Taking It into Their Own Hands

In addition to these other extreme Halo fans, there is another group that takes their obsession to an entirely different level the Halo modders. The Halo modding scene really started back in the summer of 2003, when a small group of hobbyists interested in exploring the technical details of the game began studying the mapfile format. Soon after that they discovered hidden secrets left in the map files, such as the Flamethrower and the Engineer character. These findings sparked a wave of homebrew tools to modify and create skins, super weapons, and even new map packs. The modding scene was really boosted by the release of the Halo Editing Kit for Halo Custom Edition (on the PC), which gave modders an unprecedented amount of control over their maps compared to other game engines.