Another desktop image from Chaoz in our Wallpaper section.

Yesterday, Zeinin posted a note on our forum about a movie he was planning to make – about the fall of Reach. He put up a couple of stills, and I figured I’d hold off on a news post until there was a website, or something. However, over the course of the day, he revealed many more shots; read through the entire thread, you’ll find some amazing bits of work. Can’t wait to see the final product!

iBonk has posted a video showing a new, rather intriguing form of Warthog Launching – how high can you make that puppy go? There’s a forum thread here.

Mad Cow dropped off a tweaked b.net screenshot for our Miscellaneous Art collection. (It’s a pretty minor change, but it’s rather well done.)

Dolbex, of Been Mawed (possibly soon to change to a different name), has sent in a pretty scary desktop for our Wallpaper section. (If you like it, drop him some email – there are others.)

The Halo Fan Fiction Project, an attempt to write the Halo story in novel form, has closed down. You can read an explanation by its leader, until it’s taken down… and you can chime in on their forum if you care to. Hopefully, the people involved will find other outlets for their creativity in the Halo community. Thanks to Wonga for the heads-up.

Monday’s Fan Fiction offerings:

• UNSC Long Range Rifle Group, part 4, by Blindside
• Relations, part 1, by Icebraker20
• Taken From A Four Year Old, by Blindside
• Revolution, part 8, by Gruntkiller
• The New Reach Campaigns, part 5, by Gasmask

That’s all for today…

Another desktop from Chaoz in our Wallpaper section…

One of the more enjoyable ‘mini-games’ in Halo multiplayer is Jousting; Warthogs square off, usually on Blood Gulch, and ram each other, head-on. The intention is to knock the opponent out of his hog (and then run him down, of course). Several films have incorporated footage from games like this… but they’ve always left me feeling like something was missing. I thought that perhaps this style of gameplay was better suited to actually PLAYING than watching. Now, however, there’s a film on the scene that shows me that all it takes is timing, a great score, and an eye for theatrical flips – this style can work VERY well on film. Check out Fun With Vehicles (not to be confused with Vehicle Fun, released some time ago), an almost-3-minute, 15 mb QuickTime movie with perfect musical choices and some great camera shots. (If you can mirror this film, please let us know.) Update: Eric Jourdan has added another mirror for this file. (See the mirrors list for a link.) Thanks, Eric!

Just a heads-up – an upstream router is undergoing maintenance this evening; most of bungie.org (excluding HBO, but not its forum) will be offline from roughly midnight to 6 am. There’s nothing wrong, it’s just a hardware upgrade. We apologize for the downtime.

BOLL has created a nice Flash animation showing the cool bumpmapping of the Halo 2 Master Chief. We’ll add it to the Miscellaneous section soon.

Got a great note from Paul Teets today:

I was watching CBS’s football coverage today and they were doing a special on Brian Griese for Denver. To my amazement I heard some interesting background music. “Under Cover of Night” from the Halo Soundtrack!!! Guess Halo is now mainstream. Soon everybody will know how special this game is.

I gotta say… this just tickles me. Marty and crew – you rock!

To the vast numbers of people sending us a direct link to a download directory containing the Edge scans: thanks, but we posted it yesterday. (Check this post.) The directory everyone’s sending us links to is listed at least twice in the thread mentioned in that post – and as we said there, we’re not sure how we feel about Edge’s intellectual property being disseminated so widely when the issue isn’t even on the shelves yet. If you want to see the scans, finding the URL should be pretty easy – but please don’t ask us to help take income out of Edge’s pocket even more blatantly by displaying that URL on our front page. Thanks. (I’m betting that a significant chunk of change has been lost to Edge because of this – there are thousands of issues that WOULD have been bought if the information hadn’t been spread like this. Most of these ‘lost’ copies would ONLY have been bought for the Halo 2 info – so putting that info up now directly impacts Edge’s bottom line.)

Chaoz sent in a new desktop for our Wallpaper section. Take a look…

StarwarsFanMan has put together a new movie. It’s rather large – 35 megs, 7 and a half minutes long (QT format). Content is mostly glitches and tricks – some pretty funny stuff. (Personally, I’d say it goes on too long… but things have been quiet, so I’m willing to cut him some slack. 🙂 ) It’s called Operation: Beheaded, and you can find it at mythica.org (of course) and the Psyjnir Complex Hotline server (of course). Any other mirrors are (as always) gratefully appreciated. Biggest thing to watch out for – sound level is rather low on everything but the music tracks. Crank it up for dialog and effects… but make sure you’ve got your finger on the volume control for when the music kicks back in.

Here’s the Fan Fiction that’s built up over the last 24 hours:

• Wings of Death, part 3, by el_halo_diablo
• UNSC Long Range Rifle Group, part 3, by Blindside
• Shadows of Archon II, part 13, by Wado
• Into the Ranks: Points of View Told, by David Beale
• Prince of Shadows, part 1, by Mercforhire
• Project-Halo, part 2, by SpikeDaDragon

Go read it before there’s more!

Team Overkill, a Staten Island Halo clan, is planning a Halo LAN fest on September 22nd. These guys are good; if you’re within driving distance, it’ll be worth the trip. You can read more about it on their Seventh Column chapter site. (We don’t normally post small lanfest notices like this… but this is one I’d love to make myself (I can’t, unfortunately; that weekend is fully booked) – these guys put on a good show. 🙂 )

Microsoft is learning the hard way that coordinating data releases across multiple sources is nearly impossible these days. A few days ago, the cover of the French MOX (Official Xbox Magazine) was leaked on the internet… then pulled less than 24 hours later under MS pressure. The damage was done, though, and early versions of this tantalizing new Halo 2 content were out there. Today, two new leaks have occurred – BOLL received (over a week early) a copy of the Swedish magazine Super Play containing new pictures… and davex5647 found some online scans of this month’s Edge magazine, also out almost a week ahead of schedule. There are new enemies, new vehicles… possibly new weapons to come. (The full Edge article isn’t online anywhere yet – and it’s unclear if it WILL be.) We don’t condone the posting of copyrighted print material before it’s actually off the shelves… but the fact remains, it’s out there; Microsoft’s careful plan to have all magazines with this info be released on the same day (September 17) lies in tatters on the floor, stomped on by the near-instantaneous information transfer capabilities of the internet.

Matt Soell points out that the Halo Rumor Control database (linked prominently from our FAQ) has been updated. He was spefically talking about information about Halo on Xbox Live (it is not, and will not be, supported – though Halo 2 will contain Xbox Live support) – but there’s also information about the Halo 2 release date (there isn’t one) and the issue of the Halo 2 footage being too good to be in-engine (it is in-engine, not prerendered). When in doubt, go to the source!

As a followup to last week’s ‘Making of the Halo Trailer, Part 1‘, Bungie has posted ‘Part 2‘ at their Tru7h and Reconciliation site. It’s a pretty amazing read, if you’ve ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes, soundwise. Beyond the electronic magic, there were 35 live musicians involved in what you hear, including Jay Weinland playing oboe and english horn, and Marty O’Donnell and his wife joining 12 others for the choir singing. Go read it – and then see if you can find a Dolby 5.1 version of the trailer that works for you.