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2005 Halo Machinima Award Winners
ThatWeasel writes "It was announced on /. almost two months ago and now, finally, the 3rd Annual 'Rockets on Prisoner' Awards have announced this year's Winners. Several video segments have been produced documenting the Nominees and Winners, along with the acceptance speeches from the lucky few who will be receiving golden Master Chief statues for their excellent work in Machinima. With awards Ceremonies like this, who needs the Oscars?"
What is this actually about? It isn't explained either in the summary nor in the article. The title and the summary seem to have nothing in common.
While they seem to be the big dogs in the genre and have garnered a lot of mainstream attention, looks like they only won a couple of awards. (One of them being a "Best Series" award so I guess it's a pretty prominant one. It looks like some series called The Codex was a bigger winner here, with its 20th episode and 18th episode raking in a lot of awards.
Yup...
I know this may come across as flame bate, but damn, some of those were downright painful to watch.
I don't really have a problem with Red Vs. Blue. Those guys can be fairly funny. But man, I found myself actually felling embarrassed for some of the directors (?) of those machinema flicks.
They weren't good, and they weren't bad enough to be funny. They were just kind of, umm, "uncomfortable" bad.
Now, for good machinema, watch Summoner Geeks
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Over a gig of videos on that site and the 3 random ones I watched were total shit - Lots of Blue vs Red wannabe clones and some boring footage of Halo matches.
Anything in there with an actual story?
However, I'd like to plug the guys doing a new machinima: Bloodspell. That group has done a number of machinima shorts and features over the years and has constantly been pushing the envelope with machinima. The quality they get out of engines never designed for this is amazing.
Machinima is a genre of cinema made with video games. In the case of productions like Red vs Blue, this involves taking video feeds from a game (like Halo in multiplayer) in which "actors" control characters as per a script and subsequently, on a computer, editing the footage and adding an audio layer for dialogue; in other instances, it can mean scripting a game engine (like Half-Life 2's Source). What it always means is, as I said, films from games.
Some history here.
Sarcasm is redundant. Yep, this is Slashdot. ;)
No penguins were harmed in the making of this post.
If you want to watch some good machinima, the original Doom has some great stuff done for it. Try this: Imp Encounter.
were you expecting to see a sig here? perhaps you'd rather see the inside of an ambulance!
http://files.filefront.com/mine/;4157978;;/fileinf o.html
Not epic but well choreographed and funny.
A larger appeal (and real-life) Machinima festival takes place next month in New York. They have their own awards too (the Mackies?).
Not Halo-specific, and hopefully, with a much better offering of works.
I wish I could go attend this! I hope they produce a DVD "best-of" release or something. Because downloading and installing and tweaking all the drivers to render it locally would be a pain in the ass.
Anyway, folks who're into novel uses of existing technology should take a look at Notacon, a yearly tech gathering in Ohio. You know you want to enter the Anything But Ethernet contest!
If there's interest from the Machinima community, I'm sure some projector time could be arranged. If some experienced animators would like to submit a presentation, the Call For Proposals is open! I'd love to see a public screening of a few films, and maybe an intro-and-how-to.
I realize they may be receiving a minor slashdotting, but I'm not going to download a video without seeing at least a tiny thumbnail screenshot so I'll know what the hell I'm wasting all this time to see.
Something, apparently.
Here's a thought: lots of people might like things that you don't. Here's another thought: something can be "good" without your approval. I hate GTA, but I can still recognize it as a "good" game because so many other people have, including people I trust.
I have played plenty of FPS on the PC (not the least of which was System Shock 1&2, [insert other good and obscure fps]) and Halo still takes the cake. They just do everything so well, story, graphics, AI, and even controls. I have some friends that if you were playing the same exact game of Halo, them on the controller and you on the mouse and keyboard, they would kick your ass everytime, no matter how much you practiced.
Damn. I clicked the link. Thats 30 seconds of my life I wont get back.
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beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master
Wrong. Mouse and keyboard will always smoke console controller in shooters. There is a reason they had to make Halo harder when they released it on PC.
You may know some people who can smoke an average keyboard and mouse player, but at the same skill level a controller hasn't got a chance.
The REAL FPS players don't bother with Halo because, well, it's a console game ported to PC (even though it was ORIGINALLY for PC until M$ bought out its dev company and forced it onto Xbox) Take your "uber-controller" players, set up Counterstrike or BF2 with a USB console type controller and they'll be getting smoked by 12 year old girls.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
i'll call bullshit on that. i have played a little halo, have played many FPS games using both paddles and kb/mouse. and i have watched so pretty decent halo tourneys.
unless the mouse is deliberately nerfed or paddles get auto-aim any decent player on kb/mouse will smoke even the best using a paddle.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Oh God, I can't erase the memory! It was so awful, so banal to hear dramatic lines delivered in such bored tones.
And those were the winners.
I know these aren't professionals, but is it really so hard to inject some emotion?
Sombeody that knows filmakers have learnt something after 100+ years of cinema: it is the plot, stupid.
Action!
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Behold: a not-so-scientific experiment using the new Xbox360 controller. Guess which one wins?
Since when does more accurate headshots = more fun? I'd like to see you play Katamari with a mouse and a keyboard. That'd be funny.
i don't care about headshots, the issue is that a joystick makes reacting to an unexpected threat more cumbersome. thus putting more emphasis on who sees who first and encouraging camping.
with a mouse you can do better trick jumps while shooting and take on several lower skill players and win. with paddles if you have to waid for the game's aiming speed two or three opponents together have a huge advantage against one player of higher skill.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.