Dark Helmet is back. After a spell away from Halo moviemaking, he’s submitted a slew of films in recent days. Two new ones today; a 250+ meter jump on the level Halo (measured with a Navpoint), and a truly high-flying banshee. Both posts lead to WMV vids.

RevolutionSF reviewed Halo about a year ago – dr_saius discovered it today. We’ve added it to our Reviews database. They also reviewed The Fall of Reach, at about the same time. (They liked it.)

What’s this? Two Halo Story Page updates in two days? What’s the world coming to?

Recently, Ghôlsbane extracted the vector-format weapons schematics from the Halo Manual. We’ve tossed them up for you to grab, if you’re so inclined.

Fan Fiction entries from this weekend:

• Liberation, part 10, by Hoju
• Legend Hunting, part 1, by Dispraiser
• Under the sergeant’s cap, part 4, by Traumatised Marine
• Spartans: The War on Solstice, part 1, by Shadow X
• A New Year’s Day, part 10, by Guilty Spark
• Force 81, part 6, by NobleWard

What are you waiting for?

Yesterday, Bowser posted a note to our forum explaining how a slow run through the Maw seemed to gain extra time at Foe Hammer’s pickup site. Some experimentation showed the limits of this feature. Here’s a short film (23 seconds, 1.4 mb, QT format) showing a gain of almost a minute. The situation is this: when you pass into the area where you’re supposed to wait for Foe Hammer, the timer drops off the screen. It doesn’t come back until AFTER she is shot down, and when it DOES come back, it comes back with the amount of time that was on it when it disappeared… with an exception. The rule is this: If you enter that area with LESS than one minute on the clock, your timer will be reset to (2 minutes – your time on the clock). Go in with 59 seconds, you’ll come out with 61. Go in with one second… you’ll come out with 1:59. This suggests that if something happens to you on this run, and you get to this area with less than a minute on the clock, you should run it down to nearly zero before crossing into the ‘pickup zone’; the longer you’re willing to wait, the more time you end up with. (Of course, if you misjudge, and the timer runs out before you get in, you’re dead.) Interesting find… even more interesting, in context; the game has been on the shelves for more than 14 months, and nobody noticed this before!

Links around the Halo universe… there are lots. Chris Hamilton pointed out his new Halo site, Proximity Zero. It’s devoted to Halo 2 info. He plans to buy a domain name if the community grows enough, so go visit! Also, OrangeMC pointed out that the family of Halo sites at forerunners.org isn’t listed in our Links section – that’s been rectified. (Soon, we’ll do another links pruning as we do periodically.) There are also a couple of Tournament sites worth noting; different scales, but we report what we’re told about. The Elite Spartan sent word that the Arkansas tournament we mentioned last week now has a website… and Jay, from the Associates of Gmaing Professionals, sends word about AGP’s second Halo Championship Event. It’s taking place in Nashville, TN, on April 12-13, and there’s a guaranteed $7,000 pot no matter how many teams show up. There are slots for 64 teams, and Darkman and the Dream Team will be back to defend their titles. That should keep you busy for a little bit!

Another pair of Halo 2 covers for our collection – one is from Spikedadragon, the other from Z77. It’s getting to be a big collection!

Again, we had to filter out a number of images, but the remainder (four pieces, plus variations) can be found in our Miscellaneous Art section. Some nice stuff!

Heh – pu1l found a NEW .fortune message (if you don’t know what a .fortune message is, check the Easter Eggs page). We like this one.

Beginning to clear out the artwork backlog… first up: desktop images. Three new ones (and several that didn’t meet the newly posted guidelines) – check ’em out in the Wallpaper section.

More action figure goodness… this time, right from the source. Check out the story at b.net, including a nice shot of a Cortana figure prototype. (A tad too sexy for my taste… but she ain’t done yet.) Thanks to mnemesis for the heads-up.

Whoa – we forgot to get back to it. Thanks to archon, at the Marathon’s Story Page forum, for reminding us. A week ago, some Halo dogtags (from Japan) went up for auction at eBay. They closed a couple of days ago for $77.02. Now THERE’S a nice profit.

Nice find. Brandon Tyler points out an article at Yahoo which details the agreement between Racing Champions Ertl (a marketer of collectibles) and Microsoft to create collectible figures and vehicles based on Halo (among other games). No dates have been given.

scibot3 points out his new Halo site, Bungie Halo. Currently, the Weapons section is the most fleshed out, but he plans to add content continuously. Check it out!

For all those who’ve submitted artwork, fiction, movies, in the last few days – apologies for the delay in posting. It’s a holiday weekend, and we have relatives in town. I was hoping to get to much of it Sunday afternoon… didn’t happen. Monday, as well, looks booked up. I might get some time, but I might not. If family delays me, I’d really appreciate your patience; I’ll get it all posted just as soon as I can. Thanks!

It took a few days, but a mechanism has been set up whereby Bungie community members who would like to contribute to the Brian Morden Recovery Fund can do so. Check this page for details.

Now this is a pretty cool glitch. In answer to the old chestnut “If a tree falls in a forest, and nobody’s around to hear it, does it make a sound?”, SaFruk discovered that on at least one multiplayer map, the answer is ‘No.’ Toss a couple of plasma grenades on a dead body on the map Chiron, leave the room before they explode… and they’ll REMAIN unexploded until someone enters the room. This doesn’t seem to work on open levels… but Chiron is a series of unconnected rooms. SaFruk suggests using the glitch to set up proximity mines for your enemies… see what else you can come up with!

Whoa – can’t wait to see a bigger version. Dulaman87 noticed that the Ballantine entry for Halo: The Flood (the next Halo novel) now has all-new cover art. Is that the Master Chief with his helmet off? Update: Thanks to the more than half-dozen people who sent links to this picture (made local here in case it changes again), making it clear that the MC’s face is NOT visible. My bad.

A Covenant anatomy project? Looks that way. Check out the details here, and get on the stick helping Shishka out.