If, like me, you were disappointed when season 1 ended you’ll be glad to hear that it’s made it’s return today with a top 5 entitled “Welcome Aboard” focusing on the art of boarding.

The video at number 2 might look a little familiar to those that were reading (and watching) my exploits back in June 2009….

They’ve wrapped it up nicely in this Youtube video which servers as both a demonstration and tutorial.

For detailed information on how to repeat it and how it works check out their discussion forum and get “bumping”!

In comparison to the fully loaded sector when the door is missing the following applies:

3 areas used as the SI supply drops are now open (not just the 1 originally discovered).
The grunts and turrets are not loaded in one of the circular areas.
Adverts for cars are missing from the walls.
Various items are not loaded such as the Opticon health dispensers and stand alone terminals (such as the one near the shotgun).

So it’s a case of good work on finding a glitch, now can we do this on other sectors to access even more areas that should be blocked off?

JSM26 has uploaded an ODST video to his Bungie.net file share showing missing Opticon dispensers and de-loaded doors in the starting sector. Further evidence that the ODST modified Halo 3 engine has glitches, possibly exploitable to access other blocked off areas the designers never wanted us to get to…

I’m sad to say that  the doors disappear from what appears to be a loading glitch, not from looking at any glyphs. Here’s how I determined this, I encourage you to try this to replicate the results:

Having completed the game I loaded up New Mombasa Streets,  immediately got myself a mongoose and headed to Sector 8 to check on the door.  At this point I should point out that at no time after getting the mongoose did I have the visor on. The door was closed as expected.
I then drove over to Sector 6 and without turning on my visor walked up to the covenant sniper rifle next to the Elites, picked it up and got back on my mongoose (parked near to the Sector exit). I then drove immediately back to the door which was now open with no glyphs sighted.

If you look at a map you’ll see that Sector 8 is actually a twisted mirror of Sector 3 and if you look closely you’ll see that Sector 3 also has a room with funny tiles on it matching the location and design of the one in Sector 8. If you go to this area you’ll immediately feel at home and easily spot the Security door as placed in a mirror fashion to the one in Sector 8. This door opens…

So, it’s my belief that this is just fall out to the way the game engine loads the levels and nothing at all to do with the glyphs, it’s just coincidence that they are located in the area you need to go to de-load the doors.

Certain glyphs lead you to keys areas so for me it’s pretty clear that the glyphs are there for player guidance and to add an air of mystery. Give it it a go, try the experiment above and let me know your results.

I’m not sure if I will be updating the app to support the new layout, I’ll have to see how inspired I am with the release of ODST…;)

To assist users old and new I’ve knocked up a quick Halo 3 Asset-O-Matic FAQ, this will be updated as and when information becomes pertinent. If you’re struggling to figure something out and it’s not on the FAQ feel free to leave a comment so I can answer your question and add it to the FAQ if appropriate

What happened to Beta 3 you may ask. Well Bungie made a few changes in between me completing Beta 3 and actually finding time to upload it. By that time it no longer worked.

So, what you have in your metaphysical hands is Beta 4, it’s just like Beta 3 but it works!

The changes are:

*You can now search Matchmaking or Custom games

*You can now go directly to the files instead of the match details

*It is significantly faster (think 5 minutes to search over 2500+ matches..)

*Templates are working (sorta, no word wrapping enabled and no way to clear the output box). This allows you to enter some text in the top section, hit a button and have your text repeated with the following tokens replaced by data from the currently loaded database: %SCREENS%, %CLIPS%, %GAMEID% (used for linking directly to the game), %GAMETYPE%, %GAMEDATETIME% and %MAP%

Alas, Campaign searching did not make it in. I wrote half the code and then realised it needs a whole new DB format to support the relevent information found for a Campaign record. I will add support once my busy work life allows.

Databases from previous versions are not compatible with this new release. A fresh search is always preferred in this house

Give it a try yourself, tell your friends! Download the Halo 3 Asset-O-Matic Beta 4 today!

(Feedback is always appreciated folks! )

• Search Matchmaking or Custom Games
• Direct linking to the files page
• Faster searching (5 times more grabbing threads)

A problem with increasing the amount of network activity is that the thread checking for the next page of results sometimes times out. It’s fine if a grabber thread times out because there’s 24 more left to continue to continue the work but there’s only one thread looking for the next page. I’ll have to see if I can add some fallback code to reinitilise the thread if it falls over.