Apologies to Fan Fiction writers; on busy weekends, more time-consuming tasks get pushed back, and formatting fiction entries falls into that category. Here, then, are the submissions from over the weekend:

• Wings of Death, part 11, by el_halo_diablo
• Revolution, part 18 (series finale), by Gruntkiller
• Cry for a Hero: Epilogue, by el_halo_diablo
• Halo 2: Return of Death, part 1, by Lord Dagon
• He’s Baaaaaack! Intro, by Killer_Fairy

Note that there are two series-finishers in there…

ICDedPpl wanted to point out that the 7th Column chapter MOSHPIT will be hosting a tournament in mid-November, with $850 in cash on the line (if full attendance – 64 people – is reached), and pizza, soda, and snacks for everyone. Entrance fee is $20 a head, and the location is Rochester Hills, MI. If you’re in the area, check it out!

Four new desktops for you in our Wallpaper collection, including one from the curator of the newly opened Bungie Wallpaper Stash over at Forerunners.org. Go check ’em out… and check the stash for other Bungie-related (not just Halo) desktops!

Charles Powell has whipped up a pair of banners for our Banners section… we’re honored. You’ll find both a small version and a larger one.

The Posthumous Phoenix Artwork page has been updated again.

It’s been said that Halo can inspire obsession. We recently received a pretty clear example of this. Zachary Hahn, armed with Halo and a stopwatch, managed to run some time trials and calculate various speeds and rates related to Halo vehicles and weapons. You’ll find the results in our Miscellaneous section, in a document called ‘Random Stats‘. (Note: except for rounding numbers with more than 3 significant digits, and adding the note from Chucky Gough, we here at HBO had nothing to do with the actual values; any contentions should be taken up with Mr. Hahn.)

Since the announcement that Bungie’s secret project known as Phoenix has been shelved, the artwork has begun to pour in. We started by placing it in our Miscellaneous Art section… but it’s clear that it has the potential to crush that section, and it’s not particularly Halo-related. We’ve therefore added new additions (as well as recently submitted pieces that are already in our Misc. Art section) to phoenix.bungie.org… and will continue to add new pieces there as they’re submitted. Minimalist interface; the art is the thing. Hope this works for everyone!

Recently, Bungie posted the eighth chapter of their Legendary Walkthrough at the Tru7h and Reconciliation site. It included a whole passel of the now-legendary (hehe) Bungie-quality screenshots to illustrate the text. We’ve added these to our Screenshots database; you’ll find the 43 shots shown on that page, plus 9 others that didn’t make the cut. Go crazy!

Ghôlsbane has submitted an .eps file containing a path of the Phoenix logo outline. To use this, open it in Photoshop (or anything that reads Photoshop paths) and select the Paths palette. It’s invisible until you select it. Quality is quite good; there’s a simple example of what you can do with it in the Miscellaneous Art entry that houses it, and a fancier one at the Phoenix Hub over at Forerunners.org. The Phoenix project, a shadowy enigma these past couple of years, has been shelved… and to add to the history of this image, the word from Bungie was that “it’s not an ‘official’ Phoenix logo, just one that the team picked out from a dozen or so Chris Barrett put together for our Bungie business cards.” However, it’s all we’ve got, and now that Phoenix is no more, I’m sure folks will put it to good use. 🙂

Last month’s mind-shaking magazine articles are no longer on the newsstands… so we can finally bring them to you in our Press Scans section. You’ll find ‘Apokalyps Nu‘ from the September issue of Sweden’s Super Play, ‘X-Files‘ from the October issue of France’s Official Xbox Magazine, and the gorgeous article from the September Edge Magazine. Enjoy!

We’re swimming in Miscellaneous Art today…

Pair of new desktops for you… check our Wallpaper section.

—m0bus— has turned in a new banner, in use on his clan site, BOX Inc. Halo. You’ll find it in our Banners section.

There’s been plenty of Halo Story speculation on our forum recently… but now there’s even more; the Halo Story site has gotten a tasty update by our very own Finn. Go see what he thought was worth considering this time around!

Boatloads of new content at Bungie.net… on top of yesterday’s system upgrades, we now have a Legendary walkthrough for Two Betrayals (with almost 50 new screenshots – and more if you know where to look) and an article entitled ‘So You Want To Be a Programmer‘, written by Michael Evans, a programmer on the Halo team. Go read it all!

Three new images for our Miscellaneous art collection this time around. Folks: during the past few days, we’ve received a huge number of art submissions. Some of them we received more than once. Again – if you don’t see your image online in a day or so after submission, feel free to send us email asking us whether we got it… but PLEASE don’t resend the image unless we say we didn’t. Also: if you’re going to start with Bungie artwork, and add a line of text… or paste a character from another game onto it with no attempt at actually combining the images… we’re going to decline to host it. The overall quality of submissions in recent weeks has dropped precipitously (with several very notable exceptions) – people seem to be encouraged to send in barely modified existing work by seeing other barely modified existing work actually get posted… so from this point on, we’re going to be a bit more selective about what we post. This is not to say you must be a great artist; it’s just to say that in order for us to display your work, we have to be convinced it’s YOUR WORK. (More than half of the submissions this week aren’t getting posted for this reason.) I hope this makes sense to everyone.

Inverted can be fun. New desktop from Frank Machado in our Wallpaper section. Update: eep, forgot one. Bbow of Been Mawed dropped off a Halo50K desktop. Sorry about that.

Three new logo modifications from Justin Guizzo – check our Logos section.

A week’s catchup on Fan Fiction:

• Revolution, part 16 and part 17, by Gruntkiller
• A New Breed, Chapter1.final, by Geshtu
• Liberation, part 6, by Hoju
• Shadows of Archon II, part 23, by Wado
• The New Reach Campaigns, part 8, by Gasmask
• Forgotten Emotions, by Geo Drakis
• Have Design, Will Build, by hipboyscott
• Outlaw, part 2, by Chris Cassani

On a less pleasant note, there’s been some abuse of the comments system in the fan fiction section recently. There’s not a lot I’m going to do about this; the system wasn’t built with idiots in mind, and policing it really isn’t feasible. One writer suggested that if the abuse doesn’t stop, I’d have to institute some sort of forum system and force people to register to leave comments; this isn’t true. If it gets bad enough, I’ll just remove the comments mechanism altogether. One of the things that makes this site interesting to a diverse group of people is the ability to contribute; artwork, music, fiction… and yes, comments on others’ fiction. If it makes you feel good, or powerful, to screw up the ability of others to add to this community by forcing me to shut down areas I don’t have full control over… well, maybe you need to get out more. Remember: this site is run completely on volunteer effort. We don’t charge you anything, we don’t force you to look at banner ads, we’re simply trying to give you a place to share your love of Halo. Please – don’t make it so hard for us that we simply remove areas that require policing.

Ouch.