Streamer Showcase: Shyway

With the closing of Mixer, we’ll probably see a lot of these streamer showcases originate from Twitch. For our readers who watch streamers on other platforms, if you see a streamer that you think should be featured here that’s not on Twitch, please let us know reaching out to us on our socials, Discord or sending us an email. With that out of the way, let’s get to our next featured streamer who has been destined for this spotlight for some time (as mentioned numerous times on the podcast). As an HCS Grassroots partner and Twitch Affiliate, we’re happy to feature him today and happy to say he’ll be joining us on the podcast in not the too distant future.

Quickly becoming the next Walshy in terms of competitive Halo breatdown and analysis, Shyway has made great strides as an HCS Grassroots partner. In addition to streaming, he has some great breakdown videos on his YouTube channel of plays made by pro players, tricks and tips for taking your game to the competitive level and talking about the latest news on HCS Weekly, which is currently on hiatus. He has also casted for official HCS events and worked with the HCS team to produce several features including the latest Halo Game Sense. Needless to say, Shyway is incredibly dedicated to the competitive Halo community and is a passion for helping others become better at the game and understand the minutia of what we see the pro players pull off during streams and competition. Being a fairly newer streamer than some of our other features, Shyway achieved his Twitch Affiliate status in January 2019 just prior to him joining the HCS Grassroots program later in June. He peaked over 200 subscribers just last night after the last MCC Pro Circuit, Pro Tournament last night.

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Shyway regularly streams a few times a week and will occasionally stream more often depending on happenings within the competitive Halo community. You can subscribe to him on Twitch and follow him on Twitter and YouTube.

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Podtacular 743: Contingent Deployment

We’re just a week away from the Xbox Games Showcase, which means we’ll be diving into Infinite coverage pretty soon. With DJ back with their two new puppies Astro and Alfie, it’s time we take another look at fan games and mods, and see what the teams have been up with for the past couple months. As we start the Halo Infinite coverage, you may see the show format change a bit, but we’re still bringing the latest Halo and community news to you.

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Forger Fridays: Arpod

Hello everyone. Welcome to a somewhat new section of Podtacular in which we feature some awesome Forgers in the Halo Community. As is suggested by the title, the first Forger to be featured is Arpod.

These features consist of general conversation and Q&A style formats. I asked Arpod a few questions regarding his forging, so please enjoy his answers below.

Question: When did you first get into forging?

I started Forging right when Halo 3 came out and they introduced the Forge mode. I thought being able to build our own maps was an absolutely brilliant idea and ever since then I was hooked.

I’ve built maps in Forge in every single game after that. Reach, Halo 4, Halo 2 Anniversary and Halo 5.

Question: What has been your favourite Halo game to forge on so far?

I do. Halo 5 is my favourite Forge just because of the mechanics of it, what we can do with it and the objects. No two maps really look the same because there’s so much variety on what you can do with that Forge.

I love it. I think that it’s a very good start to what we’re gonna see in the next game too.

Question: What features are you hoping to see in Forge in Halo Infinite?

I know a lot of people in the Forge community would probably agree, I would absolutely love to see a terrain editor to be able to manipulate the terrain.

Even if it’s a limited one where we can raise or lower terrain, or make simply hills or something would be fantastic. That to me would truly make no two maps look the same, they’d be entirely different. You could have the terrain how you want.

As far as maybe some enhancements on some of the features we have in Halo 5, duplicating and stuff. I would love to see a mirror duplication so that if you’re making a symmetrical map, if you want a base on one side and you just wanna mirror duplicate that to the other side. That might be a little difficult to try and achieve but it would be a neat feature.

Water, Lava and more natural elements. I love forging with the natural elements. Maybe some nice broken down blocks would be some nice added features too.

Definitely the terrain editor would be fantastic, or even the ability to scale parts, like rocks or blocks or whatever. Just to have some scaling with those to make them different sizes.

Also maybe just have one forge canvas where we can alter the skybox to what we want, to snow or desert or forest. So you don’t have to go into different ones to make different maps, you can just have one canvas to then make the elements what you want.

Question: Did you do any level or map design prior to creating maps in Forge, or is it a passion that’s grew purely through Forge mode?

It’s a passion that grew from Halo. I do create for my job, so I’ve always had a passion for creating things and making things. I’ve built lego sets my whole life and still to this day build lego sets, so to have something like this where we can build levels, I just love it.

Question: In regards to creating stuff, is there a specific map that you could mention that you’ve made recently?

Yes I have. I’ve actually had a couple of community features on ForgeHub over the past couple of months. My most recent creation hasn’t been featured yet on there, but I’d like to see it go on there. It’s called Lifeforce and what it is is a floating Island map.

There’s a main island and you’ve got kinda of like veins, I’ve got the lights flashing on it so it’s kind of pumping the life force into the other islands. As you’re playing on it you feel the ambience of the pulsing of the lights. It’s a really cool immersive alien environment.

I have it set up for the slayer game modes and capture the flag, strongholds, you know the basic gamemodes, but it could be adapted really easy to play game modes like Infection.

Question: For those who want to check out maps you’ve made, where can they do so?

If you have Halo 5 you can log into the game and simply go to my gamertag which is ARPOD and you can look for my files there.

I also submit them on ForgeHub. You can find any of the maps I make on ForgeHub and there’s a download link there to download them and bookmark them.

I also post them on twitter too with the link so that anybody that’s on Twitter can access them on there also. My Twitter is @Arpod1980.

That concludes the Q&A with Arpod. A big thank you once again to Arpod for taking the time to come and talk about his incredible Forging experience.

Forger Fridays will be back soon enough with another awesome Forging guest, but until then, be sure to check out Arpods maps and give them a go.

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Machinima Monday: Halo The Athon Project

Well well well, look who it is. It’s Machinima Monday. After having a little break, it’s back to highlight some awesome community made Machinima projects. This weeks Machinima feature is ‘Halo The Athon Project’. Now it’s not certain if the Machinima is just called ‘The Athon Project’ but we’ll stick with the Halo at the beginning for now.

One of the first things to be noticed when watching the above trailer is the lack of in game content. The trailer consists mainly of out of engine animations. This may suggest that the actually Machinima may blend animation with in game action similar to the later seasons of Red Vs Blue.

The description of ‘Halo The Athon Project’ trailer is as follows:

Year is 2557, The UNSC Contact a team of Spartan IV’s on the outer planet of Trilla to investigate an ambush of a manufacturing and distributing company known as Athon Industries. The investigation leads them into what’s known as The Athon Project.

(( We are currently looking for members who will be interested in body and voice acting in this machinima. If you are interested please contact me on Xbox live. Gt (Sckreee) ))

This machinima takes place in the Halo Universe expanding more around it’s lore and the secrets of ONI.

This trailer description goes into a little more about the project. There are some additional details in the full description, so I suggest checking it out on YouTube.

‘Halo The Athon Project’ actually first appeared on November 15th, 2020 as a concept video. This video can be found here, Since that time the project has been relatively quiet, so it’s nice to see news starting to come in about it once again.

‘Halo The Athon Project’ was published on the x Sckree x YouTube Channel, whom is known to dabble in other areas of Halo such as Forge. Some animations used in the trailer were created by x Sckree x, but some were created by Budge, so I’d recommend checking them both out. There is currently no additional information on when we can expect to see more of this project, so we’ll just have to sit tight and wait.

Video Published by: x Sckree x

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Podtacular 742: Battle Born

While DJ’s off getting his puppies this week, it’s time to cover another book. This time, we’re starting to dive into the young adult novels by Cassandra Rose Clarke with Halo: Battle Born. Another good short read, this book follows four late teens and Spartan Owen before the events of Halo 5: Guardians on Meridian. In addition to our book discussion, we have or regular Halo news and community updates.

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Podtacular 741: Ascending Forge

Welcome back to another guest filled episode, this week featuring Ascend Hyperion. We’re always on the look-out for community content and Ascend is doing just that reviving his Forge spotlight series. Head on over to his YouTube channel to see what he’s doing. Meanwhile, there’s plenty of community items to cover this week along with the latest Community Spotlight and MCC Development Update.

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Podtacular 740: Tag Designation: Banished

It’s been a whirlwind of a week and we did two episodes this week to cover everything going on. We’ve had three extensions of the Halo 3 PC flight, Mixer shutting its doors and our first official teaser for Infinite confirming the Banished will be in the game. With the closure of Mixer, DJ is absent this week as he’s trying to figure out how to maintain his streaming career, so if you have the opportunity, go follow him on https://twitch.tv/DJBluePDX.

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