For those who don't have Finale PrintMusic, I've added PDF and MIDI files to the entries for Covenant Dance, Follow Our Brothers, and To Kill A Demon.

If you want to work with the PrintMusic files you can use the free program Finale Notepad; check How To Open Sheet Music Files for details.

Hardy Lebel, the multiplayer designer of Halo 1 who also worked on Halo 2 and Oni, has set up a new games development studio in Seattle called Tyrant with Anders Hejdenberg, who worked on Battlefield 2 as its lead designer.

The seven-man studio currently has listed as its only project something identified only as "ESP".

Comic website Earth's Greatest interviewed Eric Trautmann about his comic Checkmate. Trautmann previously worked at Microsoft and was involved with Halo and the Halo novels written by Eric Nylund.

Asked about working on Halo, this is what he had to say:

Helping Eric Nylund craft "The Fall of Reach," the first HALO novel was a treat. Eric's a hell of a writer (and I actually was one of the people who more or less bullied Del Rey into using him in the first place) and a good friend, so that kind of contribution is effortless.

Working on the game itself, HALO: COMBAT EVOLVED, was a considerably less pleasant experience. The deadline pressure was enormous; my co-writer at the time, Brannon Boren, and I had just a couple days to bang out a massive amount of dialogue at the request of the game's designer, John Howard, and Bungie co-founder Jason Jones. Apparently, whoever had written the original in-mission dialogue had not done a job everyone was happy with, and they needed, essentially, a writer or writers who could work fast. We happened to be around and available, so we agreed to do it, but Bungie is VERY secretive, and, despite the fact that we operated under the same non-disclosure agreements THEY did, they can be quite mistrustful.

So, we had three days to bang out some ridiculous amount of dialogue, but they wouldn't actually let us LOOK at the game (which is why some of the dialogue doesn't make total sense; I conservatively estimate we got it about 80-90% right, which I think is an accomplishment given how blind we were flying).
THAT was no fun at all.

Deadlines are never fun. Check out the full interview for more information on some of the work Trautmann is doing for DC Comics and has done on Lucasarts properties in the past.

Another Halo sheet music submission from MJCrascal21; this time it's Halo 1's Covenant Dance (with percussion). Audio file to come soon.

Awhile back I took a post about a Halo themed shoe and spun it into a theory about why Bungie and Microsoft might have parted so amicably: because while Bungie gets the freedom to expand into a studio large enough to do more than one project and not just Halo games, Microsoft gets to retain the Halo intellectual property to capitalize on any way they can.

Of course, it turned out the shoe wasn't official-- it was just a one-off by a fan.

Now the other shoe has dropped.

Kotaku brings us the story of the Adidas Gil II Zero Halo Sneaker which is a design approved by NBA player Gilbert Arenas. Who cheats at Halo.

The admin of uber community file hosting service Mythica.org has posted a note that the Useruploads service, which allowed Halo fans to host files for free, is ceasing in February of this year due to high costs and a lack of time and interest. A shame to see such a wonderful service go, but given the huge amount of bandwidth required for such a site, it is understandable that it could not have continued forever.

Newsweek columnist N'Gai Croal interviewed Bungie's Joe Staten about the Halo 3, Halo 2, and the Halo movie back in August of 2007. The first part is online now. Croal picked out one blockbuster revelation by Staten to highlight in a second post prior to the publication of part two, however: that the faceless Master Chief wasn't really going to be the film's protagonist.

In the film, the other characters begin to comment on Master Chief's anonymity, like "Who is he?" and "What's his story?" He becomes a really wonderful source of mystery, a sort of anonymous problem solver. So we definitely worked on that. In the final version of the script the Master Chief was certainly absolutely critical to the film, but there were other characters around him which carried most of it, that did most of the emotional heavy lifting. The Master Chief was there in support of their story.

Staten also does confirm something that many fans have long suspected, and that even some people "in the know" have expressed doubt at: that Halo 2 was supposed to be the end of the story. Staten says, "we didn't think we were necessarily going to make Halo 3. I mean, we made Halo 1 not knowing we were going to make Halo 2. So we started out designing Halo 2 not thinking that we were going to make a Halo 3." Halo 2's third act, even though it was different from what we got in Halo 3, could have ended the story. Halo 2's cliffhanger simply made it impossible to stop there.

All those who think there must be a Halo 4 should take heed of that.

In response to a reader request from heuertag I've reworked the sheet music page to work like the forgemap database, the gamertag database, and the movies database. Now you can search and sort the sheet music entries just like you can on those other pages. The default page shows all entries in alphabetical order by title, but you can filter by one or more games, see the newest or oldest first, or group them by author.

HaloBabies just recently announced the new Halo comic Larry The Marine, which I neglected to mention at the time and richly deserves it.

In addition, HaloBabies has posted a profile of Halo fan artist Kelli "Etoli" Davis, who is now working on an upcoming game at SuperVillain studios. Check out mrsmiley's interview with Etoli over at HaloBabies.

Second Foundation, home of the Halo community podcast The Riot, is holding its 2007 community awards. Voting will be open until midnight GMT on January 13.

In the interest of full disclosure, yours truly was nominated under "Biggest Community Contributor (Individual)" but I'm up against Louis Wu so if I don't win, no hard feelings. Then again, if you want to vote for me, don't let me stand in your way.