Rampancy

We don't mention all the Halo comics around the web every time a new one comes out-- there are just too darn many of them, and besides, Louis Wu at HBO does a better job keeping up with them than we ever could.

However, the publication of the 117th edition of Stuntmutt's own One One Se7en comic deserves special attention; he's produced a four-page series of panels that not only traverses the entire plotline of Halo, but also contains more jokes than the entire series up until now.

Just kidding. Maybe.

The Plinth of Art contest over at HBO ended awhile ago, and just now the winners have been announced. Congratulations to Sep7imus, BOLL and Sam Koch, who will receive hand-drawn, framed One One Se7en strips by Stuntmutt, quite an honor. Speaking of honor, honorable mentions Patroclus, Neil Corné and Max Power will each get hand-drawn, unframed single frame comics.

All the details, as well as the winning strips and images of the prizes are avaialable at the Plinth of Art winners page.

When online gaming first became popular, it seemed that only a lucky few had high speed, low latency connections, usually from a university or office. Now, with the proliferation of DSL and cable modem availability, a lot more people can get in on the fun without cursing about their modem catching on fire.

However, there are still those of us who, for one reason or another, can't find Halo servers on the 'net with a ping lower than 250 or so.

For this reason, I've started to compile the High Ping Bastard's Guide to Halo, tailored specifically for helping players who want to get in on the fun of online Halo but haven't yet managed to discover the joy that is broadband.

The first installment, Vehicles, is available now.

[image:6677 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]Frankie has put up the second Bungie Weekly Update over in the forum at Subnova. We've archived it in our Halo 2 Updates section. Here are some highlights:

• The new Bungie.net is launching soon.
• Mehve has been working on the Halo 2 log and some top-secret stuff. (Ed. note: Whatever happened to the team working on what was formerly Phoenix, anyway?)
• The Master Chief will have a real walking animation in Halo 2, unlike the neat running-in-place animation he has now.
• Combination of animations and AI code are now reaching the point of being called "gameplay" rather than technical demos.
• Bungie employees are starting to participate in wider multiplayer testing.

Yeah, I bet they have to twist arms to get testers. Both of 'em.