Hugh Hancock points us to a post-E3 report with a different flavor than most… what impressed the folks at Machinima.com most about Halo was its potential for use as a movie-making tool. This has been a topic of interesting discussion on our forum, and others… here’s a group that wouldn’t normally be interested in Halo, finding the same excitement. While they may or may not have the details right, this comment piqued our curiosity:

…but the announcement of the show as far as I was concerned was that Bungie would be shipping the game with a fully-featured “demo editor”. An editor they used to create the gameplay movie shown at E3 itself, no less.

This is news to us… noone else at E3 has reported this fact (although Doug Zartman said in an October chat at World Without Borders that Bungie planned to release tools… but plans can change). In any case, the Machinima.com article is quite a good read… go check it out!

Took us a while, but we’re finally able to bring you the Halo articles in the May and June issues of PC Accelerator. Mike Salmon, Editor in Chief (okay, ex-EIC… PCXL has officially closed down), has given us permission to put these up for your viewing pleasure. Without further ado:

• May 2000: Page 1 (244K), Page 2 (315K), Page 3 (265K)
• June 2000: Page 1 (251K), Page 2 (280K)

Thanks, Mike! (Be sure to check out Mike at his new job over at Daily Radar.)

More info on the alt.games.halo newsgroup mentioned by Simon Brownlee… seems someone screwed up royally. There was no proposal posted to alt.config, which means that many newsservers will ignore the group as “unofficial”. There’s no valid “Approved” line in the newgroup control post (the post that actually starts the group), which means that MOST servers will ignore this group. (We’ve posted the newgroup control message, as it appeared on Simon’s server.) And unfortunately, it means that a sanctioned Halo newsgroup will have to choose a different name than alt.games.halo… since that one is now taken. A great big rasberry to “Toolbox”, who did such a wonderful (not!) job with this. On the upside… there’s a link to HBO as the place to go for “more information about Halo”. 😉

30 units behind alt.comp.hardware.overclocking… will the Halo SETI Marines climb another notch tomorrow? Even though the SETI servers seem to be losing several hundred of their units every day, they still persevere… It’s CRUNCH TIME! Jjaro Tech knows it… do you? A warm welcome to Forty-Two and Psyche911… and welcome back to WA2FAST! Check the 24 hour stats. Pax.

A bit earlier than some expected… but an alt.games.halo newsgroup has been started.(It may or may not have propagated to your local server by now… be patient, if it hasn’t.) Yet another place to discuss the nooks and crannies of the Halo universe! Thanks to Simon Brownlee for the heads-up.

=NAV=Shadow writes to let us know that he hopes to put together a short 3D movie of Halo this summer… but he won’t be able to manage it alone. He’s looking for 3DS MAX modellers who might be willing to help out… contact him if you think that’s you!

CUTS has submitted an interesting piece of fan fiction… who is the marine, really? Go read his thoughts on the Fan Fiction page!

The Halo SETI Marinesdig in at position #50 in the Battle of the Teams. Next on the hit list is “alt.comp.hardware.overclocking”. Their CPUs are gonna melt trying to stay ahead of us! ;)Four new recruits join the Halo community effort. A big welcome to Redhook (252 units) and Malice (107 units). Gotta love those large unit additions! Jjaro tech and SkyHook grab the La Crunch and Frogblast awards. All this and more on the 24 hour stats page.

Thanks to Beamish for posting scans of the E3 Halo movie flyer and the E3 Halo game flyer. Ok we’ve seen these before but the quality of the movie flyer is better than we’ve previously seen (you can easily read the text). E3 Halo game flyer is a biggie (1.9MBs). Grab them here:

E3 Halo movie flyer (cover) (303K)
E3 Halo movie flyer (inside) (529K)
E3 Halo game flyer (1964K)

Nice!

The German GameStar site has a Special E3 Report with a number of game developers. While Bungie aren’t represented some of the pics of the developers’s are taken withGameStar’s Halo cover in the background. Nice one! :)GameStar do have a short E3 Halo report herethough.

Blam! The Halo SETI Marinestake out Brasil and enter the top 50 in the Battle of the Teams. Kudos all round on the great Halo community effort. Some big names next on the hit list. Team membership rises to 382 that’s an increase of four since yesterday. Join up today! Check out the combined processing power of the Halo team on the 24 hour stats page.

Marathon’s Story has got a set of links to some great Bungie booth E3 pics at MacGamer’s Ledge. Bungie like you’ve never seen them before. Who needs booth babes when you’ve got guys like this… erm. Go check the Story page for the full set of pic links or go direct to MacGamer’s Ledge E3 Photo Gallery. Nice one!

New Halo screenshot on the Voodoo5 5500 AGP box? MAK thinks so on our forums and posts this URL to a Voodoo5 5500 AGP box pic. Thanks MAK.

Soon^TM seems to have gotten their hands on a trailer for the E3 trailer. (Not the trailer itself… a trailer for it.) Or something. Go take a look. (Thanks to Sibrax, for posting this at the R.net forum. Pax.

Wow, that was quick. 🙂 Vector has resubmitted his wallpaper to our Wallpaper page. Glad to have them back! Thanks to the whole BGH team for straightening all this out.

Seems we were misinformed. The policy at Battleground: Halo is NOT that its staffers can’t post artwork at other sites… it’s that they can’t post artwork with BGH identifiers at other sites. It’s unclear at this point whether vector will be resubmitting his wallpapers without the BGH URL on them… but we hope so. We liked ’em! Thanks to Protector for clearing up the misunderstanding.

Blam! The Halo SETI Marinesmove up one place to 51 in the Battle of the Teams. Lots of movement in the team rankings. Brasil are still ahead but only by 2 UNITS! Can the Halo team enter the top 50by tomorrow? Join the Halo community effort today! A big welcome to Admiral Darkk who joins up with 32 units, and to xmatrix, who joined up yesterday with 458 units (sorry we missed that!). Check out the team 24 hour stats.

Happy anniversary to Rampancy.net! The Core went live one year ago yesterday… as did our blam.bungie.org forums. Talk about blasts from the past! Has it been a whole year? Wow.

Battleground: Halo mentions a poll at the Queensland Gamers League (northeastern Australia)… what game are you most looking forward to? Halo is currently neck and neck with Tribes 2… go see if you can swing that!

Seen at R.net: Gamespot has added an Editors’ Choice Best of E3 2000 section… and Halo is on the list for Most Potent Action Game.