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Covenant Psychology
a week ago
Halo Covenant Edition lets you play Halo as a Grunt on Covenant team, a role-reversal or team-swap mod. Also known as a play-as mod. This is a very traditional thing to do in Halo. Back in the day, we'd use a hex editor to swap a couple values to play as a Grunt on an original Xbox. Now we have Halo Custom Edition, and with MCC, the full Halo Editing Kit has been released for multiple titles. I mostly focus on Halo 1.
Halo Covenant Edition started out as a kind of mod to allow for exploration without combat, so you can just walk past your Covenant allies. But then it started to get really educational. It turned into a study of Covenant behaviour, and code. I had to learn how the AI in the game works in order to make mods, so over time I ended up with a very intimate knowledge of how these AIs work.
It's really cool to watch them on alert status, on patrol, or even sleeping. But on the flip side, now that I'm playing as Covenant, I need to now shoot the Marines. Initially, I didn't want to shoot people, but for testing purposes I had to. It felt... weird. It was obviously forced. I didn't like it. I felt like scrapping the game and taking out all the Marines. But that wouldn't be fun. So I kept making the game, making most battles optional. I didn't have the source code for Keyes, so it was mostly modded by hand, and is the reason the last few maps are mostly unmodified except for the biped and team.
Playing as a Jackal was really fun. Body health only was a whole new dynamic to the game. Much more challenging. I took Jackal's Journey as an opportunity to make a better mod. Covenant Edition, playing as a Grunt, was meant for original Xbox, and had a lot of cut content, including objectives. Xbox was very hard to work with. Initially, this was an 'Only on Xbox' title, but popular demand wanted it for Halo Custom Edition on PC, so I released my source maps with some buffed, cut content. This is when I realized I could make a PC version of Covenant Edition, a sequel, and include an elaborate story, because Custom Edition had more capabilities, and was easier to work with. Plus, I had learned so much code and scripting.
I wrote Jackal's Journey level by level trying to roll with it until the idea sparked. It really sparked for the level 343 Guilty Spark, which I renamed The Laboratory, which I was really proud of. It has a secret story randomizer including a black-out script if you want to play underground in the dark with the zombies. From there the story really takes off, too much in some regard because it became a major complaint that my cutscenes were too long, and you can't skip them because I need the subtitles to translate the alienspeak.
I basically tried to make the game a bit lore accurate, so I modelled the story after Halo 2, specifically the schism, so I could explain why the Spec Ops were enemies in the Grunt campaign. It's technically because they know you defected and are now working with Cortana after basically killing Chief. I chose a Grunt as the hacker, as a reference to the Grunt campaign, that turned out to be lore accurate thinking back considering the Grunt species' history of rebellion. But what was striking to me looking back, was the telepathy and remote viewing aspect fit right into the Halo universe. The Gravemind is telepathic, it's implied in the dialogue. The Master Chief also has hallucinations because of telepathy in Halo 3. In theory, the Gravemind is remote viewing everyone. I was just able to put more scientific words to it, and explain what telepathy is using this game. The last few levels, in particular Keyes, weren't written by me but by Sharkie, who also helped script the cutscene.
Now that MCC has rolled out, I've been REALLY pushing Protogen RAM Wars on Steam. It's kinda losing traction, so please, if you haven't checked it out, and you like Protogens, subscribe and play it for a bit. It's pretty fun imo. The whole concept is a play on words. 'Remote viewing' is used in the classic sense of the word, but since these are Protogens, remote viewing as a SOFTWARE PROGRAM such as TeamViewer, who had his own model and biped, raise awareness of the risk of letting strangers on your computer remotely. I still plan on expanding Protogen RAM Wars, I got two maps in prototype/brainstorming phase. The story is incomplete as of yet. The entire game is about using the computer to guess your target's location.
Protogen RAM Wars is a sort of sociological experiment. By replacing blood and gore with bolts and oil, I am theoretically bringing the game down to a T [Teen] rating. I would like to test this thesis one day scientifically. It's got an anti-gun message to it that I developed during the early days of Covenant Edition. Ironic, it's a shooter, but where better to find your target audiance?
Now that I have better computers, I can run things like Blender, and make custom geometry. I am much, much better at things like scripting and AI, so The Grunt Rebellion - Balaho is a mod made exclusively to show off my progress as a modeller. Balaho will only have custom geometry. I have a prototype for a sequel level now that it's bug-proofed. I just need a few things first.
Halo Covenant Edition started out as a kind of mod to allow for exploration without combat, so you can just walk past your Covenant allies. But then it started to get really educational. It turned into a study of Covenant behaviour, and code. I had to learn how the AI in the game works in order to make mods, so over time I ended up with a very intimate knowledge of how these AIs work.
It's really cool to watch them on alert status, on patrol, or even sleeping. But on the flip side, now that I'm playing as Covenant, I need to now shoot the Marines. Initially, I didn't want to shoot people, but for testing purposes I had to. It felt... weird. It was obviously forced. I didn't like it. I felt like scrapping the game and taking out all the Marines. But that wouldn't be fun. So I kept making the game, making most battles optional. I didn't have the source code for Keyes, so it was mostly modded by hand, and is the reason the last few maps are mostly unmodified except for the biped and team.
Playing as a Jackal was really fun. Body health only was a whole new dynamic to the game. Much more challenging. I took Jackal's Journey as an opportunity to make a better mod. Covenant Edition, playing as a Grunt, was meant for original Xbox, and had a lot of cut content, including objectives. Xbox was very hard to work with. Initially, this was an 'Only on Xbox' title, but popular demand wanted it for Halo Custom Edition on PC, so I released my source maps with some buffed, cut content. This is when I realized I could make a PC version of Covenant Edition, a sequel, and include an elaborate story, because Custom Edition had more capabilities, and was easier to work with. Plus, I had learned so much code and scripting.
I wrote Jackal's Journey level by level trying to roll with it until the idea sparked. It really sparked for the level 343 Guilty Spark, which I renamed The Laboratory, which I was really proud of. It has a secret story randomizer including a black-out script if you want to play underground in the dark with the zombies. From there the story really takes off, too much in some regard because it became a major complaint that my cutscenes were too long, and you can't skip them because I need the subtitles to translate the alienspeak.
I basically tried to make the game a bit lore accurate, so I modelled the story after Halo 2, specifically the schism, so I could explain why the Spec Ops were enemies in the Grunt campaign. It's technically because they know you defected and are now working with Cortana after basically killing Chief. I chose a Grunt as the hacker, as a reference to the Grunt campaign, that turned out to be lore accurate thinking back considering the Grunt species' history of rebellion. But what was striking to me looking back, was the telepathy and remote viewing aspect fit right into the Halo universe. The Gravemind is telepathic, it's implied in the dialogue. The Master Chief also has hallucinations because of telepathy in Halo 3. In theory, the Gravemind is remote viewing everyone. I was just able to put more scientific words to it, and explain what telepathy is using this game. The last few levels, in particular Keyes, weren't written by me but by Sharkie, who also helped script the cutscene.
Now that MCC has rolled out, I've been REALLY pushing Protogen RAM Wars on Steam. It's kinda losing traction, so please, if you haven't checked it out, and you like Protogens, subscribe and play it for a bit. It's pretty fun imo. The whole concept is a play on words. 'Remote viewing' is used in the classic sense of the word, but since these are Protogens, remote viewing as a SOFTWARE PROGRAM such as TeamViewer, who had his own model and biped, raise awareness of the risk of letting strangers on your computer remotely. I still plan on expanding Protogen RAM Wars, I got two maps in prototype/brainstorming phase. The story is incomplete as of yet. The entire game is about using the computer to guess your target's location.
Protogen RAM Wars is a sort of sociological experiment. By replacing blood and gore with bolts and oil, I am theoretically bringing the game down to a T [Teen] rating. I would like to test this thesis one day scientifically. It's got an anti-gun message to it that I developed during the early days of Covenant Edition. Ironic, it's a shooter, but where better to find your target audiance?
Now that I have better computers, I can run things like Blender, and make custom geometry. I am much, much better at things like scripting and AI, so The Grunt Rebellion - Balaho is a mod made exclusively to show off my progress as a modeller. Balaho will only have custom geometry. I have a prototype for a sequel level now that it's bug-proofed. I just need a few things first.
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