Smilebit has a theory about the delay of the Halo 2 trailer…

A few days ago, we posted a desktop image submitted by Chome, of Xbox Weekly. Turns out that pic used (without permission) the artwork of Greg Martin, specifically a picture called ‘Inevitable‘. At the request of Mr. Martin, we’ve yanked this entry. (He does some pretty amazing work – you might want to browse through his site.) A warning to content submitters – if we discover you’ve submitted a piece using artwork that belongs to someone else, we will not accept any future submissions from you – in any category.

We mentioned the Halo National Tournament thoughts of Freewill, and Team Overkill – now there are a bunch more at Bungie’s Tru7h and Reconciliation site. Stop by, and see what people were experiencing…

Even when we say no, someone says yes. Kevin Chambers’ movie ‘The Drunk Master Chief’ was turned down here for hosting because it didn’t meet our (rather stringent) posting guidelines… but it’s already found 2 homes: Haloid is hosting it on the web (last item on the list), and the Psyjnir Complex is hosting it via Hotline (go to Files, then Halo -> Movies). 14 megs, .wmv format… go for it! (We’ve got a pair of homes lined up for the larger movie mentioned this morning, as well – just ironing out some details.)

Ouch! Xbox.com has put up a ‘Halo 2 Trailer Countdown’ – and it’s set at 21 days. Ugh. (Unfortunately, even though the link it goes to is broken, Bungie has confirmed that the date is correct.) Think of the interim as a reflective period… (Matt Gray gets the nod for the first heads-up.)

Vinny Mac has submitted ‘Marines’, a pretty cool Flash file – it’s just over a meg, and it’s really nicely done. You can call it a music video, I guess… low-tech, but some laugh-out-loud moments. Check it out!

It’s happening again. 🙁 Recently we had two movies submitted to us (different submitters) containing interesting gameplay clips put to music. They’re very different – one focuses on a Master Chief who can’t drive, is in .wmv format, is almost 9 minutes long, and weighs in at 14 megs, the other focuses on what happens when plasma grenades and warthogs get together, is in .mpeg format, is almost 5 minutes long, and weighs in at almost 50 megs – but they have the same problem – they need a home, and neither one meets our Movie Posting Guidelines. The Halo 2 trailer is on the horizon, some other very promising pieces are coming soon, and some of our biggest bandwidth donors are facing troubles of their own… bandwidth is really, really tight. 🙁 If anyone wants to help out with either of the files mentioned above, let us know – we’ll send ’em off to you, and post a link (and our grateful thanks). If anyone has a large, unused bandwidth pipe that they are just aching to fill-drop us a line, we’ll set up a movie mirror, and thousands of Halo fans will love you.

Team Overkill has written up a description (with pictures) of their experience at the first round of the Halo National Tournament. There’s some interesting stuff in this thread on our forum, as well.

For those of you who just can’t wait to actually SEE the Halo 2 trailer, Gamers.com has put up a transcript of it. Thanks to andrew katz for the heads-up.

It’s not a flood, just a trickle… but hey, they’re getting out. 3 more entries in the Gameplay Tricks section – a glitch, a new Blood Gulch technique, and a demonstration of class. Check ’em out!

Lion has created yet ANOTHER Halo mini-game – this time it’s a Space Invaders type. You’re the MC, shooting Banshees. It’s a little funky – all the Banshees got trapped up in the top left corner for me, so just holding down the fire button racked up the points until I got bored… but hey, whaddaya want for free? PC-only, just under 2 megs, zipped. We’ll set up a section somewhere soon.

Yeroen, over at Bungie.net, points out that even though the Rules page for the Halo National Championship seems to have disappeared from the EBGames website, you can find them online here, courtesy of iGames.

Three new Desktop images for you today:

• Chiefs, by DannoHung (I’m using this one right now)
• Bild1, by Ken Schreiber
• H2BackVI, by Paul Teets

Go visit our Wallpapers section for these.

Griffon has created a couple of morphing animations to show the difference between the Halo MC and the Halo 2 MC. You can find MPEG versions on his page here (the version with a background is 288K, the version matted on white is 256K), or you can grab local .mov versions (morphinchief.mov is 261K, mmwhite.mov is 296K). Go Go Gadget Assault Rifle!

Not everyone can tell yet… but HBO is back online, after a short outage yesterday, at a new home. Hopefully, DNS will propagate fast enough that by the time the Halo 2 trailer is released, folks can find us. Moral of the story – buy your bandwidth from nice people.

[BFoH]Sepultura writes to point out a clan page for the german clan ‘Battle Federation of Halo‘. We’ve added them to our Links page.

Once upon a time, a big star in the Halo fan firmament was The Core, which morphed into Rampancy.net. Time went by, and R.net slipped off the radar screen – dns woes, loss of maintainers to the Bungie developer stable, and maintainer change of focus all contributed. Narcogen has resurrected the site, however, and it now sports a Halo 2 forum, an emerging Halo 2 FAQ, and more. Stop by and say hello!

Apparently, Xbox Gamers has managed to secure an interview with the Halo 2 development team – they’re currently asking for questions. If there’s anything you must know, head on over! (Thanks to Aginor for the heads-up.) Update: you might want to check Matt’s own words on the subject before you send your questions in…

Clearing out the rest of the weekend Fan Fiction queue:

• Shadows of Archon, part 3 and part 4, by Wado
• Rise To Honor, part 15, by Shadow
• Cry for a Hero, part 2, by el_halo_diablo
• The Discovery, part 7, by strategyfreak

Read ’em now, before we’re offline…

I said I’d do it – so I’m doing it. Too much mail about this – too many forum posts. Last Thursday, Halo 2 was announced – and at 6:15 am PDT, Bungie released a set of desktop images. One of them (‘The Mark VI’) contained some very-hard-to-read text spread around the image. About an hour later, lexicus began to decipher it – the final tidbits were posted an hour after that. The full transcription can be found in THIS post – put up after one-too-many threads on the subject. They’re still coming (as is the email), though.. hence this news post. Bottom line: The text is known, please don’t send us any more modified images showing it to us. Thanks!