Celebrating ten years of HALO

All images from Google.com

 

Hello again. Time surely flies when you’re having fun. I can’t believe it’s been TEN years since Halo appeared on the original xbox.

The Trilogy

Halo: Combat Evolved

If you do not know by now, I am a huge Halo fan! I mean HUUUUGE! I played the first Halo ever since it came out.

Halo 2

Then Microsoft gave it the go – ahead to create a sequel which was Halo 2. I find this the best out of all the Halo games. Why? To keep a series alive, you have to add unexpected and new elements to the game which was what Halo 2 did to keep the franchise alive.

Halo 3

Then the trilogy has to be completed. With which Halo 3 filled in the Gap. I did not find Halo 3 the most exciting as it did not live up to Halo 2’s high expectations. It also did not have to best soundtrack with which Halo 2 had in variety

 The Past

Thinking the trilogy had come to the end, guess again. The next three games had to explain the story gaps in between and so the brand new trilogy began.

Halo: Wars

This game took place 20 years before the original game; where mankind first made contact with aliens and found them to be hostile. It all took place to shape the Halo story; on planet Harvest. 
 

It introduced a new genre to the mix, Real Time Strategy. It was a new genre, different from the traditional First Person Shooters the Halo Franchise had incorporated.

Halo 3: ODST

Then came a different style of game play. This took place during the third mission of Halo 2. ODST (Orbital Drop Shock Troopers) are a kind of soldiers which fall from the sky using drop pods and are as tough as a Spartan. 

The game had ODSTs, so no energy shields to start with. And the campaign had a kind of Role Playing elements to it, reliving the memories of your squad mates after you were unconscious.

Halo: Reach

This grand daddy of a game was where the protagonist of the franchise was trained to be a Spartan. The game did not make you feel lonely as you were not the only Spartan left but soon, they died and you did as well. 

The story drifted a bit from the books but had many elements that made it unbearable to keep away. This game lived up to Halo 2.

 The Future

After ten years, the story does not end. The franchise has not died because announcement and trailer for HALO 4 has been revealed. Microsoft game studios has also re-mastered and re-made the original Halo calling it: Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary which should be coming out this year.

The Novels

Besides the games, there were also novels regarding the Halo series. These books are all in order:

I have all these books and read them all. This shows just how large the Halo Universe really is! It’s huge so that it can have intertwining stories.

The Animated series

Speaking of intertwining stories, a DVD of Halo came out in the month of February 2010. It’s called Halo: Legends. It is a compilation of 7 mini episodes featuring random but related stories from the Halo universe. 

I thought it was well done, telling the story from a different perspective, featuring different art styles in all the 7 episodes and expanding my knowledge further of the Halo universe.

Here’s a part of an episode called “The Package” which features the main protagonist of the Halo franchise: John and his two best childhood friends fighting aliens aka The convenant. Embedding the video has been disabled so you can click here to see this awesome fight scene.

The Geek (me)

I’m such a fan boy too that I have one small figurine of Master Chief, the legendary edition of Halo: Reach which comes with the 5 Spartans in Reach and Posters too!

Master Chief HIMSELF

Noble Team from Halo Reach

Halo Reach Poster which includes Noble team

And of course, The funny and The cool

To finish off the post here, I am going to show you that even Halo has it’s funny segments where people creatively exploit Halo’s interesting diversity. And instead of Cool videos, I want to let you listen to what made Halo 2 the best game to me: The soundtrack.

There are truly awe-inspiring ones but there are others which left me with a tear in my eye. So, continuing to believe in this truly amazing 10 years, this is me signing off.

This is one had my blood pumping! 

MKTUROK117 August 19 2008

This is one made my cry!

MKTUROK117 August 15 2008

This one is truly unique although it has some vulgar words used, but in the end, it plainly pokes fun at Halo overall. 

machinima June 18 2011

Bungie.net : Lumpy pudding is against the rules

Bungie.net : Lumpy pudding is against the rules

 Get your blue flaming helmets and BUNGIE nameplates while they last. Only on Halo: Reach!

Exercise on IN3D

So now is the 2 weeks break and there are quite a few work to do (That's why they call it a break) so I wanted to do this for my IN3D. I have seen my friends draw models on what they like. I like games so I am drawing a game based weapon.

This weapon is from Gears of War: The lancer rifle.

 

Here's my model so far.

I am currently drawing the chains of the famous chainsaw on the gun. It does not  look much but I hope I get it completed. Will continue and see what comes out of it.

 So I think I am finally done with the gun. There is really isn't much I can do now because the texture and the tiny details would take more time and knowledge for which I do not know of. A lot of extruding and inserting edge loops to play around with the extra edges and vertex points. Nothing new I haven't added because that is the best my modelling has taken me.

Halo 4!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Image by Sir-Beret at devaintart.com

Hello again. E3 has finally come and many, many, many trailers and game announcements were made. 

First off, Star Wars: the old republic released a new cinematic trailer called RETURN which signifies the return of the sith to their home world: Korriban. 

Second, the Assassin’s creed franchise does not end. There is a new trailer called REVELATIONS and shows an older, unknown assassin (possibly ezio only older, or a brand new face) fighting off templars. 

Third, Halo has come back and even better than ever! There will be two, repeat TWO new halo games. One will pick off where chief left off, in the ship “Forward unto dawn” that was cut in half by the ark portal which sent him to an unknown alien world which possibly looks like the creators of the 7 Halo rings world. Then, to celebrate Halo’s tenth year anniversary, the original halo game will be remade. It’s called Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary. 

So many things are coming out so I am so excited. Still can’t wait for Gears of war 3 this September though.

G4TV June 6 2011

machinima May 31 2011

Assignment Rocket: Final!

I have finally finished my assignment on 3D Rocket and this is the continuation I did after the last blog.

As you can see from the first one I did at the background and the new one I did in the foreground, the one in the foreground is much better looking and has at least some colours to distinguish it.

 

I also took some advice from my teacher and he said it would be better if I selected all faces from one side of the polygon and deleted it, I can make changes to that particular side and then duplicate the special of it instead of activating the reflection of it so here it is.

By duplicating special of one side by scaling it by -1, I made an exact copy of the side I edited. I found this technique to be better than editing both sides simultaneously. That would be very time consuming so this method is very useful.

FINAL

 

The one on top is the original image of course. The one below is my 3D modelling of the picture and It very much resembles the original. There is a lot of similarity so I am proud of it.

Research

As I have stated earlier, I duplicated special of my model so that it is easier to simply edit on one side and duplicate it on the other like in this video. 

Although reflection would be a good way to edit my model, Mirroring my model as well as duplicating special would be a wiser choice for me. This video gave me an understanding of duplicating special as this video showed how successful it was even on simpler sphere objects. 

There was one part that I did not follow and had to come up with my own way.

When I cut my model into half and made a mistake and deleted a face, I cannot fill hole to fill up the missing polygon face because the edge is missing when I cut it into half. 

The video above showed how to fill hole with a sphere cut in half simply by selecting one or all edges and mesh > fill hole to fill it up but that is when all the edges are surrounding the missing hole. When I cut my  model into half, I could only get three edges, not four and could not fill hole.

My method was to click 1 to un-smooth it. Then I selected the edge of the polygon facing towards the missing edge and extrude it. Once extruded, I moved it to the missing edge and a face is created. Once the face is created, it is like a hole and then I need not have to fill hole.

Self-Critique

Finally, the critique. Well, I think my model looks and resembles closely to that of the one in the picture. There may be some parts wrong like the width needs to be longer or the colour is not right in some areas. I think I did a good job. My first model was to combine different polygons of different shapes and sizes together and make the ship. It turns out that I was wrong and that all the different shapes are all extruded from faces from a single polygon. I am quite proud that I kinda mastered extrusion to form the original rocket ship. I also like to use hypershade since it is pretty easy and to colour my model instead of seeing a grey lump makes my appreciate my model even more.