You know, after playing every other notable shooter the industry has to offer, only Halo's A.I was the one that were not completely braindead(that and F.E.A.R).Though I must admit, I do not remember any other reason to like halo over any other shooter. Maybe I was biased as halo was my first real shooter I have ever played. Well, I guess I could just play CMT SPV3 Truth and Reconciliation map to find out. It can't be that...

I am the masterchief! Bow before my plasma rifle covenant scum!

Seriously though, the game does have it's own flaws after a few...thousand replays. It would be cool to have a sprint button and charge at a zealot and thrust his sword right back into his skull but that is just my opinion. Here are some of the things I want future map-makers to keep in mind when making maps.

• 1)Thou shalt not have kill boxes

Get rid of them. I would hate to get flung back into oblivion by my own warthog due to whacky Blam! engine physics. I liked Bioshock Infinite's approach to this issue. They simply teleport the player back up when they fall off and not enter a failstate and revert to checkpoint. This can also be applied to boundary limits in Halo Reach where they just kill you if you so choose stay outside the set map boundary for a few seconds.


• 2)Thou shalt allow player to carry healthpacks

Did you hear? F.E.A.R actually allows the player to carry healthpacks for later instances. What a great innovation for all games to follow! This includes all powerups and consumables too. I hated myself for passing on a good active camouflage because I was only able to find it after the firefight. You can't seriously expect me to backtrack all the way once I found an actual difficult firefight to use it against do you? Also, I guess it would be nice to be able to carry more than one weapons...I guess...


• 3)Thou shalt have shields regenerate at all times

Let's return to the idea of shields for a moment. Shields allow you to win against a firefight even with 5% health if you were able to hold on to the skin of your teeth as the covenant arsenal rip you to shreds. It ain't easy but it certainly not impossible unlike previous games where you are expected to have multiple checkpoints on your first run just in case that you do not have enough health to go through another firefight. This entire philosophy is screwed over though if you expect the player to sit in a corner and cry every time he needs full health. It turns them into cowards and they will frequently run back into cover every time instead of playing the game as it is supposed to be played...like a spartan. Wooooooooooo!!!!!!!

Allowing shields to regenerate while out of cover just makes them useful again for Halo's firefights because honestly, they are useless after the first 10 seconds when they go down and you keep getting hit my plasma from all directions. After all, the true difference between the people who love halo and the people who hated it are the spartans and the wall huggers.


• 4)Thou shalt not have difficulty settings

This is why people get pissy when someone implements difficulty settings into their games. Balancing for these things are hard as they are like balancing for whole new games for each difficulty. Bioshock was a cakewalk on Normal and 1 difficulty higher and the enemies are bullet sponges. They are not worth it and you shouldn't try to implement them. Just design the game as if it was on Heroic; the way halo was meant to be played


• 5)Thou shalt provide skull modifiers for the mentally unsound

Even though the entire idea of the previous statement is to get the game to be more balanced does not mean we cannot provide the player the ability to unbalance a game. There are just some crazy people out there that love their enemies bullet spongy and who are we to deny them this? Plus, sputnik skull and grunt confetti is awesome.


• 6)Thou shalt disable friendly fire on marines

Self-explanatory


• 7)Thou shalt not make melee damage deadly

The Masterchief is a tank. He hits hard and can take hits himself. Brutes and hunters and tough as they are should not be strong enough to K.O a guy can can survive an orbital drop from the stratosphere! Even for the zealots, the Masterchief should have the ability to smack that sword back into their pretty little face with those iron bones of his...or maybe with his rifle. As long as the player timed the melee right, The chief should receive minimal damage from the sword. If not, he dies. Simple as that.


• 8)Thou shalt not bother with smoothing groups

I did the export script for blender. The JMS file does not record smoothing groups at all! I double checked with the GBXmodel tag and it has no input for this either. Halo completely ignores smoothing groups and it is time that people stop bothering about this too. I'm surprised that Ghost or any of the guys that did the modding for halo(Kornmann in particular for open sause) did not mention this. This is really not so much as a flaw but a minor tidbit.


• 9)Thou shalt nerf grenades

Ah yes, the mini-nukes. Nerf em. They are way unbalanced.


• 10)I'm very lonely inside

Just notice how lonely halo can get. Your marines don't really talk and respond that much so I have to make my own witty dialogue along the way.

"What's that sound?"

"It's the covenant phantom. It must have docked while we were in those tunnels."

"Nice, I wonder if the driver is still inside? It would be totally awesome if I get to drive that thing."

"Oh sure you can. They usually leave the keys in the ignition don't they?"

Minutes later...

"Hop on everybody!"

"You know, I was kidding when I said that..."

Halo needs more dialogue at the side. It already has witty humour in the writing but it just needs more passive lines like these be spoken. It's very lonely after every firefight and my little A.I friend doesn't talk to me all that much.

Well that took a while. So what do you guys think?
-Zekilk
Edited by cyboryxmen on Jun 5, 2013 at 09:56 AM

Well..? Half of these 'commandments are redundant. It's a good thing the New Testament stopped using em. Please, never encourage the HCE community to make more voices for marines. I've had enough 'shy' voice actors who whisper into their PC microphones so their parents can't hear em. If you want good voice actors, check YouTube and look at the smaller celebrities. Joseph Christ, Druox Shredder, something like that. Why? Because you know it wouldn't be their first time recording and they aren't shy in the slightest. Also, smaller youtube celebs are more attentive than the larger ones. I've had fullfledged conversations with Dexter Manning and a few talks about future map releases with THFE.

Ah, new person! Everything is so different now. I don't see much of anyone from my batch that I know of other than Tiel and a few others. Ran out of ideas with that last one there. What do you think of the current health system though? I actually turned the shields indicator off(and the entire hud too actually) because it kept signalling me to retreat which usually caused me to die. I can see where everyone was going with hating on Halo's shields. It's way more fun to play it like Doom and not be persuaded to hide under a rock for a few seconds.
-Zekilk

Edit: Also, try not to quote the entire post. It is natural to assume that you are referring to OP by default anyway. Now if you excuse me, I think I am am going to go have another round of Halo.
Edited by cyboryxmen on Jun 5, 2013 at 10:53 AM

You make it sound like it's hard to record dialog :/
For marines, you just yell and scream lines you'd say if you're a marine in combat. Not hard. Anyone can do it after at least a week of practicing to stifle their shyness.

Actually, as Steve Downes described it, you don't need a rich voice to do voice acting. It's more about the second half of the name: "acting". You have to feel as though you are in the scenario you are voicing to produce the best, most believable results.

2 is available in Takedown
5 is redundant and shouldn't be a commandment
6. Why?
8. Smoothing groups do work. I've made my map before without them and once I get ingame I could immediately tell I forgot to add them.
9. Halo without grenades. Imagine that
10. I'll just go on everybodys current topic for Voice Acting. Some people just are not good voice actors, but modding Halo is free. You don't get a profit. A lot of "youtube celebs" won't just do voice actings because you asked. Sure, smaller celebs will talk to you but ask and see if you ever get anything back. A lot of good people are just hard to find in this community

A lot of these are pretty stupid actually.

A majority of YouTube celebrities and entertainers wouldn't give you the time of day. However, a good few of them appreciate things like this and would strongly consider helping you. It's a nice change of scenery from 'I'm your biggest fan' or 'Can we make a machinima together'.

I have a few shotgun mics, but my old-â's preamp broke when I decided to use some dumb omnimic on it instead.. :/

That d'âm piece of crap..

11. If ever you're working with an invincile AI for a quarter of an level. His name is always Jake ...From StateFarm

I've never asked this,

But if you're waffles and I'm OrangeJuice, where is Butter and Eggs?

Play halo's what? addons?
I'm surprised Captain Obvious hasn't logged on to post anything, he's usually around for every spamming spree that ends up happening..

And how come nobody ever goes back to rescue Dustin Echoes?!

Even bungie knows who Dustin Echoes is..

false. you just gotta know where to look. unlike TM, queue mad posts

it's not that I hate Lumoria's VA compared to other HCE mods; it's all those other mods of custom engines or older games that have far superior VA than something that had, what, 3 years to develop? the engine doesn't matter; TM had no excuse for the poor job they did when plenty of potential rests outside of halo CE, but they wouldn't know that.

TM made maps

your timing and posts are pure gold.

lololololotmsuckslumoriasucks0/10wouldnotplay

orlymate

If your such an expert on the subject manner, please point us in the right direction.

Thanks,
Higuy

TM, everybody. can't deal with criticism so they box themselves in and go to their happy place, as per usual.

you're 2011 m8.
my lurking began in 2010

It was a simple question, are you willing to help contribute and not only help give useful information to me but others that might be intrested as well? I'm quite curious as to what places you may go for voice actors.

oh, please. you couldn't be any less interested in knowing; you only care about shooting all criticism down as "hate", and "all haters should go make their own maps and see how good it is". you did this before, and you haven't changed a bit.

Why would I take criticism? My maps are 10/10's that you just can't enjoy because you don't understand fun

In no way shape or form was anything of Lumoria being criticised at the moment and I was asking becuase it could be useful for future projects. If you are not willing to share your information that is perfectly acceptable and Ill go back so I don't waste any more of your time. Have a nice night!

gift that keeps on giving

for one thing, VAs aren't just limited to the internet; there are plenty of viable people at my school, and there's even a recording booth in the animation classroom. second, asking around for VAs isn't just "I have a project VA plz". you can also mention that it can affect their resume in a positive way, and that it would give them a form of reputation for future reference. honestly, your condescending/sarcastic attitude just digs you deeper into your box of "dreams and wonders". go back to deviantart, where you would be welcome more than here.
Edited by master noob on Jun 5, 2013 at 08:54 PM

Voice acting depends on two main factors.

A- The quality of the sound recording software, self explanatory

B- the willingness of the person behind it to give the acting their all and act as if they are actually living in the moment they are acting out

No one is born without the ability to act, because the ability to act is based on your ability to react (react to situations realistically, that is), and everyone reacts to everything everyday.

You want good voice actors, BE the good voice actor. The only factor is 80 bucks and the willingness to practice and rehearse.

surely thousands of people within a school/neighborhood can't all have the same reception, unless you ask in the worst possible way.

Why should we manually shred the model into pieces when we can let halo do itself with smoothing groups? Just because they aren't smoothing groups ingame, it doesnt mean they do nothing. Import any GBX, wield by 0.0001, you'll see the difference those smoothing groups made. Halo shreds the mesh apart into separate pieces based on the smoothing groups. There is no way I would ever want to have to do that manually.

You're astounded over that? This guy has 20 views on his video. That's more views than my entire channel has! http://www.youtube.com/user/Epicwin912
Oh wait.. No it isn't.

never said they did, the uniqueness of us all is what gives us the ability to act, if we all reacted the same there would be no need to have more than one actor
Edited by Delicon20 on Jun 5, 2013 at 09:30 PM

Wait...what was the point of linking your channel...or this post...or even this entire 2nd page

I disagree with almost everything in OP. Bad ideas.

Channel Promotion, I'd imagine