Louis Wu has put up a poll at HBO, asking whether the forum should stay closed until November 9, to avoid risking exposing users to spoilers from the pirated copies of Halo 2. Right now, the poll is running at a bout a 3.6:1 ratio for closed:open, so if you want the HBO forum to stay open, go vote.

I have to reiterate Louis Wu's statements at HBO, that episode one of The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter is probably the best bit of Halo machinima to come out since Red vs Blue. The movie's own site has already exceeded its bandwidth allocation, but Mythica is hosting a mirror of the first episode. It's nearly three minutes long, and is part one of six in a 30 minute movie. Check it out; with good voiceacting and high production values, this one is definitely worth downloading.

Today's new Halo Babies strip reminds us there are very few shopping days left before Halo 2 is released. mrsmiley also writes to let us know about their Halo Gamers Against Piracy campaign; read all about it and perhaps use their banner (as we have) to proclaim your site a supporter of Bungie against software piracy.

And as if that wasn't enough, they've got an interview with Junpei and Murph MacManus, makers of the MCandCortana comic.

princeofthesword has posted an interesting challenge for Halo fans over in the HBO forum; he's compiled a checklist of tricks and accomplishments in the original game, for fans to go through and make sure they've done before the sequel hits the shelves. Sounds like a great idea-- maybe we'll run a quick series of polls on some of these items to see how common some of these exploits really are, once the current poll ends. Thanks Louis Wu at HBO.

Skeifer and the Captain venture into the Library to see how "real" a giant multilevel archive full of Flood can be in Part 7 of The Junkyard's series on realism in Halo. I have to admit, this article must have been a real challenge, as the Library is probably the most unnatural and arbitrarily designed environment in the game, so it's difficult to imagine it as a real scenario. The Captain does ask the question I've always wondered about, though:

I would be kind of suspicious what kind of facility this was when I saw how big everything was. I would be asking 343 GS tons of questions while we'd be taking those lonely walks down hallways. But in our case, the Chief is a mute and is just a killing machine.

Be sure to check out this latest installment as well as the rest of the series. Thanks Ryan "Mhaddy" Matthews.

Season 3 of Red vs Blue kicks off with Episode 39, The Best Laid Plans. Lores versions are available right now for everybody, since the sponsor restrictions on the new site are not yet in place. Speaking of which, if you haven't seen the new site yet, go ahead and take a look, it's sweet, and you should sign up.

Eric Trautmann notes in his blog that he got his last payment for his work on The Art of Halo just recently-- and ahead of schedule, at that. Also, it seems, this means the book may be out soon:

I'm also given to understand that the book is due to arrive in Del Rey's warehouse system very soon now, which means I may actually see it soon. (A variety of Bungie folk decended on it during it's layout phase and I opted to stay out of the way; this is cool from a stress-reduction standpoint, but not so cool from a "Hm...I wonder what the hell the book looks like" standpoint.)

[Checks watch, waits to see how long this tidbit takes to get onto a Halo fansite...]

Eric: about three hours. Sorry for being so slow, we'll do better next time.

UPDATE: Eric added another update; he's actually received his copy of the book now.

According to this thread at GameSpot, SpikeTV is doing a new show called The Ultimate Gamer. Residents of Southern California who want to try out are urged to attend a casting call today, October 12, at 15:00 at MTV Networks, 2600 Colorado Ave., Santa Monica, CA, and bring a photo of your living room and another of your house. Don't know if this is the real deal or not, but it might be. Thanks Snipe who posted this in the HBO forum.

UPDATE: Looks like Konrad mentioned this earlier.

Aero at Halo Impulse interviewed Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford about the port of Halo to the PC. Some of the answers are interesting:

Aero: Is there an alternative way to get a patch for halo CE other than getting 1000 players? Perhaps you could give us a wider range of options that the community can work towards?

Randy Pitchford: I used the 1000 player line as a publicly available metric for tracking how many folks are playing the game. What it really is about is a business concept of return on investment. Gearbox will cease to exist if it spends more than it makes. I think the best way to get more support out of Halo is to appeal to the folks that hold the keys - Bungie. Bungie owns Halo. If Bungie wants more support to happen, it will happen. I imagine they are very busy right now, though...

Well, not so busy as they were before last week, I imagine. But somehow it's still hard to imagine anything but PC Halo being orphaned and overshadowed by the impending release of Halo 2.

But perhaps most telling of Pitchford's remarks is this, although it works against just about everything else he says about PC Halo, including claims that it has gotten more post-release support than any other PC port:

As far as 1000 players, goes - I think if folks who are playing the game went out and evangelized it, it could happen. Instead, we find that the folks that are playing the game the most are also whining about it the loudest.

Doesn't that fact say something in itself? That those who play the game are the ones complaining? In other words, those who play PC Halo complain about it, and those who don't play don't mention it? That doesn't make 1000 simultaneous players sound possible at all.

Wouldn't you like to be Matt "Zyos" Leto? We bet lots of people would. In the past year, he's won $55,0000 in Halo tournaments at the tender age of twenty. There's an interview and video intervew at GameSpot (video for Complete members only). Here's hoping the professional gaming industry follows suit with professional athletes, so that one day even mediocre players can make millions; as it is we're probably not all in the same leagues as guys like Zyos and Darkman. Thanks Louis Wu for the heads-up.

Lots of new stuff at Halo Babies over the past few days; a new strip, two new fan strips, new 3-D desktops and 3-D fan strips. Thanks mrsmiley.

Fluffy Pants has a writeup, with photos, of the Crisp Death LANfest held at Louis Wu's earlier this month online at The Junkyard. The photo of the network rack is a nice touch. For carnage, apply within, I guess. Thanks Ryan "Mhaddy" Matthews.

Dolbex writes that details of the 2004 MLG Season Championship are now up on the MLG site. Prizes for the Halo 4x4 tournament and the Halo FF competition. $50,000 is at stake; gaming is indeed big business these days, and not just for the companies that make them.

Notorious peripherals maker Lik Sang is now promoting a device called the SmartJoy designed to allow gamers to use a mouse and keyboard instead of the usual controller to play games on an Xbox, including Halo. HBO pointed out some salient points about the item, and so has TeamXbox. Our take? While we were big supporters of the keyboard and mouse combo prior to Halo's release, we've now become so used to it that using WASD in front of the TV just wouldn't seem AOK.

As far as whether or not using a mouse and keyboard would give a player an advantage over those using gamepads, this post seems to indicate that Bungie may already have considered this and has a way to deal with it by limiting turn radius.