Now before you get all giddy thinking that this is the machinima I've been planning for this map for so long- don't. I was just checking out Bungie's new feature called render-to-video on their website which allows one to render a saved game film file into a video file on their computer if they have a subsricption to Bungie Pro. Well, I do happen to have a subscription to Pro so I thought I'd expirement and see what happens. As it turned out I had 5 min of render time and my walkthrough for Mind Snare just happens to be exactly 5 min, and I just happen to not have a YouTube walkthrough for Mind Snare yet- coincidence or a sign from the Gods? So I used my mintues to make the easy video I've ever made in my life. There is no music and hardly any editing but hey it's a walkthrough and it serves it's purpose. Enjoy.
Mind Snare Walkthrough
(PS- This does not necessarily mean that I will no longer be making the Mind Snare machinima, but it doesn't mean that I will either. Just think of it as a little bonus and we'll see what happens).
Monday, May 25, 2009
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Necrubis and Paradox Forgers
Okay so first off, if you haven't noticed already, I've posted a new link under affliates to "Paradox Forgers" Blog, which was created by Gamer720 and myself as a website for the Halo 3 puzzle community. There we will post the best puzzle maps (YEE MAN IZ BAK, BuddhaCrane, and T3CHH800 have all joined), and keep viewers informed of anything of interest going on in the puzzle community. And yes, this was all inspired and revolves around that puzzle map we're all working on together (which there has been talk about creating a part two, but nothing official yet..)
Check out Paradox Forgers Here
In other news, I've got a real nice treat for you guys. I've finished Necrubis and it turned out awesome! The gameplay and asthetics came out as best as I had hoped and I have to say that it is my personal favourite out of al the infection maps I've built so far! So without further ado here it is:
Necrubis - City of the Dead
Necr comes from the Greek word "Necro" which means dead.
Ubis is derived from the latin word "Urbis" meaning city.
The City of the Dead- Necrubis was once a thriving, well-liked underground city known for its beautiful architecture and rich structures of gold and stone. Complete with a mall, tower, gas station, weapons shop, convience store and residential area, Necrubis was fastly becoming popular. The city was built underground to protect it's inhabitants from the dual suns that scorch the planet's surface above, but it's location led to it's downfall as the local water supply became contaminated with an infectuos virus which rendered it's victims with insanity and bloodlust. Quickly the city became abandoned as the outbreak of the the virus overan the citizens with fear. You are part of the group that got left behind- will you beable to survive until evac arrives for you, will you beable to kill off all the infected completely, or will you perish in the effort?
Horror flick fans, your ultimate map has arrived. Much of my inspiration for this urban-themed map came from the greatest zombie movies out there- "Dawn of the Dead" (2004 version), and "28 Days Later". I recreated the mall where they take refuge in "Dawn of the Dead" and also recreated the tower from 28 Days Later where the survivors meet the father and daughter and there's a barricade of shopping carts at the bottom of the staircase.
Another great and unique feature about this map is that almost all the weapons are located in the weapons shop.
Now before you think "Oh great this map is just going to be a major campfest with everbody in the armory", this layout actually prevents camping. How? Well, first off, the weapons shop is a horrible place to camp- the zombies can easily enter it through multiple ways. The best places to make your stand will probably be in the mall or the tower. So what does this mean? It means that you and your friends will have to go on "Ammo Runs" where a group or you will have to run down the street, covering eachother's backs to get to the weapons shop and grab some quality weapons.
The "Ammo Run"
The only other weapons on the map are an assualt rifle and a magnum located in the mall's security room, and those won't help much. There is some useful equipment in the mall and tower such as radar jammers, flares, and deployable covers but they can only delay your doom.
There are two ways you can win as a human- you can try and wait out the time limit or you can commit a zombie genocide by killing as many zombies as you can possibly handle.
In the "Pandemic" gametype the zombies have a limited amount of lives (8) but the amount is relatively high, so you'll have to kill a LOT of zombies to win. Your best bet would be to try and kill of the infection before it spread too much, but that's hard to do, and with each human the zombies infect, you'll have to kill 7 more... Also there is no waypoint over the last man's head but instead the alpha zombies have an enhanced 10m radar, so they'll have to work together and scour the map, and when they get close they'll beable to "sniff" him out. The zombies aren't pushovers either, they may not have shields, but they have a decent damage resistance so it'll take multiple body shots to take them down, but true to the movies, a well-placed headshot, even with the magnum, will stop them in their tracks.
A special thanks goes out to all those who helped me playtest the map and gametype (way too many names to mention). Thanks to you guys we managed to hone the gameplay to perfection. The gameplay is very fair for both sides, and games usually end up being extremely exciting where it gets down to the last man within the final 30 seconds of the game. Both the humans and the zombies have an equal chance of winning.
I also used many of the default Sandbox items to forge this map, and while it was much more work for me to interlock them, the result is that I finished the map a good ways under the object limit and so games with large amounts of people don't have problems with lag (for those that don't know the default items take up much less memory than those spawned).
In the final playtest I had a full party of 16 people play this map for 2 hours straight, and after every game people were still asking to play it again.
I also went through the trouble of preparing this map for EVERY gametype! The only problem is that all the weapons will still spawn in the armory so you may prefer to change the gametype so that no weapons spawn on the map. But I will say that we played some epic games of multiflag, king of the hill, and oddball on this map.
There are tons of cool and interesting places so the gameplay is a unique experience every time.
Forging 101:
>Interlocking
>Geomerging
>Spawn timed events
Alright, enough babble, here are the pictures:
Overview of the city
Residential area, and Weapons Shop
The 28 Days Later Tower
The Dawn of The Dead Mall (After 60 seconds the front windows and entrance get boarded up and the only way in is through the roof)
The Zombie House (after 30 seconds a block will spawn and the teleporters will block allowing the zombies to escape)
The Gas Station (After 3 minutes a warthog will spawn in the garage)
The front counter and toilet stalls inside the Gas Station
The Convience Store located at the street intersection
Red Street
Blue Street
Action Pictures
The Warthog may allow you to survive for a decent amount of time, but only if you have a gunner...
The indoor balcony of the Gold Complex
Rooftop Confrontation
It is possible to get onto every single rooftop by more ways than one
The zombies have infiltrated the tower!
Download Necrubis Here
Download Pandemic Here
Enjoy, and stay tuned for the preview video of the puzzle map and the machinima of the above map!
-Mander
Check out Paradox Forgers Here
In other news, I've got a real nice treat for you guys. I've finished Necrubis and it turned out awesome! The gameplay and asthetics came out as best as I had hoped and I have to say that it is my personal favourite out of al the infection maps I've built so far! So without further ado here it is:
Necrubis - City of the Dead
Necr comes from the Greek word "Necro" which means dead.
Ubis is derived from the latin word "Urbis" meaning city.
The City of the Dead- Necrubis was once a thriving, well-liked underground city known for its beautiful architecture and rich structures of gold and stone. Complete with a mall, tower, gas station, weapons shop, convience store and residential area, Necrubis was fastly becoming popular. The city was built underground to protect it's inhabitants from the dual suns that scorch the planet's surface above, but it's location led to it's downfall as the local water supply became contaminated with an infectuos virus which rendered it's victims with insanity and bloodlust. Quickly the city became abandoned as the outbreak of the the virus overan the citizens with fear. You are part of the group that got left behind- will you beable to survive until evac arrives for you, will you beable to kill off all the infected completely, or will you perish in the effort?
Horror flick fans, your ultimate map has arrived. Much of my inspiration for this urban-themed map came from the greatest zombie movies out there- "Dawn of the Dead" (2004 version), and "28 Days Later". I recreated the mall where they take refuge in "Dawn of the Dead" and also recreated the tower from 28 Days Later where the survivors meet the father and daughter and there's a barricade of shopping carts at the bottom of the staircase.
Another great and unique feature about this map is that almost all the weapons are located in the weapons shop.
Now before you think "Oh great this map is just going to be a major campfest with everbody in the armory", this layout actually prevents camping. How? Well, first off, the weapons shop is a horrible place to camp- the zombies can easily enter it through multiple ways. The best places to make your stand will probably be in the mall or the tower. So what does this mean? It means that you and your friends will have to go on "Ammo Runs" where a group or you will have to run down the street, covering eachother's backs to get to the weapons shop and grab some quality weapons.
The "Ammo Run"
The only other weapons on the map are an assualt rifle and a magnum located in the mall's security room, and those won't help much. There is some useful equipment in the mall and tower such as radar jammers, flares, and deployable covers but they can only delay your doom.
There are two ways you can win as a human- you can try and wait out the time limit or you can commit a zombie genocide by killing as many zombies as you can possibly handle.
In the "Pandemic" gametype the zombies have a limited amount of lives (8) but the amount is relatively high, so you'll have to kill a LOT of zombies to win. Your best bet would be to try and kill of the infection before it spread too much, but that's hard to do, and with each human the zombies infect, you'll have to kill 7 more... Also there is no waypoint over the last man's head but instead the alpha zombies have an enhanced 10m radar, so they'll have to work together and scour the map, and when they get close they'll beable to "sniff" him out. The zombies aren't pushovers either, they may not have shields, but they have a decent damage resistance so it'll take multiple body shots to take them down, but true to the movies, a well-placed headshot, even with the magnum, will stop them in their tracks.
A special thanks goes out to all those who helped me playtest the map and gametype (way too many names to mention). Thanks to you guys we managed to hone the gameplay to perfection. The gameplay is very fair for both sides, and games usually end up being extremely exciting where it gets down to the last man within the final 30 seconds of the game. Both the humans and the zombies have an equal chance of winning.
I also used many of the default Sandbox items to forge this map, and while it was much more work for me to interlock them, the result is that I finished the map a good ways under the object limit and so games with large amounts of people don't have problems with lag (for those that don't know the default items take up much less memory than those spawned).
In the final playtest I had a full party of 16 people play this map for 2 hours straight, and after every game people were still asking to play it again.
I also went through the trouble of preparing this map for EVERY gametype! The only problem is that all the weapons will still spawn in the armory so you may prefer to change the gametype so that no weapons spawn on the map. But I will say that we played some epic games of multiflag, king of the hill, and oddball on this map.
There are tons of cool and interesting places so the gameplay is a unique experience every time.
Forging 101:
>Interlocking
>Geomerging
>Spawn timed events
Alright, enough babble, here are the pictures:
Overview of the city
Residential area, and Weapons Shop
The 28 Days Later Tower
The Dawn of The Dead Mall (After 60 seconds the front windows and entrance get boarded up and the only way in is through the roof)
The Zombie House (after 30 seconds a block will spawn and the teleporters will block allowing the zombies to escape)
The Gas Station (After 3 minutes a warthog will spawn in the garage)
The front counter and toilet stalls inside the Gas Station
The Convience Store located at the street intersection
Red Street
Blue Street
Action Pictures
The Warthog may allow you to survive for a decent amount of time, but only if you have a gunner...
The indoor balcony of the Gold Complex
Rooftop Confrontation
It is possible to get onto every single rooftop by more ways than one
The zombies have infiltrated the tower!
Download Necrubis Here
Download Pandemic Here
Enjoy, and stay tuned for the preview video of the puzzle map and the machinima of the above map!
-Mander
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Dead Space Video
Alright the Dead Space video is done and up on YouTube. Here's the link:
Dead Space Video
Be sure to watch it in High Quality for the best picture. And don't worry, you're not supposed to understand the music lyrics- its German. Ramstein kicks ass.
My infection map is nearing completion so keep an eye out for it as I'll probably post it up here within a week or less. The map is called "Necrubis" meaning "City of the Dead" through a combination of Greek and Latin, a common mix for ancient names. "Necr" coming from the Greek word "Necro" meaning dead, and "ubis" derived from the latin word "urbis" meaning city. I've completed the mall and the tower and just have to finish the rest of the buildings and organize the spawns. Then it'll be playtested like hell before I put it up on my fileshare and post it to Forgehub. After Necrubis, the next thing you'll likely see will be my preview video for the puzzle map.
Stay tuned and enjoy!
-Mander
Dead Space Video
Be sure to watch it in High Quality for the best picture. And don't worry, you're not supposed to understand the music lyrics- its German. Ramstein kicks ass.
My infection map is nearing completion so keep an eye out for it as I'll probably post it up here within a week or less. The map is called "Necrubis" meaning "City of the Dead" through a combination of Greek and Latin, a common mix for ancient names. "Necr" coming from the Greek word "Necro" meaning dead, and "ubis" derived from the latin word "urbis" meaning city. I've completed the mall and the tower and just have to finish the rest of the buildings and organize the spawns. Then it'll be playtested like hell before I put it up on my fileshare and post it to Forgehub. After Necrubis, the next thing you'll likely see will be my preview video for the puzzle map.
Stay tuned and enjoy!
-Mander
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Everything interesting
Okay so here's everything that's happening these days. I know I was supposed to get the Dead Space video up but I've been having troubles picking a good song for it that won't get taken down for copyright issues. Don't worry though because I've been working on other treats for you and the Dead Space video will be made soon.
The Puzzle Update: Yes, I'm aware that one of the most interesting topics being discussed on my blog right now is the Puzzle Map being made by all the best puzzle makers and it's progress. Well, I'm done my section and I've handed it off to T3CHH800 to build the hub of the map and his challenges, then it'll go to BuddhaCrane, then to Gamer720, then to The Flippy One, then to jmen77, and finally WickedSOADMAN. T3CHH should be almost done his section by now, so progress is being made.
To those of you who are asking about the preview video of the map, here's what's happening with it: I'll make it after my Dead Space video, and I'm hoping to do it once Buddha is done his section so I'll have a decent amount of rooms to do cameos on. The problem is that I have people pushing me to do it earlier as Buddha's section probably won't be done for 2 weeks, and I've also had a request from Gamer720 not to do it until his section of the map is done. Any way you cut it- it still comes down to the fact that I'll do it when I think the time is right. Even if your section doesn't get a cameo in the preview video, you'll still get credit and your section will still be shown in the walkthrough video after the map is released.
BTW I have the preview video mapped out in my head and I'm telling you now that it's going to be SICK. Besides, it would be hard to do a bad video on this map as it's turning out so well.
Anyways in other news, I've been working on a new infection map and let's just say that this'll be my best chance of getting featured on Forgehub yet. I don't want to say too much about it, but I'll let you know that it's urban themed and inspired by the two best zombie movies "Dawn of the Dead" (2004 version) and "28 Days Later". It's about half done and it's definately got some of my best forging and ideas yet. I will also make a machinima-like video for this map, which will come out sometime after the preview video. This video will also make use out of YouTube's new annotations feature, which allows the viewer to choose what happens.
I also reorganized my fileshare so that it's much easier to find the files you want, while keeping all the downloads and ratings they've recieved. It wasn't easy to do, but it was worth the effort and now I won't have to do it again.
This brings me to my next point which is that after I upload my new infection map to my fileshare along with the new puzzle map when it's complete and their respectful gametypes, I will only have room for two more maps (maybe three if I squeeze). And after all, Halo 3 is beginning to run near the end of it's rope. After ODST comes out in the fall, Bungie won't be making anymore add-ons for Halo 3, and I have to admit that they've milked it for all it's worth. Therefore I will be making no more than three more maps on Halo 3, by which time my fileshare will be stock-full of goodies for you. I will, however, continue to make videos and many may still be made in Halo 3.
So there you have it, all the important events that are unwinding with my Xbox Live account. I think I mentioned everything I wanted to. I suppose you may be wondering what the final two maps I'll be making are. Maybe I'll leave that for another time. *cough* Infection Colliseum and Mind Crypt *cough* I should grab some Halls.
Catch ya on the other side,
-Mander
The Puzzle Update: Yes, I'm aware that one of the most interesting topics being discussed on my blog right now is the Puzzle Map being made by all the best puzzle makers and it's progress. Well, I'm done my section and I've handed it off to T3CHH800 to build the hub of the map and his challenges, then it'll go to BuddhaCrane, then to Gamer720, then to The Flippy One, then to jmen77, and finally WickedSOADMAN. T3CHH should be almost done his section by now, so progress is being made.
To those of you who are asking about the preview video of the map, here's what's happening with it: I'll make it after my Dead Space video, and I'm hoping to do it once Buddha is done his section so I'll have a decent amount of rooms to do cameos on. The problem is that I have people pushing me to do it earlier as Buddha's section probably won't be done for 2 weeks, and I've also had a request from Gamer720 not to do it until his section of the map is done. Any way you cut it- it still comes down to the fact that I'll do it when I think the time is right. Even if your section doesn't get a cameo in the preview video, you'll still get credit and your section will still be shown in the walkthrough video after the map is released.
BTW I have the preview video mapped out in my head and I'm telling you now that it's going to be SICK. Besides, it would be hard to do a bad video on this map as it's turning out so well.
Anyways in other news, I've been working on a new infection map and let's just say that this'll be my best chance of getting featured on Forgehub yet. I don't want to say too much about it, but I'll let you know that it's urban themed and inspired by the two best zombie movies "Dawn of the Dead" (2004 version) and "28 Days Later". It's about half done and it's definately got some of my best forging and ideas yet. I will also make a machinima-like video for this map, which will come out sometime after the preview video. This video will also make use out of YouTube's new annotations feature, which allows the viewer to choose what happens.
I also reorganized my fileshare so that it's much easier to find the files you want, while keeping all the downloads and ratings they've recieved. It wasn't easy to do, but it was worth the effort and now I won't have to do it again.
This brings me to my next point which is that after I upload my new infection map to my fileshare along with the new puzzle map when it's complete and their respectful gametypes, I will only have room for two more maps (maybe three if I squeeze). And after all, Halo 3 is beginning to run near the end of it's rope. After ODST comes out in the fall, Bungie won't be making anymore add-ons for Halo 3, and I have to admit that they've milked it for all it's worth. Therefore I will be making no more than three more maps on Halo 3, by which time my fileshare will be stock-full of goodies for you. I will, however, continue to make videos and many may still be made in Halo 3.
So there you have it, all the important events that are unwinding with my Xbox Live account. I think I mentioned everything I wanted to. I suppose you may be wondering what the final two maps I'll be making are. Maybe I'll leave that for another time. *cough* Infection Colliseum and Mind Crypt *cough* I should grab some Halls.
Catch ya on the other side,
-Mander
Monday, May 4, 2009
Some news regarding the Sandbox Puzzle Map
Okay, so I was informed that there's been an influx of spam on Youtube puzzle map videos with regards to this puzzle map we're making. So I checked it out and was actually pretty surprised at how bad it actually is. On almost every Youtube video about Halo 3 puzzles, and even some that weren't, there were posts about this map, and I have a feeling that many of those comments are from viewers of this blog as I recognize some of the names. While I appreciate that you guys are trying to help us hype up the map there's a line between hype and spam and some of you were crossing it. I was even getting complaints from the owners of the other videas about your comments. So if you could tone it down that'd be great.
As far as the map progress goes- it's turning out well. I'm just finishing up my challenge now and then it'll go to T3CHH800 and then to BuddhaCrane. We have also picked up one more forger to work on the puzzle- Gamer720- the creator of the "Saw" series. But that also means that we'll be dropping a forger which will likely be ZZmayo who hasn't been online for awhile.
So there you have it- the rundown of everything improtant in regards to the map.
Stay tuned for my Dead Space video which should be out by Saturday.
-Mander
As far as the map progress goes- it's turning out well. I'm just finishing up my challenge now and then it'll go to T3CHH800 and then to BuddhaCrane. We have also picked up one more forger to work on the puzzle- Gamer720- the creator of the "Saw" series. But that also means that we'll be dropping a forger which will likely be ZZmayo who hasn't been online for awhile.
So there you have it- the rundown of everything improtant in regards to the map.
Stay tuned for my Dead Space video which should be out by Saturday.
-Mander
Friday, May 1, 2009
Mind Gouge Video
The Mind Gouge video is up: you can view it at the following link:
Mind Gouge Walkthrough
I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out and am glad to finally give my subsribers a new video. The Dead Space video will be out next week and then a video previewing our Sandbox map will follow that.
Enjoy and stay tuned!
Mind Gouge Walkthrough
I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out and am glad to finally give my subsribers a new video. The Dead Space video will be out next week and then a video previewing our Sandbox map will follow that.
Enjoy and stay tuned!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
