Wow – TeamXbox has gotten their hands on a 2 minute, 9 meg movie (.asf format) of Halo gameplay. Great new footage… and a teaser for http://www.combatevolved.com/ at the end (resolves to Microsoft’s main site at the moment). Thanks to Chanan for the heads-up!

Thanks to Uriel, who pointed out this article at Gamestar.de – apparently, they’ve gotten ‘official word’ from Microsoft that Halo WILL be coming to the PC, and that the ‘Only on Xbox’ tagline refers to other consoles, not to a PC version. (Yes, Matt Soell has said this a hundred times… but many people have complained that since Bungie is owned by Microsoft, it didn’t matter what BUNGIE said, it mattered what MICROSOFT said. Now, for the first time, we have a report attributing this to a MICROSOFT spokesperson. Unfortunately, Gamestar didn’t go into detail about who they talked to.)

Razorback sends in a sketch of a Covenant Elite for our Miscellaneous Art section. Sorry to hear about Photoshop, RB…

Recently, I heard from a viewer that the Wallpaper section was difficult to navigate, owing in part to the large numbers of images and in part to the fact that only three thumbs are shown on a page. I agreed to look into the situation, and suggested that a cookie-based solution might be good – folks could pick how many images to display at a time. This may still come about, someday… but time constraints dictate that someday is not today. In the meantime, though, I’ve revamped the section a bit – if you hate it, let us know. Hopefully, it’ll be easier to browse now!

Thanks to Allan_X, over at the TeamXBox forums, who picked up a copy of the Official Xbox Magazine at his local 7-11 – among the many bits he scanned was this Halo ad. We’ll do our best to get a better one for you soon. (Thanks, op_ivy, for the heads-up.)

Thanks to everyone who pointed out that Microsoft’s official Halo site is back up, in all it’s Flashed glory. Check it out!

Okay, I don’t understand this at all… but it works. So here goes. I mentioned yesterday that a program called DivX Player will let you watch the movie, but not listen to the sound. Bluskale writes to say that you can get sound by selecting ‘DivX Doctor’ from the ‘Movie’ menu, and saving the resultant .mov file. This file will play using the QuickTime Player, with the following caveats:

• You keep DivX Player around
• You start the movie only from the beginning (the visuals continue to work if you jump around, but sound stops the minute you do)

I got all excited when I saw a .mov file playing… but tests with a second machine show that you still need DivX Player, and DivX Player needs WMP 6.3 – so putting the .mov up is hardly worth it. (If you want to do this for yourself, download the .avi, and run it through the doctor.) Wow – the lengths we go to for new footage!

Dink!… the Halo SETI Marines fall to 53rd in the Battle of the Teams, edged out by Picard – who are pulling away rapidly. Total crunchage is up, despite the loss of two team members this week, thanks in large part to NEO, who took la Crunch Honneur with 154 units. See how YOU did on the 7 day stats page.

Last week’s Halo update has been added to the Halo Update Database – now 414 tidbits of Halo goodness, spread out over 44 updates. (The total timespan is 49 weeks – there were a few missed ones in there.) The word of the week is ‘Banshee‘ – check out how the first 7 months of mentions are all about looks, while the most recent is all about action. (But, Banshee… you STILL look mahvelous.)

Joker writes to pass along a Halo animation – sort of an animated logo thing. It’s 3.1 MB, and lasts about 20 seconds. It’s in MPG format, and you can snag it here.

Okay, the saga of the Interview movie goes on. Bravehamster has re-encoded it from his original source, using DivX. On a PC, with WMP, the sound is there, the video is there… and the filesize has been reduced to 21.6 megs. (Woohoo!) On the mac side, I was able to watch it perfectly with the DivX Player… but BH’s link to an official DivX codec for macs didn’t let QuickTime 5 render this movie. (There’s no sound when using the DivX player… but there wasn’t any sound on the original 80 meg version on the mac, either.) For PCs without the DivX codec yet, grab it here. (Requires WMP 6.4 or better) The new file is now available either via http from BH’s site, or via http from Psyrixx’s site. (The original uncompressed .avi movie is no longer available in either location.) Again, mirrors are strongly encouraged. Enjoy!

Thanks to Psyrixx, who generously offered to mirror Bravehamster’s .avi movie – you can snag it here. No clue how the site will hold up… so if you’re getting horribly slow downloading times, maybe try and hold off for a bit. Again: this movie is 81 megs, in .avi format. On a PC, WMP plays it flawlessly (no drops), a major advantage over the .WMP file. QuickTime (on a PC) can’t play it at all. On a Mac, WMP can’t touch it (go figure), but QT5 plays the video perfectly – and hoses the sound. On the advice of BikeMike, I tried downloading the RAD Video Tools and re-encoding the movie using the DivX codec – it reduced the total filesize by 20 megs (to 60 megs or so), but totally removed sound. Ouch! The original streamed .wmv is still available at Microsoft, and the downloadable .wmv’s are still up at Battleground: Halo, for those who can’t handle the .avi.

Thanks wholly to Bravehamster =PN=‘s conversion of the .wmv to .avi, I was able to use QuickTime (with its much more flexible manipulation tools) to grab a few more screen captures from the interview/discussion movie. There are 18 new shots on this page. Enjoy!

Man, you gotta love fans. Johann, unhappy that the boat we saw only once, as concept art, might not be in the game any more, modeled his own. You’ll find the wireframe in our Miscellaneous Art section.

Bravehamster =PN= writes to say that he’s re-encoded the interview (sorry, Harry – the discussion video) in .avi format – it’s a whopping 81 MB now, but WMP plays it without stuttering. (QuickTime, for some reason, still can’t play it.) He’s kindly made it available via HTTP and FTP… but bandwidth is limited; mirrors are encouraged and appreciated. (Send us word of any mirrors – we’ll let folks know.)

It’s the night for Bungie explanations! Chris Butcher steps into a conversation about the quality of the latest movie… and explains that

if you look at all of the scenes outside in the snow, in the angular interiors and out on the bridge, you’ll see that the environment polygons are flat-shaded and all the characters have full brightness. that’s why you could be forgiven for thinking it looks very jet grind radio. 🙂

Wow – for two days, folks have been looking at this movie, and nobody noticed that? A tribute to the beauty of the material! Thanks, Chris.

Joe Staten jumped into a discussion of ‘the Schwartzenegger shot’ to expound on Matt’s ‘cinematics are done’ comment in this week’s update, and to suggest that

Hopefully we’ll be able to give you an abbreviated taste of what’s in store (i.e. a new trailer) sometime soon. Certainly before Halo is on the shelves, a date that really isn’t that far off.

(He also took the opportunity to put me in my place, movie-history-wise.) We’re looking forward to the new footage! (Hopefully in a more universally-accessible format…)

Mr. Bill. Jr. V© sends along a homemade (with Bryce and Photoshop) desktop – inexplicably, it’s 500×375 pixels. I’ve taken the liberty of scaling it up to a more standard desktop size, but the original is still available in our Wallpaper section, if you’d rather start from scratch.

Thanks to both Darwin Campa and Tim Wilson, who both filled me in on the meaning of ‘attract mode’… apparently, it’s a term from arcade games – it’s the footage that plays when there are no quarters in. Canned gameplay, in other words… can you say ‘films’? (hopehopehope) Tim adds:

A standout “Attract Mode” from the early 80s was Bezerk. The machine would say: “Quarter Detected in pocket! Play Bezerk!”

Good to know… and glad Bungie is collecting footage for this!

Coolness. Bounty, of Battleground: Halo, has compressed down the 44-meg .wmv to a 10 meg .wmv – quality is quite good for the size. For folks who can’t handle a 44 meg download… check out the low-res version. (It’s the same screensize as the original, just higher compression.) Note: in BGH’s description of the downloads, these are listed as .MPG files… they’re not. Both are still .WMV files, and you’ll still need Windows Media Player to watch ’em. Update: MPG designations removed – apparently, Bounty was doing his best to re-encode them, but without success. Thanks for trying!