The latest news about the Halo series of games from Microsoft
From Brian Ekberg and submitted by Kalamari:
Halo fans and VIP members rejoice… and check your Forza 4 inbox! Our latest community VIP car will be rolling in to your inbox soon, featuring everyone’s favorite Spartan in a sweet Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary Edition livery. A special shout-out to Forza community member KCTigerFan, who contributed to the painting and design of this car. Enjoy it!
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From SuperFastHD and submitted by Ben:
Helljumper is a fan-made web series based on Microsoft’s acclaimed video game franchise, Halo. Adapted from the short story, “Dirt,” by Tobias S. Buckell, it tells the story of a few human ODSTs as they fight through 27 years of brutal war with the Covenant. They evolve from a rag tag group of recruits in the UNSC to being cold battle hardened veterans that are shadows of their former selves.
In episode one, the Rookie drops onto New Jerusalem. He finds lone ODST, Gage Yevgenny, dying near a Pelican crash site. Refusing to be rescued, Gage begins to tell the young Rookie about how he got here and to not make the same mistakes he did.
HRSotD (short for Halo: Reach Screenshot of the Day) is a daily feature dedicated to the wonders of Halo: Reach screenshots and the artists that capture these amazing images. A variety of shots—all of which are completely unaltered and captured in Halo: Reach’s theater mode—are included for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy the varied selection of images, and maybe even find inspiration to make your own!
Author: chris101b
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Hey everyone, welcome to the 16th episode of our weekly series: Reach Customz. This week we feature a, uh… rather unique minigame in which the objective is to kill yourself. This was created by seattlesavage.
If you want the most fun, insane and hectic Halo: Reach custom games around, then look no further. Don't forget to rate the video so we know what kind of custom games you like, and subscribe if you want to keep up-to-date with Reach Customz, airing every Friday!
Every Monday, we feature a community member who does one or more of the following things: routinely goes above and beyond for their fellow forum members, is a positive and active member of the community, and/or sends me mass amounts of cat pictures. This week our Community Member of the Week is The Little Moa. Read about his Halo preferences below, then hit his profile to learn why he loves Reach so much, which may or may not have something to do with everybody’s favorite extra-terrestrial flightless bird….
Gamertag: The Little Moa.
Previous or current clan/community: Just friends and Waypoint’s community.
Halo games you are currently playing: Halo 3: ODST, Reach and Anniversary.
Favorite map, game type and playlist: Powerhouse, Zero Bloom Slayer, and Anniversary Classic.
Least favorite map, game type and playlist: Uncaged, Invasion, and Team Snipers.
Halo weapon specialty/preference: Ordnance.
Halo playing style: Offense.
Anything else we should know? I have been an active Halo player since 2006 when I bought Halo PC. I was clueless to any sort of storyline and tended to just hit up Sidewinder in a local game and drive around in a Ghost for a while until I was bored. I plan on being active on Waypoint as long as Halo lives, which, of course, after 10 years, is still going strong!
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From CarnageA51:
I just finished up my 343 Industries and Halo-themed Spartan Rube Goldberg. This video is dedicated to 343 Industries for their hard work on Halo: CEA, as well as what they are doing for Halo 4 and the continuation of the Halo franchise. I hope you enjoy this video!
If you love the art of combining elements of print comic books and animation, you’ll be excited to hear that four of our original motion comic series are now available—in all their high-definition glory, none the less—for purchase on the Zune Video Marketplace! Here are the relevant details, along with some easy-to-click links, for those of you intrigued by the convenience this offers both you and your favorite technological devices.
Prices, in Microsoft Points
• Midnight in the Heart of Midlothian – 4 episodes, 280 points for a season pass, 80 points per individual episode
• The Return – 4 episodes, 280 points for a season pass, 80 points per individual episode
• Headhunters – 3 episodes, 200 points for a season pass, 80 points per individual episode
• The Mona Lisa – 11 episodes, 700 points for a season pass, 80 points per individual episode
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From petetheduck and submitted by Der Flatulator6:
Last Forger Standing is a multi-week Forge competition following a TV reality show elimination format. These are real contestants in a real contest with a real prize for the winner: 4,000 Microsoft Points!
This week’s challenge is turning out to be a real, well, challenge! Some of us (mainly me) feel incredibly lucky to get just one multikill a game, but in order to get the large bundle of credits at the end of this particular rainbow, you’ve got to earn a cool two hundred of them over the course of the week. So grab your controller and get to getting, because time is running out!
MULTIPLICATIVE – 25,000cR
Earn 200 Multikills in Multiplayer Matchmaking this week.
Carnage loves company! Don’t forget to stop by your friendly neighborhood forum to gather your party:
Weekly Challenge Thread
Weekends and webcomics go hand in hand, and there’s no better day to celebrate that relaxing ritual than on Sunday. Today’s
Halo-themed Weekend Webcomic, which will undoubtedly quack you up, is brought to you by pete_the_duck. Enjoy this rather wormy strip, and if you have a comic you’d like to submit for possible future inclusion, send it to bsangel[at]halowaypoint.com!
You’re a busy person, and we have a thing for releasing as much Halo-related content our multi-fingered appendages can handle. That means—assuming you aren’t a speed reading super-soldier—you probably missed a few stories along the way. Not only do we forgive you, but we’ll also happily provide a convenient weekly wrap-up of absolutely everything we covered during the last seven days. Don’t worry about saying thank you. We’d rather you spend that time soaking in the goodness that is this entertaining collection of articles. Off you go!
News
The Halo Bulletin: 1.25.12
Jada Toys Introduces Halo Die-cast Collectibles
Office of Halo Intelligence: Part 2
Reach Weekly Challenge – 1.23.12
Videos
Serenity – A Halo Music Video
Time’s Trial 2 and Pyramime – A Halo: Reach Racetrack Review
Halo: Reach Tricks – Mini Spartan
Closure – A Halo 3 Campaign Trick Jumping Montage
Last Forger Standing – A Community Forge Competition Show
Blues Brothers – A Halo 2/Halo 3/Halo: Reach Sticktage
Robotic Arm FTW – A Halo: Reach Stop Motion
Reach Customz: Helms Deep
Death Battle – Master Chief vs. Doomguy
Synister – A Halo: Reach Montage
Tyrant’s Halo 3 Legendary Walkthrough – Crow’s Nest
Things to do Halo: Reach – RBI Halo
Fails of the Weak 71
Fun Stuff
Weekend Webcomic: A Fistful of Arrows p.5
Headcase Medal
Halo IRL: A Revved-up Spartan-II Program
Manly Mister Chief – Fan Art
Friday Caption Fun 37
How to Make Machinima, Part 4 – by CruelLEGACEY
Community Happenings
The Cleaning Crew’s 2v2 Tournament Winners
Community Member of the Week: Plunderfull
Test Night with a Cartographer
Sign-ups Now Open for GrifballHub’s Good Games League
Forum Downtime
Halo: Reach Screenshots
Pac-Man vs. Spartan – Freakin’ Weird
Alien – Fun with Forge
Sniper Addiction – Simply Amazing
Drone – Fun with Forge
World of the Inverse – Freakin’ Weird
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From Rooster Teeth:
Jack and Geoff bring forth a wonderful bounty of failure in Halo: Reach. Hold hands with them as they giggle their way through this new batch!
HRSotD (short for Halo: Reach Screenshot of the Day) is a daily feature dedicated to the wonders of Halo: Reach screenshots and the artists that capture these amazing images. A variety of shots—all of which are completely unaltered and captured in Halo: Reach’s theater mode—are included for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy the varied selection of images, and maybe even find inspiration to make your own!
Author: sheesh1991
From CruelLEGACEY:
If you remember part two of my guide, I had already created animatic videos using storyboard sketches and a rough cut of the recorded dialog. Using those animatics as a guide, I edit my newly recorded video files together into a rough cut of the scene.
Because of all the time I spent storyboarding each scene, I already have a very good idea of how to cut every scene together. This means I end up with far less wasted footage. For example, while making Playtime Season 1, I only ended up using about half of the footage I shot. For Season 2, I used all but two of the 150 clips I filmed. On top of that, having the dialog pre-recorded means that I already have a sense of the rhythm and timing of each scene. All of this adds up to a relatively smooth and fast initial editing process.
A couple weeks ago, I posted this clip of one of my animatic sequences:
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Now, here’s the same scene after filming. You’ll notice a few differences in the timing of the different camera angles, but overall it is very similar to the original storyboard.
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Once I have a rough cut of the scene put together, I’ll watch it start-to-finish a few times to make sure I’m happy with the sequence of the different shots and camera angles. I might move a few minor things around and trim some time off a few shots. Generally speaking, my first cut of a scene is what I call a “long cut,” meaning that some of the shots are a little longer than they’ll end up being in the finished version. This early in the editing process, it can sometimes be difficult to know for sure if I’ve got the timing of every single cut just right. If I ever think to myself maybe I should cut away from that shot a little sooner, I leave it as it is. It will be far easier for me to cut a few seconds of footage out later than it would be to add it back in if I change my mind.
From here, it’s a matter of repeating the process for every single scene in your machinima. In my case, once I have a rough cut of every scene, I slap them all together into one, giant video. This is another way in which Playtime Season 2 differs from Season 1. The first season of Playtime was made as four self-contained episodes. Season 2 was made as one continuous video. It wasn’t until after I completed the season that I split it up into individual episodes.
Now that I’ve put all the different scenes together into a single video, I have a complete rough version of the entire season! The end is close…. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel…. almost.
The final major step is the audio editing and music, but there is one more thing to do before I get to that. I take my complete Season 2 rough cut, and watch the heck out of it. I watch it over and over and over again, looking at the flow of each scene and the progression of the story over the entire season. I’ll make lots of little cuts; a half-second off the end of a shot here, a couple seconds off the beginning of a shot there, etc.
I’ll also look for problems with continuity or anything else that needs fixing. This is my last chance to make any substantial changes to my machinima. Once I move on to the final audio editing, I’ll be committed to what I’ve got. I’ll be able to cut little pieces out, but I won’t be able to add things or move anything around in any substantial way.
It just so happens that I did find a logistical problem with the continuity of the Playtime Season 2. Nothing major, but enough of a problem to annoy me. Luckily, catching the problem at this stage made it fairly simple to fix. A few simple cuts, and the issue was solved!
We’re in the home stretch now. Next week, I’ll cover the process of recording the music and mixing the final audio. See you then!
– CruelLEGACEY
www.cruellegaceyproductions.com
www.playtimeshow.com
Last week, for our Friday Caption Fun festivities, you provided quips for an image featuring a potentially painful situation. Here are the top captions you left for that particular image!
“Ouch! Charlie bit me!” –Gamerguy378
“Ze top of your head… it is so POINTY!” –ZZoMBiE13
“This is the last time I volunteer to feed the Elites.” –Link1201
“Sanghieli Thul, not understanding what a high five is, thought that Spartan Tim was offering his hand to eat. In fact,
such social misunderstandings are what initially cause the Human-Covenant war.” –ThreeSixXero
“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you…. especially when it’s a Spartan that’s feeding you.” –Sir Kamikaze666
“This is why you don’t ask an Elite to pull your finger.” –Master Al64
“Got your…. wait, where is your nose?”” –Xerzaph
“They called him… the Elite Whisperer.” –Coux73
“And that’s how Rtas ‘Vadum lost his mandible.” –W1ltz
Now that we’ve wrapped up that picture, let’s start a new one. Up for your captioning pleasure this week is a picture featuring one of Halo 3’s most deadly weapons. Soak in the screenshot, then leave your witty and relevant quip in a comment. Off you go!
Author: HI IM CAPS LOCK
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From Rooster Teeth:
Geoff, Jack, Michael and Ray hit the mound to test out a little baseball in Blood Gulch. Hey Batta Batta Batta… BLAM!
Office of Halo Intelligence, or OHI for short, is a semi-regular diary-type feature brought to you by various members of the Halo 4 development team. Kiki Wolfkill, Executive Producer of Halo 4, kindly agreed to write the second entry. We hope you enjoy an inside look at the making of our next title!
From the 1.25.12 edition of the Halo Bulletin:
Sweet! I feel honored to get to contribute a little blurb to this week’s Bulletin. I’ll do my best to try to keep you entertained for at least 15 seconds with all sorts of savory and unsavory details about the goings-on here on the Halo 4 team. In all seriousness, this team is doing some extraordinary work, and I look forward to being able to share more of their heroic deeds periodically over the next few months.
So, what the hell are we up to? Well, as even Kotaku noticed, Seattle was hit with a Snowpocalypse of proportions unseen since, wait for it…. 2011. Some 343-ers were stranded at home, racking up gamerscore and ruining their futures with hours of TV viewing (my marathons of choice: Downton Abbey and Spartacus). Now we’re back and man, catch-up is a b****.
We’ve had an action-packed week of internal mission reviews, a deep-dive with the Marketing and PR teams, and a quick little exec review thrown in for good measure. It may sound like a lot of reviews and that’s because it is…. we are in full execution mode. There are hundreds of moving parts across 343 and Microsoft Studios that need to be aligned and coordinated—now is the time to get all our ducks in a row. While it’s been a little hectic making up for last week’s snow days and going through these reviews, it’s always invigorating to be able to get the game in front of folks who aren’t staring at it every minute of every day. I do look forward to getting back to our normal routine of game-building, playtesting, and general creative rabble-rousing. More on this later.
Oh—did I mention that my favorite hour this week was our music review? Magic….
Kiki
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From MythicTyrant:
Welcome to the Tyrant’s Halo 3 Legendary Walkthrough! Each week I’ll be taking you on a detailed tour of Halo 3 on solo Legendary with in depth, narrated video guides brought to you in high definition. Each week a celebrity from the Halo community will be guest hosting with me in addition to giving away awesome avatar prizes at the end of each episode.
Be sure to follow me on Twitter for a chance to win free XBL avatar prizes each week! The day of release, I will be asking ONE question regarding the released episode. The first person to get it right will receive a 343 Industries t-shirt avatar code: one male & one female.
The Halo Waypoint forums are currently down for maintenance. Once we’re done clearing out all the cobwebs, you’ll be able to once again satisfy your craving for thought-provoking, in-depth Halo discussion.
In the meantime, playing some Halo may help pass the time. Post your gamertag in a comment if you’re looking to fill your online party!
UPDATE: Forums are back up. Have at it!
HRSotD (short for Halo: Reach Screenshot of the Day) is a daily feature dedicated to the wonders of Halo: Reach screenshots and the artists that capture these amazing images. A variety of shots—all of which are completely unaltered and captured in Halo: Reach’s theater mode—are included for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy the varied selection of images, and maybe even find inspiration to make your own!
Author: HEY iM GREEN