We get nice mail sometimes… but we got a note yesterday that stood out. (Well, for me, at least.) It’s just a note from a Halo player, explaining how he got hooked, and why HBO pleasantly surprised him… but it cleanly sums up what I like about this community, as well. With Ed’s permission, I’m archiving this for posterity; you can find it in our Miscellaneous section.

Update on the 3D Hunter model from Aleph One… •M has generously sent along a few other variants; we’ve put them all on their own Miscellaneous page. Gah – I’d LOVE to see a Halo Marathon mod…

We received word of a mod for Battlefield: 1942 that takes place in the Halo universe. The creator is looking for help in building this, although at the moment it’s not clear whether Bungie will actually allow a mod like this to be released. (With Halo for PC still in production, the fear is twofold; first, that Bungie/Gearbox/Westlake will be judged by the quality of third-party work, and second, that folks will say “well, I can just play Halo on [existing engine of your choice] – why buy Halo for PC?” Until these issues are worked out to Bungie’s satisfaction, any such mod is in limbo. That’s not to say there’s no value in showing you what’s already been accomplished…) Take a look, and feel free to comment on our forum!

Heh – check this puppy out. You can see some static pics on •M’s spnkrghol gallery page – a Myth-to-Aleph One conversion that seems to be taking a side trip or two. (I found the first link in this post on the Marathon’s Story page forum.) Bungie fans are great. 🙂

Matt Soell has written a short update to let you know what’s going on with the ongoing Halo Winter Season. You can find it on B.net’s Tru7h and Reconciliation site. Round 1 saw 1100 people. How many will turn out for the next round?

Quiet weekend for Halo news, mostly because I’m taking it off with my family. 🙂 Spec Ops Elite has sent in an image he calls the Covenant Homeworld… you’ll find it in our Miscellaneous Art section. And to whoever uploaded a pretty cool-looking Master Chief/Xbox wallpaper from Switzerland yesterday… we only got the first 250k of it; could you try again? (And please – identify it while you’re at it. Thanks!)

Having trouble coming up with a Gamertag to use for Xbox Live? Dave Candland has written a guide on how to create the perfect name. Check it out at B.net!

Mark Couto has put together a 5 minute video showing how bad a day the Master Chief can really have. The first 3 minutes are deaths by explosion… lots and lots of them. (Good views of various levels.) The last 2 minutes are a slight reworking of the final sequence in Halo. (Punchline’s near the end.) Yes, there are lots of spoilers. It’s in .wmv format, but the data rate is low enough that even Mac users should be able to watch it. Mythica’s hosting this, all 17.7 mb of it. Enjoy! Update: This has been mirrored on Pez’s ftp server. Thanks, Pez!

Six pieces of Fan Fiction for you today, three from new authors:

• Halo: The Covenant Frontier, by Andrew Golightly
• Decisions, Chapter 1, by Warbow
• The Shots Heard Around the World, by Gasmask
• Hunters, part 1, by whoknew
• Wings of Death part 12, by el_halo_diablo
• Outlaw Chapter 6, by Chris Cassani

The Fan Fiction section has been enhanced a bit – there is still a limit as to how big a story can be and fit into the database… but it will only appear once in the story listing. (Immediate impetus was Andrew Golightly’s 130k story, but this has been on the to-do list for quite some time.) Go read!

Hojjen brings you news of the annual RocketRace – you can find details in our Miscellaneous Art section.

Back to the fan submissions… Jack Smith has turned in a logo modification. You’ll find it in our Logos section (whose idea was that, anyway?).

After two weeks of downtime, The Junkyard is back up and running… gotta love those ‘quick’ server moves. We feel for ya, Mhaddy! Swing by and say hello…

For anyone who’s totally out of it, today marks two major points in the Xbox lifespan; it’s the one-year anniversary of its debut (and, of course, the one-year anniversary of Halo – yes, it was RELEASED before the 15th last year, but you couldn’t PLAY it before the 15th, except in special circumstances) and it’s the launch date of Xbox Live (which will be fully supported by Halo 2 next year). Happy Birthday!

One last batch of photos came in last night – you’ll find it on our Live Party Launch coverage page. More pictures (with minimal identifiers, as well) can be found over at Xbox.com. It’ll be interesting to see how many Xboxes make it on to various TV shows after this… (Thanks to wheeler, Frogblast, and Team Overkill for help in identifying some of the pics. We’re still a half-dozen short, though.)

Another batch of XBL Launch Party pics have gone up (the last of the evening, for me; anything that comes in now goes up in the morning), but identification of these people needs someone more celebrity-savvy than I am. If you can identify the folks in these pics, please, drop us a line!

Microsoft is holding a massive shindig at an undisclosed location this evening to celebrate tomorrow’s Xbox Live launch. We can’t tell you where it is… but we can show you some pics. A photographer will be sending in pictures regularly this evening… I might be asleep for some of it, but we’ll put ’em up as we get ’em. For now, check out the pre-party stuff on our Xbox Live Launch Party coverage page.

Got some cool ideas for a 7th Column theme, but never found the time to implement them? Never been a better time – Bungie’s running a Theme contest. Prizes are cash to be spent at the Bungie Store, so turn on your creativity, whip out your editing program, and get theming! Full details are in the story.

Heh – Xbox Live is launched officially TOMORROW… and already there’s a web page up that shows you how to split the audio signal so that your friend, visiting your house and playing as a guest, can join in the verbal fun. Not sure how happy MS will be about this (they’re kinda hoping that the Guest accounts will convince people to buy their own XBL account, since the guests don’t get audio, normally)… but all the parts are off-the-shelf (and require no physical modification of any MS-supplied hardware). Radio Shack part numbers are included. Thanks to kiro69, who posted this to the Marty Army Chapter of the 7th Column. Update: Mr. Poke discovered a 3/32″ splitter at Radio Shack, obviating the need for a couple of adapters recommended in this article. As for part number 274-948, and you’ll save about $6 in extra parts.

Thursday’s Fan Fiction:

• Fafnir Part Eight, by KnightmareWolf
• Through a Soldiers Eye, by [E}{G] Bioblob

You’ll find, if you read straight from the fiction page (instead of from these links) that Fafnir part 8 has been broken up into two chunks – this is a necessary evil of our databasing system. The two listings (chunk 1 and chunk 2) will show the same content; the only place it’s actually broken up is if you read the series as a whole. (One of these days, I’ll clean up the code so that this won’t happen.)

Forum wordsmith Hedgemony has taken on the daunting task of compiling a full list of all the dialogue spoken by NPCs in Halo. This has been attempted before (PanZer set up a database in his 7th Column Chapter which currently has over 780 entries in it, though many are duplicates), but never quite so systematically. Marty O’Donnell chimed in with useful information about the scope of the project, and ways to improve the odds of hearing new dialogue. As of about 12 hours ago, Hedge was up to just under 500 entries, categorized; I’m posting this here to encourage him to take this as far as possible, and to offer a home for the final product. Let him know what you think!