Halo 4 Machinima - Update #3

Games Other Halo
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HELP THE HALO 4 MACHINIMA COMMUNITY!
UPDATE #3

UPDATE 1
I put together this little video and dropped it on my channel so that I could maybe get this thread a little more attention.

UPDATE 2
To save space on the thread I am linking folks directly to Noble Protocol’s original thread. You can find it here.

UPDATE 3
I can’t say what it is since nothing is set in stone at the moment but hopefully within the next week or before I’ll have something set up to be sent to 343’s office that will hopefully help our cause. I’ll go into greater detail when I have more information.

Along with that I have also heavily edited the OP as well as added a Community YouTube Channels section at the bottom of this post. If you’d like to see some community channels, give them a go. If you’d like yours to be added to the post then please PM me here: Teh Spearhead

ORIGINAL POST
Hey 343, I’m sure you’re busy so I’ll try to make this quick but I’d like a quick chat with you regarding the state of Machinima for Halo 4.

Now many may consider Machinima to be a second priority, which I would agree with. Game fixes come first and I wouldn’t have it any different. However, machinima creators humbly ask for your help in this area if at all possible.

I’ll list a few of the problems and go into greater detail below.

  • Weapon Lowering Online: Happening or not?
  • Weapon Lowering in General
  • Sword Lowering Pose
  • Depth of Field: Where is it?

Weapon Lowering Online: Happening or not?
I believe it was at RTX where someone asked Frank O’Connor a very simple question regarding weapon lowering being allowed online or not, Frank confirmed it was. So may I ask where is it? There’s already been a video on the front page explaining how to do it offline, but what about online?

Weapon Lowering in General:
I hate to be blunt, but the weapon lowering offline is terrible. Having a Spartan with his weapon lowered looks fine…until he moves. Even if your spartan moves an inch or walks at an incredibly slow pace his weapon instantly pops up. I have recorded a video so you can see exactly what I mean. Click here to access it.
Now that you see what I mean, we can move on.

Sword Lowering Pose:
Halo: Reach introduced a new weapon pose for Local play, the sword lowering pose was arguably the most used for Halo: Reach machinima. I used it frequently myself as did many of my friends who make their own content. This isn’t a complaint at all, more so myself and those people asking where it went? Was it forgotten?

Depth of Field: Where is it?
Now I understand we weren’t promised this and I’m not 100% sure where the rumor came from but I and a few other directors were hoping for a Depth of Field option. For those of you who do not know what this is, take a look at this image.
Depth of Field essentially makes an image/video look a little more cinematic and while I don’t think this was confirmed, I would at least like to know if it is in the game or was supposed to be in the game at some point.

I am now finished with my thread, however I will be sending this thread to many other Machinima directors in hopes to attract a bit of attention and hopefully get a little support for it because in my honest opinion, Halo 4 is the least Machinima friendly Halo game to date.

If you plan to respond, please keep it clean. My aim is not to get this thread locked. :slight_smile:

I would also ask you to pass this thread along to anyone you know who has a love for machinima, any support for this cause would be helpful. My ultimate goal is to get some answers from 343 and see if any of this will be changed through an update or not. If you have any questions, please ask.

Previously this area was asking for other YouTube channels, I’ve now edited the OP to add all channels that are sent to me. If you’d like me to pop yours here then PM me and I’ll do it as soon as I can.

COMMUNITY YOUTUBE CHANNELS
Teh Spearhead
palmfish

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I have a series I would like to start and I was looking forward to using the depth of field option. Before I had to rely on adding it in later in After Effects and it can be quite time consuming. The weapon lowering is a bit disappointing, your weapon should stay down when moving throughout your sets otherwise your film looks a bit choppy. The weapon lowering online would help greatly for large scale scenes, does anyone else agree with Spearhead and I?

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I agree 100%. I make machinima myself and I think Halo 4 has a lot of potential. I think the biggest problem for us would be the weapon lowering factor. I wouldn’t mind if they kept it on local, but it really is stupid how your spartan moves a centimeter and his weapon raises up. From what I’ve seen (and tried myself), Halo 4 is the least machinima friendly Halo game. There is another thing that was bugging me: vehicle debris. Why does the vehicle itself and the debris from the explosion disappear so quickly? That can really kill the cinematics/ascetics for a video.

I really hope 343 sees this thread and takes most of these things into consideration. It would help us a bunch.

Halo 4 is an awesome game, and I would love to use it for machinima!

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The thing is, to me, I don’t really find it that annoying when the weapon raises up when you move. Is it a bit agitating? Yes. But is it so bad that I won’t even bother making videos? No. If it were an option online for when the spartan character stops moving, the gun would lower automatically, I’d be completely fine with that. I just find it a little annoying that ever since Halo 3, the Machinima community has just asked for a way to lower your weapon online, and unfortunately neither Bungie and now 343 hasn’t allowed it. But maybe one of these days.

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I agree, it was mentioned a few months ago that the Theater would have significant changes, and I don’t see any of those. Of course I realize the gameplay is more important, but Machinima is a very large part of the community as well, and I hope weapon lowering online (which was confirmed) somehow makes it into the game as promised. Depth of field would be cool, but it isn’t that big of a necessity to me. We have done it before manually,we can continue to do it. Thank you for your time.

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It’s a shame that nobody really cares enough to reply to us. It seems making this thread was a waste of time Spearhead. :confused:

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i was honestly hoping to start a little series just for the hell of it to test out the alert carry feature, I was disappointed to find out that yet again for the 4th FPS Halo game in a row that you have to be offline to do it. plus, I honestly don’t want to have a gun up in someone’s face everytime I’m on forge, it feels a little uncomfortable…to me anyway.

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I’ve been really excited for Halo 4’s theater mode so I could get working on a few machinima projects I’ve been holding off until Halo 4’s release. One thing I haven’t heard people complaining about is a small “glitch” that I have had to encounter numerous times while experimenting in theater mode. <mark>After toggling off the menu and HUD, I occasionally see the text from the menu pop up and cause the video to stop and restart simultaneously.</mark> I have absolutely no idea how or why this is happening and I hope this gets patched soon. Halo 4 has so much potential for machinimators like us and although game-play is the most important thing overall, I just hope you won’t forget about us.

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@Little Timmy; Waste of time? No, you just have to give the thread a little more time to grow.

Anyways, moving onto the situation at hand. I agree with a lot of the points that have been stated. Being able to walk around casually with your weapon lowered like in the previous games would be appreciated if were to be implemented into the game again. I also enjoyed the sword lowering aspect as well. Mythic is right when he says that Machinima is another big part of this community, and Timmy was right about Halo 4 having a lot of potential. It would be great to see what people could create with this game.

Even thought the game was recently released and a lot of feedback is being sent…hopefully 343i hears the calls of the machinima community and work on a way to solve all of our problems!

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hm…I wonder if 343 is even reading this. Wouldn’t it also help machinima if they also added theater to campaign and Spartan ops?

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> @Little Timmy; Waste of time? No, you just have to give the thread a little more time to grow.
>
> Anyways, moving onto the situation at hand. I agree with a lot of the points that have been stated. Being able to walk around casually with your weapon lowered like in the previous games would be appreciated if were to be implemented into the game again. I also enjoyed the sword lowering aspect as well. Mythic is right when he says that Machinima is another big part of this community, and Timmy was right about Halo 4 having a lot of potential. It would be great to see what people could create with this game.
>
> Even thought the game was recently released and a lot of feedback is being sent…<mark>hopefully 343i hears the calls of the machinima community and work on a way to solve all of our problems!</mark>

I don’t even want that. I don’t expect 343 to wave a magic wand and fix everything. I would really like a fix for this weapon thing. While it isn’t a massive problem, it’s still annoying.

As for the reply to Timmy, it kinda does feel like a waste of time. I’m trying to get something constructive done in a sea of complaints. D:
It’s not easy sir.

> hm…I wonder if 343 is even reading this. Wouldn’t it also help machinima if they also added theater to campaign and Spartan ops?

Believe me dude, I felt so awful when I found this out. I make this little series called Lives of the…it’s essentially a mockumentary, so far I’ve done Moa, Flood, Elites, Brutes and Grunts. I really wanted to do the Prometheans…so…many…jokes.

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Sorry about that. I kind of messed up a bit on my wording there at the ending. I was just trying to say that it would be nice if they just fixed that little weapon lowering situation.

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> > @Little Timmy; Waste of time? No, you just have to give the thread a little more time to grow.
> >
> > Anyways, moving onto the situation at hand. I agree with a lot of the points that have been stated. Being able to walk around casually with your weapon lowered like in the previous games would be appreciated if were to be implemented into the game again. I also enjoyed the sword lowering aspect as well. Mythic is right when he says that Machinima is another big part of this community, and Timmy was right about Halo 4 having a lot of potential. It would be great to see what people could create with this game.
> >
> > Even thought the game was recently released and a lot of feedback is being sent…<mark>hopefully 343i hears the calls of the machinima community and work on a way to solve all of our problems!</mark>
>
> I don’t even want that. I don’t expect 343 to wave a magic wand and fix everything. I would really like a fix for this weapon thing. While it isn’t a massive problem, it’s still annoying.
>
> As for the reply to Timmy, it kinda does feel like a waste of time. I’m trying to get something constructive done in a sea of complaints. D:
> It’s not easy sir.
>
>
>
> > hm…I wonder if 343 is even reading this. Wouldn’t it also help machinima if they also added theater to campaign and Spartan ops?
>
> Believe me dude, I felt so awful when I found this out. I make this little series called Lives of the…it’s essentially a mockumentary, so far I’ve done Moa, Flood, Elites, Brutes and Grunts. I really wanted to do the Prometheans…so…many…jokes.

Wait that’s you? You sir just earned yourself a subscriber :slight_smile: I’ve been looking forward to a new one since the flood one. Hell the grunt and brute ones were the best one’s I’ve seen so far.

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Wow, I was planning on making a machinima series in Halo 4, but with all these problems, I don’t know if I even want to consider it. Looks like I’ll be sticking with reach until these are fixed :confused:

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Look, we can go on and on about how big or small, or important or insignificant the machinima community is. The problem at hand is that 343i promised a feature that was not implemented into the game. Once that question is answered, then we can start moving onto asking for better weapon lowering.

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I have to agree with TehSpearhead 100%,They really need to fix this situation. I was pretty excited of halo 4 and wanted to create a Series but, Halo 4 Internet Connection and Lowering your weapon down was -Yoink!- me off, Trying about like 12 times hasn’t work out. 343 Industry must find a way to Lower your Spartan Weapons down on Multiplayer,So we can get this over with. Of Course I’m gonna stick with Halo Reach until they fix this.

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I agree 100% with all the points that the OP has made. These need to be addressed, especially the one about the spartan raising their weapon whenever they move.

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> Wait that’s you? You sir just earned yourself a subscriber :slight_smile: I’ve been looking forward to a new one since the flood one. Hell the grunt and brute ones were the best one’s I’ve seen so far.

Glad you enjoyed them.

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Depth of field can easily be added post-production with decent editing software (eg. After Effects)

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> Depth of field can easily be added post-production with decent editing software (eg. After Effects)

Which is why I said in the OP that it wasn’t a massive deal for me. I personally just wanted to know if it was going to be in the game since I had doubts that the Xbox’s 7 year tech could handle it.

Also. Unless a person is pretty good with After Effects they won’t know how to do that, hence why I’m also bringing it up for them.