Well, somebody has to be first, so this is it. A site called HaloBunker.net has a modified version of Blood Gulch, with some weapon and vehicle modifications (namely, the LAAG fires rockets) as well as some movies of the modded map in action. Thanks Louis Wu at HBO.

Halomods.com, the site that is home to the only currently-released (although unofficial) Halo map editing tool, Sparkedit, is running a poll on what new features users would like to see in the next version. Head over and vote if you're planning on editing Halo maps.

Blue's News has linkage to Wired and BBC stories expanding on the story of the source code stolen from Valve by crackers, as well as word from Valve's own Gabe Newell, via Shacknews, on how the attackers gained entry.

OK, sue me for re-using the same bad joke inside of a week. There's an old adage about blood and a stone that applies to the results.

Anyway, there is a hotfix-- ahem, I mean, patch, for PC Halo that brings it up to version 1.01. There's no list of changes with it, and apparently the auto-updating feature of the game will also retrieve this patch.

We've added mirrors of the full PC Halo Dedicated Server (106 Mb) as well as the PC Halo Dedicated Server without maps (1.7 Mb) created by BOLL. HBO, as usual, has a list of all the mirrors and a mirror of the mirror list.

PC Halo has been reviewed at: GamingNEXT, Telefragged, Gamers Depot, The Wargamer, GameSpot and

Registrations for the Halo competition in Cyberathlete Professional League's Winter 2003 event starts today. 32 teams, first-come, first-serve. Thanks Blue's News.

There's a new, albeit short, preview of Halo on the PC done by Gamer's Pulse; it's got a quick rundown and some screenshots that suffered the usual fate.

With the interesting tagline above, CompUSA has announced their Halo VIP Contest, where the grand prize package includes VIP treatment at the CPL Winter 2003 event, participation in Nvidia's Halo tourney, a free PC game every month in 2004, and an Nvidia prize pack. All you have to do is preorder Halo for $49.99. We report; you shop.

The Silent Cartographers, a PC Halo mapmaking group, have got their website up now. They have 14 members and list several projects on their project page, including four new maps, one called "Aquaphobia", a clear reference to similarly named levels in Bungie games, such as Phforaphobia in Marathon and Gephyrophobia in PC Halo.

Zandervix over at MBO has posted a note on the availability of Myth Browser v1.81; it runs on Windows and Mac OS X (requires X11) and allows you to browse Myth games running on PlayMyth and Marius.net.

Want specs for PC Halo? There's a bunch: the official PC Halo site, and the other... official... PC Halo site... uh.. anyway. Most of the info is the same, except it's more specific in some areas. Apparently you can run Halo under Windows 98. Well, I'll be damned, it's good for something!

Two mapmaking-related updates from Subnova lately.

The first is the formation of a PC Halo Mapmaking group called The Silent Cartographers. They intend to make maps, weapons and vehicles for Halo PC, and unlike most other mapmaking groups, they are not recruiting new members.