Rampancy

Nthro Sraom submitted a nice how-to for finding the Famine Skull in Halo 3. Since Rampancy's collection of skull pages isn't complete, we're asking readers to submit entries on their own favorite skull: how and where to find it, what it does, your preferred method of reaching it, and how it changes your experience of the game. Not just the location; lots of sites have lists of skulls with locations. This isn't about getting credit for finding a skull, or just compiling a walkthrough to finding all the skulls, but also some information on how each skull changes your experience of playing the game.

When submitted it'll be added to the list of Halo 3 Skulls, a subsection of the Halo 3 Tricks page.

Once again more news has transpired in 24 hours than I'm able to handle with the individual loving care that each unique-as-in-snowflake bit of news fully deserves to be treated. So sue me.

Here's what happened:

Bungie cheated HBO out of a Humpday win. Makes you wish there was some large company comprised of adults watching over these boys Luke Smith while at play.

Speaking of cheating, NBA player Gilbert Arenas apparently sets up dummy matches of doubles in social slayer and gets the dummy to quit out, leaving him with the victory and the experience points. MC187 sniffed out the method looking at statistics, and the Washington Post got Arenas to admit to it, who arrogantly asserted it wasn't cheating. Bungie, instead of banning him, pointed to Arenas' apparently legitimately high matchmaking skill ranking as proof of the player's ability and ignored the fact that he's manipulating the experience system. So that's it, it's OK to set up fake social games to get free experience points. If you're a famous NBA player who is friends with top MLG teams. Otherwise, don't. You might get banned.

Speaking of HBO, Bungie AI engineer Max Dyckhoff gave an excellent and wide-ranging interview to HBO about exactly how the Saved Films feature works (it is simultaneously both more and less complex than you'd think) as well as how driving AI works (or doesn't).

Frankie pointed out Halolcats, the content of which is pleasantly predictable.

Shacknews interviewed Wideload's Alex Seropian about being an independent game studio.

YankeeHotel has started up a picture blog called abstrakt, art from inside the Halo 3 engine, featuring artsy, unmodified screenshots. Check it out! Thanks for the heads-up to Louis Wu at HBO.