The Catfish stopped in to let us know that 2501 Episode 14 is now online – with a new character.(Louis Wu 14:44:04 UTC)

gunluva noticed a cool piece of RvB fanart at DeviantART – and HawaiianPig was happy to see his original poster work used as inspiration. Fans loving fans loving Bungie… that’s what we’re all about! (Louis Wu 14:43:38 UTC)

CaLL Me ZeNy was the first on our forum to notice that the Mythic Maps are now included in Bungie’s Heatmaps. Now’s a good time to check out their layouts… while the maps are still clean! (You can, of course, always look at a version filtered for some obscure death – try Elephant Turret on any map except Sandtrap, for example – to see the clean map for already-in-use levels… but for the three new maps, no extra work is involved.) (Louis Wu 14:43:11 UTC)

Last night was pretty productive for urk, over at the Bungie Blog – lots of local content, and even one new fan bit:

• The Sandbox screenshots that were unveiled in the recent IGN/T3 interviews (sometimes in really small sizes) are now all available, in beautiful hi-res, in the Halo 3 Screenshot Gallery. Swing by and feast your eyes.
• The next Community Spotlight feature has been posted – Facility B5D is a Bungie.net group founded originally to give people info about Recon armor, but has grown into a tightly-knit community of friends. Go see what goodies they’ve added to Bungie Favorites this week!
• The Bungie Online Team took on the Community Team on the Mythic Maps for the most recent installment of the Bungie Humpday Challenge – I think the Online Team can blame Stosh for their drumming. (I mean, hell, they blame him for everything else…)
• Bryan Simon has released the latest episode of his ‘Voicemail Chronicles’ series – and Bungie gets the news heads-up. It’s always fun to listen to silly people ranting…

Whew. That’s a lot of news – I could call it a day, I think! (Don’t worry, I’m not.)(Louis Wu 14:29:36 UTC)

Pete Cooper stopped in this morning to unveil the latest – and last – piece of concept art for the ‘Operation Chastity’ project. These pieces are so spectacular, we’ve collected them to make a small gallery; they deserve close attention. Check ’em out.(Louis Wu 19:22:46 UTC)

Goodies via the Bungie Blog:

• ‘First Contact‘ is a Halo machinima with some great graphics and a taut story. The date work could use a little help, but mostly, this is top-notch. View/download at Machinima.com.
• Halo Final Fantasy: It’s not the first time someone’s made an RPG in the Halo engine (check these posts – 1 | 2 | 3 – for an older series using Halo 2), but this one’s pretty well-done, and fun to watch. Check it out in High Quality at YouTube.

Again, thanks to urk for the links!(Louis Wu 19:12:40 UTC)

New comics released today: we heard from TTL Demag0gue that Reclaimer 148 (“Veil”) is live – and Ferial runs up against more than he expected. We also heard from Rob Tracy, who pointed out that the last of the Halo/Grifball comics (“GOAAAAAAAAAAAAL”) went live at Remedial comics today. (He also mentioned that his thoughts on the Halo Wars demo can be read in the blog post for today.) (Louis Wu 18:54:38 UTC)

bluerunner experienced a bizarre glitch while playing the Halo Wars Demo last night… here’s hoping it’s an isolated incident! Anyone seen this before?(Louis Wu 13:36:31 UTC)

The Halo 1 Tricking continues apace. Latest cool trick: slYnki has managed to get a Scorpion Tank onto one of AotCR’s suspension bridges. A trick long thought to be impossible… now on film! I heard about this one from lots of people – Dark Helmet even posted it in our forum.(Louis Wu 13:34:37 UTC)