Next weekend, a large gaming event is taking place up in Ontario – Fragapalooza East 2002, 3 days of carnage with $40,000 in prizes to be given out. The focus is on PC games (UT2003 and Warcraft III), but also listed on the ‘Official Tournaments’ list is Halo CTF, 4vs4. If you’re nearby, this might be a worthwhile weekend activity! Thanks to Battleground: Halo for the heads-up.

End-of-the-week Fan Fiction:

• HALO: Pilots of Autumn, part 2, by Jake Anderson
• Wings of Death, part 13, by el_halo_diablo
• Stormbringers, part 2, by WildebeestNZ

What’s on YOUR bookshelf?

James Snow has turned in an update to an older banner in our collection – you’ll find it in the Banners section. I’m not 100% comfortable with banners that were built to plug other fansites… but we accepted the older one, so we should accept this one. In other banner news, I need to figure out what we’re doing about banners in general; a significant chunk of bandwidth is being wasted by people who use banner links from our pages for their signatures on various message boards. I haven’t come up with a perfect solution – what will probably happen in the not-too-distant future is that we’ll zip all the full-size banners, and show only a thumbnail; they’ll still be accessible for anyone browsing our pages, but external links will no longer work. I hate to do this, but people don’t realize that when they post a link like this on a board, we end up paying the bandwidth charge, for zero benefit to ourselves (folks don’t even know where the banners come from, in most cases). This is just a heads-up; I don’t have time to make these changes right now. If you are one of the people using our banners in your signature, now would be a good time to find other hosting. Thanks!

Want a lot of Warthogs on your desktop? Visit our Wallpaper section.

Late afternoon Fan Fiction:

• I want to be a Spartan, part 2, by assman
• Stormbringers, part 1, by WildebeestNZ
• Decisions, part 2, by Warbow
• This is Suicide, part 2, by Neile Pederson

Go get ’em!

A pair of new desktops for you have been submitted to our Wallpaper section. (A reminder; if you upload material either to our ftp uploads area or our http uploads area, and do not identify it, we cannot post it.)

7th Column chapters Halo Diplomatic Core and xboxlanaz have taken it upon themselves to create a list of the top chapters in each state of the US, one chapter per state. You can see their work in progress here. We’re tickled that the HBO Junkies were picked as the Connecticut representative. Check out the list, and give ’em some feedback on the project!

Back in August, Mr.Poke discovered a pretty cool mp3 of some of Jen Taylor’s voice acting credits. It’s pretty fun to hear ‘Cortana’ selling body wash and chicken strips. It never occurred to me, or to anyone else who communicated with me, to look for other Halo voice actors… but today Stuntmutt found a similar file for Steve Downes, the voice of the Master Chief. That got me to do a bit of digging… and armed with The Names Behind The Voices, and the archives of Voicebank.net and The Talent Group, you can find clips from a large number of Halo voice actors. Moviemakers… start your engines!

Whoa – great find by Ghôlsbane. If you visit COMPUTERCAFE.com, and navigate your way through gallery -> broadcast -> Bungie (in the Flash version, it’s the first icon), you’ll see the opening movie (the cells morphing into the earth, with a Bungie logo), and its credits.It was created by NoiseTV, for Microsoft/Bungie. Interesting that nobody involved is credited anywhere in the Halo manual. Anyway, if you have need for an opening cinematic that has to capture the attention, now you know a company to call!

That Weasel, enjoying the newfound space on That Weasel Television, has added two new mirrors; the OXM Warthog Jump movie and Jackass. Links have been added where appropriate. He’s also put up a movie we decided we didn’t have space for; The First Time Playing Halo Online, by Assassin X. It’s 20 mb, 8:25 long, and in .wmv format. Once again, the community thanks you!

Just a couple of entries in the Fan Fiction database today:

• HALO: Pilots of Autumn, by Jake Anderson
• Sestina to Master Chief, by Megan Swaine

For those who don’t know what a sestina is, you should read this.

Interesting forum post from Noctavis, on Xbox Live, and his first few days’ worth of impressions. Worth a read, if you’re contemplating jumping into XBL. (Not Halo-related, but hey, Noc’s been around a long time, and XBL is the FUTURE of great Halo (2) gaming.)

Bungie rocks. I think that’s what this website (this family of websites) comes down to. Latest example: When Jay Weinland, Bungie Audio Gnome, learned that forum regular Hedgemony was on a quest to catalog all the existing lines of dialog in Halo, he popped into our forum with some targets to shoot at. The basic numbers:

• 153 AI categories (i.e. killed enemy with mounted weapon)
• ~5600 combat dialog speech files
• 1,238 scripted dialog files (cinematics and set in-level dialog)
• Dialog attributed to 4 marines, 2 sargeants, grunt, elite, jackal, flood, Keyes, hunter, and the Monitor

There are some caveats explaining why all of the dialog can’t be found… but this should help Hedge get a lot farther along. One source for AI categories which hasn’t been tapped yet, I don’t think, is Marty’s speech at the Game Developers Conference last March… I’m pretty sure all 153 are visible there. Bottom line; this is a huge project… but not one that Hedge can be helped with, except peripherally (like this). Here’s hoping he gets there!

Back in August, Silverbrin turned in a piece of music called ‘Mahdrigalo’. It was well-received… but SB has built on it.

A few months ago I uploaded a piece of fan music called “Mahdrigalo”. It was a combination of the Halo gregorian chant with the Siege of Madrigal. Both (in my opinion) are some of Marty’s best works. Both songs are also on the Halo soundtrack. After releasing the somewhat crude midi, I got a surprising amount of requests to rework the piece into a more high quality audio effort. Months passed and I came to own some new software. I decided to start from scratch and bring the old piece to life through more powerful software; the way it was meant to be heard. After a a few days of tinkering I was able to recreate the original Mahdrigalo and maintain a duel Myth/Halo aura. The main differences between this sequal and the original include a much higher quality of audio and a new ending. I hope you enjoy Mahdrigalo2.mp3.

From where I sit, it’s definitely a more polished piece of work… check it out, it weighs in at 4.8 mb. (It’s currently hosted here, but if bandwidth issues get in the way (and we’ll only know if you tell us), we’ll move it to another server.)

Forumgoer Mr. Poke held a party for the Xbox (and Halo, of course) – check out the pictures.

Apologies to all who used it appropriately… but html capability has been removed from the Fan Fiction comments section. Hopefully, the ability to express oneself without the use of garish colors or page-breaking code will still be enough for people choosing to give feedback on stories.

Andrew Mello submits a piece that gives homage to classics from the past and future. You’ll find it in our Miscellaneous Art section.

This came in yesterday, but I almost missed it – That Weasel Television, a longtime bandwidth contributor to the HBO movie scene, is back in business on a new host, and has mirrored two recent movies, Speed and Haliens. (Links have been added where appropriate.) Welcome back, TW!

Stosh has started up a new comic series, called ‘Blamed!’ You’ll find the first installment in our Miscellaneous Art section.

Blackstar has been working on a Halo movie for quite some time. He’s recently put up a Question and Answer session explaining a bit about the project, and how you can get your grubby mitts on a copy (no, you won’t be able to download this one). Check it out! (Thanks to Rampancy.net for the heads-up.)