The Halo 1 PC security rollup has completed testing and is ready for official use. Start updating your servers, because clients will auto-get this patch on Friday. The great thing about this patch is that it disables the CD check every time Halo loads.
Check out the article at Bungie for details.

Hey everybody...I apologize for the downtime over the past few days. Apparently there was (literally) an explosion and fire at my ISP a few days ago and my server happened to be in the affected building. They have been trying to restore services, but not everything has come back up...in particular the DNS nameservers that tell the virtual servers on my box which folders to retrieve content from. I've put in some new nameserver entries on my box and hopefully things are back to normal now. I apologize for the downtime.

If you are interested in the details of the explosion/fire, read on...

Just a quick heads up, I've moved some of the content over to the new server, and the only thing remaining is the forum move. There will likely be some lost posts during this period, so if your topic seems to disappear I apologize for the inconvenience.

Update: The forum has been moved over to the new server, so any new posts from now until the DNS updates will be lost. Unfortunately the DNS entries themselves are out of my hands (a friend does them for me), so I am not sure when they will be changed. So don't make any super-long posts until the move is complete. I will let you all know when that is.

In the meantime, if the forums go down - it's because the old server has been taken offline and the DNS hasn't updated yet.

Gren

I wanted to tell you all what's currently happening with the HaloMods server. Despite all of the generous offers for servers from several people - a few of them I was seriously considering - I've decided to shift to a lower performance server. The reason for this was very simple - I just didn't feel sure that the donated server would be around beyond a few months; most of the offers came from people I didn't know so I felt it would be best to just move to a cheaper server.

The downside of this is that the site may run a bit slower, but I think a slow site is better than no site at all.

I would also like to express my sincere appreciation to the people who made donations to HaloMods, especially the few that sent in rather large donations. It helps to defray some of the costs of the past few months.

Over the next week or so I will be moving content to the new server, so it is likely that a day or two of posts will be lost when we make the switch. I will let you know before that happens.

Gren

Just thought I would give an update on what's going on with the site. We've had three (serious) offers from various people for hosting that we are evaluating. The other possibility Iron_Forge and I discussed involved moving the site to a cheaper server that will be more in line with the current ad revenue. In any case, we are considering the options at hand and will probably make a decision within the next week or so.

Also, a special thank you to the three members that made donations to help with some of the server costs. It is very much appreciated.

If you want to help, there is a donate button at the upper right corner of the page. Thanks!

Grenadiac

Hey everybody-

I know it's been a long time since you've heard from ol' grenadiac (I would venture to guess some of you probably don't even know who I am). I started HaloMods about 4 or 5 years ago - just before HaloPC came out and console modding was in its infancy. I've watched the site grow from a personal homepage to the monster forum it is today.

Over the past year or so you haven't heard much from me - my virtual life took a backseat to getting married, selling/buying a new house, and starting a consulting business. Needless to say it left little time to tend to HaloMods. Thankfully, there were a number of very devoted staff to keep things running, and for the most part it has kept the website under control.

One of the reasons HaloMods has lasted so long is that the ads have, for the most part, covered the server expenses. It costs $240 per month to rent the server we currently use, and ads normally cover most of that. At the end of the year I usually break even, but recently something has changed with google's advertising program. The result is that the pay per click has been reduced to about 25% of what it was. You can read about it here:

Adsense changes since November

How can you help? Contribute to the discussion thread

And if you can spare a few bucks, click on our PayPal donate button to the right :) We'll figure something out.

The seventh Prometheus update has finally been posted, and it was a long time coming. The update touches on the new UI, revamped rendering, redesigned core, new team members, and more.

Head on over to HaloDev to check out the new update and feel free to comment on it in the Prometheus forum.

Prometheus Update #7

This can be considered a sub-follow up to the previous Halo 3 issues, "The Last Straw" and "A Disgrace to Halo Modders."

The HaloMods staff, along with the lead development team for Halo 3 Beta modding and other key members have decided to disallow the extraction of assets from the Halo 3 Beta map files. This content includes bitmaps, models, and sounds, among other things.

We still encourage you to research the map structure, as well as the structure of the raw data. The H3Core team will certainly continue their diligent work on the maps. We hope others will do the same. However, we will not tolerate people posting code, tools, or similar things pertaining to extraction of this type of content from the Beta maps. Anyone doing so will be punished on sight.

You can read the full explanation here.

Shade45 posted a preliminary metadata extractor/injector to the forums. Since it is the first utility uploaded to the vista forums, I thought I would give it a plug :)

He says it is a very early beta, but it's a start. Get it here:

http://forums.halomods.com/viewtopic.php?t=61186