the bandwidth for it.) It’s 13.7 mb, 3:30 long, in QuickTime format. Timing is quite good… and there’s a short clip starting at about two minutes in that I just LOVE. We’ve mirrored it at the Psyjnir Complex hotline server, if you have trouble reaching mythica – and there should be other mirrors on the way. Enjoy! Update: Whoknew writes to say he’s added a mirror. Thanks!

Break Point writes to say that he’s started a profile for Team HBO at the Halo50K competition. There are still two positions open – if you’re interested in representing our site at this massive Halo competition at the end of April, stop by and sign up! (Break Point asked if there was another official ‘Team HBO’ before setting this up. There is a team made of HBO Junkies that played recently at the iGames Regionals… but they won’t be headed down to Atlanta, so the name was available.) Show what you’re made of… and bring the honor of winning (if not the $50k) back to HBO!

We have another movie for you – this one’s not a hacking film, but a gameplay one – but our main bandwidth provider, mythica.org, seems to to be having some nameserver troubles. As soon as we can get there, we’ll serve this puppy up!

Another Bryce-looking piece from gizella Varga – check our Miscellaneous Art section.

Been a few days since Fan Fiction was updated – here are 10 more:

• Sarges Platoon, FINAL CHAPTER, by Bobby Lucas
• Project Shadow Spartan: Chapter 2, by Shadow Spartan
• The Battle For Sigma Octanus Chapter 2, by moniter101
• Forest of Black Epsilon, by janglurevil7
• Freelance-Chapter 3, by Bloodcider
• Attack Plan, by Dispraiser
• A Fresh Start, part 4, by Simon James
• Chronicle of Neapolitan Ice Cream Banshee, by Sesshoumaru, Lord of the Western Lands
• And Raise Your Head With Pride! Part 1, by Arthur Wellesly
• Ring Of The Forerunners Part V, by Locke

Hopefully, I’ll have time to check the forum tomorrow. (Busy weekend…)

Thanks To Ciarán Walsh, our Forum search features just became more useful. Before today, if you were looking for a specific snippet of text, you could search for that text, or you could search for the author of that text – but you couldn’t do both. If you knew you were looking for a post about banshees, from, say, Red Loser… you could search for ‘Red Loser’, and manually check almost 800 posts… or you could search for ‘banshee’, and sort through almost 1300 posts. Now, however, you can search for both, and pare your results down to a manageable 54 posts. Nice! It’s a simple checkbox in the Search window, and it’s been added to the forum archives, as well. (If all goes well, there will be more enhancements in the not-too-distant future.)

Rampancy.net posted links to two new Bungie jobs listed at Gamasutra (but not yet on the Bungie Jobs page). These new job openings (posted a week ago) are for a 3D Environment Artist and a Developer. (The developer job is for Halo 2 – the last bullet in the ‘Responsibilities’ list is “Work with the graphics team, artists and designers to insure that Halo 2 is the best looking game on this planet or any other.” Seems like a worthwhile goal to me!) To see these at Gamasutra, you’ll need an account there. It’s free – and if you’re too lazy to sign up for one, you probably don’t want these jobs.

HUNTR-KILLR created a small (900K) movie showing the jumping ability of a floodified marine with the recent Halo hack. The library is 4 stories high… the marine has no trouble getting above the final platform in one huge leap. (For good measure, a second jump proves, once and for all, that there are no branches in the roof. If you don’t know what that means… consider yourself lucky.)

A pair of great sketches from Tina – originally done with coloring pencils (sorry, Tina, I’m American, can’t use the British spelling without twinging 🙂 ) and pen, with a little photoshop help. (Spoilers, for those still keeping track.) You’ll find ’em in our Miscellaneous Art section.

Wanna get a copy of the next Halo book (Halo: The Flood) for free? The MOSHPIT, a 7th Column chapter at Bungie.net, is giving one away – just drop by their website and add your name to the giveaway database. They’ll pick a winner at random on April 1, and ship a copy to that lucky person the day the book becomes available! (MOSHPIT Membership is welcome, but not required, for this contest.)

A bunch of mirrors have come online for both Halo Hackin’ Fun 2 (released a couple of days ago) and Heffalumps and Woozles (released last night). I’ve set up mirror pages for both – follow the links above to grab your copy. Thanks to all the bandwidth providers – you guys make all this possible!

More information about Halo Novel #2 at Ballantine:

The Human-Covenant War, a desperate struggle for humankind’s very survival, has reached its boiling point on the mysterious, ring world called Halo. But the fierce Covenant warriors, the mightiest alien military force known, are not the only peril lying in wait.

As the fortress world of Reach and its brave defenders were bombarded to rubble, a single cruiser fled the carnage with the battle’s only human survivors-Captain Keyes, his crew of a few hundred Marines, and the last remaining SPARTAN super-soldier, the Master Chief.

With the cruiser’s artificial intelligence, Cortana, concealed in his battle armor, the Master Chief crash lands on Halo in the midst of a massive Covenant occupation. Curiously, the alien soldiers appear to be searching for something hidden on the ring. Built by a long-dead race, Halo harbors many deadly secrets, but one overshadows them all. Now the Master Chief must lead the scattered troops in a brutal race to unravel Halo’s darkest mystery-and unleash its greatest source of power. . . .

Heh – one of the topics that’s come up a lot recently on our forum is whether the Forerunners are actually gone or not – this text suggests they are, but is it just random copy written by someone who doesn’t look as closely at the story as some of our visitors? (Thanks to Aaron Charles for noticing the new copy.)

Okay… we’ve got another Hacking vid for you. This one is called ‘Heffalumps and Woozles’, and was created by HUNTR-KILLR. (Okay, he shouldn’t be blamed for the name. That’s my fault – it’s full of such fancy that the name just seemed to fit.) This one’s a monster; 11 and a half minutes long, 33 megs, in QT format. There’s no sound at all, and segments are broken up by a second or two of black space, so keep your eyes open. There are more cool things than you can shake a honey pot at! Think of this one as a library of what might be. Right now, it’s ONLY at Mythica.org – we’d love mirrors. (I’m currently uploading it to the psyjnir.com hotline server, but I’m only getting about 6k/sec… gonna be an hour or more.) The next movie after this one won’t be a hacking vid – we’ve had a Blood Gulch action flick in the queue for FAR too long. (Sorry, Mobius.) Oh – and Dinky, of HaloJuggaloProductions, sent along a link for Dozi’s SECOND hacking fun film – you can grab it here, if mythica is too overloaded with this current film. Thanks, Dinky! Update: Frogblast, in his infinite kindness (and despite the pain), has provided mirrors for both ‘Heffalumps‘, and the recent Halo Hackin’ Fun 2. We <3 you, Froggie…

Mmm… pie. (Thanks, Razorback.)

Couple of updates on yesterday’s news… The guys running Sector.7 have bought a domain name, www.sector7-halo.com, and will be moving there shortly. (Currently, it’s just a placeholder page.) And the editorial by poena.dare on hacking and what it means to the Bungie community has generated a host of interesting comments, including several from Bungie employees. Go read.

Three new Art tidbits – a nice satire piece, a boot logo for Win2K, and a cute exercise pic. Check ’em all out in our Miscellaneous Art section.

In the last couple of days, we’ve gotten a couple of banner submissions, from Andrew Austin and Fuzzy – you can find both of them in our Banners section.

poena.dare is putting together an interview of Brannon Boren, a consultant at Microsoft who’s been intricately involved in the creation of the ‘Halo Bible’, the collection of information about the Halo universe that all Halo content creators (official ones – book authors, folks writing the stories for the games) use to keep their facts straight. If you have anything you’d like to ask Brannon, send your question along to p.d – he’ll add it to the list. (No promises on answers, of course – Brannon isn’t going to violate any secrets he’s been entrusted with… but it can’t hurt to ask!) Update: the window for questions is now closed. Thanks to all who contributed!

Here’s the first of several Hacking movies we have for your perusal. This is another one from Dozi, the guy who made the first one – again, sound is pretty rough. (Much rougher than the first one, as a matter of fact. There’s a static rumble throughout the entire movie.) You’re watching it for the action, however, not the sound. 🙂 Things shown in this film: bumping a jackal, some hilarious high jumps, bumping marines, grunts, and hunters, and more fun jumps. It’s 2:23 long, and 9.3 megs big, in QuickTime format. You can grab it at Mythica.org. (Some of the ones in the queue contain many more tricks – if you’re limiting yourself, this isn’t the best one to grab.) Update: MereCatFish writes to point out that blam.forerunners.org has mirrored this. (He also points out that the main site has been updated.) We love mirrors!

To all the folks asking questions about modding your xbox, and hacking Halo: while we here at HBO think the results are pretty cool, this is a Halo site, not an Xbox modding site. We do not provide any information on how to mod your Xbox or how to hack Halo, nor will we in the future. There are plenty of places to get this sort of information, if you’re interested – if you can’t find them without our help, you probably shouldn’t be looking. (I’m adding this information to our FAQ, as well.)