Halo Maps Forum members,

I celebrated my 69th birthday at the end of last month. So there, now you know how old I am. Many of you have asked over the years, and until now, I've declined to say. I tell you now because age is part of the reason I've decided to shut down the forum. I'm tired. When you catch up to me, you'll know what I mean. But most of all, the hardware running the web forum, while aging well - something I can't say about myself - is out of date and needs to be retired. The amount of effort it will take to upgrade is cumbersome and time-consuming. Did I mention that I'm tired?

The web forum may be going away, but I'm not. All the other Halo Maps websites, the Portal website, and of course, UXB Internet are still alive and active and will stay that way for the foreseeable future. I am not retiring, heading out of the pasture, or off to the old folks home. Not yet, anyway. But I am winding down. I decided to spend my time on something I have always wanted to do.

These past few years, living through the pandemic has given me time to reassess. To think more. To ascertain what I want. I was lucky. The pandemic didn't take any of my family, and working from home, getting vaccinated, and wearing a mask the few times I ventured out in public kept me safe. Which was not so for some of you. I am sorry for your loss. While I didn't lose anyone in the family, nine people I knew, five of whom I called friends, are no longer with us. And I miss them. No matter how long you live, life is too short.

As strange as it may sound, I will miss you sociopathic reprobates arguing over game cannon, whose tags are better, or whether you can reliably sync AI bots in a multiplayer game (you can't). But you've grown up now, so I hope you will understand that the forum no longer serves the purpose it once did. And I wish to exert my limited energy on another pursuit that doesn't involve mediating or moderating 12 and 16-year-olds. Or anyone, for that matter. There's that tired thing again. It must be a theme.

If you've read this far and I've written this correctly, by now, you are asking yourself, what's this other thing? I have written two (unpublished) novels and am working on a third. This is a new departure for me, and I am learning as I go. They are both currently under revision, so it will be a while before they are available. I'm not at that point yet, but I will be looking for beta readers to offer feedback on the stories. If you would be interested in doing that, then follow me on Twitter at @DennisMPowers. That is where I'll be making announcements.

Thanks for participating in the forum, and I'm glad some of you have good memories of your time here. I'm not as active online anymore. I still play video games – L4D2, Borderlands (2&3), Minecraft, and No Man's Sky. A lot of No Man's Sky. I promised I'd keep the file archive active and intend to keep my promise as long as possible.

It's not So long. I'm still here. But Thanks for all the Fish!

Thank you Dennis for all the time and patience you've put into this community. I would say that you more than anyone deserves some time to rest and relax, without you the CE community would likely have never thrived so much nor for so long and for that I have always respected your efforts.

I am glad someone of your character has been the one who held the post that you did, Your commitment to the promise you made has been somewhat inspiring and admirable to many of us where so many would have given up, you've held on and continue to do so.

So again from the bottom of my heart, Thanks for all the work you've put in.

-Cobby

I'd like to second that. Your stewardship over this site has benefited the modding scene for years, even now with the release of MCC modding tools and the renewed interest that brings. The information contained in these forums continues to shed light on obscure issues and archived custom maps are getting ported to MCC to receive a second life. Thanks for everything, and best wishes with your novels!

That's definitely more than enough reason to close the doors now. In terms of this website, I'm amazed you put up this place as long as you have anyway lol.

Thanks again, Dennis. Best of luck on your writing ventures. Been looking to get deeper into reading for awhile now so I'm definitely gonna keep an eye out for that

This place was my childhood and because of this forum I learned a lot not just for Halo but learning English and grammar and how to learn more about people and you could say that this place is a product of what I am today and because this forum holds a lot of information about Halo modding I manage to make a living out of modding Halo through YouTube (Pays 10x than what an average job here in the Philippines) so this place will always be a big part of my life.

Also met a lot of people here and encountered a lot of different personalities from genuine and helpful people to Masterz1337. It made me befriend a lot of people from different parts of the globe and form bonds beyond Halo. This place was my escape from reality back in my teenage years when most of the trend from where I lived was to cause trouble and I grew tired of it and just wanna be here in the forums to see awesome stuff made by the community and to show off my own stuff or if I'm in a mood I will probably do the some spamming and have Giraffe or L283023 when he was first known here to collaborate with me to make 1000 Altheros accounts and do glitches to make visible cuss words or to annoy and beg tags to senior members and become bitter and cause more trouble here if I didn't get what I wanted like a spoiled child.

I am gonna miss the forum and to be honest I never stopped checking this place cause it still holds a lot of modding information and if you checked my Google searches for the past 4 years It's all gonna be "halomaps forum how to" "halomaps forum tag release". I think I said pretty much already and I have something planned as my farewell to this forums.

Dennis,

I joined this forum as a kid - probably one too young to be playing Halo, though I'm sure that was true for many.

Your forum provided me a resource and community to learn from and get interested in so many things I otherwise would not have.

It's interesting to think that many life long friends and opportunities I've encountered that I can trace back to joining this forum.

You're an inspiration in keeping this site running for this long. Terrifyingly I can go back and view those old posts when I was a kid and cringe at myself, but it's great to have the ability to see how I've grown. I have a few old gaming forums I keep alive for the members of those communities - my way of passing on that lesson I learned here.

Thank you, for everything.

I wish you and yours all the best, and I look forward to picking up copies of your books!

Several days after the Forum is closed to membership, I will place a pure HTML read-only archive of the discussions online for future reference. It may take a week or longer before Google or other search engines index the new pages. However, the information will be retained for future searches.

Unfortunately, the new archive will retain all your embarrassing posts, but at least the information will not be lost.

-- Dennis

Do take care of yourself, Dennis.

About the new Archive: As far as people not wanting old posts to be available on the internet. That ship has already sailed with the Web Archive.

I'm so sad to see this place go, but I am eternally grateful and happy to have been a part of the community here. It was right around when I was starting middle school that I came to this site. You gave me a space for my interest and fascination with 3D art to grow.

I always point to these forums as one of the catalysts that shaped me into becoming a 3D Artist in the game industry today. I had so much fun hanging out here, working on maps, mods, and making a few lifelong friends on top of it all.

Dennis, thank you so much for everything you've done here. I wish you all the success in your novel, and many wonderful years ahead.

Cheers,
Sahir (killer9856/Sheers/Sheerio)

Thank you Dennis. Goodbye, Halo Maps.

Thank you Dennis, for bringing us all together. In this forum's nearly two-decade run (wow), we've seen some of the most chill people you'll meet, as well as psychopaths like Sparky and DSalimander. Whereas most other scenes have been esoteric, so many of us learnt to understand software here, and some of us are even working on retail games now.

This has been one of the most amazing communities on the internet and it can never be replicated, but your admirable leadership style will inspire the folks here to pass on your wisdoms for the next 20 years. The spirit will live on someday. I have fond memories of being called a petulant child by Dennis when I was in middle school, he was absolutely right haha. We all owe you a beer Dennis, something for a sendoff party.