Category: Video

Games Video

Team Fortress 2 Beta

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Well, I have been playing it for a while now and I must say that it is quite good. In fact, even though Halo 3 is out I still find myself playing this game a lot as well. Everything about it is an improvement over the old Team Fortress, and the gameplay is very solid. All of the maps are well designed and the classes feel pretty balanced. All the game needs is some bug squashing and it is certainly ready for release.

Games Video

Halo Evolution

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With the Halo 3 launch only a few days away, it is pretty neat to take a look back at the old Halo games to see how far the series has come. IGN is running a great article about the history of the Halo series, and I absolutely recommend checking it out. Also, be sure to check out the video at the end of the post. It contains some pretty cool footage of extremely early Halo builds.

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You know you’ve arrived when the universe paints a target on your back.

“Halo Killer” has become part of the gaming industry lexicon, a pipe dream floated by every wannabe developer hoping to make their bones by taking top honors away from the most successful first person shooter of all time. It’ll be a tough climb. As a series, Halo has sold more units faster than any other game in history. Over five billion matches have been played online. Dozens of awards. Hundreds of accolades. Halo was itself a game-changer, simultaneously putting a new and untested console on the map while announcing the end of PC-shooter dominance with authority.

The epic tale it wove was pure pulp sci-fi goodness. An interstellar war, Earth on the brink of defeat, the fate of the galaxy hinging on an ancient and mysterious alien artifact and one hope for survival remaining: a lone soldier of superhuman will and ability, fighting to turn the tide in humanity’s final hour. One man, one war. And that was just for openers.

When Bungie Studios finally deployed Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 in late 2001, everyone felt the lightning hit. The thunder was still to come.

Breaking Stuff to Look Tough

University of Chicago student Alex Seropian had already published Gnop!, a humble Pong clone, and tank shooter Operation Desert Storm when he met fellow undergrad Jason Jones. Hungry for another project, they partnered in 1991 to create Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete, with no solid intentions beyond getting it done and out the door. Seven years later, as co-founders of Bungie Studios, they topped the admittedly-thin list of Mac developers with two stellar franchises to their name: real-time strategy Myth and first-person shooter Marathon.

Marathon took the relatively young FPS genre and added physics, dual-weapon wielding, networked multiplayer and, most improbably, a plot with objectives beyond “shoot everything, find door.” You were a nameless cyborg security officer in Mjolnir Mark IV armor, revived from stasis to defend the UESC Marathon from alien incursion, assisted (and hindered) by increasingly unstable AIs. Fans of open source, Jones and Seropian finished their popular trilogy by including the Forge and Anvil, level editors that put their design tools into gamers’ hands.

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Bungie soon partnered with Take-Two Interactive, publisher of controversial top-down actioner Grand Theft Auto. California-based Bungie West was coding Oni, a third-person beat-em-up with a strong Masamune Shirow flavor and definite sequel possibilities.
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Myth II was in the bag. A longtime fan of old school science fiction, Jones fired up a new project at the Chicago office: an RTS envisioned as a sci-fi variation on Myth, chronicling a desperate war on a distant planet… called Solipsis. Also the name of the game itself: “One of many.” The Crystal Palace, Hard Vacuum, Star Maker, Star Shield, and The Santa Machine all took their turn.

It went to a rough build before everyone decided moving tiny army men around felt a little dull. Solipsis shifted to third-person run-‘n-gun and picked up a new nickname: “Blam!” The planet became a Dyson Sphere – an artificial world built around a live sun – then a much cooler Dyson Ring inspired by Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels. Focus centered in on a beefed-up 3D build of a sketch by conceptual artist Shi Kai Wang, finally getting the thumbs-up with a drawing of an imposing cyborg soldier encased head to toe in pencil-gray armor.

The Master Chief set foot on Halo for the first time in 1998, and he was armed to the teeth.

Machetes, flamethrowers, mini-guns, a gravity weapon, SMGs, bazookas, pistols, rifles, and harpoon guns to deal with the odd sea monster (never built), plus a host of alien ordinance, all found its way to the ring, itself featuring a missing segment connected by scaffolding. Helicopters hovered overhead. Zodiac boats were on the beach. Local dinosaurs and rubber chicken-looking “blind wolves” could be subdued and used for cheap transport like a less-than-epic World of Warcraft mount.

Many became preludes. Most were simply cut by the time Jones shared the stage with Apple CEO Steve Jobs at MacWorld ’99 for Halo’s public debut. The crowd went crazy for it. Jobs announced Halo would release for Mac and PC same-day.

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Reps from Microsoft saw the presentation as well. Microsoft was secretly developing its first gaming system since collaborating on the Dreamcast and headhunting top-notch content to launch it. Midway surfaced as a likely acquisition, but in June of 2000, less than three months after confirming “the Xbox project” to the press, Microsoft cut a check for $50 million and Bungie cashed it. Take-Two disengaged, taking the rights to Myth and Oni with them. MacAddicts everywhere howled in betrayal. Bungie was now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Microsoft.

Halo wasn’t just another videogame anymore. It was an exclusive launch title — THE launch title — for the Xbox, and the success of Microsoft’s big black box depended on it.

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Games Video

Cinema Paradiso

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With the launch of Halo 3 only days away, Bungie has released one more VidDoc. This one, titled “Cinema Paradiso”, focuses on oft-discussed features Forge and Saved Films. This is the third of the VidDocs released so far. The first one, “Et Tu Brute“, focused on the development of the Brute characters, while the second one, “Is Quisnam Protero Damno“, focused on the development of multiplayer.

In addition to releasing this new video, Bungie also updated their site with information on films:

Saved Films: How to Use Them

Saved Films is a cool new feature implemented in Halo 3. Now, we didn’t invent it. Replays of games are as old as the hills, and PC players have been used to “demo modes” for trillions of Eons. All we did was add a coat of spitshine, make it work on a console and give the player some very nice, almost entertaining control over the feature.

What’s a Saved Film?

Basically, it’s a recording of your movements and actions which can then be replayed in the game engine, precisely as it happened first time around. However, since it’s game data in a 3D graphics engine, we are able to give the player near-full control of the camera and VCR-like controls. Other features beyond pause, fast forward and so on, include the ability to make short clips and take high resolution screenshots from your films. The films will play back at whatever resolution your system supports – from 480i to 1080p – complete with 5.1 audio, even in stills.

Is a Saved Film the same as a WMV or QuickTime?

No. Saved Films are simply game data. The advantage of course is their size. A ten minute 1080p film would be hundreds of megabytes. But a Halo 3 saved film which will play back at that resolution, is just a few Megabytes. This makes them simple and quick to transfer and share.

What do I need to make a Saved Film?

You need an Xbox 360, an Xbox 360 HDD and of course, a copy of Halo 3.

How do I make a Saved Film?

Simply play a game. Multiplayer, Campaign, or even Forge. A selection of your most recent films will appear in the Theater Lobby, accessed from the main menu,

How do I control a Saved Film?

The controls for Saved Films are located in your manual – you can see an electronic version of the manual here and here. Controls are roughly correspondent to the movement controls of Halo 3, or the controls for the Monitor mode and Forge. You have full range of 3D motion and the ability to freeze time, fast forward, slow mo and more. The right trigger controls the forward speed of the film in an analog fashion – slightly depress the RT to slo-mo, press it all the way down to Fast Forward. In Multiplayer, you can skip back a “chapter” by pressing left on the d-pad. You can hide layers of UI by continually pressing the “B” button and “Y” detaches the camera from its default “follow” mode.

To follow a different player, push up on the D-pad and cycle through co-op or multiplayer players. To get back into first person mode, click down on the right stick as if your were zooming a weapon.

How do I take a Screenshot?

Screenshots are a great feature in Saved Films. To take a screenshot, press “X” to pull up the on-screen control menu. Use the D-pad to tab to the Screenshot button (a small camera icon) and press “A” to take a shot when you have your camera angle just the way you like it. The shot is anti-aliased, the resolution increases and it is saved automatically to your HDD. Screenshots you take can be viewed at www.bungie.net if you have linked your Gamertag and are a paid Live Gold member. You can see the screenshots of other players in their File Share, by searching for their linked Gamertag on www.bungie.net or by selecting them from your Friends list while playing Halo 3.

How do I keep a Film I like?

If you think you’d like to keep a Saved Film, access it from your recent Saved Films stack in the Theater Lobby. Select the film you’d like to keep and press X. It is instantly Saved and will not simply vanish when you cycle through your film limit (which is either 25 films, or about 400MB worth, whichever comes first). To rename a film, go to the Theater Lobby, choose the type of film it is (Campaign, Multiplayer etc) and select it from the list. You should now be able to press X to edit the name and description.

How do I get my Saved Films onto YouTube and the like?

The simplest method would be to use a video capture card and appropriate software to turn the Saved Film into video data. At this time there is no software capable of doing this without video capture hardware. Machinima makers and amateur videographers already know lots of tricks and methods for doing this.

How do I share my Films with friends?

You can recommend your Saved Films to anyone on your Friends list. Simply select them from the Guide while Halo 3 is running on your 360. You will now have the option to recommend a file to them, or see their publicly facing files in their File Share. If they decide to watch your Saved Film, a “bookmark” will take them to the film, where they can choose to download to their 360 immediately. If you receive a Saved Film, you can control it just like you made it yourself – however, a Clip will pay back with the camera moves used during the recording of the clip. It is still possible to detach the camera with the “Y” button, however and watch from your chosen angle.

Films may also be watched over Live in a party, with up to 4 friends watching simultaneously – however, because of the enormous amount of data and bandwidth required, this feature is best enjoyed with very fast connections – otherwise it is possible that the Films could simply run out of bandwidth, gently depositing you back in the Theater lobby. The Host of a Saved Film watched in network viewing mode is the only one who can control “time” (pausing , FFWD etc) but other viewers may control their own camera movements throughout

Why can’t I go backwards in a Campaign Saved Film?

Because Campaign mode loads in a linear fashion – to skip back, you’d have to reload a previously played area. Which would take ages, suck and ruin the experience of watching the film in the first place. It also has to do with multiple checkpoints and the pseudo-determinism used in Combat Dialog, but we won’t frighten or bore you with that. In Multiplayer, the entire map is in memory, hence the ability to go back as well as forward.

Why can’t I make a clip in Campaign Saved Films?

The honest truth is that the feature did not function perfectly, and we didn’t want to ship something clunky. The fact that clips are infinitely more useful in Multiplayer anyway, made that decision much, much easier.

Where can I find cool Saved Films?

The Bungie community is going to create some epic films and clips. Browse the File Shares of your friends (and strangers) at www.bungie.net – read the comments and rankings of these films, and select ones you’re interested in. If you flag such a film, it will be downloaded to your 360 next time you log into Xbox Live in Halo 3.

What kind of films can I make?

The sky’s the limit. Machinima, art, drama, comedy, tutorials, guides. Go nuts!

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