The History of HackHalo
Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 7:31 pm
Humble Beginnings (CA Sept. 2003)
Its known history begins in the fall of 2003 (the site was actually founded in 2001, but very little is known about pre-September 2003). It was a fan community, founded mainly to form a place where people could get together and discuss their "modding" projects in a new game, Halo PC. It actually did pretty well, in its original days. Its most famous mod was called "Stealth Gulch", created by Ppsimakesmehigh. It provided several interesting tutorials on how to go about modding everything from your Xbox controller to connect to your PC to becoming an elite in Singleplayer. There were also information pages on the different maps, vehicles, and weapons.
FADAN and the Dark Days - (Spring 2004 - Spring 2005)
In the following months, a small faction that called themselves FADAN (Federation against Noobs and Dumbasses) started to flame any "noob" in the forum, shutting down the influx of new members for months, and putting HackHalo into a deep sleep. The site did not return to its normal activity until the summer of 2004, when members began to get hyped about the upcoming game, Halo 2. The forum remained active for the next month or so, but on the Christmas of 2004, the site was hacked, and many of the admins were banned. The site was brought back shortly, but was hacked several more times and was downed for a while. A backup forum had been put in place for the time being.
Integra-Mod and the Collapse of HackHalo (Spring 2005 - August 2005)
Once the site was brought back on-line, it put to use a new system called "Integra-Mod", which had its ups and downs. It was finally blamed for majorly slowing down the forums and killing the place off. The site once again almost died. There was an attempt to revitalize the site by changing the domain to vgmods.com, but this had little effect. Not much later, the owner of the vgmods.com domain, Ps2Player4u, decided to shut down the HackHalo community. For most, it looked like it was the end, and the small, friendly community packed their bags and went their seperate ways.
Rebirth (August 2005)
This, of course, did not last long, due to how tightly-knit the HackHalo community is. dpraedan, one of the lead admins for a majority of the known history of HH (affectionate term for the site), decided to take action, and began rounding up as many members as possible to try and bring HackHalo back to life. An older member of the site, Pronto, offered a free sub-domain on his hosting site, pronto185.com, called "hackhalo.pronto185.com". This reunited some of the famous Golden Members (translated: HackHalo AARP), enough to form a strong enough backbone to finally bring HackHalo to what it truly was: a close community of friends. To add to this boom, Yomama offered to donate hosting and the HackHalo.org domain to the admins, which is currently in place at the time of writing. The site has all but given up on actually modding Halo PC, but is now just a community for pretty much talking and posting stuff about computers and the world in general, and the only reason that its name is still HackHalo is because it's just been come to be known as that. Who knows? When Bungie decides to release Halo 2 for PC, maybe HH will go back to its roots and actually mod again. Everyone is certainly ready.
At this point and time, the admins, specifically dpraedan and Phenomena, are planning on starting a Halo modding contest, offering custom computer parts, modded personally by dpraedan and Stuntman, as prizes for the winners, to attempt to bring HackHalo back to its former glory.
Its known history begins in the fall of 2003 (the site was actually founded in 2001, but very little is known about pre-September 2003). It was a fan community, founded mainly to form a place where people could get together and discuss their "modding" projects in a new game, Halo PC. It actually did pretty well, in its original days. Its most famous mod was called "Stealth Gulch", created by Ppsimakesmehigh. It provided several interesting tutorials on how to go about modding everything from your Xbox controller to connect to your PC to becoming an elite in Singleplayer. There were also information pages on the different maps, vehicles, and weapons.
FADAN and the Dark Days - (Spring 2004 - Spring 2005)
In the following months, a small faction that called themselves FADAN (Federation against Noobs and Dumbasses) started to flame any "noob" in the forum, shutting down the influx of new members for months, and putting HackHalo into a deep sleep. The site did not return to its normal activity until the summer of 2004, when members began to get hyped about the upcoming game, Halo 2. The forum remained active for the next month or so, but on the Christmas of 2004, the site was hacked, and many of the admins were banned. The site was brought back shortly, but was hacked several more times and was downed for a while. A backup forum had been put in place for the time being.
Integra-Mod and the Collapse of HackHalo (Spring 2005 - August 2005)
Once the site was brought back on-line, it put to use a new system called "Integra-Mod", which had its ups and downs. It was finally blamed for majorly slowing down the forums and killing the place off. The site once again almost died. There was an attempt to revitalize the site by changing the domain to vgmods.com, but this had little effect. Not much later, the owner of the vgmods.com domain, Ps2Player4u, decided to shut down the HackHalo community. For most, it looked like it was the end, and the small, friendly community packed their bags and went their seperate ways.
Rebirth (August 2005)
This, of course, did not last long, due to how tightly-knit the HackHalo community is. dpraedan, one of the lead admins for a majority of the known history of HH (affectionate term for the site), decided to take action, and began rounding up as many members as possible to try and bring HackHalo back to life. An older member of the site, Pronto, offered a free sub-domain on his hosting site, pronto185.com, called "hackhalo.pronto185.com". This reunited some of the famous Golden Members (translated: HackHalo AARP), enough to form a strong enough backbone to finally bring HackHalo to what it truly was: a close community of friends. To add to this boom, Yomama offered to donate hosting and the HackHalo.org domain to the admins, which is currently in place at the time of writing. The site has all but given up on actually modding Halo PC, but is now just a community for pretty much talking and posting stuff about computers and the world in general, and the only reason that its name is still HackHalo is because it's just been come to be known as that. Who knows? When Bungie decides to release Halo 2 for PC, maybe HH will go back to its roots and actually mod again. Everyone is certainly ready.
At this point and time, the admins, specifically dpraedan and Phenomena, are planning on starting a Halo modding contest, offering custom computer parts, modded personally by dpraedan and Stuntman, as prizes for the winners, to attempt to bring HackHalo back to its former glory.
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