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Subject: Community Projects: Campaign Contest

Thats Right I Was Banned For Watching The Webcams Too Much!Combat Arms - X647"He who'd walk a mile just to hold an empty hand, knows what it means to be a wealthy man."
Skin This Place Alive...

This is all anyone had to say...

"Microsoft Points purchased from a retail store can only be applied to accounts registered to the same country where the retail store is located. The only exception is the 2100 point card (available in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa), which is universal throughout those regions."

  • 11.20.2007 9:21 AM PDT

Old school Bungie, born and raised,
In the Septagon is where I spend most of my days.
Relaxin', maxin', posting all cool,
Talking about Halo, life and some school.
Got in one little argument, and the mods got scared,
they said "You're gonna get banned and your member title'll be bare!"

Posted by: PKF_647
This is all anyone had to say...

"Microsoft Points purchased from a retail store can only be applied to accounts registered to the same country where the retail store is located. The only exception is the 2100 point card (available in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa), which is universal throughout those regions."


Good. That means the next time a contest is held, we can open up entries to all of Europe. That is, if we still use MS point cards.

  • 11.20.2007 9:27 AM PDT

Thats Right I Was Banned For Watching The Webcams Too Much!Combat Arms - X647"He who'd walk a mile just to hold an empty hand, knows what it means to be a wealthy man."
Skin This Place Alive...

I swear a remember something about being able to buy points online (on xbox live) for someone else's account.

Like a "gift" feature.....maybe it was only for xbox live subscriptions....hmm..

  • 11.20.2007 9:41 AM PDT

Twitter | Nothing

Posted by: PKF_647
I swear a remember something about being able to buy points online (on xbox live) for someone else's account.

Like a "gift" feature.....maybe it was only for xbox live subscriptions....hmm..


I'll look into it, in th emean time keep the submissions coming!

  • 11.20.2007 11:08 PM PDT
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Posted by: prometheus25
Posted by: Strippa
i know this may sound like a long shot but here goes how bout in the future runnin the contest for all countries then if the winner is in another country to u try bringin up a site local to that country and purchasin the code from there i know its a long shot and i aint really worked out the details but it is after all just a suggestion


I thought about this, but I'm not exactly enthusiastic about entering my debit card number into foreign sites. I'll think about something.


cool i understand man

  • 11.21.2007 4:18 AM PDT

Old school Bungie, born and raised,
In the Septagon is where I spend most of my days.
Relaxin', maxin', posting all cool,
Talking about Halo, life and some school.
Got in one little argument, and the mods got scared,
they said "You're gonna get banned and your member title'll be bare!"

This contest is ending tonight, so be sure to get in your submissions.

A lot of people have been wanting realtime updates for the highest score. While I don't feel like starting this now, I will say that, for an entry to come close, you're going to need to break 250,000. Yeah, you heard me right. Good luck...you'll need it!

Further more, if you've already submitted your 3 alloted submissions, I'm granting one additional entry gratis, meaning you can have up to four submissions.

  • 11.21.2007 7:52 AM PDT

Old school Bungie, born and raised,
In the Septagon is where I spend most of my days.
Relaxin', maxin', posting all cool,
Talking about Halo, life and some school.
Got in one little argument, and the mods got scared,
they said "You're gonna get banned and your member title'll be bare!"

The contest is over and the winner has been determined. Check the OP for all of the scores!

  • 11.21.2007 10:05 PM PDT

MY LOVE FOR YOU IS LIKE A TRUCK...
Posted by: Langley
--on another note, I think MLG Chewhatever is an idiot.

Posted by: Achronos
There is a reason I am user ID 1 and my account creation date is before this site came online.

Nice work on this Prommie. I was going to try, but I have soooo many projects due next week that I didn't get much Halo time recently. Stupid college making me do stuff!!

Congrats to the winner, because it looks like he kicked ass in that run-through.

~B.B.

  • 11.21.2007 10:39 PM PDT

You know I've never used forum signatures before. I think they're supposed to be used to convey who you are, in a tiny text box. But who can do that?

Oh cool. Thanks to Community Projects for hosting this! Also, good job, everyone who entered. Even if you didn't win you still saved the galaxy, in style.

My run's film is available in my file share, if you've got a half-hour to kill. It has lasers and tanks and lots of explosions. I think I'll post a write-up later on how I did it.

  • 11.21.2007 11:07 PM PDT

Twitter | Nothing

Congratulations and well done. Thats quite a score. If you do a write up I'll make sure HBO knows about it. Thanks to everyone who entered and took part.

  • 11.22.2007 9:22 AM PDT
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Wow, nice score! this is truly an achievement worthy of something cool. MS Points are cool. Congratulations Ezandora.

  • 11.22.2007 12:18 PM PDT
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  • Exalted Legendary Member

congrats Ezandora!

this is NOKYARD of HighSpeedHalo.net - in the near future we will also be keeping track of campaign high scores.

if you don't mind, i will grab the run from your file share and upload a video of it to mythica.org so you can offer it to people who can't watch file share video. i will also put a copy in our High Score Halo topic at HighImpactHalo so the others who are attempting high scores on other Missions can admire your work.

i will post a link in this topic when the video is ready.

  • 11.24.2007 10:15 AM PDT

You know I've never used forum signatures before. I think they're supposed to be used to convey who you are, in a tiny text box. But who can do that?

Posted by: NOKYARD
congrats Ezandora!

this is NOKYARD of HighSpeedHalo.net - in the near future we will also be keeping track of campaign high scores.

if you don't mind, i will grab the run from your file share and upload a video of it to mythica.org so you can offer it to people who can't watch file share video. i will also put a copy in our High Score Halo topic at HighImpactHalo so the others who are attempting high scores on other Missions can admire your work.

i will post a link in this topic when the video is ready.


Oh, sure, go ahead, that'd be pretty keen. But you might want to go for goatrope's instead - he scored 356k on this level, a few thousand ahead of mine, and his film is on his fileshare.

  • 11.24.2007 1:52 PM PDT

Formerly known as BASs13 and One Point Three

WOW. That iron skull really helped you out a ton.

  • 11.24.2007 2:34 PM PDT
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  • Exalted Legendary Member

Posted by: Ezandora you might want to go for goatrope's instead - he scored 356k on this level, a few thousand ahead of mine
i must have missed that - i knew goatrope's run was high but i didn't see it on the Leader Board so i thought it had been beaten



here is the link - Ezandora 347,620 Covenant.mp4 - hosted by mythica.org

[Edited on 11.24.2007 5:46 PM PST]

  • 11.24.2007 4:59 PM PDT

Finally playing Halo Reach!

Damn, I didn't even make the list. Even if I had, my score was blown away! Wow! Good job!

  • 11.24.2007 7:54 PM PDT

You know I've never used forum signatures before. I think they're supposed to be used to convey who you are, in a tiny text box. But who can do that?

As promised, I wrote a simple guide to maximizing a metagame run. This is by no means complete; I am no expert, and this is simply from my experiences with this Covenant run.

The Basics
SketchFactor posted an amazingly complete explanation of how the metagame's mechanics work. Go read it!

The essential thing to get out of that guide is this: the most important thing behind any run is the point multiplier. The four ways to increase it are enabling skulls, changing the difficulty level, finishing the level quickly enough to earn a time bonus, and finishing enemies with style moves.

The time bonus is amazing in its utility, simply because the way its applied: instead of adding to the regular multiplier, as skulls do, it multiplies it. This means one skull can, if you complete the level quickly enough, be worth three skulls worth at the end. This is an enormous gain, and is responsible for over half my score. For this reason, it's important to complete the level quickly. This, however, does not mean run through the level as fast as you can - it's better to balance things out. In short, you might be able to achieve a 3x multiplier if you skip half the encounters, but those encounters could give you much more points, overall, if you stuck around and targeted a 2.5x bonus.

For skulls, I would recommend turning on as many as you're comfortable with, minus Iron, which we'll save for later. For me, this was every skull minus Black Eye and Mythic. Black Eye is tricky on levels with lots of vehicle combat - there's simply no easy way to regain your shields. As for the Mythic skull, I've found it to drag encounters on for not nearly as much of a bonus. In the time it takes to destroy one enemy with Mythic on, I can kill three without. You can mitigate this by using instant-kill techniques - a sticky grenade, or a headshot, or running them over, or whatever else you can think of, but that won't always be an available option. I've heard of a run that uses the skull to great success, though - as always, your experience may vary. Also turn on the grunt birthday party skull. I cannot stress how important that skull is to your general well being and overall score.

For the difficulty level, I chose Normal. Normal is a good baseline to start from - you don't get any extra points for using it, but it's not too hard, and it's possible to do things on it that you cannot on other levels. For example, in The Covenant, there's only one laser on Heroic but two on Normal, which opens up all sorts of possibilities. Normal also means the enemies fire less often, which means you can play around with your movement a lot more without fear of dying.

The style kills are covered in SketchFactor's guide. Try to make them happen as often as possible; not only do they give extra points, but they're always efficient ways to dispatch enemies.

All of this can be boiled down to: turn on lots of skulls, run fast, play on Normal, and do it with style.





She needs a trial run
So, with all of that in mind, what do we do next? We plan. The first thing you should do is play through the level in the metagame, with all the skulls and such. However, don't worry about the time bonus in the slightest. Instead, you should take a look around, and think about every encounter, and apply four thought processes to them:

-What can I do to maximize the points gained in this encounter? (target choice)
-What can I do to get through this encounter as quickly as possible? (weapon choice)
-What equipment from a previous encounter would help me out here?
-(if you're going to use the Iron skull) How can I avoid dying in this encounter? (path choice, target choice)

For points, we simply focus on the biggest targets. Destroying one high-value enemy can be worth destroying ten of another; therefore, they should be the main focus. Don't sweat the small stuff; a drone here or there isn't going to affect your overall score. Skip a platoon if they look too scary. A short list of big targets, in order of priority:

-Vehicles. They always give ridiculous amounts of points, but only if you destroy them with a passenger inside. That means if you kill the passenger first, you won't get the points, so watch out. These are easily and quickly dispatched with lasers, tanks, rocket launchers, missile pods, and hornets. It's even possible to run directly into a vehicle with a warthog and make it explode; I've done this with turrets and ghosts, although the second is quite tricky, as they have to be accelerating directly towards you. But always remember: target the body, not the passenger.

-Chieftains. These can be tricky to kill, since they have so much health; for this reason I try to save power weapons for them. Remember that the needler won't work very well against them, and you can't stick them with grenades. Field investigator Goatrope reports that using a charged plasma pistol shot and a few battle rifle headshots to take them out works well, and it also nets two separate style multipliers.

-Hunters, if you can manage it. I haven't been able to work out a way to kill them that's ammunition efficient though.

-Brutes. They're quick to kill if you do it right. My favorite way is to wait for one to throw a grenade at me, then stick one on them. Since they're throwing a grenade, they won't be able to dodge yours, and they'll also drop more grenades to use on their friends. You can clear out entire platoons this way if you're careful.

-Big groups just asking for grenades. Even just a blind throw while you're rushing past can help.

-Large packs of grunts. If you're handy with a battle rifle, you can headshot the entire pack within seconds.

For speed, we try to take out our chosen targets as fast as we can, while moving towards our goal. Try to get out into the fray as much as possible - have confidence! Skip past stuff that doesn't help your score much. Run past entire groups of enemies if you don't have the time, or if you're likely to die - it turns out, this works more often than not.

Equipment choice is a tricky one. The basic idea is that if you save a piece of equipment, you can make a later encounter much easier than it usually is. As an example, I kept a laser gun around until the top of the first tower, simply because it could dispatch the Chieftain in one shot. However, you have to figure out where and when this should be applicable. A good rule of thumb is to save the power weapons (the laser, the rocket launcher, etc.) and items (invincibility, cloaking) for the hard-to-fight areas and enemies.

Finally, you should consider how to avoid dying, especially if you're going to try finalizing the run with Iron. The basic idea is to identify where and how you're dying, and think up how to avoid it. Trying the same area with the same tactics, over and over, can work, but you'll have a better chance if you stop, think a bit, and change your plan. For me, this ended up either targeting the things what kill me first, running past the entire encounter because it is scary and is like death, or using a different path through the area that gives better cover.
Some things to watch out for:
-Grunts with grenades. If you're in an enclosed area, those blue explosions can be very deadly, very quickly. Avoid, or take out the grunts as quickly as possible.
-Hunters. They shoot you and it hurts. They smash you and it hurts more.
-Being surrounded. It's hard to deal with being shot in the back when you're busy shooting to the front. Try a different path.

Once you've considered all of these things, you can do the run again, except this time trying to target the time bonus. Pace yourself by allocating out time for each rough section of the level - for example, say you're going to be at the seven minute mark after you're done with the first tower. Gradually decrease your time targets for each area until you've reached your desired time bonus. This should keep you moving quickly enough while not being too stressed out about moving as fast as possible. It also lets you think, hmm, I'm taking up too much time in this area, maybe I should try it another way.

Random tricks:
-I discovered that the gravity hammer can be a good drone-zapper if you jump inside the swarm and mash the fire button. Its effect around you makes them drop like flies.
-You can wear out the dialogue if you play through the level too much - remember that you can disable dialogue by playing a repeating song playlist in the Xbox Dashboard. You'll miss out on the music, which makes Marty very sad, but it's okay, he can deal with it I think.





Finishing Touches
So you've done a run that you're pretty confident in. You've seen every battle, you've beaten down every enemy with expert precision. What next?

Try doing it again, without dying. The Iron skull, which removes checkpoints from the game, provides a 3x bonus. It is ever so useful for that, but it makes even the slightest slip-up mean total death. For this reason, Iron skull runs can be extremely tedious, so watch out. Fortunately, the feeling of victory you get after winning the level without a single death is quite euphoric, which makes up for the tedium. Also afterwards you can tell your friends about how cool you are for doing that and they will think you are cool which is a pretty good thing to have in life.

That's about it. Just remember: don't get aggravated if it gets too difficult. Go outside and take in the scenery, then try again.

  • 11.25.2007 7:37 PM PDT

You say tomato; I say potato.

Holy -blam!-. My score is crap!

  • 11.25.2007 9:18 PM PDT
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  • Exalted Mythic Member

News? Podcasts? Machinima? Active forums? Competitions? Jaffa Cakes!? OMG!
Thee Warriors!

Best. Mod. Ever.

Posted by: gnome13
Holy -blam!-. My score is crap!


Not as bad as me. If there were a body hump count I might stand a chance.

  • 11.25.2007 9:35 PM PDT
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I tried to do it on legendary with all skulls but blind, mythic, tilt, and blackeye and I will forever have the first 5 minutes minutes of The Covenant engraved in my brain :P I had many less than 1 min films from it from painful retiries
I actually got pretty far on my 1st try (where you ally with the flood) but any time I tried after that I was no where close.
One thing that I learned: Pick up the chieftans fuelrod by the AA Wraith and give it to your passanger seat marine in the warthog :D

Even though the competition is over, I'm making it a personal challange to finally beat that level on legendary with all skulls but blind, mythic, tilt, and blackeye.

Also, Nice Job Ezandora :D
Iron skull runs can be extremely tedious, so watch out. Fortunately, the feeling of victory you get after winning the level without a single death is quite euphoric, which makes up for the tedium. Also afterwards you can tell your friends about how cool you are for doing that and they will think you are cool which is a pretty good thing to have in life.
True, and hopefully sometime I finish my personal challange :P

That's about it. Just remember: don't get aggravated if it gets too difficult. Go outside and take in the scenery, then try again.
Wish I would have known sooner, cause I had a lot of frustrating moments getting killed by a grunt 5 secs into the level.

[Edited on 11.25.2007 10:04 PM PST]

  • 11.25.2007 9:58 PM PDT
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I'm sure there's a way for Microsoft/Bungie to make an exception for the country-specific rule, or hold their own official international contest for highest score. (the game's only been out for two months. There's still plenty of time for these things)

  • 12.01.2007 6:48 PM PDT

Old school Bungie, born and raised,
In the Septagon is where I spend most of my days.
Relaxin', maxin', posting all cool,
Talking about Halo, life and some school.
Got in one little argument, and the mods got scared,
they said "You're gonna get banned and your member title'll be bare!"

We're actually discussing alternative solutions to the award problem we're having. If you've got any input on the issue, or you wish to help out Community Projects in a host of other ways, join in.

  • 12.01.2007 6:59 PM PDT
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  • Intrepid Mythic Member
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Chemical Weapon!

posted by:Achronos
Less self-righteous posturing and ad hominem attacks will keep this thread open and its participants' posting privileges retained.

i played on legendary, and that was my downfall.

a word of advice for legendary: in the beginning of the level, only attack the banshees if you have laser ammo remaining. if not, hang back and let the warthog do it.

  • 12.04.2007 4:22 PM PDT

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